Citizenship, Identity and Social Movements in the New Hong Kong: Localism after the Umbrella Movement [1 ed.] 9781138632950

Table of contents :
Contents
Notes on contributors
Introduction • Luke Cooper and Wai-man Lam
1 Decolonisation deferred: Hong Kong identity in historical perspective • Wing-sang Law
2 Changing identity politics: the democracy movement in Hong Kong • Ngok Ma
3 Mainland Chinese immigration in Hong Kong: analysing anti-immigrant sentiment • James F. Downes
4 Hong Kong’s fragmented soul: exploring brands of localism • Wai-man Lam
5 “You have to fight on your own”: self-alienation and the new Hong Kong nationalism • Luke Cooper
6 The development of Hong Kong identity: from local to national identity • Stephan Ortmann
7 Visual and discourse resistance on the “China factor”: the cultural formation of the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong • Wai-kwok Benson Wong
8 From past to future: Hong Kong’s democratic movement • Benny Y. T. Tai
Index

Citation preview

Citizenship, Identity and Social Movements in the New Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s “Umbrella Revolution” has been widely regarded as a watershed moment in the polity’s post-1997 history. While public protest has long been a routine part of Hong Kong’s political culture, the preparedness of large numbers of citizens to participate in civil disobedience represented a new moment for Hong Kong society, reflecting both a very high level of politicisation and a deteriorating relationship with Beijing. The transformative processes underpinning the dramatic events of autumn 2014 have a wide relevance to scholarly debates on Hong Kong, China and the changing contours of world politics today. This book provides an accessible entry point into the political and social cleavages that underpinned, and were expressed through, the Umbrella Movement. A key focus is the societal context and issues that have led to growth in a Hong Kong identity and how this became highly politically charged during the Umbrella Movement. It is widely recognised that political and ethnic identity has become a key cleavage in Hong Kong society. But there is little agreement amongst citizens about what it means to “be Hong Konger” today or whether this identity is compatible or conflicting with “being Chinese”. The book locates these identity cleavages within their historical context and uses a range of theories to understand these processes, including theories of nationalism, social identity, ethnic conflict, nativism and cosmopolitanism. This theoretical plurality allows the reader to see the new localism in its full diversity and complexity and to reflect on the evolving nature of Hong Kong’s relationship with Mainland China. Wai-man Lam is Assistant Professor in School of Arts and Social Sciences at the Open University of Hong Kong. Luke Cooper is Senior Lecturer in Politics at Anglia Ruskin University, UK.

Routledge Contemporary China Series For our full list of available titles: www.routledge.com/Routledge-ContemporaryChina-Series/book-series/SE0768

171 Competing Economic Paradigms in China The Co-Evolution of Economic Events, Economic Theory and Economics Education, 1976–2016 Steve Cohn 172 China’s Relations with Central and Eastern Europe From “Old Comrades” to New Partners Edited by Weiqing Song 173 Public Security and Governance in Contemporary China Mingjun Zhang and Xinye Wu 174 Interest Groups and New Democracy Movement in Hong Kong Edited by Sonny Shiu-Hing Lo 175 Civil Society in China and Taiwan Agency, Class and Boundaries Taru Salmenkari 176 Chinese Fans of Japanese and Korean Pop Culture Nationalistic Narratives and International Fandom Lu Chen 177 Emerging Adulthood in Hong Kong Social Forces and Civic Engagement Chau-kiu Cheung 178 Citizenship, Identity and Social Movements in the New Hong Kong Localism after the Umbrella Movement Edited by Wai-man Lam and Luke Cooper 179 The Politics of Memory in Sinophone Cinemas and Image Culture Altering Archives Edited by Peng Hsiao-yen and Ella Raidel 180 China’s Soviet Dream Propaganda, Culture, and Popular Imagination Yan Li

Citizenship, Identity and Social Movements in the New Hong Kong Localism after the Umbrella Movement Edited by Wai-man Lam and Luke Cooper

First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 selection and editorial matter, Wai-man Lam and Luke Cooper; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Wai-man Lam and Luke Cooper to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-63295-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-20797-1 (ebk) Typeset in Galliard by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Notes on contributors Introduction

vii 1

LU KE CO O P ER A ND WA I-MA N L A M

1

Decolonisation deferred: Hong Kong identity in historical perspective

13

W I N G - S AN G L AW

2

Changing identity politics: the democracy movement in Hong Kong

34

NGOK MA

3

Mainland Chinese immigration in Hong Kong: analysing anti-immigrant sentiment

51

J AM E S F. D O WNES

4

Hong Kong’s fragmented soul: exploring brands of localism

72

WAI - M AN LAM

5

“You have to fight on your own”: self-alienation and the new Hong Kong nationalism

94

LU KE CO O P ER

6

The development of Hong Kong identity: from local to national identity S TEP H AN O RTMA NN

114

vi

Contents

7

Visual and discourse resistance on the “China factor”: the cultural formation of the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong

132

WAI - KW O K BENS O N WO NG

8

From past to future: Hong Kong’s democratic movement

151

BEN N Y Y. T. TA I

Index

173

Contributors

Luke Cooper is Senior Lecturer in Politics at Anglia Ruskin University. His research interests lie in the area of historical sociology, with a particular focus on the role of nationalism and national identity in social change, non-Eurocentric international theory and the dynamics of contemporary protest movements. James F. Downes is Lecturer in Government and Public Administration at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Previously, he was a Tutor at the University of Hong Kong and a Visiting Scholar at the European Union Academic Programme Hong Kong. He has also been a Visiting Student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and at the Brussels School of International Studies in Belgium. His research pursues theory-driven quantitative research in the field of Comparative Politics, and touches on the themes of political behaviour, public opinion, comparative European politics and immigration policy. Wai-man Lam is Assistant Professor at the Open University of Hong Kong. Her current research interests include political culture and political participation, democratization and social movements, civil society, and state-society relations. She is the author of Understanding the Political Culture of Hong Kong: The Paradox of Activism and Depoliticization and co-editor of two existing volumes on Hong Kong politics. Wing-sang Law is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at Lingnan University. His research interests include historical and cultural studies of colonialism, Hong Kong cultural formation, and citizenship and cultural theory, and he is the author of Collaborative Colonial Power: The Making of the Hong Kong Chinese. Ngok Ma is Associate Professor in Government and Public Administration at Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests include government and politics in Hong Kong, democratisation, parties and elections, and he is the author of Political Development in Hong Kong: State, Political Society and Civil Society in Hong Kong. Stephan Ortmann is Assistant Professor in in the Department of Asian and International Studies at City University of Hong Kong. His research interests

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Contributors

include authoritarian regimes, politics of East and Southeast Asia, and social movements, and he is the author of Politics and Change in Singapore and Hong Kong: Containing Contention. Benny Yiu-ting Tai is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Hong Kong. His research lies in the area of constitutional law, governance and Hong Kong’s Basic Law. He is also a leading figure in the Hong Kong democracy movement and a co-founder of Occupy Central with Love and Peace Benson Wai-kwok Wong is Assistant Professor in Government and International Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. His research interests include comparative politics of Hong Kong and Taiwan politics, cultural change, and political symbolism.

Introduction Luke Cooper and Wai-man Lam

A turning point in Hong Kong politics On the twentieth anniversary of “the return” to Chinese sovereignty Hong Kong society stands at a crossroads characterised by ambiguity, self-reflection and pervasive uncertainty for what the future holds. The Umbrella Movement that erupted in Hong Kong in September 2014 undoubtedly marked a new political age for the polity. The movement had lasted for 79 days during which time tens of thousands of protestors occupied several important commercial districts in the territory. Although in some ways a development of the Occupy Central Campaign initiated by Benny Tai, a law professor, in 2013, the Umbrella Movement was ultimately unpremeditated and spontaneous. It constituted an extension of the long-standing and frustrated democracy movement in Hong Kong, catalysed by the “831 decision” of the Chinese National People’s Congress in August 2014, which denied genuine universal suffrage in the 2017 Hong Kong Chief Executive election, thus jeopardising further democratic constitutional reform. In the end, the movement did not succeed in reversing the “831 decision”. Nonetheless, it has raised the political consciousness of Hong Kongers from all walks of life, strengthened support for democracy, and also stimulated the growth of pro-independence movements in Hong Kong that further divide the people. The Umbrella Movement is undoubtedly unparalleled in the development of Hong Kong, but it nonetheless grew out of the highly specific, indeed unique, history of the polity. Hong Kong, a British colony until 1997 and a special administrative region of China since 1997, is a well-known example of a “hybrid” regime. During the British colonial rule, Hong Kong was referred to as a liberal autocracy, which signifies the colony’s high degree of civil liberties with very limited political and election rights (Lau and Kuan, 2002). The colonial Hong Kong Governor was appointed by the British Crown, and the Legislative Council was not fully elected at the handover of the territory to China. As of today, the Chief Executive is still elected by an election committee of 1,200 members belonging to four sectors of an electorate of around 246,000 people whereas Hong Kong has a total population of around 7.5 million. In addition, so-called “functional constituencies”, which only have around 230,000 eligible voters, return half of the seats of the Legislative Council. In recent years, extraordinary political

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challenges prevail and intensify in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Perceived deterioration of political autonomy and the protection of freedom, as well as the stagnation of movement towards democratisation, reached a breaking point with the appointment of Chun-ying Leung as the Chief Executive in 2012. Leung started his office at a very low level of popularity and has triggered intense societal and political divide under his rule. Indeed, in recent years, Hong Kong has become a hybrid system of inherent tension, with controlled electoral competitiveness displaying features of competitive authoritarianism in the legislative, judicial and social aspects (Case, 2008; Fong, 2013). The declining political legitimacy of the Hong Kong government and the people’s accumulated frustration with stagnant democratisation over the years were among the reasons leading to the Umbrella Movement. In the remaining months of his office, Leung only scored 41.6 out of 100 (HKUPOP, 2017) in the half-yearly average rating at the beginning of 2017. Not only is Hong Kong still deprived of democracy, but its traditional image as an economically vibrant and politically apathetic polity also endures. Indeed, for supporters of free market capitalism, Hong Kong remains a model case. Following the return to China it is still one of the freest markets in the world. The Fraser Institute, a Canadian free market think tank, has continuously ranked it number one in the world, scoring Hong Kong 9.11 in 1995 and 9.03 in 2014 on a scale in which 10 is the highest level of economic freedom (Fraser Institute, 2016). Hong Kong’s 'minimalist government' formula has continued to attract international plaudits that herald its economic success. The adherence of laissez faire and positive non-interventionism by various Financial Secretaries had accumulated a total reserve of around HK$330 billion (including the Land Fund) by March 1997 (Tsang, 1997). For the financial year of 2015 to 2016, the fiscal reserves proudly stood at HK$842.9 billion (Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau, 2016). The determination of the Chinese government to defend and extend the economic success formula of colonial Hong Kong to post-1997 Hong Kong was obvious. The Basic Law of Hong Kong clearly stipulates “the previous capitalist system and way of life shall remain unchanged for 50 years” (Article 5, Hong Kong Basic Law). However, the intent of the government to maintain the Hong Kong model of capitalism is not without problems, some of which are severe. For instance, property prices have continued to soar. Social mobility is believed to have been falling. The Gini Coefficients, reaching 0.533 in 2006 and 0.537 in 2011 (Legislative Council Secretariat, 2016: 3), have made Hong Kong a city of serious income disparities and contradictions. These economic conditions undoubtedly created fertile ground for the rise of the Umbrella Movement. In the colonial period Hong Kong was also known for its political apathy – a reputation that has continued into the 2000s. Research studies published in the 1970s and 1980s documented Hong Kongers as a politically apathetic or aloof people who treated Hong Kong as a temporary shelter (e.g., Hoadley, 1970), and saw them as deeply influenced by the traditional Chinese culture (e.g., King, 1981) and utilitarian capitalist culture (e.g., Lau, 1978). Particularly notorious in this regard was the theory of “utilitarian familism” suggested by Siu-kai Lau who

Introduction 3 argued that Hong Kongers were largely materialistic, individualistic and familialoriented. As such, they were politically passive and instrumental, and the overall political participation in Hong Kong was minimal, sporadic and short-term (Lau, 1982; Lau and Kuan, 1988). These political-cultural traits were found to have gradually altered in the 1980s and 1990s as Britain and China began the negotiations on Hong Kong’s political future and as Hong Kong entered its political transition. Nevertheless, Lau and his collaborator Hsin-chi Kuan argued that Hong Kong people were still merely “attentive spectators” (Lau and Kuan, 1995) who had become more alert to politics, but their overall participation remained individualised, sporadic and instrumental. Hong Kong had enjoyed political stability and was exempted from organised anti-colonial movements despite the undemocratic nature of the colonial regime. Hong Kongers had all along remained politically passive and pragmatic. Whilst influential, the above “apathetic theses” were not without challenges. In fact, since the 1970s waves of labour, student and women’s movements, and all sorts of social and citizen activism, signified Hong Kongers’ political dynamism. In particular, the democracy movement, which emerged in the 1980s and gained noticeable momentum with China’s crackdown of the pro-democracy student movement in Beijing in 1989, nourished a variety of democratic political groups and parties in Hong Kong, ranging from social democratic to moderate ones. Over the years, these political groups and parties organised numerous political campaigns pushing for a quicker pace of democratisation and universal suffrage in the election of the whole Legislative Council and the Chief Executive in Hong Kong, and defending Hong Kong’s political autonomy vis-à-vis growing political intervention from China. In 2003, to the surprise of many, half a million people took to the street to protest against the proposed national security legislation. This challenged the common sense stereotype of Hong Kong’s cultural life, finally breaking the spell of political apathy. In the decade that followed, waves of social movements, which involved hundreds of thousands of Hong Kongers, emerged one after another. These included the series of campaigns for preserving cultural heritages, the protest against the construction of the express rail connecting Hong Kong and China, the anti-national education curriculum campaign, the rising pro-independence sentiments, the Occupy Central Campaign together with the Umbrella Movement, and the Mong Kok riots in 2016. In the academic literature, serious doubts about the “apathetic thesis” have emerged since the 2000s. For example, Tai-lok Lui and Stephen W.K. Chiu argued that social movements in Hong Kong were under-researched due to the narrow definition of political stability of the above scholars (Lui and Chiu, 2000: 5–6). Similarly, Wai-man Lam, the co-author of this introduction, suggested that political activism coupled with a culture of depoliticisation were actually prevalent in Hong Kong. Political activism in Hong Kong cannot be well understood without also taking into account the significance of alternative types of political activities in constituting Hong Kongers’ political life, and the counter-narratives that simultaneously discouraged their political participation. These included patriotic activities targeting and invoked by the Beijing and Taipei governments,

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the social and discursive participation that addressed common concerns, and the political discourses that associated collective actions with trouble-making and political instability (Lam, 2004). These studies point to the fact that the political identity of Hong Kongers has never been as simple as is often assumed. Indeed, the political identity of Hong Kong is a hybrid which helps explain the people’s antipathy towards the perceived sinicization of the local culture by China and the subsequent clashes between the local and Mainland Chinese identities. Take the development of the ethnic identity of the people in recent years as an example. Much effort has been made by the Hong Kong government to nourish patriotism, such as the series of measures to strengthen the Chinese elements in the school curriculum, the use of Putonghua as the teaching language in primary schools and the attempted implementation of a national education curriculum, which were all met with strong public opposition. Despite these efforts, polls found that the most popular choice of self-identification of Hong Kongers has been the dual identity as Hong Konger and Chinese, except in the years after the political handover and until the Umbrella Movement. Meanwhile, the proportion of people who regarded themselves Hong Kongers had risen over the years, while the proportions of only Chinese had also increased but with obvious fluctuations (see the chapters by James Downes and Ngok Ma in this volume). The complexity of Hong Kongers’ identity is also demonstrated by its cosmopolitan elements. Previous studies found that Hong Kong people were supportive of the protection of freedom and civil liberties, expressed in their backlash against the national security bill perceived to be infringing their liberties in 2003. Moreover, it was found that Hong Kongers aspire to the general ideals of democracy alongside their awareness of the city’s connection with the global world, which help elucidate the growth and radicalisation of the democracy movement in recent years (Lam and Kuan, 2008). Recent polls showed that the strength of the identity of Hong Kongers as Asians and as global citizens had reached 7.81 and 6.76 respectively by December 2016 (HKUPOP, 2016). Indeed, as a former colonial and postcolonial polity, Hong Kong’s political culture and identity are known to be multiple and truncated. This has hybridised the people’s expectations of the government and made political legitimacy a hybrid notion, with the task of gaining political legitimacy a difficult one. Maintaining economic prosperity and government performance could satisfy the people only if their simultaneous political expectations of the government were also fulfilled. Any attempts to pacify Hong Kongers and deal with the government’s legitimacy problem, thus, have to address the people’s various expectations impartially and squarely, and appeal to the different components of their identities (Lam, 2016). The strong local-oriented and cosmopolitan components of the Hong Kong identity, along with the government's failure to instil strong patriotism, have heightened the people’s determination to defend Hong Kong’s political autonomy from the perceived encroachment of China, which, in turn, paved the way for the Umbrella Movement and rooted the pro-independence sentiments erupting through the political equilibrium until now.

Introduction 5

The new global protest and the Umbrella Movement The explosion of social protest Hong Kong saw in September 2014 was, therefore, the pinnacle of a longer period of political radicalisation amidst growing tensions between the populace and ruling authorities. There is no escaping the highly specific nature of this contestation over Hong Kong governance. Not only does it reflect contradictions and ambiguities within the original “One Country, Two Systems” settlement with regards to the possibility of democratisation, it also raised issues connected to Chinese identity and its applicability to Hong Kong. But despite these eminently unique circumstances, the Umbrella Movement inevitably draws parallels to the new wave of social protest and dramatic political upheaval, which broke out in the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and North America in 2011 (Kaldor and Selchow, 2014; Ishkanian and Glasius, 2016). The occupation of the city-square became particularly synonymous with the Tahrir Square protests in Egypt, providing a model of popular, democratic insurgency that would be directly imitated in the European and North American protest movements (Cooper and Hardy, 2012: 86–87). Hong Kong’s own experience of the occupy tactic reflects this modular character. The occupation is a form of political contestation that is easily replicated and also creates implicit transnational bonds of solidarity with the movements that had previously popularised the tactic. Indeed, Benny Tai’s (2013) original call for the democracy movement to utilise non-violent civil disobedience and take over the Central district on Hong Kong Island was directly modelled on the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States, which had also targeted the city’s main financial district. While the inspiration from global social movements is clear in the adoption of these tactics and narratives, the context that the Umbrella Movement grew out of also indicates some similarities. The new wave of social protest across this decade has been widely discussed in terms of the changing societal context of the twentyfirst century, and these find strong resonances in the causes of Hong Kong’s own experience of mass civil dissent. Firstly, the Umbrella Movement emerged out of a “legitimacy crisis” (Habermas, 1992) for the ruling Hong Kong authorities, which finds parallels in the high levels of public mistrust of institutions that was a key contextual factor for the social movement wave of 2010/11 and after (della Porta, 2015: 300–326). Lower public confidence in the institutions of government has been a feature of the post-economic crisis political context in many countries. The 2015 Edelman Trust Barometer found that public trust levels with government fell below 50 per cent in nineteen of the twenty-seven countries they surveyed (Edelman, 2015). With a trust level of 42 per cent, Hong Kong typified this wider trend (ibid). In such a context social movements offer a political avenue for the discontented. High levels of public mistrust reduce legitimacy and provide a source of grievances that can spiral into mass social movement activity, bringing political instability, and, potentially, even a breakdown in social order (della Porta, 2015: 323). This key factor in the new wave of global protest could also be seen in Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement with public distrust

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emanating from the failure to deliver on promises of reform. In this sense, popular discontent with the authorities was a cause of the political crisis. But a deep sense of alienation between rulers and ruled was also a consequence of the movement’s defeat at the hands of the uncompromising HKSAR government. Secondly, the Hong Kong experience appears to have more in common with the democratic revolts seen in the Middle East and North Africa than it does the European and North American movements of this period. The anti-austerity movements in the West have tended to be contextualised (della Porta, 2012: 36–38) as a backlash against what Colin Crouch has termed “post-democracy”: a political moment in which the decline in ideological differences between parties narrows the significance of elections and produces a propensity for technocratic forms of governance (Crouch, 2004). In the context of the financial crisis and the ensuing revolt against the economic assumptions of neoliberalism, the promotion of alternatives required social movements because the political party system in the West remained – at least until recently1 – wedded to a narrow range of policy responses. In contrast, the mass democratic movements of the Middle East and North Africa challenged the rule of classically authoritarian systems of government, not “post-democratic” ones. While Hong Kong has a unique governance structure, which hybridises elements drawn from the experience of British colonial rule with facets that reflect the ultimate power and sovereignty of the Chinese communist system, its overall character remains undemocratic. Hong Kongers seeking to establish a system of fully democratic elections based on universal suffrage for the first time in their history therefore put forward similar demands to those raised in the Middle East and North African revolts. However, the outcomes were, of course, very different. Hong Kong has not experienced a violent collapse in state authority such as that seen in the (victorious) Libyan Revolution, or in the (semi-defeated) Syrian one. In Egypt, unlike Hong Kong, the protestors’ sheer force of numbers within the more socially unstable national context was sufficient to dislodge the ruling regime, but also created a spiral of crisis-laden events that would ultimately see a return of a layer of the military elite in a revived semi-authoritarian system. Tunisia also provides an interesting point of contrast to the Hong Kong experience. It appears to be an example of what George Lawson (2005) has referred to as a “negotiated revolution”, a peaceful transition in which insurgent actors are prepared to compromise on some of their aims to allow a more stable changeover of power. Hong Kong’s democracy movement has traditionally adopted a similar conception of gradual political change. Hopeful of compromise with Beijing they have been reluctant to undertake actions that would anger the sovereign; for example, historically, they accepted the “One Country, Two Systems” approach and argued more radical aims were likely to provoke a counter-productive response from the PRC. Seen in the context of this great diversity of recent experiences, Hong Kong provides yet another example of the severe challenges that achieving and sustaining a democratisation process entails for civil society actors. Thirdly, the movement’s cultural aesthetics, i.e. its use of meaning-inducing symbolism, and its demographic composition are the factors that most clearly

Introduction 7 situate the Umbrella Movement as a component part of the global resurgence of social movement protests. While the movements of 2011 inevitably prompted analogies with the great years of political and social convulsion, 1848, 1917, 1968, 1989, etc., there was nonetheless “something in the air that defie[d] historic parallels: something new to do with technology, behaviour and popular culture” (Mason, 2012: 65). For the British journalist Paul Mason, who reported on many of these protests movements, the actor that most clearly defined how the societal context became interwoven into these revolts was the “graduate with no future” (Mason, 2012: 66–79). For Mason the role played by students and graduates in these mobilisations was a direct result of the economic and cultural transformations seen in the global economy over the previous two decades. “The boom years of globalisation”, he wrote, “created a mass transnational culture of being young and educated; now there is a mass transnational culture of disillusionment” (Mason, 2012: 69). For the graduate arguably represented the idealised worker of the heyday of neoliberalism: they were highly self-reliant, had a dense network of social contacts, and, lacking the expectation they would work for the same employer across their entire lives, implicitly embraced the flexible labour market (Mason, 2012: 68; see also Sennett, 2006). Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement can also be seen as strongly continuous with these dynamics in terms of its cultural ethos and social composition. Enrolled students, alongside their recently graduated peers, were a key force within the social movement with a particularly strong presence at the occupation in the Central area. However, like the Middle East and North African revolts, this layer was able to activate the participation of a wider social constituency that was more conventionally working class. Movement participants typically identified the occupation at Mong Kok as distinctive in this regard; it drew in a layer of the non-university educated to a far greater degree than the occupation of Central. While the movement was formally united around the demand for democratisation and universal suffrage, participants, particularly those of the younger generation, made frequent references to the persistence of social and economic injustices as a motivating factor for their dissent. Key factual indicators support such impressions. As a global city, which forms a central nodal point in the regional and world economy, Hong Kong provides an intense representation of many of the social problems associated with the modern metropolis in the twenty-first century. Hong Kongers work on average the longest working hours of any major city in the world at 50.11 hours spent in the workplace each week and with just 17 days of annual leave excluding public holidays (UBS, 2015: 36). This means across a year they will spend a stunning 1,000 hours more in the workplace than Parisians do (ibid). Neither does this significant workload lead to higher wage levels. The same study placed Hong Kong thirty-second in a league table of average weekly earnings (UBS, 2015: 9) while also putting the polity second highest (only behind New York) on housing costs (UBS, 2015: 25). A picture of squeezed incomes relative to high housing costs and long working hours can thus be seen, and it is one frequently cited by this discontented generation of occupiers. Hong Kong, nonetheless, remains

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distinctive in relation to the broader trend seen in the Global North and South for the rapid expansion of higher education. Only 18 per cent of its population attend publicly funded universities and admission remains highly competitive. But this does not appear to have obstructed the ability of the Umbrella Movement generation, Hong Kong’s own “graduates with no future”, to appeal to the grievances of a wider layer of the polity’s population, and stimulate their participation in the momentous events of autumn 2014. The electoral breakthroughs of the student- and graduate-led localist parties since testify to the wider appeal of their ideas.

Hong Kong’s hybridity: social movements meet the new populism Umbrella Movement participants powerfully mirror the young, networked, highly educated and socially aware individuals that led other waves of global protest. They also face the same experience of increased precariousness and diminished long-term economic prospects due to skyrocketing housing costs and wage stagnation. But while in the global protest wave, at least in Europe and the United States, these individuals were synonymous with a broadly leftliberal ethos, the same cannot be said of Hong Kong’s movement, which had a much more ambiguous relationship to the left-right spectrum as it is conventionally understood. As such, the movement reflected the specificities of the Hong Kong political landscape. In the latter, the range of issues defining the left-right spectrum – primarily, though not exclusively, differing attitudes to the market – are subordinated to the primary cleavage of Hong Kong politics: support for, or some degree of opposition to, the ruling Beijing establishment. More significantly, the manner in which local identity was manifested in the movement, and the legacy that this has left behind, powerfully underlines the distinctiveness of the Hong Kong experience. The issues of identity, sovereignty, cultural change, and attitudes to immigration, which were central to the narratives of localist actors within the protests, have some similarities to the favoured political vocabularies of the new right populism in the West (Vieten and Poynting, 2016; Jansen, 2015). In Europe and North America these ideas have tended to find higher levels of support amongst older layers of society and been popularly associated with those globalisation “left behind”, particularly in areas that have suffered the social effects of deindustrialisation (e.g. Ford and Goodwin, 2014). Opposition to these sentiments has been strongest amongst young graduates. The reason for this arguably lies in the demographic trends Mason identified in his original analysis of the new protest movements; namely, the way in which the social trends of globalisation fostered a cosmopolitan culture amongst young graduates that was not tribally associated with a particular political party, but strongly identified with a set of progressive discourses connected to multiculturalism, democracy and social justice. Interestingly, the novelty of the Hong Kong experience lies in how the relationship between social demography and the emergence of nativism appears to be powerfully inverted. In Hong Kong, at least

Introduction 9 a section of the “graduates with no future”, the highly networked young people suffering under the effects of urban life in the neoliberal metropolis, appear to have become strongly inclined to some ideological narratives that would be considered “right populist” in many other political contexts. A key aim of this book is to draw out the complexity and specificity associated with the emergence of the political phenomenon of localism. For while these comparisons and differences can serve to situate the significance of events in Hong Kong within a wider gamut of changes in twenty-first century world politics, they cannot be explained merely with reference to an underlying set of global causes. If hybridity is a phenomenon found in all societies in some form or another, Hong Kong provides an intense expression of this social process. This is an underlying theme of many of the contributions found across the chapters that follow. Wing-sang Law (chapter one) discusses the historical evolution of Hong Kong identity, locating it within the specificities of the polity’s colonial experience. Law argues Hong Kongers are experiencing the effects of the temporally deferred nature of the decolonisation process; the passivity of the return to China has left the people of Hong Kong stuck in a state of incomplete decolonisation. Localism therefore represents what Law calls a “return of the repressed”, which emerges out of the historical reality of Hong Kong’s unwilling return to the “Motherland”. Similar themes are taken up by Ngok Ma (chapter two), but through a different scholarly lens. Ma discusses the historical evolution away from the socalled “refugee mentality” of the colonial era towards the political constitution of a new identity in the era of Chinese sovereignty. Increased intervention from Beijing, threats to the autonomy, freedom and rule of law, and the lack of progress in democratization, all heightened resistance to the Chinese government. Ma argues the Umbrella Movement was a pivotal turning point that crystalised this protest into a new political identity. Stephan Ortmann (chapter six) develops further this theme exploring how Hong Kong identity has started to transform into a national identity, which is reflected in increasing calls for an independent state, and drawing on qualitative interviews with students he shows how these new nationalist sentiments are particularly strong amongst young people. Ortmann explains how Hong Kong identity has developed by distinguishing between civic, ethnic, and racial dimensions of identity. His conclusions reflect the complexity and heterogeneity of this process as he shows many still accept a Chinese identity based on racial, cultural and legal terms. However, at the same time, an increasing number of students reject Chinese identity altogether and promote a separate Hong Kong identity based on an appeal to the polity’s “core values”. Identity is always defined relationally. It requires a sense of who is not included within the imagined boundaries that unite together diverse groups of people who may never before have met one another, but still believe they have something in common, reflecting a shared memory or experience. Wai-kwok Benson Wong reviews visual materials from the Umbrella Movement to show how the symbolic articulation of Hong Kong identity requires the simultaneous presence of the

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“China factor” in visual materials (chapter seven). Luke Cooper (chapter five) explores the imagined construction of the new Hong Kong through the lens of the polity’s geopolitical relationship to the Chinese state. He emphasises the mutual othering that has taken place in the clash between the Chinese and Hong Kong “imagined communities” and how this has given rise to xenophobia and nativist discourses amongst the more radical sections of the localist movement. James Downes (chapter three) looks at the consequences of this mutual alienation in the discrimination faced by Mainlanders moving to Hong Kong on the One Way Permit Scheme, which has been strongly attacked by many localist groups. Localism is, however, a diverse, complex political phenomenon that should not be reduced to the most radically nativist forms. In this spirit, Wai-man Lam (chapter four) explores the various brands of localism and how they are constituted by nationalism, nativism, cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism, and other ideas. She argues that localisms in Hong Kong are hybrids with traits of nativism and cosmopolitanism, and some versions of them even accommodate multicultural ideas. Lam shows how Hong Kong localisms signify the locals’ attempted soul-searching amid the rising dominance of Chinese nationalist narratives, and represent their laborious efforts to face the challenge of identity as it emerged from the on-going process of decolonisation. While the Umbrella Movement took on its own dynamic, which was distinctive from the original call of the Occupy Central with Love and Peace Movement, it did nonetheless form part of the same cycle of protest and radicalisation. In our conclusion, Benny Tai (chapter eight) discusses the original public appeal he made for Hong Kongers to utilise the tactic of civil disobedience and locates it within the history of the polity’s democracy movement. Although situating the struggles of today on this longer historical plane, Tai also maps future possibilities by assessing the complex ways in which the views of the sovereign power, the Chinese communist regime, and the ideas and struggles of Hong Kong people are likely to intersect in the years ahead. He lays out a new perspective for uniting the disparate strands of the fragmented Hong Kong democracy movement in the context of a realistic appraisal of the likely developments in the polity’s relations with China. It seems fitting that the scholarly reflections brought together in this volume end on such a highly political note. At a time when Hong Kong society is going through a process of unprecedented change, with a younger generation of political and civil society actors searching for a way out of the polity’s postcolonial condition, we hope this volume sheds light on the nature of the new Hong Kong being born through these transformations. At the time of the twentieth anniversary of the handover to China, and looking at the polity’s condition in the longer historical context, change appears certain. It is that nature of it that is now being negotiated in Hong Kong.

Note 1 It might be argued that European and North American politics has been through a social movement phase, which reached its peak between 2010 and 2012. In the

Introduction 11 period since, a new process has emerged in which the political party system has become radically more polarised. The left component of this polarisation, from Bernie Sanders, to Jeremy Corbyn, Podemos, Syriza, and so on, is itself strongly linked to the post-crisis social movements. In many respects, the activists of the latter have made a ‘turn” to electoral politics, seeing it as a key vehicle for winning their policy demands. Meanwhile, the same social context has also proven amenable to the rise of the radical right on both sides of the Atlantic with Trump, Le Pen, Farage, et al. In Hong Kong, the polity’s highly unique political and institutional circumstances have meant that the processes of rupture with the existing political landscape has not taken the form of a deepening left-right polarisation, but instead concern different conceptions of Hong Kong’s relationship to the Mainland and how political actors should relate to Beijing.

Reference Cooper, Luke. and Hardy, Simon. (2012). Beyond Capitalism: The Future of Radical Politics. Winchester and Washington: Zero Books. Crouch, Colin. (2004). Post-Democracy. Cambridge: Polity. della Porta, Donatella. (2012). Critical Trust: Social Movements and Democracy in Times of Crisis. Cambio. Rivista Sulle Trasformazioni Sociali 2:4, pp. 33–43. della Porta, Donatella. (2015). Social Movements in Times of Austerity: Bringing Capitalism Back Into Protest Analysis. Cambridge: Polity. Edelman. (2015). 2015 Edelman Trust Barometer Global Results, www.edelman.com/ insights/intellectual-property/2015-edelman-trust-barometer/global-results/ (accessed 3 February 2017). Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau. (2016). Hong Kong: The Facts – Public Finance, www.gov.hk/en/about/abouthk/factsheets/docs/public_finance.pdf (accessed 20 February 2017). Ford, Robert, and Goodwin, Matthew, J. (2014). Revolt on the Right: Explaining Support for the Radical Right in Britain. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Fong, Brian C.H. (2013). State-society Conflicts Under Hong Kong’s Hybrid Regime: Governing Coalition Building and Civil Society Challenges. Asian Survey 53:5, pp. 854–882. Fraser Institute. (2016). Economic Freedom of the World: 2016 Annual Report (data by country), www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/economic-freedom (accessed 20 February 2017). Habermas, Jürgen (1992). Legitimation Crisis. Cambridge: Polity. HKUPOP. (2016). Ethnic Identity, www.hkupop.hku.hk/english/popexpress/ethnic/ index.html (accessed 20 February 2017). HKUPOP. (2017). Rating of Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, www.hkupop.hku. hk/english/popexpress/ce2012/cy/halfyr/datatables.html (accessed 20 February 2017). Hoadley, Stephen J. (1970). “Hong Kong Is the Lifeboat”: Notes on Political Culture and Socialisation. Journal of Oriental Studies 8, pp. 209–211. Ishkanian, Armine. and Glasius, Marlies. (2016). What Does Democracy Mean? Activist Views and Practices in Athens, Cairo, London and Moscow. Democratization 23, pp. 1–19. Jansen, Robert S. (2015). Populist Mobilization: A New Theoretical Approach. In C. de la Torre (ed.) The Promise and Perils of Populism – Global Perspectives. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, pp. 159–188.

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Kaldor, Mary. and Selchow, Sabine. (2014). Subterranean Politics in Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. King, Ambrose Y.C. (1981). The Political Culture of Kwun Tong: A Chinese Community in Hong Kong. In Ambrose Y.C. King and Rance P.L. Lee (eds.) Social Life and Development in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, pp. 14–168. Lam, Wai-man. (2004). Understanding the Political Culture of Hong Kong. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Lam, Wai-man. (2016). Political Legitimacy in Hong Kong: A Hybrid Notion. In Joseph Chan, Doh Chull Shin and Melissa Williams (eds.) East Asian Perspectives on Political Legitimacy: Bridging the Empirical-Normative Divide. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Lam, Wai-man and Kuan, Hsin-chi. (2008). Democratic Transition Frustrated: The Case of Hong Kong. In Yun-han Chu, Larry Diamond, Andrew J. Nathan, and Doh Chull Shin (eds.) How East Asians View Democracy. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 187–208. Lau, Siu-kai. (1978). From Traditional Familism to Utilitarianistic Familism: The Metamorphosis of Familial Ethos Among the Hong Kong Chinese. Hong Kong: Social Research Centre, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Lau, Siu-kai. (1982). Society and Politics in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. Lau, Siu-kai and Kuan, Hsin-chi. (1988). The Ethos of the Hong Kong Chinese. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press. Lau, Siu-kai and Kuan, Hsin-chi. (1995). The Attentive Spectator: Political Participation of the Hong Kong Chinese. Journal of Northeast Asian Studies 14:1, pp. 3–24. Lau, Siu-kai and Kuan, Hsin-chi. (2002). Between Liberal Autocracy and Democracy: Democratic Legitimacy in Hong Kong. Democratization 9:4, pp. 58–76. Lawson, George. (2005). Negotiated Revolution: The Czech Republic, South Africa and Chile. Farnham: Ashgate. Legislative Council Secretariat. (2016). Fact Sheet – Hong Kong in Figures, www. legco.gov.hk/research-publications/english/1516fs01-hong-kong-in-figures20160406-e.pdf (accessed 20 February 2017). Lui, Tai-lok and Chiu, Stephen Wing-kai. (2000). Introduction – Changing Political Opportunities and the Shaping of Collective Action: Social Movements in Hong Kong. In Stephen Wing-kai Chiu and Tai-lok Lui (eds.) The Dynamics of Social Movement in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, pp. 1–20. Mason, Paul. (2012). Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions. London and New York: Verso. Sennett, Richard. (2006). The Culture of the New Capitalism. London and New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Tai, Benny. (2013). 公民抗命的最大殺傷力武器. Hong Kong Economic Journal, 16 January 2013. Tsang, Donald. (1997). The 1997–98 Budget, www.budget.gov.hk/1997/speech/ eng/speech.htm (accessed 20 February 2017). UBS. (2015). Price and Earnings 2015. Zürich: UBS. Vieten, Ulrike M. and Poynting, Scott. (2016). Contemporary Far-Right Racist Populism in Europe. Journal of Intercultural Studies 37:6, pp. 533–540.

1

Decolonisation deferred Hong Kong identity in historical perspective Wing-sang Law

A passive handover The identity of Hong Kong people has created endless debates before the handover of the city from Britain to China in 1997. It has drawn people’s attention again in recent years, especially, in view of the upsurge of political activism caused by a series of China-Hong Kong conflicts. The widespread discontent over Beijing’s acts to bar Hong Kong from developing a democratic electoral system gave rise to the “Umbrella” occupation in 2014. The campaign was also overshadowed by the contentions between rival groups divided by their positions regarding the issues of political identity, local consciousness and even political separatism. This new tendency to associate pro-democracy movement with identity issue put the “One Country, Two Systems” formula to the test. Although most people did not expect China would allow the high degree of autonomous rule to be implemented in Hong Kong, more and more people now feel that Beijing’s interventions in local affairs have become regular. The rapid pace of integrating Hong Kong with China is turning Hong Kong into just another Chinese city. Out of frustration, radical thinking and ideologies emerged – in an attempt to defy the legitimacy of the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China that happened twenty years ago. This line of “localist” thinking also expresses its advocates’ strong feeling about their cultural difference with Mainland China; they regard their quest for autonomy and democracy as part of their battle to defend Hong Kong’s own culture and identity. Yet from the pro-Beijing establishment’s point of view, the persistence of dissenting voices in Hong Kong is attributable to the uncompleted process of “return”: namely, successful only in political but not in cultural and ideological terms. Although the above views are diametrically opposite to each other, they both point to the flaws of the process in which the transferal of Hong Kong’s sovereign power was negotiated between Britain and China in the early 1980s. The first and foremost defect of the Sino-British negotiation over Hong Kong’s future was the absence of the Hong Kong people’s representative. Over the hundred years of British colonial rule, there had never been any locally led organization that represented the general opinions of Hong Kong people. The Basic Law, drafted after the two governments signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration, incorporated only Hong Kongers appointed by Beijing as members of the Drafting

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Committee or Consultative Committee. These bodies served more as vehicles for co-opting pro-China loyalist elites than channels for the representatives of Hong Kongers to write up for themselves a mini-constitution. Since both governments agreed on the priority of actualizing a “smooth transition” and intended to keep the existing system intact, they avoided touching upon the colonial nature of the running system. In a concerted manner, they whitewashed Hong Kong’s economic achievements while covering up its colonial past in order to make everyone think of only the bright future. As a result, people were unable to see the true picture of Hong Kong’s colonial history and make fair and reflexive evaluation through public debates. All that the British government did was to make Hong Kong people believe that the colonial past was a miracle story: the British brought the rule of law, a system that respects individual freedom and advanced urban infrastructure to Hong Kong. Meanwhile, China kept silent on Hong Kong’s colonial past, too; they just wanted to selectively talk about the handover through a tragicomedy-style nationalist narrative of “the wandering child finally returns home”. This sentimental language usually adopted the same tone and perspective of the British in praising Hong Kong’s economic achievements and generalizing Hong Kong people as “economic animals”. It asked Hong Kong people to remember their origin and acknowledge that the “motherland” had always been “supportive” and contributed to the prosperity and stability that Hong Kong people enjoyed. A thorough process of decolonization should be one in which the spirit of independent subjectivity of the colonised can be liberated from the oppressive colonial system. However, one could not ask questions about how Hong Kong was going to be “decolonised” if one was repeatedly told that Hong Kong's story was just about a child’s sentimental return from his “foster father” back to his “biological mother”. Yet the “1997 politics” deliberately designed the pace of Hong Kong’s social development so that the colonial political system and social power structure would remain operational after 1997. This is because neither the Chinese nor the British government acknowledges the right of those who live on this piece of land to participate in the decision-making process of their own fates. In fact, Hong Kong people felt a strong sense of powerlessness as they were made into a bargaining chip for the two governments. Such a “handover,” determined through trading arrangements between Britain and China, can in no way mark the end of colonialism. Rather, it represents the indefinite deferral of decolonization. Or, it might be described as a “passive handover” leaving people of this city stuck in a state of “incomplete decolonization” and in need of a process of “subjectivity” building. Therefore, the local consciousness and localist movement that emerged in recent years in Hong Kong can be seen as a “return of the repressed”, a revenge of the fate of “being returned to China” unwillingly. What is coming back is the Hong Kong cultural and political subjectivity that had long been suppressed; it demands the overdue “recognition”.

The Hong Kong native gentleman identity Whether Hong Kong people, during the early colonial time, had already a unique identity of their own, or any trace of an emergent local consciousness, is a matter

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of academic debate. According to the historical narrative of the British in defense of imperialism, Hong Kong was a trading port where East met West. The important things were only goods, capital and a mobile labor force. The flows of these things might result in certain cultural clashes, yet they were all derived from rapid mobilities brought in from elsewhere. The native culture of Hong Kong was nothing more than the habits and customs of the ordinary men; such folk customs would inevitably be wiped out in the process of modernization. This colonial historical narrative that understates the importance of Hong Kong’s local culture reveals one fact: the early Hong Kong population was indeed highly mobile. These newcomers who came to look for job opportunities and a new life in Hong Kong comprised a large number of Mainland Chinese. They did not consider Hong Kong as their permanent home. The colonial government did not recognise their citizenship nor grant them proper civic rights. The former Chinese government(s) also found this vague legal status useful. They allowed Chinese to cross the borders freely just like the Concession arrangements of other Chinese coastal cities. The “local consciousness” had little weight in this historical environment of Concessions because even if there were a kind of consciousness as a treaty port resident, it would be far from an exclusive, unique identity but rather highly overlap with other identities. This consciousness of being a resident in the Chinese area would only be converted into political mobilization under very limited circumstances. The British rule began in the mid-eighteenth century, half a century before the fall of the Qing dynasty and the outbreak of the contemporary Chinese nationalist revolution. Historian John Carroll argues that although Hong Kong was a colony characterised by high mobility, a group of comprador capitalists had already made Hong Kong their permanent residence and developed a unique Hong Kong identity (Carroll, 2005). Entrusted by the British colonial masters, they were appointed as the leaders of the Chinese community. Besides trading, they oversaw charity organizations that served Chinese people and became the bridge between the British and Chinese communities. They were loyal to the British Empire but did not give up their Chinese identity, because their dual identity allowed them to survive between both groups. They internalised the cultural value system of the British gentlemen and looked down upon the “foreign” Chinese whom they regarded as immoral and of low quality. They consciously distanced themselves from the lower class Chinese of Mainland origin. Yet, they did not completely “de-sinicise” their everyday lives, because they were the “Chinese representatives” in the colonial system of British-style “indirect rule.” They would defend Chinese social customs and corrected or warded off the British or Westerners’ demands for reforms, such as improving the level of hygiene in Chinese housing and banning the adoption of slave girls under the principle of gender equality. Furthermore, the loyalty to the British Empire of these “superior Chinese” did not contradict their involvement or support for the modern Chinese nationalist “revolution”. In other words, these compradors had a unique “Hong Konger” identity while participating in different stages of development in China as patriots. Of course, when nationalism radicalised, their dual identity was also the source of trouble: they would be accused by radical nationalists of being

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traitors, one of whose crimes is precisely that they were neither fully Chinese nor fully Western. In early Republican China, the political chaos in China drew some Hong Kong-based Chinese businessmen into the political struggles of different local factions. As the Nationalist-Communist conflicts intensified, Chinese nationalism flourished. During the Canton-Hong Kong strike in 1925–1926, local capitalists stood with the colonial government in suppressing strikes and maintaining public order. As a result, the comprador class was increasingly in animosity with the radical nationalists of both the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Afterwards, the political conservatism of Hong Kong’s “superior Chinese” was closely associated with the colonial system, becoming a part of the unbreakable “collaborative colonial system” in Hong Kong. A review of the history of the compradors’ “Hong Kong identity” in early colonial Hong Kong is actually very useful for understanding the history of Hong Kong-China relations. Although these Chinese elites were only a minority, they had profoundly influenced the shaping of Hong Kong’s political culture. They were “native gentlemen” and extremely loyal to the British Empire. They received a good English language education and admired the rule of law and liberalism of the British civilization. They kept internalizing these values and included them in their blueprint for China’s reforms. However, they were sheltered by the colonial system and never became a capitalist class with profound political missions like those who led the liberal revolution during the Age of Enlightenment in Europe. Therefore, though John Carroll points out their shared capitalist cultures in which they consciously distanced themselves from other Chinese people as well as rich and powerful non-Chinese, and actively sought recognition of their Hong Kong identity from the British, their comprador characters differentiated them from the European bourgeoisie during the Age of Enlightenment. That was exactly their political weakness. As a result, the Chinese elites were unable to overcome their limitations of a superior class and create an inclusive local movement. They were also unable to lead an anti-colonial movement like the elites in India. They were born during the Self-Strengthening Movement in the late Qing dynasty after the British occupied Hong Kong. Back then, the British Empire was keen to nurture a group of Chinese who possessed British cultural qualities and skills to assist in the reforms of the Qing empire. The compradors in Hong Kong quickly learned to establish their social status through working with the two empires. This experience led to the construction of their self-image and a unique Hong Kong identity. They were eager to get the British to acknowledge that they were “British nationals” and different from “other Chinese”. They internalised the cultural values of the British Empire and identified the weaknesses of China through this lens, thereby positioning themselves as the promoter of “reforms” and Western modern civility in China. They would harshly criticise the situation in China, but that did not prevent them from seeing themselves as nationalists who deeply loved China. They had mastered the skills of dealing with powerful foreign rulers and relied on the colonial system to safeguard their class interests. On their dual political

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identity, they had also developed a kind of conformism and even opportunism in the disguise of pragmatism. This pragmatism of “knowing when to take the appropriate action” became a political cultural tradition of Hong Kong, and was one of the structural factors that led Hong Kong to the road of “a passive return to China”.

Refugee society and democratic self-government In the 30s and the 40s, Chinese nationalistic mobilization against Japan strengthened the national identity of the Hong Kong Chinese. Yet the civil war between the CCP and KMT confused the precise meaning of being a Chinese because the confrontation between the two parties involved antagonistic political loyalty. Hong Kong, under British rule, was a crucible accommodating both of the antagonistic Chinese identities as it became a “refugee society”. To manage this massive “refugee society”, the Hong Kong government followed the practice of the previous Japanese occupation government (1941–1945) to implement a registration system that issued a Hong Kong identity card to locals. And in response to the flood of famine-stricken refugees during the “Great Leap Forward” period (1958–1962), the government began to regulate the number of immigrants in the 1960s.1 However, an “identity card” did not by default equate to civic duties or match the “sense of identity” of the people at that time. In contrast, most people in Hong Kong still regarded themselves as Mainland Chinese immigrants rather than Hong Kong people. The Taiwan-based KMT government also considered Chinese people living in Hong Kong as “Chinese nationals living abroad”. Meanwhile, the CCP, whose policy towards Hong Kong at that time was “to plan comprehensively and use in the long run”, considered Hong Kong as “a territory that has yet come under its heel” and those living in Hong Kong as “compatriots.”. Since Hong Kong was crowded with newcomers, the focal point in the 50s and 60s was not local politics but the political struggles between the pro-KMT and pro-CCP camps during the Cold War. Many critics considered this struggle as a proxy of the global Cultural Cold War, but that was not the whole story. Despite Cold War rhetoric – such as calling Hong Kong the “Berlin of the East” – neither the British rulers nor the Americans really intended to turn Hong Kong into a full-scale anti-Communist base. The British government did not force a cultural policy upon Hong Kong and instead insisted on a “depoliticisation” policy that ensured the political neutrality of Hong Kong as a trade port. More importantly, the British needed to maintain a friendly relationship with China via Hong Kong in order to protect its long-term post-war interests in the Far East. Therefore, although left- and right-wing supporters often escalated infighting to making violent scenes, riots and clashes with the police, these riots had very little to do with the local consciousness. However, some did try to develop a local identity in post-war Hong Kong. Among the local businessmen, a group of Chinese elites, led by Ma Man Fai, son of the founder of the Sincere Company, together with non-locals influenced by

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social democracy or Fabianist reformism such as Elsie Tu and Brook Bernacchi, was actively involved in targeting colonial policies (貝加爾, 2012a). They formed advocacy groups such as the Reform Club of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Civic Association. These two groups became the major opposition forces in early postwar Hong Kong. Due to their mild attitude and their difficulties in involving the sizeable refugee Chinese community, they were unable to gain strong support from grassroots society; as a result, their further expansion was thwarted. But these Chinese and Western elites, who considered Hong Kong as their home, publicly demanded, for the first time, a more open political system and asked for democratization; they did help to end the pathetic trend that few people cared about local affairs. They attempted to speak for Hong Kong people and pressured the government by critiquing public policies in Chinese- and English-language newspapers. They also traveled to London frequently and complained directly to the British Parliament about the incompetence of the colonial government. Therefore, the Hong Kong colonial government received much pressure from its motherland. These advocacy groups developed into a new wave of political party organization in the 60s. They founded NGOs and political parties such as the United Nations Association of Hong Kong (UNAHK), Hong Kong Democratic Self-Government Party (HKDSGP), Labour Party and Hong Kong Democratic Socialist Party. They also organised protests with small business owners, hawkers and other social actors. In 1961, UNAHK demanded a full universal suffrage for the legislature. In 1963, UNAHK became HKDSGP and proposed an anti-colonialism and anticommunism manifesto, demanding that the British give Hong Kong the right to self-government and appoint a Hong Kong person as the governor.2 These political groups refused to join the CCP-KMT conflicts and aimed at serving the interests of Hong Kong people and achieving democratic self-government. Compared to the riots and labor strikes organised by the pro-KMT right wing and pro-CCP left wing, these activities appeared extremely mild. But to the colonial government, they were equally politically radical since unlike the left- and rightwing nationalists, they directly targeted the colonial government. Therefore, they were under strict surveillance from the colonial government. Their efforts indirectly induced the 1966 protest against the raise of Star Ferry fare. It was the first protest initiated by locals, but it lacked organization and turned into an uncontrollable riot. The riot was met with aggressive suppression by the colonial government and backlash of the conservatives, who pointed their fingers to mild reformists such as Elsie Tu. Under the suppressive colonial rule, there was no election platform for those who advocated for locally led democratic self-government.3 Besides, ideals like democracy and self-government were powerless in the face of a colonial government that promoted governance by depoliticisation and a “refugee society” that was deeply divided internally. The institutions and political parties associated with this ideology lost their momentum and disappeared altogether in the 70s. The 60s self-governance movement that emerged for the first time in Hong Kong advocated for a system of universal values and the spirit of the United

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Nations: that everyone is born equal and enjoys the right to self-determination. However, this international perspective and spirit of cosmopolitanism underlying the ideology of democratic self-government were against both colonialism and class-struggle-style communism. It was unable to sustain itself during the Cold War between the left and right during the 1950s, and eventually lost to the extreme leftism that flourished in Hong Kong in this period. Young people, who tended to embrace the emerging left-leaning nationalism, forgot entirely its achievements later (Law, 2014).

The first wave of local consciousness: the baby boom generation In fact, although the Hong Kong-born baby boomers had a strong desire to call Hong Kong their home, they were still mostly indoctrinated into the refugee mentality by their parents’ generation during their early development. The mentalities that represented this refugee consciousness the most were the “return to the north” ideology advocated by the left wing, and the right wing’s optimistic vision of waiting for the opportunity to return to Mainland China and promote cultural renaissance. Among these right-wing cultural nationalists, neoConfucians promoted Chinese cultural education and gained widespread support from Hong Kong youth. But these cultural nationalist ideologies appeared delusionary and out of touch after the 1966 and 1967 riots. This locally born younger generation wanted to understand the social reality of Hong Kong; this is something the older generation, who were indulged in the self-pitiful sentiment of being exiled abroad, did not do. The Hong Kong-born generation began to develop their cultural and political subjectivity in the late60s. This generation grew up in colonial Hong Kong and had a vague or fragmented understanding of China’s past and present and little real experience in China. Education in public schools was apolitical and ahistorical because the colonial government feared that history education would become the nursery for different political camps to recruit members. The first Hong Kong-born generation benefited from the 60s economic growth. But in the meantime, they also witnessed the emergence of various social issues and injustices resulting from this rapid economic development. Not only were they dissatisfied with the colonial rule, but they were also skeptical and fed up with the ideological paradox created by the Cold War dichotomies and hoped to break free of these boxes. The Star Ferry Pier riot broke out in 1966 quite spontaneously but did not lead to the new generation involved becoming more organised. In contrast, the pro-CCP leftist riot that happened in 1967 was highly organised and had comprehensive political slogans. Although the protest started with labor disputes, it quickly escalated to violence under the influence of China’s Cultural Revolution and aimed at challenging the colonial government, even asking the CCP to take back Hong Kong immediately. Although this radical political view faded with the failure of the riot, the younger generation was deeply shocked by the turn

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of events. Though they knew little about the political ideology of the pro-China camp, and only a few of the young rioters were provoked by left-wing groups, the fact that a lot of young people watched the demonstrations and shouted at the police led society to realise that the younger generation was impatient and anxious. Indeed, in the next wave of social activism in the 70s, people tended to describe this period as “the fiery era”. Young people were the subject of political and social movements at that time. Compared to the Cold War-style struggles in post-war Hong Kong, the social movement trend in the 70s was characterised by independence and autonomy of the new generation. Even though these movements still had interwoven relationships with Chinese nationalism, they were also the first local socio-political movement independent of the traditional left- and right-wing forces. This is where the first wave of local consciousness came about. For instance, the movement to make Chinese an official language in the early 70s directly targeted the colonial government’s language policy that prioritised English over Chinese. This campaign was the first peaceful social movement since the 1967 riot, receiving widespread support from different sectors of society. After that, the Baodiao movement criticised the American and Japanese governments for collusion over the Diaoyu Island controversies. The British government’s use of force to disperse the demonstrators gave the movement an anti-colonial element. These two movements showed how the development of the local consciousness could possibly deal with the issues of the colonial reality and redefine its relationship with Chinese nationalism. On the one hand, the (anti-Communist and anti-present-day-China) cultural nationalism created by the Cold War struggles did not offer a solution to the Hong Kong-born generation in response to the changing reality. The generation wanted to break free of the old nationalist mentality that had no mobilizing power. On the other hand, as the young generation was made to face the pressing issue of the colonial reality, they could only resort to the Chinese interests (Chinese language) and identity (Baodiao). This redefinition and compromise of nationalism have helped this generation break free of the traditional political apathy and “rootless” mentality. In short, these were the complex cultural and political contexts under which the first wave of local consciousness emerged.

The fiery 70s and sense of belonging to Hong Kong One of the sequels of the Baodiao movement was the demise of right-wing anticommunist nationalism and development of a new generation of pro-China “patriotic faction” youth through redirecting patriotic sentiments to pro-CCP nationalism. But apart from this patriotic current, those who were more critical towards the CCP converted their passions for social issues to locally focused movements that aimed at improving the interests of locals following the end of the Chinese language and Baodiao movements. That was the first political movement that successfully reached out to the grassroots. These young activists labeled themselves as the “social faction”, inheriting the reformist tradition of

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the older generation of activists such as Elsie Tu in approaching grassroots communities. From the making of this first wave of local consciousness, it is clear that under colonial rule, the search for local consciousness had to acknowledge the colonial reality rather than resorting to self-pity. Yet meanwhile, since it aimed at challenging colonial powers, it still had to rely on some form of Chinese national consciousness and nationalism. The student movement experienced major disagreements over whether they should become part of Communist China or engage more in the local anti-colonial struggles. The fall of the Gang of Four in 1976 led to the end of the “patriotic faction” in Hong Kong’s social movement because of their blind approval of the mistakes made by the CCP. Such grave mistakes resulted in a new and more critical approach towards Chinese nationalism growing among the youth. The 70s radical social movements were also deeply influenced by Trotskyism and anarchism and took the visions of the student and social movements beyond national boundaries. The internationalist student movement, anti-war movement and “counter-culture” movement in the 60s and 70s were also introduced to Hong Kong, albeit with a certain time lag. Meanwhile, the younger generation was influenced by Taiwan’s liberal resistance movement, the East-West cultural debate and nativist literature polemics, as well as the fleeing to Hong Kong of the extreme left Red Guards towards the end of the Cultural Revolution revealing the dark side of the Revolution. Altogether, these new changes promoted another kind of radical critical culture different from the official Maoism. These alternative radical ideologies provided a new angle that allowed the younger generation to critically reevaluate China. In an era when the existing ideologies were rapidly dismantling, how one should understand Hong Kong’s position and role in relations with China became a major issue in the 70s and 80s. Influenced by Beijing Spring in the late 70s and the “fifth modernization”, meaning democratization, proposed by dissident Wei Jingsheng, Hong Kong’s new generation readjusted the purely sentimental sense of Chinese identity and rejected those failed ideologies. However, they were still hopeful that critically self-positioning Hong Kong as a special status would be effective in promoting democracy in China. This complex understanding of China continued into the official Sino-British negotiation over Hong Kong’s future in the early 80s and influenced some of the active members to support the model of “reunion in democracy” as a solution to the 1997 handover issue. What this means is that they believed colonialism no longer had the justification and ability to continue, and Hong Kong people worried that the authoritarian CCP regime would destroy Hong Kong. Given the absence of alternatives, they thought that developing a democratic system was the best option to ensure a safe future for Hong Kong. Moreover, local democratic development would be effective in balancing or even restraining the social injustices created by the colonial system and realizing Hong Kong people’s participation in public life as the subject in the post-colonial era. Regardless of whether one supported the ideology of “reunion in democracy” the local consciousness vis-à-vis Hong Kong’s political crisis in the early 80s was

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actually extremely weak. None of the proposals were translated into effective political mobilization. “Reunion in democracy” was an idea of a minority that received little public attention except among university students.4 As for those with other proposals, including keeping the status quo, being placed under the United Nations’ trusteeship, transferring the power of sovereignty to the British government, extending the lease and self-determination, all they did was write in newspapers instead of organise any collective resistance. After all, Hong Kong people were conditioned to the high degree of political apathy maintained by the colonial government. Moreover, even though most Hong Kong people feared the CCP’s taking over of Hong Kong, few raised doubts about China’s ownership of Hong Kong out of a sense of Chinese identity. In fact, the Hong Kong government actively promoted an apolitical local consciousness in the 60s and 70s in response to the social crises and sense of alienation between the government and locals revealed by the 1967 riots. At the same time, it also began to adopt a de-colonization policy within the government in terms of promoting more Chinese administrators to the topmost ranks. Compared to the previous administrations, the late colonial government was more proactive in gaining legitimacy through various means, including promoting public housing, developing new satellite cities and establishing the Independent Commission Against Corruption to fully combat corruption. Meanwhile, the colonial government specifically built a sense of belonging as a “Hong Kong resident” through collective entertainment programs such as youth dances and the “Hong Kong Festival”. But while this sense of Hong Kong identity aimed at differentiating oneself from those living in other Chinese cities, it carefully prevented Hong Kong people from identifying themselves with the British because the British government had already decided that they would not be allowed to flood to Great Britain as British nationals. Although this series of reforms did not affect the fundamental governance structure of the colonial regime and aimed at only easing the conflicts under the disguise of “consultative democracy,” let alone promise a democratic selfgovernance structure approved by the people, these policy changes had already laid down the foundation for the promotion of Hong Kong as a different political community than China. The only problem was that Hong Kong people were not informed nor allowed to participate in this preparation for the “glorious retreat” of the British. Hong Kong civil society was allowed to develop a sense of belonging to the city within a limited framework, yet people were denied the ability to express their collective will through any formal mechanisms. Therefore, the official decolonization too was simply a post-colonial project designed to make Hong Kong people passively accept the departure of the British rulers. This official “Hong Kong identity” construction project was designed to maintain the self-image of the Hong Konger as an economically successful yet politically apathetic animal. In retrospect, the “success” of this apolitical Hong Kong identity was that it stripped Hong Kong people of their agency to seek participation in the Sino-British negotiations, leaving them powerless in the hands of the two powers.5

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Grandiose Hong Kongism and “more Chinese than China” Of course, according to the logic of the nationalists, the “Hong Kong identity” is nonexistent because all Chinese living in Hong Kong are Chinese nationals. This was the consensus of the left and right wings. Yet, the local pop culture that was growing rapidly in the 70s and 80s played an active role in shaping a local culture different from Chinese nationalism and identity. It was just that this local culture did not carry a kind of apathy or a clear desire for political autonomy; instead, it was a form of “plebeian citizen” cynicism with a sense of political dissatisfaction and powerlessness. This cynicism mocked the grand narratives of political loyalty and morality on the one hand, and carried strong dissatisfaction towards local politics and developed a sense of “plebeian citizen” pride for Hong Kong’s economic achievements on the other. The major source of this “plebeian citizen” consciousness was Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) that came into existence around that time. With TVB’s primetime variety show “Enjoy Yourself Tonight” at the heart of this source, the television industry quickly became a tool to shape the Hong Kong identity. These shows provided a platform for the grassroots to poke fun at current affairs and develop an imagined community of Hong Kong people while preventing them from becoming politically aware through entertainment shows. On the one hand, TVB appealed to the audience by including the digital public discussion platform that was lacking at that time in entertainment shows. On the other hand, the entertainment shows played a part in scaling down the conflicts resulting from discussions on public affairs. Their tone was one that praised good people who did good things for others and repeatedly emphasised that stability and prosperity were the highest values of Hong Kong people. They designed the pace of life of millions of audience members every evening and absorbed politics into entertainment, thereby helping the colonial government construct a Hong Kong identity based on the image of an apolitical economic animal. But this grassroots-based local culture gradually expanded to other forms and potentials. On the one hand, it meant a consumer culture of popular, sensational movies and magazines. On the other hand, it was a popular culture that centered on the everyday lives of grassroots society and showcased the unique features of Hong Kong, including the sophistication that all kinds of cultural resources can coexist. But more importantly, this new popular culture became disconnected from traditional China and the Great China imagination of the Mainland and Taiwan over time. The 70s and 80s were the golden time for the development of Hong Kong local culture independent of the cultural imaginations across the strait when the revenue loss of Mandarin films was the revenue gain of Cantonese language films. Most of the Mandarin language films popular in the Chinese markets in Southeast Asia in the 70s were filled with Chinese cultural and nationalistic messages. With a large scale of production and advanced technology, they once dominated Hong Kong’s film market and outperformed Cantonese language movies that were typically about traditional moral lessons. But the 80s “Hong Kong New Wave” and the grassroots-themed works by Cinema City Company

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created a series of Cantonese language films that were relevant to the everyday lives of Hong Kong people and successfully outcompeted Mandarin movies in the film market. Cinemas became the base for shaping the new generation’s sensitivity of their times and the city in which they lived. The new Hong Kong films not only reclaimed the local film market but were also being sold overseas. This was a sign that a powerful local cultural wave reached new heights in the 80s. This big change in the film market showed that the post-war baby boomers were boldly expressing and consolidating the local consciousness of their generation. However, other than showcasing a unique urban cultural perspective that lay beyond the national border, this local consciousness did not nurture a Hong Kong identity with concrete political values to accompany the image of the “urban economic people.” It praised the plebeian citizen characteristics of flexibility, quick wit and rejection of traditional norms, gradually developing a new self-image for Hong Kong people and a sense of pride and confidence based on the “economic person” identity, opportunism and pragmatism. Of course, this era of confidence in life in Hong Kong and the Hong Kong identity was also a product of the rapidly growing financial mechanisms in the 70s and changing circumstances in China. The death of Mao Zedong in 1976 and fall of the Gang of Four led to China’s economic reform. With the collapse of the socialist fantasy, Hong Kong-style opportunism and pragmatism proved to be the ideological model of “success.” Hong Kong’s adoption of capitalism bore fruit after the Second World War. Meanwhile, in the 80s, China was many steps behind Hong Kong in implementing capitalist reforms. Hong Kong, therefore, provided the platform through which Mainland China obtained capital, technology and managerial experiences. In contrast to the long years between the 1920s and 1980s in which Hong Kong was dominated by Chinese nationalistic and anti-imperialist ideologies, it was as if the 80s Hong Kong picked up its old role again and returned to the old comprador-led times when Hong Kong led China’s economic reforms while serving its own interests. Therefore, the local consciousness developed in the 80s was centered on economics and an arrogant “Grandiose Hong Kongist” mentality that saw Mainlanders as the culturally backward “Other.” Similar to early colonial Hong Kong, there was no need to separate this Hong Kong identity from China as it was not considered mutually exclusive with the Chinese identity. Politically, Hong Kong people once panicked over the early stage of SinoBritish negotiations in the early 80s, but they gradually accepted the “One Country, Two Systems” arrangement because the CCP marketed it as a “demonstration unit” for Taiwan. This context also explains why in the 80s local consciousness did not contradict the nationalist view that Hong Kong was a special part of China. Even though the 1989 June 4 tragedy destroyed the fine balance of the imagination of Hong Kong-China’s relations in this wave of local consciousness, the tragedy did not strengthen an exclusively Hong Kong local consciousness but rather promoted the national identity of Hong Kong’s people, who believed that the fate of Hong Kong is inseparable from that of China. The 1989 democracy movement and June 4 massacre were not just an internal affair in China, but they

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carried significant weight regarding the development of Hong Kong local consciousness. This local consciousness was not entirely about fighting for democracy but rather about an unprecedented political awakening among many Hong Kong people. It offered a new narrative of the Hong Kong identity that differed from the old image that Hong Kong people were not only politically powerless but also boastful, arrogant economic animals. Although their political passion for living in a way that was “more Chinese than China” and changing China’s politics gradually faded after the shock of June 4 sunk in, it continued on a smaller scale in the form of an annual June 4 commemoration led by the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China. This history demonstrates the complexity and interwoven relationships of the China factor in the development of the Hong Kong political consciousness. The June 4 incident was a critical moment that awoke Hong Kong people from the political apathy shaped by colonialism, the refugee mentality of the 50s and the economic animal mentality of the 70s. Historical subjectivity can only come into existence through a collective healing experience that gives birth to a sense of unity with moral significance and forces the community to overcome the selfinterested, rootless individuality. In that regard, “June 4” was a crucial element in the shaping process of Hong Kong’s historical subjectivity. It was initiated by a kind of Chinese identity, but because Hong Kong is the only place that allows people to own the mission of “justice for June 4 victims,” their June 4 memories became an indispensable element of the local political consciousness and carried a special meaning to the “Hongkonger” identity. Given the 1997 handover at sight, June 4 commemorations were expressed in a language of “dissident Chinese nationalism” because Hong Kong people could, by then, gesture as continuously playing a supporting role in the democracy movement of China as they did in 1989. As such, Hong Kong positioned itself as an untamable “internal critic” of China and, for that matter, it might be criticised as confined to the “Greater China mentality.” Nonetheless, this positioning did not prevent Hong Kong people from reevaluating Hong Kong-China relations in the 1990s, in particular, the relationship between Hong Kong’s cultural subjectivity and Chinese nationalism.

The second wave of local consciousness: Hong Kong as the world Throughout the 1990s, at the same time when the aforementioned awareness of ethnic identity arose, a big doubt and sense of alarm also emerged among Hong Kong people regarding their futures. This is because, during the time of the Tiananmen Massacre, which took place eight years prior to the 1997 handover, Hong Kong people were being pushed towards the day of “leaving Britain” and “becoming Chinese.” The few years immediately following Tiananmen Massacre were characterised by heavy emotions. But as days went by, the cultural sector saw an explosion of passion for self-reflecting, exploring and consolidating local cultures, as well as a solemn rethinking of the Hong Kong identity.

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Be it creative work or theoretical exploration, discussions of the past and future of local culture had reached new heights. The general attitude of this wave of exploring local consciousness towards the Hong Kong identity was to reject the Chinese nationalism’s belittlement of Hong Kong history and culture. From evaluating creative works through the imported lens of post-colonialism to proudly affirming the hybrid nature of Hong Kong culture, to self-affirming the urban characteristics of Hong Kong culture and the lens of the “marginal,” and to applauding the resistance and subversive potential in Hong Kong pop culture, the cultural sector’s review and reflection on Hong Kong culture was indeed a kind of strong reaction against China’s looming power over Hong Kong. During that time, people believed that local consciousness must be closely linked with cosmopolitanism, a character that Hong Kong as an international city must possess. Therefore, protecting the spirit of local culture is also about protecting its openness, diversity, transnationalism and capacity for self-reflection. They saw that deconstructing the grand narrative of nationalism and preventing local culture from being engulfed and destroyed by the authority of nationalism are the only ways to preserve the invaluable cultural heritage of Hong Kong. A critical distance from the official version of Chinese nationalism was considered an essential part of the struggle to preserve Hong Kongers’ commitment to universal values, developing a diverse, vibrant civil society, so as to safeguard press and academic freedom, etc. Obviously, in this pursuit of the second wave of local consciousness, local identity is constructed in relation to nationalism. This wave of self-reflection and commentary on local culture was the first to critically review China-Hong Kong cultural and political relations. For the first time, commentators broke free from the conventional framework of political nationalism and cultural nationalism in discussing the “Chinese identity” of Hong Kong people. The affirmation of Hong Kong culture was also shown in the abandonment of clichés such as “cultural desert” and “East meets West” in describing Hong Kong. Besides rejecting the “Greater China” lens in analyzing Hong Kong, the cultural sector also warned and criticised Mainland Chinese scholars who attempted to write the history of Hong Kong from the Sinocentric viewpoint. Instead, it emphasised the need for Hong Kong academia to develop a critical angle that would posit Hong Kong as the subject. However, what does it mean by positing Hong Kong as the subject? What would the Hong Kong view of history look like? These questions raised a lot of controversies and discussions. On the one hand, there was a pressing need to find the local perspective. On the other hand, there were endless questions regarding the definition of Hong Kong’s “localness.” On this issue, local scholars who engaged in these discussions in the 90s did not advocate for a conservative, essentialist or primordialist narrative of localism. This is because they too realised that such an essentialist localism would be the reflection of the essentialist primordialism that they sought to criticise and because they understood that this essentialist localism did not match the historical experiences of Hong Kong. They asserted that while “localness” should not submit to Sinocentric nationalism, they should focus on the potential of the

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diversity, hybridity and subversive tendency of Hong Kong culture. They carefully affirmed and criticised Hong Kong’s “international personality,” “characteristics as a trading port,” “double consciousness” and even the “comprador tradition.” Methodically, they used postmodernism and post-colonialism to deconstruct the Sinocentric nationalist hegemony, as well as self-criticise localism or Grandiose Hong Kongism, which they believed lacked the capability of self-reflection. Local scholars understood that the world is full of all kinds of multilayered, intertwining power relations, and any hegemonic narratives are cunning and dangerous.6 The wave of exploring “local consciousness” in the 90s not only tried to highlight the uniqueness of Hong Kong cultural identity, it also had a strong awareness of the issue of subjectivity. Rather than plainly describing the cultural characteristics of Hong Kong, scholars and commentators actively analyzed the relationship between the development of Hong Kong culture and the continuity and discontinuity of relevant cultural resources. They even explored Hong Kong’s relations with China and the world through the complicated self-other relationship. Even though these discussions were not directly linked to political actions or ideological promotion, these discussions and creative exploration had a clear sense of urgency to implement these ideas. They were also coherent with the spirit that aims at building a theoretical foundation for the city’s cosmopolitan character. Whenever the cosmopolitan character of Hong Kong and the universal values this city upholds were felt to be under threat, Hong Kongers, after 1997, took actions to safeguard them because they are perceived as the constituents of the core of Hong Kong identity. The campaign against the National Security Bill (Article 23), exploded in 2003, is a vivid case that demonstrates the strength of that new sense of Hong Kong identity.

The third wave of local consciousness: cultural uprising and the post-80s generation After the 2003 July 1 rally that drew half a million to the streets, a large number of youths upset with the status quo emerged. This is the generation that was born when Hong Kong’s “path of handover” had already been decided. Inspired by the 2003 protests, this generation realised that they are living in a nondemocratic system in which they do not have the right to choose. As the new generation of the SAR, they generally do not feel strongly against being identified as the “Chinese people in Hong Kong,” the category of identity assigned to them by the regime. Even if some disagree with this identity, they feel powerless about it just like the older generations. But they fear that if Article 23 were passed, the government could strip them of their freedom and spy on their everyday lives in the name of national security. More so, they are disgusted and disappointed at Beijing’s multiple interpretations of the Basic Law to crack down on the will of Hong Kong people to implement democratic reforms. This generation acutely feels that regardless of whom the Chief Executive is, the government would only obey the orders of Beijing. This gap between reality and expectation has a strong alienating effect on the youth.

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Political discontent also extends to dissatisfaction with the status quo. Young people are very sensitive towards the city’s pro-development agenda controlled by land developers. Witnessing the loss of old neighborhoods, destruction of community relations, shrinking space for alternative ways of life and lack of choices in everyday life, young people have lost confidence in calling Hong Kong their home. So they talk about their own values, reiterate their right as a subject to determine the future of the city, and reject the passive attitude of the older generations. The older generations see Hong Kong only as a city of opportunities and define their identity through the official narrative of the “Lion Rock Spirit,” which reduces the local consciousness into a story about working hard to make ends meet and eventually succeeding. The post-handover generation’s pursuit of a sense of belonging forms the essence of the local consciousness of the new generation. Local consciousness, as such, takes the following as its “other”: global capitalism, the political economic system, government-business collusion and developer hegemony that monopolises Hong Kong’s political lifeblood, and the state machine and establishment with vested interests that controls Hong Kong from miles away. Not only are the youth dissatisfied with the ruling government and conservative powers within the pro-establishment camp, but they are also unhappy with the city’s political opposition. The political opposition (pan-democrats), led by baby boomers, has become rigid and lacks the ability and courage to lead an effective resistance movement. Instead, they are comfortable with being petty politicians loyal to the “pan-democratic” camp. Therefore, the younger generation attempts to break through the predicament of Hong Kong’s political development outside the existing limited democratic system through more radical forms of social activism. Increasingly feeling alienated from this city, they cry from the bottom of their hearts, vowing to reclaim the lost soul and values of this city. They break open the field of urban social movement surrounding urban architecture and environmental conservation, issues that politicians and the traditional social movement sector did not care about. From the protests to conserve the Star Ferry and Queen’s Pier in 2006 and 2007, to anti-urban renewal activism in Lee Tung Street, and to the anti-Express Rail Link protests in 2009, Hong Kong saw a new (third) wave of local consciousness and a brand new form of local activism. Because this wave of local consciousness was led by the “post-handover generation,” also known as the “post-80s generation,” it is closely associated with the discussion of intergenerational conflicts. Young activists criticise the post-war baby-boomer conservatism of both government officials and mainstream pandemocratic parties, which play a passive role in the social movement sector. Coming from a perspective developed during a time when Hong Kong was rapidly developing, these baby boomers failed to understand that the local consciousness of the new generation is not in protest of the lack of social mobility and opportunities, but rather it is about a new, post-materialist value system. The youth feel the need of a breakthrough of the colonial-style political games because these games would only divide and co-opt opposition voices. After the handover, the

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political establishment uses the system of “functional constituencies” to buy and win over opposition figures in order to divide the power of the political opposition and allow the CCP to control Hong Kong.

Collective memories and Hong Kong-China conflicts In order to mobilise those who have yet to join the political establishment for self-interests, the “post-80s” social activists tapped into the power of culture by converting Hong Kong people’s strong sense of powerlessness and passive reminiscent mood to the determination to safeguard the city’s cultural and historical memories. Under the old and new colonial systems, Hong Kong lacks a fundamental sense of history and history education, and the government only tells a one-sided, banal story of development. The pursuit of the forgotten history and collective memories, therefore, became the source of political mobilization. This wave of local consciousness developed rapidly as the new politics, focusing on the cultural dimension, received strong support from the cultural, media and arts sectors. The force behind the “post-80s generation” social movement came from rebutting the official narrative of nationalism and rewriting the colonial historical memory. Aiming at conserving monuments and collective memory of colonial Hong Kong, these social movements stirred up fear among the political establishment, who criticised them for obsessing with a nostalgia for colonialism. But there is no way to stop the debate: narratives about the feelings and experiences of colonial Hong Kong have since then broken free from the official framework of nationalism, striving to protect old architecture and reminiscing about the social customs, way of life and the lost system and norms during the colonial time when comparing the past and present of Hong Kong. Such sentiments have gradually been absorbed into the “anti-Mainland” discourse that completely rejects the post-1997 status quo, and is no longer under the control of the original campaigners. During the protests against the demolishment of the Queen’s Pier, campaigners believed in urban activism and summoned the collective memory of an ethnically diverse public using the pier. Their ideology is a kind of localism that embraces multiculturalism and critiques colonial historical scholarship and the hegemony of the pro-development agenda in post-1997 Hong Kong. However, this anti-development discourse coincided with the issue of rapid integration of Hong Kong and China, the sentiment against which was unleashed thoroughly during the anti-Express Rail Link (XRL) controversy. Since then, both Hong Kong-China relations and undemocratic infrastructure development plans became the central issues of the movement and brought together diverse supporting forces. While the anti-XRL protests attracted an unprecedentedly large number of social movement organizations to besiege the Legislative Council Building, the Internet also saw a growth of sarcastic multimedia works that mocked the influx of “locusts,” a nickname for Mainland Chinese individual visitors, and a huge number of reposts of photos of Mainland tourists urinating on the streets of Hong Kong. In the years following the end of the anti-XRL protests, Hong

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Kong people’s concerns about the rapid integration of Hong Kong and China finally led to a drastic change in direction of the pursuit of the local consciousness. In 2012, a luxury store on Canton Road forbade Hong Kong people from taking photos of it but allowed Mainland tourists to do so, enraging netizens who were upset with rich Mainland tourists. Netizens organised a series of protests and crowdfunded a full-page “anti-locust” advertisement in newspapers. At around the same time, cultural critic Wan Chin (2011) published a right-wing localism book, On Hong Kong as a City-State, arguing for the need for ethnic politics and resistance against Mainland Chinese encroachment into Hong Kong on all fronts. Since then, the pursuit of Hong Kong’s local consciousness has changed from the left-wing agenda of rewriting colonial history and embracing cultural diversity to a right-wing route that bases new forms of resistance on the radicalization of Hong Kong-China conflicts. We saw a large number of Hong Kong-China social conflicts over the last couple of years, including the influx of Mainland individual visitors, fear of the introduction of the “self-driving” scheme (which allows Mainland visitors to drive in Hong Kong), insufficient capacity at hospitals as Mainland parents take away resources from local pregnant women, similar issues with schools as children born to Mainland parents drain local resources, CY Leung’s hiring of a Communist Youth League member who had not lived in Hong Kong for seven years as an assistant at the Chief Executive Office, and allegations that Mainland students forced their instructor to speak in Mandarin. These cases were widely debated and revealed the root causes: the Leung administration is a puppet government of Beijing and the fact that Hong Kong has no power to say no to Beijing contradicts the promise of “a high degree of autonomy.” Hong Kong people became increasingly discontent with a large number of Mainland individual visitors that stretches beyond the city’s capacity to receive visitors and the fact that the government has no authority to screen and approve newcomers from Mainland China. They are concerned that they are left out of the planning process of most infrastructure and new town development projects, as well as regional economic restructuring policies. Culturally, the gradual replacement of the existing cultural norms with Mandarin and simplified Chinese has become a trend of the new cultural hegemony. There are also concerns about the high ratio of Mainland graduate students in universities. These incidents reveal the worrying trend that Hong Kong is losing economic and political independence, the government is no longer held accountable to the public and Hong Kong’s unique cultures will eventually be wiped out. This is the context in which localism based on anti-Chinese sentiments became popularised. In response to a wide range of issues that concern Hong Kong people, a handful of anti-China discourses emerged. Two examples are the aforementioned “Hong Kong as a city-state” theory and Hong Kong self-determination/independence. Although there are huge ideological and theoretical differences between the two discourses, both proponents do not mind joining hands with the shared goal of “localism.” They share the principle of “priority for locals” and agree that only localism could provoke emotionally driven resistance, which is believed to

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be a solution to the current political stalemate. This new right-wing populism rejects the principles of “peaceful, rational, non-violent and expletive-free” (woh lei fei fei) resistance laid out by mainstream pan-democratic politicians, as well as the conventional movement strategies employed by established social movement organizations and civil society groups. They even believe that earlier movements led by the “post-80s generation” were tied up by various constraints that limited their own resistance methods and goals, and were therefore unable to achieve “true victory.” This new localist movement advocates for the use of radical means of expression and gains widespread support with the help of online news media. On the Internet, localists not only attack the traditional pan-democratic camp, but they have also stirred up a storm of left-right rivalry, creating new dichotomies and conflicts and attracting occasional media attention.

Conclusion Through analyzing the century-old history of Hong Kong’s local consciousness and ethnic politics, this essay has teased out the intertwining relationships among the three waves of post-war local consciousness. I used a contemporary cultural anthropological lens to analyze the history of Hong Kong people, understanding the local consciousness and ethnicity as a product of history rather than a list of characteristics. From this perspective, we can see that in different time periods, there were different issues, structural constraints and “Others” in regard to Hong Kong identity and consciousness. The resulting outlooks of this native identity and consciousness therefore differ. As Fredrick Barth (1998) points out, ethnic identity is a result of the processes in which boundaries are created between groups under certain societal and historical contexts – through social interactions, the selective use of history and symbols, or even the invention of traditions. Therefore, not only can we identify the consistency and continuity of the cultural memory and symbols shared and inherited among members of an ethnic group, but we can also see that these symbols are sometimes self-contradictory and even disconnected. As I have shown in this essay, Hong Kong ethnic identity is complex: it carries the marks left by imperial and colonial powers, and by a resistant force against colonial rule at the same time. As Hong Kong ethnic identity broke free of colonial powers, it, in turn, got caught up in conflicting nationalistic courses, or the project of “restoration of the celestial empire,” that took root in different time periods. Such twists and turns make it difficult to form a distinct Hong Kong identity of its own. However, these conflicting identities are the true inheritance of Hong Kong’s history, as well as the foundation of the future development of a common ethnic identity. Having wandered between imperialism and nationalism for more than a century, Hong Kong has become a unique city, gradually nursing a civic culture as well as various practical struggling experiences – through which our civil society is strengthened – that we should be proud of. In examining the state and changes of the local consciousness in the context of unfinished decolonization, the key is not to repeatedly point out the

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characteristics of Hong Kong people or culture or to label only the apparent differences between “us” and the “Other” purely for the sake of consolidating a sense of pride and superiority in replacement of the rejected self-image. Nor is it to erase every kind of (pro-colonial or pro-Chinese) complex created through the interactions between the new and the old colonised through ethnic cleansing. It is to recognise that these collective memories are intertwined with the colonial experiences of Hong Kong. The collective memories exist in “our” memories, experiences and imaginations, waiting to be recalled and mobilised. The reason why contemporary Hong Kong remains vibrant and possesses unique values is because it has over the last few decades successfully overcome the obstacles of a refugee society that diverged from post-war nationalism and the Cold War and transformed into a civil society without any national burden. It has overcome the problematic rivalry and division caused both by the two major political ideologies or cleavages among kinships and clans which plagued Hong Kong in the early days. Hong Kong is now in the process of developing a stronger sense of a united civic/political community to safeguard itself from being recolonised again. To track down reflexively the paths in which such a strong civil society has come about is undoubtedly part of such an endeavor.

Notes 1 To control the influx of refugees into Hong Kong, the Hong Kong government implemented the “Touch Base Policy” in 1974. The policy allowed illegal immigrants to stay in Hong Kong if they succeeded in reaching urban areas and meeting their relatives. Those who were intercepted midway would be repatriated back to the Mainland immediately. The policy was lifted in 1980, meaning that any illegal immigrants would be repatriated to Mainland China immediately. 2 The then-Legislative Council comprised only appointed and official seats. The only institution that had directly elected seats was the Urban Council that was responsible for municipal sanitary services. Moreover, very few were eligible to vote for the seats. 3 Shortly after the end of the Cultural Revolution in the early 80s, implementation of Deng Xiaoping’s blueprint for reform began to take place. The CCP demonstrated a strong determination to implement the reforms; reformist leader Zhao Ziyang also gave a positive response to the demands of “reunion in democracy” put forward by Hong Kong’s university student leaders. This made some believe that a “reunion in democracy” would come true. Nonetheless, official media and documents of the CCP never formally accepted the slogan of “reunion in democracy”. After the 1989 June 4 massacre, Zhao was expelled from the party and two prodemocracy members quitted the Basic Law Drafting Committee. The drafting of the Basic Law was entirely dictated by the conservatives after June 4, 1989. It is fair to say that the “reunion in democracy” ideal had been buried since then. But it was useful as a constructive gesture of political participation and a slogan for bargaining for self-government. The closer to the official day of the 1997 handover, the more the pro-democratic politicians voiced support for “reunion in democracy”, including those who had reservations about the handover arrangements in the early days, such as Martin Lee. Hong Kong’s pro-CCP newspaper Ta Kung Pao even attacked the “reunion in democracy” discourse in its editorial published on 30 June 1996. 4 In fact, most civil society organizations with a substantial supporter base (except for the direct-descent pro-China leftist groups) kept silence on the sovereignty

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dispute. Independent groups that belonged to neither the left nor right, including the biggest teachers’ union, Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union, and its leader Szeto Wah, were also reluctant to endorse the “reunion in democracy” or other proposals. 5 The death of Margaret Thatcher last year triggered a wave of reposting of an article by former legislator Margaret Ng published in 1984, the year when the Sino-British Joint Agreement was signed. Ng explained that the Chinese legislators at that time supported the negotiation strategies of the British in the name of the interests of the whole society, but it turned out that the British government renounced their role to participate in Hong Kong’s affairs after 1997. Ng expressed shock and disappointment regarding the British government’s decision (Ng, 1984). 6 Commentaries on post-colonialism of Hong Kong by critics such as Leung Pingkwan and Rey Chow raised public debate at that time. Young scholars criticized Chow’s analysis that Hong Kong was trapped between two colonial powers for promoting a narrative of limbo and self-pity. As a counterargument, scholar Hung Ho-fung proposed a thesis of “northbound colonialism”, criticizing Chow’s theory for being in complicity with the Grandiose Hong Kongism. At that time, Hung believed that in order to understand Hong Kong-China relations, one could start with the desire of “colonizing the north” hidden in Hong Kong’s economic reforms. A series of related discussions is published in Chan 1997 (Chan, 1997).

Reference Barth, Fedrick. (1998). Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press. Carroll, John. (2005). Edge of Empires. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Chan, Ching-kiu (ed.). (1997). Cultural Imaginary and Ideology: Critical Essays in Contemporary Hong Kong Culture. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press. Law, Wing Sang. (2000). The End of Virtual Liberalism. In Po-keung Hui (ed.) Rewriting the Historical Story of Our City. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, pp. 3–12. Law, Wing Sang. (2014). Decolonization in the Cold-War. A Review of the Chinese Language Movement in Hong Kong. Chinese/Chinese Education Workshop, Lingnan University, Hong Kong, 20–21 September 2014. Ng, Margaret. (1984). Now We Stand Alone. South China Morning Post, 28 March, www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.668382399855798.1073741826.253767 971317245&type=3 (accessed 12 March 2017). 貝加爾. (2012a). 港獨之父馬文輝：六十年代的民主運動（上） , https://sparkpost. wordpress.com/2012/12/04/ma-man-fai-1/ (accessed 12 March 2017). 貝加爾. (2012b). 港獨之父馬文輝：六十年代的民主運動（下） , https://sparkpost. wordpress.com/2012/12/11/ma-man-fai-2/ (accessed 12 March 2017). 陳雲 (Chin, Wan). (2011). 《香港城邦論》 . 香港：天窗出版社.

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Changing identity politics The democracy movement in Hong Kong Ngok Ma

The democracy movement of Hong Kong has been closely related to the development of identity politics. In recent years, with the lack of progress in democratization, there is a significant rise in anti-China sentiments, with more people supporting different forms of self-determination. Recent discussions, especially among “localists”, tried to summarise the past history of democratic movement as one of failure by those who had championed “democratic repatriation” since the 1980s. To this author, this is a much too simplistic view of the relationship between Hong Kong identity and the democracy movement in Hong Kong. Throughout the years, the Hong Kong democracy movement has always struggled to cope with competing influences of the Hong Kong identity and nationalism, which has shaped the course of the movement in the last 30 years. This chapter will map the development of the democracy movement in Hong Kong, in relation to changing identities towards China and Hong Kong, and show how identity politics and the democracy movement interacted in different periods of Hong Kong history. The general trend in Hong Kong was a gradual weakening of the identification with China, coupled with the rise of a more selfassertive indigenous identity, pointing towards self-determination and genuine autonomy as political goals in recent years. The widening political gap between China and Hong Kong implies a tough task for the continual implementation of “One Country, Two Systems”, with advancement to full democracy for Hong Kong under Chinese sovereignty equally difficult.

The postwar colonial society Analysis of postwar Hong Kong politics, at least before the 1980s, was largely dominated by the explanation of the “absence of politics”. The key puzzle was the relative quiescence of the colonial society amidst a period of rapid industrialization and development. There were no significant demands for democracy and with the exception of the riots of 1956, 1966 and 1967, there were few mass disturbances or sizeable challenges to colonial rule. Scholars who focused on colonial institutions claimed that politics was “administerised” or “bureaucratised” (Harris, 1978). From a sociological perspective, King (1975) asserted that possible political opposition or participation in the postwar years was effectively

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absorbed by the colonial government, by a system of co-optation by appointment of Chinese elites into the colonial power structure. Lau Siu-kai’s (1984) explanation of the low level of political participation in colonial Hong Kong was largely a cultural one. Lau saw the Hong Kong Chinese as a special bland of Chinese who harboured a “refugee mentality”. As most of the postwar inhabitants came to Hong Kong as refugees, they did not have a strong sense of belonging to Hong Kong, did not expect much from the colonial government, and did not have long-term plans for the future. They abhorred political conflicts, treasured stability and strived for material improvements, which made them unwilling to participate in colonial politics. To Lau, this was traditional Chinese political culture adapted to the urban-industrial setting in the colonial society. The lack of a Hong Kong identity was an important underlying reason for the low level of political participation and democratic demands in postwar colonial Hong Kong, where there were no meaningful elections and little welfare protection. The 1970s saw the coming of a social movement industry, the result of the combination of a number of social and political factors (see Ma, 2009). Among these, the fermentation of a new Hong Kong identity of the baby-boomer generation was a key factor. The student movements in the 1970s were led by the postwar generation, who were born and/or grew up in Hong Kong. Compared to their immigrant parents, they had a stronger sense of belonging to Hong Kong. They were better educated, and were under a heavier influence of Western values, including leftist and liberal thoughts. Growing up in Hong Kong, they had deep experience of the corruption, income inequality and lack of social protection under the colonial regime, and some were determined to do something to reform colonial society. Lui (1997) pointed out that the 1966–67 riots had led to a resuscitation among the young generation about the future development and identity of Hong Kong. The entry of the People’s Republic of China into the United Nations and the normalization of Sino-US relations also led to a rise in Chinese national identity in the 1970s. The improvement in livelihood in various aspects in the 1970s, partly a result of the social movements of the time, enhanced the sense of belonging of the Hong Kong people, showing the young generation that colonial Hong Kong was in fact “reformable”. (Lui, 2002) The course of change of the student movements and social movements in Hong Kong in the 1970s was illustrative of the changing identity at the time. The movements in the early 1970s had a strong nationalist flavour, including the movement to protect the Diaoyu Islands and the movement to make Chinese an official language of Hong Kong. After the mid-70s, the movement turned its focus to social problems in Hong Kong, such as the Golden Jubilee Incident and the Yaumati Boat People incident. The late 1970s also saw the rise of pressure group movements, with many of the pressure group leaders having student movement backgrounds. The pressure groups used social actions to push for reforms on social policies including housing, labour, education, social welfare and the like. There was little effort, however, on pushing for democratization or the overall reformation of the colonial power structure. By the end of the 1970s, a

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new Hong Kong identity was in the making, serving as an important impetus for the next stage of movement.

Decolonization: democratic repatriation and anti-communist democratism The Sino-British negotiations over Hong Kong's future in 1982–84 led to a new struggle over identity in Hong Kong. It also kicked off a process of decolonization and very gradual democratization in Hong Kong. The negotiation process in 1982–84 and the transition period of 1984–97 showed an interesting struggle of identities among the people of Hong Kong. When the issue of Hong Kong’s future first entered public discussion in the early 1980s (around 1981–82), the dominant sentiment in Hong Kong was one of fear of communist takeover. Many people preferred a maintenance of status quo, in particular a continuation of the capitalist system and little government intervention in most societal and economic aspects. The preoccupation with the status quo implied supporting a continuation of British rule beyond 1997. The public discussions in 1982–83 quickly turned the tide. With most Hong Kong people still having a strong Chinese national identity at the time, it was difficult for them to support an extension of colonial rule beyond 1997.1 The propagation of the “One Country, Two Systems” formula, with concepts of “high autonomy” and “Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong”, “50 years unchanged”, quickly won over opinion leaders and got the upper hand in the public opinion war before and during the Sino-British negotiations. For the young intellectuals and professionals who later formed the backbone of the democracy movement in the 1980s, the Chinese formula of “One Country, Two Systems”, “high autonomy” was appealing in more than one way. Most of them still had strong identification as Chinese, believing that Hong Kong’s sovereignty should belong to China. Inheriting the tradition of the student movements and social movements in the 1970s, quite a number of them embraced anti-colonial ideologies and were reluctant to support a continuation of colonial rule. On the other hand, growing up in Hong Kong, they treasured various “core values” in Hong Kong, including the respect for personal freedom, freedom of speech, rule of law, a clean and efficient civil service (at least it was so after 1974), and a capitalist system that has a high level of economic freedom. Under the influence of Western liberal values, they also wanted to see a democratic system instituted after 1997. In this light, the “One Country, Two Systems” formula was ideal in the sense that Hong Kong would return to Chinese sovereignty, but most of the desirable institutions (such as freedom, rule of law, free-market capitalism) and the Hong Kong lifestyle were to be maintained beyond 1997 for at least 50 years. For the young activists in the 1980s, the “One Country, Two Systems” provided a good pragmatic formula that allowed them to accommodate both their Chinese and Hong Kong identities. (This should also apply to a lot of Hong Kong people at the time). The Chinese nationalist sentiments were taken care of

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by the return of the sovereignty to China after 1997. With “Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong” and “high autonomy”, they did not have to live directly under the Chinese Communist rule. Hong Kong was also not going to adopt the socialist political system, economic system and style of social management after 1997. A large part of the Hong Kong identity was to be maintained, in the form of preservation of the way of life and the protection of the major institutions (including rule of law and civil liberties). The Joint Declaration promised that the post-1997 legislature would be constituted by elections, and the Chief Executive (CE) would be borne on the basis of local consultations or elections. This stimulated the democratic aspirations of the postwar generation, who believed that decolonization would bring democratization, an ideal political opportunity for their generation of middle-class professionals to take power (Cheung, 1998). Democratization was also seen as the best means to protect the high autonomy of Hong Kong against possible communist intervention after 1997. Some believed that the 1980s democrats had chosen to support a return to Chinese sovereignty because they had believed that China would deliver genuine democracy after 1997.2 For this reason, as “democratic repatriatists”, they were tricked by the Chinese government into accepting repatriation and should be held responsible for the political plight today. This is not a historically accurate description of the sentiment at the time. Firstly, Law Wing-sang and others would point out that Chinese nationalism was so dominant at the time it enabled the pro-repatriation theme to get the upper hand quickly in the public debates in 1982–84 (See Ma, 2012). It was unlikely for proposals about the continuation of colonial rule or even Hong Kong independence to get strong public opinion support at the time. Secondly, judging from the movement’s history in the 1980s and 1990s, the democrats had very little trust in the Chinese government in delivering democracy or respecting high autonomy after 1997, especially after the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. The dominant theme of the democracy movement in the 1980s was “Minzhu Kanggong” (resisting communism by democratization). The central narrative of the democracy movement at the time was that the Chinese communists were not to be trusted, and Hong Kong needed to build a democratic system so that the post-1997 government would be democratically elected and truly represent the interests and views of Hong Kong people. A democratic system would serve as the best defence against possible intervention from Beijing after 1997. The impact of the so-called “democratic repatriatists”, commonly attributed to Meeting Point leaders, should not be overstated.3 All in all, the partial and uneasy political compromise in the transition era was also a compromise in identities. The Hong Kong people, the democrats included, mostly did not question their Chinese national or ethnic identity at the beginning of the transition, and whether one likes it or not supported or accepted China recovering sovereignty over Hong Kong. Yet as Hong Kong Chinese they were not ready or willing to live under the Chinese communist system as their 1.3 billion compatriots, and maintenance of their pre-1997 lifestyle was an essential part of the deal. “Stability and prosperity”, civil liberties, rule of law, and a very

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capitalist and metropolitan lifestyle, are all crucial components of the Hong Kong lifestyle. A democratic system, which they had never enjoyed before, would be a welcomed by-product to many of them, maybe prospectively a major factor in protecting their lifestyle, but nonetheless not a top priority for many at the time. The key idea, as Lui (2002) had long put it, was a “deep freeze” and preservation of the status quo in the 1980s for as long as possible after 1997.

Post-1997 pragmatic nationalism Post-1997 identity politics in Hong Kong could at least be divided into several stages: (a) 1997–2003; (b) 2003–2008; (c) 2008–2014; (d) after 2014. Each stage corresponds to some changes in the identification of Hong Kong with China. It changed from the development of a pragmatic national identity as Chinese, to a more assertive Hong Kong identity, in defiance of Chinese political control and economic prowess, driving towards more support for self-determination. For about 20 years after 1989, the democrats in Hong Kong had a major struggle between their Chinese and Hong Kong identities. Since most of the pro-democracy leaders had supported the Beijing democracy movement in 1989, and later formed the Alliance in Support of the Patriotic Democratic Movement in China (ASPDMC), they were condemned as “anti-China” by the Chinese government and the pro-Beijing press. After 1992, since the democrats were supportive of Chris Patten’s democratic reforms, they were further given the label of “Western collaborators”. The democrats were also the chief force in Hong Kong speaking out against Chinese intervention before and after 1997. In defence, the democrats claimed that they were indeed “patriotic” as they had supported the repatriation of Hong Kong to China in the 1980s, but they were only opposed to the autocratic Communist regime. They saw themselves as an important force in Hong Kong that would stand up against China’s intervention, defending the interests of the Hong Kong people. For around two decades, the mainstream democrats were the embodiment of “Minzhu Kanggong”. By speaking out on core value issues such as Hong Kong’s political autonomy, rule of law, democracy, and human rights, defying the pressure and intervention from China, they were seen as “anti-China” by the Chinese authorities. Thus their endeavours to protect Hong Kong’s values and autonomy, and fight for democracy in Hong Kong, were seen as acts contrary to their Chinese identity or “unpatriotic”. For a large part of the Hong Kong population, this meant that the Hong Kong identity is pit against the Chinese identity. The fight for democracy, the maintenance of high autonomy, human rights and rule of law, or the preservation of the Hong Kong lifestyle, which form a large part of the Hong Kong identity, was seen as contradictory to their Chinese identity. At the societal level, the early post-1997 period saw the rise of a form of “pragmatic patriotism” in Hong Kong. With increased economic integration with China, more experience of travelling and engaging with China, and patriotic propaganda in Hong Kong, more Hong Kong people had a stronger identification with China. Eric Ma had a relatively optimistic view of the changing identity in

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this period. With more contact with the Mainland enhancing mutual understanding, the Hong Kong Chinese had a more positive attitude towards China and Mainlanders (Chow and Ma, 2005; Ma, 2007). The Hong Kong identity was no longer seen as the opposite of the Chinese identity. Yet this new identity had a pragmatic ingredient: the younger generation began to be proud of the achievements and progress of the Chinese state, and thought there was “no advantage” to opposing China. Chow and Ma (2005: 41) hence dubbed this a form of “pragmatic nationalism” of the Hong Kong people after 1997, with the Chinese identity banking on continual improvement and economic strength of China.

Increased China-Hong Kong integration The 2003 July 1 rally against Article 23 was a major watershed event in post-1997 politics in Hong Kong, in more than one way. The struggle over Article 23 itself was a fight between core values of Hong Kong and the Chinese national identity. The Mainland officials, pro-Beijing politicians and press in Hong Kong, and the Hong Kong government, all hailed the need to legislate to punish crimes that threatened national security, seeing this as both a constitutional obligation and as necessarily desirable for Hong Kong as a part of China. For the pro-democracy opposition, the legal professionals and civil society groups in Hong Kong, the proposed legislation was too vague, liable to abuse by the authorities to clamp down on dissidence or curtail press freedom and civil liberties. It was thus seen as a direct threat to the lifestyle, civil liberties and core values of Hong Kong. For those defending the legislation, they either refuted the accusation that the legislation would hurt civil liberties of Hong Kong, or claimed that even if this was the case, it was a minor necessary sacrifice for the protection of national security (Ma, 2005). In this regard, the struggle over Article 23 in 2002–03 was in fact a struggle between Hong Kong’s free lifestyle and the national priorities of China. The half-million march on July 1, 2003 eventually forced the government to withdraw the bill. The event had major impacts on identity politics and ChinaHong Kong relations that followed. For the younger generation in Hong Kong, this was a major empowerment experience. It gave rise to a new wave of movements after 2003, led by a new generation of activists who tried to define a new distinct political identity for Hong Kong. These movements were more postmaterialist in nature, as they focused on heritage protection and environmental concerns, different from the traditional social movements that focused on breadand-butter issues. These movements posed a direct challenge to the neoliberal, economic-first governance philosophy and the business-dominated Hong Kong regime. They also tried to re-narrate the political history of Hong Kong, seeing Hong Kong as not merely an apolitical refugee society that cared only about making a living, but one that was full of political activism and had played an important role in bringing about political change in Mainland China by dint of its relative freedom and Westernised values (Ma, 2015). However, the 2003 rally also led to more intervention from Beijing into Hong Kong affairs, which subsequently changed China-Hong Kong relations. The

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Chinese government was worried that incompetence of the Hong Kong government and the governance crisis would bring instability to Hong Kong, and enable democrats in Hong Kong to enhance their influence and seize power. Their response after 2003 was twofold: they adopted a more hands-on approach to Hong Kong affairs, and stepped up economic assistance to Hong Kong, both of which contributed to a change in China-Hong Kong relations. On the economic front, the introduction of individual tourism, cross-border infrastructural projects, facilitation of Mainland investments in Hong Kong and speeding up of China-Hong Kong economic integration allowed Beijing and the Liaison Office to wield more influence on Hong Kong businessmen and professionals. At the initial stage (at least before 2009), most Hong Kong people welcomed individual tourism as economic assistance from China, seeing it as a necessary reprieve for the Hong Kong economy, which had been ailing since the Asian financial crisis and the SARS epidemic in 2003. Economic integration and the influx of Mainland capital in Hong Kong drove the business and professional sectors to “turn north” and become more dependent on the Chinese market and capital. On the political front, Beijing first stamped its authority on constitutional reform with a reinterpretation of the Basic Law, and a verdict by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC) in April 2004. It ruled that approval from NPCSC is necessary before any reform towards full democracy can be initiated in Hong Kong. The political move followed a months-long propaganda campaign orchestrated by the pro-Beijing media in Hong Kong and Mainland officials, accusing the Hong Kong democrats of being Western collaborators, and reinstating that Beijing held the full power to decide political reforms in Hong Kong. Any claims that Hong Kong people should be able to decide their democratic future by themselves were seen as a challenge to China’s sovereignty over Hong Kong. In addition, the Central Government Liaison Office (CGLO) in Hong Kong gradually extended its control on Hong Kong affairs, to the extent that some claimed that a “second governing echelon” (第二管治梯隊) was being groomed to take over control of Hong Kong (Cheng, 2009; Cao, 2009). Among other manoeuvres, the Liaison Office took a very active role in intervening in the elections of Hong Kong. It coordinated the pro-Beijing candidates and community groups to encroach on the democrats in elections. Huge amounts of material resources were injected into the pro-government groups, which further aggravated their resource advantage of the pro-Beijing camp over the democrats. The whole pro-Beijing camp, with parties, enterprises, unions, satellite organizations, and residential associations, became a formidable machine that was most effective in mobilization during electoral campaigns. The increased intervention gradually alerted Hong Kong people about a possible loss of the “high autonomy” as promised in the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law. The rapid integration also led to the concern that the original Hong Kong lifestyle would be affected. The sentiment towards China quickly changed after 2008.

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The rise of anti-China sentiments The year 2008 was a watershed year in terms of Hong Kong identity. The period 2008 to 2014 was a crucial period of formation of a new Hong Kong identity, a result of the cumulative effects of new identity movements, and the rise of antiChina sentiments in Hong Kong. Ironically, the year 2008 marked the zenith of the national identification of the Hong Kong people after 1997. (See Table 2.1 below). This was the year of the Beijing Olympics, when the Chinese athletes won the most number of gold medals, surpassing the United States. In May 2008, a severe earthquake struck the Szechuan province, which led to a loss of at least 5,000 lives. The earthquake aroused an outpouring of sympathy in Hong Kong. Fundraising from all corners, including from the pro-democracy parties, reached an estimated total of 142 million dollars. Throughout the year, mass media was flooded with nationalistic symbols, while, out of political correctness or genuine fondness for a rising China, an increasingly stronger identification with China seemed natural ten years after the handover. The ecstasy about a rising China in Hong Kong quickly subsided after 2008. On the political front, post-Olympic China saw a deterioration in human rights, with the clamping down on dissidents and human rights lawyers. The tightening Table 2.1 Self-Identity of Hong Kong People, 1997–2015 Period of study

N

Hong Hong Chinese Chinese Others Don’t Konger Konger in in Hong (%) (%) know/hard (%) China (%) Kong (%) to say (%)

Jul-Dec 2015 Jul-Dec 2014 Jul-Dec 2013 Jul-Dec 2012 Jul-Dec 2011 Jul-Dec 2010 Jul-Dec 2009 Jul-Dec 2008 Jul-Dec 2007 Jul-Dec 2006 Jul-Dec 2005 Jul-Dec 2004 Jul-Dec 2003 Jul-Dec 2002 Jul-Dec 2001 Jul-Dec 2000 Jul-Dec 1999 Jul-Dec 1998 Jul-Dec 1997

1011 1016 1015 1019 1016 1013 1007 1016 1011 1011 1017 1007 1059 2043 2077 2127 1660 1587 2080

40.2 42.3 34.8 27.2 37.7 35.5 37.6 21.8 23.5 22.4 24.8 25.9 24.9 30.0 29.0 36.3 33.5 36.6 35.9

27.4 24.3 27.6 33.1 25.3 27.6 23.9 29.6 31.5 24.3 26.5 23.1 23.4 21.7 24.2 23.0 22.6 23.5 23.6

13.0 15.0 15.0 16.1 17.8 13.8 13.1 13.0 16.0 20.1 16.9 16.2 15.6 14.7 14.0 14.2 17.0 16.7 19.9

18.1 17.8 21.8 21.3 16.6 21.1 24.2 34.4 27.2 31.8 30.7 31.6 32.5 31.1 28.7 21.3 23.6 19.9 18.0

0.9 0.6 0.8 0.6 0.6 0.4 0.2 0.5 0.7 0.6 0.0 0.4 0.3 0.5 0.4 0.7 0.4 0.4 0.3

0.4 0.0 0.1 1.7 2.1 1.5 1.0 0.7 1.1 0.7 1.1 2.8 3.3 2.1 3.8 4.7 2.9 2.9 2.5

Source: Public Opinion Programme, The University of Hong Kong, www.hkupop.hku.hk/ chinese/popexpress/ethnic/index.html

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of Beijing’s control on Hong Kong became more apparent, and the political debate over universal suffrage showed that Beijing would not easily agree to full democracy in Hong Kong (see below). On the economic front, Hong Kong was beginning to feel the effects of the influx of capital and visitors from Mainland China. In 2008, in response to the global “financial tsunami” caused by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the Chinese government gave out huge amounts of internal subsidies to boost the market. A lot of this “hot money” flowed to Hong Kong, pushing up the already exorbitant property prices. The expansion of individual tourism led to a massive inflow of Mainland tourists, who splashed a lot of cash on luxury goods and basic necessities in Hong Kong. This had two adverse effects: it drove up rents in malls and tourist districts, which in turn made it difficult for ordinary retailers to survive. It also inflated consumer prices, hurting local consumers. Small shops were soon replaced by chain stores, with their goods mostly catering to Mainland visitors and not local needs. The loosening control on cross-border traffic made it much easier for Mainlanders to make use of the better social services in Hong Kong. The best case to illustrate the politically sensitive nature of this issue was the struggle for hospital beds around 2009. For years, pregnant women were allowed to give birth in Hong Kong hospitals, regardless of their nationality, after paying a surcharge. The child would by birth get Hong Kong residence rights, even if neither of the parents was a Hong Kong resident. As freedom to travel to Hong Kong was relaxed with individual tourism, tens of thousands of Mainland mothers came to Hong Kong to give birth, crowding out local mothers in public and private hospitals. Since these children would by birth be eligible for welfare benefits and education rights in Hong Kong, it was feared that a continual influx of Mainland children would drain public resources in Hong Kong in the future. As is the case elsewhere, the issue of immigrants became more and more sensitive, with immigrants easily falling prey to scapegoating. After the handover, on each day 150 Mainlanders would get the “one-way entry permit” and enter Hong Kong for legal residence. After seven years, they would become Hong Kong citizens, and entitled to the same citizen rights as other Hong Kongers. This led to an accusation against the Chinese government of trying to colonise Hong Kong with the more conservative and pro-China immigrants from the Mainland. These “anti-China” sentiments reflected a generational difference in Hong Kong. The older generation were used to the postwar influx of Mainland refugees or immigrants, having a fair share of family members who were immigrants from the Mainland. Although most of them loathed the Chinese Communist rule, most Hong Kong Chinese before 1997 had no special hatred against the people born in the Mainland. While the democrats were accused of being “antiChina” since the 1980s, they insisted they were only opposed to the Chinese communist state but not the Chinese people or nation. The new generation of anti-China sentiments, in contrast, saw both the Chinese regime and the Chinese people as the roots of Hong Kong’s problems (Ma, 2015). There were increasing concerns that with Beijing’s political control, Hong Kong’s public policies and

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resource allocation would increasingly serve the interests of China or Mainlanders and not those of Hong Kong, leading to a loss of identity.

The struggle over political identity The struggle over political identity in the democracy movement was best reflected by the “de facto referendum” movement in 2010. As aforementioned, the post2003 post-materialist movements led to a new-found political identity of the younger generation, and fostered a new crop of young activists. These activists were more assertive, keener on direct action, and most importantly, had a stronger sense of Hong Kong identity. The rise of a new identity began to create fissures within the pro-democracy opposition. The struggle over political reform in 2009–10 originated from years of political impasse over constitutional reform in Hong Kong. Since 2003, the democrats had repeatedly mobilised for a rapid transition to full democracy, forcefully retorted by the NPCSC resolution in 2004. In 2009, a new radical party, the League of Social Democrats (LSD), proposed a new move of “de facto referendum”. The idea was to ask five serving legislators, one in each of the five Legco constituencies, to resign to trigger off five by-elections. This would require all voters in Hong Kong to cast a vote on the same day, which would be seen as a referendum on democracy. If the democrats won the by-elections by a high margin, it was claimed, it would create a heavy pressure on Beijing to deliver full democracy for Hong Kong. The “de facto referendum” movement fully exposed the difference in identity and strategy between the old guard democrats and the new younger activists. The movement was supported by the LSD and the Civic Party (CP), and a wide range of civil society groups. Most of the mainstream democrats, who had been leading the movement since the 1980s, refused to pitch in. They saw it as unrealistic to assume Beijing would succumb to this type of “public opinion pressure”. The key difference between the two factions, however, was a difference in identity, in attitude to the Chinese government, and sensitivity to the changing identities of the youth. The old guard largely proceeded from a “One Country, Two Systems” framework, premised on recognising China’s sovereignty and its ultimate control over Hong Kong’s constitutional reforms. They saw the root of the political impasse over the years as the political gap and distrust between Beijing and Hong Kong. The key to democratic progress was hence to narrow the gap, to create chances of dialogue between Beijing authorities and the Hong Kong democrats, so as to build up better mutual trust. In this light, all symbols, slogans and moves that could antagonise China, including “referendum”, “self-determination”, or “sovereignty to the people”, which would be seen as challenging China’s sovereignty over Hong Kong, needed to be avoided. To the younger generation of activists who supported the “de facto referendum” movement, this was a movement about political identity. It was a historic chance that the Hong Kong people could use a “referendum” to express their views on democracy and autonomy. It was a continuation of the identity

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movements of 2003, and a direct demonstration of defiance of the political control by Beijing. The CP and LSD, new parties set up in 2005 and 2006 respectively, were more sensitive to these changing “localist” sentiments of the “post-80s” generation. The traditional democrats, led by the Democratic Party, were either insensitive to the changing sentiments, or too much confined by the national identity and political imagination under “One Country”. The difference in attitudes created a severe split within the pro-democracy camp. The difference was one of generational difference, of moderate versus radical strategies, and also one about Hong Kong identity. It was the direct confrontation between a rising, self-assertive Hong Kong identity driven towards self-determination, and the legacy and confines of a Chinese national identity which had led to a preoccupation of working within the constraints of a “One Country, Two Systems” framework. The difficulty of the traditional democrats in addressing the changing identity was much exposed by two events that followed: the anti-national education movement and the campaign against the annual candlelight vigil held by the ASPDMC. Since 2003, there had been pressure on the Hong Kong government to review the “national education” of Hong Kong students, as Beijing was unhappy about the massive protest against legislating to protect national security. A lot of pro-Beijing figures claimed that years of colonial education meant that the Hong Kong people were not given proper education about China and patriotic themes, and the Hong Kong government needed to do something about it. In 2010, the Hong Kong government proposed a curriculum of “Moral and National Education” in all primary and secondary schools. While the mainstream democrats were wary of the perils of brainwashing through controlling school education curricula, from a nationalist point of view they found it difficult to oppose some form of national education on China. Hence they did not stage a strong opposition against the curriculum. The movement against the curriculum was led by Scholarism, a group formed by high-school students headed by 15-year old Joshua Wong. The movement reached a climax in the summer of 2012, when students, parents’ groups and other civil society groups staged a week-long hunger strike and in effect occupied the “Civic Square” outside the government headquarters. The pro-democracy groups offered their support, but their national identity more or less predetermined that they would not take the lead in a movement against national education. Since the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, the ASPDMC had been holding an annual candlelight vigil in commemoration of the crackdown, joined by tens of thousands every year. It was an annual condemnation of the brutal crackdown in 1989, voicing Hong Kong’s support for democracy in China, as participants chanted “end one party dictatorship” and “build a democratic China”. Over the years, the ASPDMC had weathered quite a few criticisms and pressures, most of which came from the Chinese and Hong Kong governments and pro-Beijing forces. The annual event was usually seen as “anti-China”, and pro-Beijing or conservative forces invariably opined that Hong Kong people should “look forward” and stop tearing open old wounds. By 2009, the 20th anniversary of the crackdown, there was an estimated turnout of about 150,000, a historic high. It

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was seen as a strong symbol of defiance of Hong Kong people against China’s pressure and demonstration of the democratic aspirations of Hong Kong. With the rise of a stronger Hong Kong identity and anti-China sentiments, the candlelight vigil began to face new criticisms. “Localists” began to criticize the vigil as too routine and formalistic, and diverting Hong Kong people’s attention and energy to a fruitless fight for democracy in China. They claimed that this would dissipate Hong Kong people’s energy to a meaningless endeavour, as democracy in China, which they saw as “another country”, was not Hong Kong’s business. The traditional democrats, out of nationalist sentiments, had all along seen it as their task to promote democracy and human rights in China. They also saw it as inconceivable that Hong Kong could become fully democratic without significant liberal reforms in China. The ASPDMC’s favourite narrative “No democracy in China, No democracy in Hong Kong”, however, was criticised by localists as defeatist, and vesting energy and resources into the movement in a “foreign country”. In 2013, the ASPDMC set the slogan of the annual vigil as “Love the country, love the people; it is the Hong Kong Spirit.” (愛國愛民，香港精神). This led to a serious attack from various “localist” groups, especially young netizens on the web. They saw it as ridiculous to qualify the “Hong Kong spirit” as “patriotic”, seeing it as the fantasy of the old generation.4 The ASPDMC in the end was forced to drop the “patriotic” part of their slogan for the year. Both events reflected a strong current of “anti-China” sentiments, especially among the younger generation, which the old generation of leaders and activists found difficult to fathom. The old guard began to lose touch with the younger generation on the identity issue, and in the process of which began losing their support. A new political identity was fully played out during the Umbrella Movement in 2014, after which the Hong Kong identity took a new course.

The Umbrella Movement and a new identity The year-long debate on political reform in 2013–14, and the subsequent Umbrella Movement in September-December 2014, fostered a new political identity for Hong Kong. Because of the limitation of space, I will not recapitulate the process of the debate or the occupation movement. The focus of my discussion will be on the struggle over Hong Kong identity during and after the movement. The debate on universal suffrage elections for the 2017 CE was more or less kick-started by Benny Tai’s “Occupying Central” proposal in January 2013. The concept of using mass-scale civil disobedience to force concessions from China quickly became the talk of the town. During the political debate in 2013–14, the opposition movement that fought for free nominations for the 2017 CE elections went hand-in-hand with the movement of Occupying Central with Love and Peace (OCLP). The OCLP movement led to a resuscitation of various sorts in the movement community. There was a lot of soul-searching, in particular among the liberal groups and the young generation, about how much sacrifice the Hong Kong

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people were willing to make for the democracy and future of Hong Kong. In terms of values, the movement stressed bottom-up equal participation (e.g., the stress on deliberative democracy), the importance of the people’s views and wishes, and equal political rights (e.g. the emphasis on civil nomination instead of nomination controlled by an elitist Nomination Committee). The movement focused on encouraging the Hong Kong people to speak their minds by participating in the government-initiated consultations, voting in the “civic referendum”, and other forms of expression of their views. Hong Kong people needed to come out to “defend our city”: that was the theme. The democracy movement had become a movement about political self-determination. This resonated with the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan in March 2014, a bottom-up occupation movement opposing undemocratic practices of the Taiwan government under the shadow of China. In the end, the Sunflower slogan “It is our Taiwan; we got to save it ourselves” was adapted into a major slogan during the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement (“It is our Hong Kong, we got to save it ourselves” (自己 香港自己救). The whole OCLP discussion was embedded in a context of increasingly tight control and political pressure from Beijing. Beijing saw the OCLP as a threat to the stability and prosperity of Hong Kong. The quest for full democracy for Hong Kong was seen as a threat to national security, backed by anti-China and Western forces. The governance of C.Y. Leung since 2012 saw greater challenges to the civil liberties, rule of law, freedom of speech and other core values of Hong Kong (such as a clean civil service). To a lot of Hong Kong people, democratic reforms became imperative, closely related to their basic freedoms and the Hong Kong lifestyle. The democracy movement became one of defending Hong Kong’s autonomy and lifestyle against China and its appointees. The Umbrella Movement in September to December 2014 was a movement about awakening, about self-determination of political fate. This was best reflected in the choice of the slogan on the backdrop of the “big stage” of the Admiralty site – “Determining our fate” (命運自主). The 79-day occupation of course had as its major goal genuine democracy, unfettered free elections for the CE of Hong Kong. It was also a movement about the urge of Hong Kong people to decide their own political future free from the control from Beijing. It conveyed a message and spirit of perseverance, “living in truth”, in pursuit of freedom and democracy against the oppression and control from China. This was a mass-scaled political awakening, especially for the young generation. It brought about a “new Lion Rock spirit”,5 one about perseverance, a spirit of defiance against oppression and other adversities, a form of fighting spirit like David against Goliath. And for those who participated in and sympathised with the movement, the Goliath was undoubtedly the Chinese government. The Umbrella Movement was a major turning point in the struggle between Chinese identity and Hong Kong identity in the democracy movement of Hong Kong. The movement brought about massive awakenings but no tangible institutional changes. For most people, if a 79-day occupation could not force Beijing to give genuine democracy to Hong Kong, it was hardly conceivable that they

Changing identity politics

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could get real autonomy and democracy under Chinese sovereignty. To many, the universal suffrage election as promised in the Basic Law and the 2007 NPCSC resolution was but a manipulated election with Beijing controlling the nomination, with no genuine choice for the Hong Kong people. It drove more people towards ideas of self-determination and independence, as the younger generation believed that it was impossible to achieve democracy under “One Country, Two Systems”. Even among many traditional democrats the Chinese identity they had long held to had become an anti-thesis for democracy, and was seen as unpopular and unfashionable among the younger generation. For the “localists” and the younger generation, these traditional democrats who had supported “democratic repatriation” should be held responsible for supporting repatriation in the 1980s. The traditional democrats found it difficult to convince the Hong Kong people (and probably themselves as well) that it was possible to get full democracy in Hong Kong under “One Country, Two Systems” and sovereignty control by Beijing. Consequently, the years after 2014 saw a rapid rise of “localism” and strands of pro-independence and self-determination thinking. The Chinese identity as long held by the traditional democrats for 30 years had become a liability for them.

By way of a conclusion Writing at the end of 2016, it was hardly possible to conclude the struggle between Chinese identity and the Hong Kong identity in the Hong Kong democracy movement. The above review all but showed that the struggle of identities had shaped the movement for many years, but both identities had evolved and changed over time, in response to the social and political changes in the broader context. The 2016 Legco elections and the subsequent political struggles fully exposed the extent and constraints of the struggle over identities in the democracy movement in Hong Kong. In the 2016 Legco elections, there were two major strands of forces of self-determination. One stressed bottom-up grassroots participation, with empowerment of masses to engage in democratic decisions at various levels of the communities. It advocated “self-determination” of various forms, but did not focus on independence as a sovereign state. The other strand discussed the possibility of making Hong Kong a separate “nation” or “state” on various occasions. In the 2016 election, the latter mostly included candidates of the Young Inspiration and the ad hoc alliance between the PassionTimes, Raymond Wong and Chen Yun (Chin Wan, Chin Wan-kan). During the 2016 election, however, these candidates did not advocate outright independence. They instead made strategic adaptations of several forms, such as advocating “sustaining the Basic Law” or only a “new Hong Kong nation” instead of outright separatism. Nevertheless, the electoral process and post-election changes showed the political constraints of the “independence” road. Six candidates were disqualified from running, mostly because of their pro-independence positions. Two elected legislators from Young Inspiration had their seats forfeited because they were

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seen as refusing to take an oath pledging loyalty to the PRC and the Basic Law. This fully showed the determination of the Chinese government to stamp out any pro-independence thoughts and forbid pro-independence politicians to take public office. The mainstream democrats did not fare much better, finding themselves in some sort of conundrum. On the one hand, ideologically they did not support independence. Politically, they knew that it is a non-starter to ask Beijing for democracy from a pro-independence position. On the other hand, nationalism is losing its appeal in Hong Kong, with the younger generation growing increasingly anti-China. The strong rise of a Hong Kong identity and localist sentiments means that they need to turn more “localist” to attract votes of the younger generation. Yet they found it difficult to compete with the younger, bolder and more radical groups for the localist market. They also do not know how to carry on the democracy movement proceeding from a localist or self-determinationist position. The localists do not have a true political or constitutional blueprint to push for independence. By 2016 they also did not have a lot of movements, mobilization, or even actions, to get Hong Kong closer to independence. The forceful reinterpretation of the Basic Law, handed down by the NPCSC in November 2016, fully exposed the wide gap in political values between China and Hong Kong. Yet the forfeiting of seats also reflected the inability of the “independentists” in resisting the political power and control from Beijing. Most of the resistance movements in the year 2016 were still undertaken by the traditional pro-democracy groups, and adopting quite traditional methods. The rise of an indigenous political identity did not really lead to a formidable independence movement or political organizations for the cause. The year 2016 certainly witnessed a change of guard for the democracy movement. The old generation of leaders who had been leading the movement since the 1980s were mostly retired after the 2016 election or had lost their seats. The new generation of leaders did not share the same nationalist sentiments. Nor were they burdened with the history of “democratic repatriation”. However, politically the constraints under Chinese sovereignty seemed an immovable force against true democratic reforms. The democrats in Hong Kong needed to bargain with Beijing for full democracy in Hong Kong, with a weakening Chinese identity and increasing detachment from China in Hong Kong, and a widening political gap between Beijing and mainstream Hong Kong political values. The change in political identity in Hong Kong in recent years no doubt led to a political awakening of the Hong Kong people, to fight for democracy and the future of their own city. It does not make the path to full democracy any smoother in the near future.

Notes 1 For reference, see the interviews of student leaders in the early 80s in Choy et al. (1998) and Ma (2012). The interviews showed that nationalist sentiments were

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4 5

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paramount, and student leaders only had a vague support for Western democracy or electoral democracy at the time. For example, see Fong (2015). For example, as major leaders of the 80s movement, Martin Lee and Szeto Wah had very different perspectives. Martin Lee was not supportive of repatriation at the beginning, and nationalism did not have much impact on him. He thought that maintaining rule of law beyond 1997 was sufficient to maintain Hong Kong’s way of life. Szeto Wah all along did not believe that the Chinese government was sincere in giving democracy to Hong Kong. See Ma (2012). The other major pro-democracy groups at the time, including the Hong Kong Affairs Society and Association for Democracy and People’s Livelihood, did not really hail “democratic repatriation”. Ironically, the full title of the ASPDMC as an organisation carried the term “Patriotic” since its founding in 1989. So “patriotism” has always been part of its assumed predisposition since its founding. The mainstream narrative of Hong Kong hailed the “Lion Rock spirit” as a kind of ethos of self-reliance: average people working hard in a land of opportunities for upward mobility, a kind of “protestant ethic” which is seen to be an important factor for the economic success of Hong Kong. It was named after a TV series in the 1970s about life in public housing estates called “Below the Lion Rock”. On October 23, 2014, a huge banner was hung from the top of the Lion Rock inper central Kowloon, reading “I want genuine universal suffrage” (Wo yao zhen puxuan, 我要 真普選). The banner was quickly taken down by the government, but more similar banners were soon put up in various places in Hong Kong and quickly seen as an icon of the Umbrella Movement.

Reference Cao, Erbao. (2009). Hong Kong’s Governing Force under One Country, Two Systems Conditions. 一國兩制條件下香港的管治力量,www.china.com.cn/xxsb/txt/ 2008-01/29/content_9610867.htm (accessed 3 December 2016). Cheng, Jie. (2009). The Story of a New Policy. Hong Kong Journal 15, www. hkjournal.org/archive/2009_fall/1.htm (accessed 3 December 2016). Cheung, Anthony. (1998). Sin zhongchanjieji de maoqi ji qi zhengzhi yingxiang (新中產階級的冒起及其政治影響) (The Rise of the New Middle Class and Their Political Impact). In Lui Tai-lok and Wong Wai-pong (eds.) Jieji fenxi yu Xianggang (階級分析與香港) (Class Analysis and Hong Kong). Hong Kong: Greenwood Press, pp. 56–74. Chow, Pui-ha and Ma, Eric. (2005). Aiguo Zhengzhi shencha (Patriotic Political Censorship) (愛國政治審查). Hong Kong: Next Step. Choy, Chi-keung, Wong, Yan-yin, Choi, Yiu-cheong and Chong, Yiu-kwong (eds.). (1998). From Identity to Indifference: Hong Kong Student Movements Since 1981 (Tongtu Shugui: Qiantu tanpan yilai de Xianggang xueyun) (同途殊歸：前途談判 以來的香港學運). Hong Kong: Hong Kong Humanities Press. Fong, Brian (ed.). (2015). Xianggang Gexin Lun (On the Reformation of Hong Kong) (香港革新論). Taipei: Wanderers. Harris, Peter. (1978). Hong Kong: A Study in Bureaucratic Politics. Hong Kong: Heinemann Asia. King, Ambrose. (1975). Administrative Absorption of Politics in Hong Kong: Emphasis on the Grassroots Level. Asian Survey 15:5, pp. 422–439. Lau, Siu-kai. (1984). Society and Politics in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press.

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Lui, Tai-lok. (1997). Xianggang gushi: Xianggang yishi de lishi fazhan (香港故事 – 「香港意識」的歷史發展) (Hong Kong Story – Historical Development of Hong Kong Identity). In Gao Cheng-shu and Chen Jie-xuan (eds.) Xianggang: Wenming de yanxu yu duanlie (香港文明的延續與斷裂) (Hong Kong: Continuation and Rupture of Civilization). Taipei: Linking Publishing, pp. 1–16. Lui, Tai-lok. (2002). Sixiang jiuqiqian yu jiuqihou Xianggang (思想「九七前」與 「九七後」香港) (Thinking About “Pre-97” and “Post-97” Hong Kong). In Tse Kwan-choi (ed.) Our Place, Our Time: A New Introduction to Hong Kong Society. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, pp. 450–475. Ma, Eric Kit-wai. (2007). Hou Jiuqi shenfen Rengtong (Post-1997 Hong Kong Identity) (後九七香港認同). Hong Kong: VOICE. Ma, Ngok. (2005). Civil Society in Self-Defense: The Struggle Against National Security Legislation in Hong Kong. Journal of Contemporary China 14:44, pp. 465–482. Ma, Ngok. (2009). Social Movements and State-Society Relations in Hong Kong. In Khun Eng Kuah-Pearce and Cilles Guilheux (eds.) Social Movements in China and Hong Kong: The Expansion of Protest Space. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, pp. 45–63. Ma, Ngok. (2012). Xianggang bashi liandai minzhu yundong koushu lishi (An Oral History of Democratic Movement in Hong Kong in the 1980s) (香港80年代民主 運動口述歷史). Hong Kong: City University Press. Ma, Ngok. (2015). The Rise of “Anti-China” Sentiments in Hong Kong and the 2012 Legislative Council Elections. The China Review 15:1, pp. 39–66.

3

Mainland Chinese immigration in Hong Kong Analysing anti-immigrant sentiment James F. Downes1

This chapter examines the prejudice and discrimination that Mainland Chinese immigrants (香港新移民) on the One Way Permit scheme (OWP) often face integrating into Hong Kong society. The Hong Kong census has recently stated that Mainland Chinese immigration is becoming an increasingly significant driver of the territory’s population growth. In recent years however, Mainland Chinese immigrants on the OWP scheme have faced numerous difficulties integrating into Hong Kong society, often experiencing prejudice and discrimination in the form of hostile anti-immigrant attitudes (Skeldon, 2014; Chou, 2012b; Central Policy Unit, 2013). Drawing on public opinion data, the central research question in this chapter concerns understanding the mechanisms that have led Hong Kong citizens to hold negative stereotypes towards Mainland Chinese immigrants. Before addressing the central research question, the chapter outlines the historical trajectory of Mainland Chinese immigration in Hong Kong and recent developments, primarily on the OWP scheme. In order to explain this phenomenon, three complementary theoretical frameworks from the social psychology literature are outlined: the (a) classical ethnic competition theory, (b) the “Petersen ethnic conflict” theory, and the (c) social identity theory. Together these frameworks enable us to understand why Mainland Chinese immigrants often face anti-immigrant sentiment amongst Hong Kong citizens. A methodological approach comprising qualitative interviews with non-governmental organizations, alongside public opinion data, are applied in understanding this phenomenon. Based on the empirical findings, this chapter discusses the implications of anti-immigrant sentiment towards Mainland Chinese immigrants, particularly for the political and economic future between Hong Kong and Mainland China. The chapter then discusses how from a macro level, a large part of the attitudes that Hong Kong citizens hold towards Mainland Chinese immigrants is likely to be manifested through the dual mechanisms of “fear” and “resentment” in the recent Umbrella Movement for universal suffrage and through the February 2016 Mong Kok riots. This is likely to have facilitated higher levels of “anti-Mainlandisation” sentiment in the Hong Kong community. This chapter’s empirical findings seek to make a larger contribution to the policy debate on the concept of citizenship and, most substantively, the conflicting sense of Chinese identity in the new Hong Kong.

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Defining integration Integration is a multifaceted concept and has a variety of meanings according to the sociological, historical, or political context it is placed in. This chapter adopts a broad definition in defining integration as the “process of inclusion of immigrants in the institutions and relationships of the host country” (see Bosswick and Heckman, 2006; Boswell, 2003). When referring to Mainland Chinese integration in Hong Kong, this chapter will primarily investigate the social and economic integration problems that migrants on the One-Way Permit (OWP) scheme face.2 There are two central dimensions of integration that this chapter will focus on and which are interrelated, namely: • •

Social (Prejudice and discrimination; Cultural and language differences) Economic (Income inequality; Educational disparities)

Social integration In this chapter, social integration is referred to as differences in culture and identity alongside language, which make it difficult for immigrants to fully integrate into the host country. The chapter treats social and cultural integration as interchangeable terms and as the second area that can pose integration problems for immigrants. Differences in culture and language can hinder the integration of immigrants and also lead to a sense of alienation for immigrants in society if they do not speak the official language of the host country. Another aspect of social integration is how the citizens of the host country receive immigrants and their underlying attitudes towards such groups, alongside the resources that the government provides in order for immigrants to fully integrate into society. In some cases, the native residents of a country may hold certain prejudices towards specific migrant populations and this may provide problems for the full integration of immigrant groups into the host society (see Siu, 1996; Skeldon, 2014).

Economic integration An important indicator for immigration is the successful integration of immigrants into the labour market of the host country. Factors that are often associated with economic integration are the level of education and language skills which migrants possess. Income level is another important factor and often there can be a discrepancy in terms of income between the native residents of a country and the immigrant population, with the latter earning less than their counterparts (see Ou, 2015). In terms of economic integration, a bigger problem is arguably unemployment amongst migrants, and again this may stem from a combination of factors such as the level and transferability of educational qualifications which are crucial to employment in the host country (see Ou, 2015; Post et al., 2015).

Mainland Chinese immigration in Hong Kong 53 The following sections of this chapter provide an overview of the Hong Kong government’s immigration policy and offer detailed discussions of the integration problems which Mainland Chinese immigrants face on the OWP scheme. The chapter then draws on qualitative interviews with core stakeholders, alongside survey data in order to show the evolving anti-immigrant attitudes that Hong Kong citizens hold towards Mainland Chinese immigrants. I then discuss the implications of the findings and seek to contribute to the wider debate on the concept of citizenship and the conflicting sense of Chinese identity in contemporary Hong Kong society.

Public policy: Mainland Chinese immigration Historical developments Before investigating the integration problems which Mainland Chinese immigrants on the OWP face in Hong Kong, this section of the chapter provides an overview of the historical developments and immigration policies that have underpinned immigration policy. Three elements define the historical development of Hong Kong policy towards Mainland Chinese immigration before the handover took place in 1997 (Hong Kong Council of Social Service, Social Development Policy Bulletin, 2014: 4–9): •

•

•

•

Immigration policies were often made as a result of social and political factors. Hong Kong was crucial to the region’s economic and financial development during the colonial era, and loose border controls were implemented. These were only tightened in 1951 through the Frontier Closed Area (also known as the Boundary Closed Area) after an increase in the number of immigrants from Mainland China. The Frontier Closed Area was effectively a border zone area in Hong Kong along the border with China, and to enter the area required a permit. Immigration policies were often flexible, and from 1974 until 1980 Mainland Chinese were allowed to stay in Hong Kong permanently, provided they managed to “touch base” (抵壘政策) (see Wong et al., 2008). The increase of Mainland Chinese immigrants into Hong Kong provided rapid economic growth in the 1970s and 1980s. However, the increase in population led to social issues and the British colonial authorities sought to reform the provision of public goods. Since the handover in 1997 during Tung Chee-hwa’s era, a number of policies relating to attracting foreign talents and investments from Mainland China have been implemented in immigration policy and contributed economically to Hong Kong society. (Hong Kong Council of Social Service, Social Development Policy Bulletin, 2014: 4–9)

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“One way permit” policy The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) immigration policy towards Mainland Chinese immigrants has been characterised by the OWP scheme. Since 1980, the number of OWPs has been set between the Hong Kong and Chinese governments. This policy has been implemented since 1980, with the Chinese immigration authorities assuming unilateral control over deciding who can be granted the permits and come to reside in Hong Kong permanently (Skeldon, 2014). The OWP is an approved document for Mainland Chinese immigrants to take up residence in Hong Kong and 150 permits per day are issued by the relevant Chinese departments (see Table 3.1 below). People who fulfill any of the following requirements are eligible to apply: • • •

•

•

“Either spouse resides permanently in Hong Kong or Macau, with the couple living separately for many years”. “Parents residing in Hong Kong or Macau who are old and require caretaking by children currently residing in Mainland China”. “Elderly or young children residing in the Mainland without support who want to move to Hong Kong or Macau to be with direct family or close relatives”. “Property located in Hong Kong or Macau left by parents and are without any potential heirs already residing in those locations, and are to be inherited by individuals living in the Mainland”. “Other special circumstances”. (Hong Kong Council of Social Service, Social Development Policy Bulletin, 2014: 4–9)

The OWP schemes between the HKSAR and the Mainland Chinese government have arguably been important economically in providing population growth for Hong Kong and reuniting families (see Skeldon, 2014: 81). Furthermore, the 2013 Hong Kong census has outlined the importance of the OWP schemes in providing sustained economic growth for Hong Kong (Legislative Council Secretariat, Hong Kong’s population policy, 2014). The demographics of the OWP have changed considerably over time. Figures from the Hong Kong Council of Social Service have shown that the majority

Table 3.1 The 150 Daily Permits Category

Daily Quota

Children of resident permit holders Spouses who have been separated for at least 10 years and any accompanying children Others who fulfill the other conditions above

60 30 60

Mainland Chinese immigration in Hong Kong 55 of OWP holders migrating to Hong Kong have been aged between 25 and 44. The education level of the OWP holder has also been on the rise in recent years, with the percentage of university graduates amongst permit holders aged 15 and above increasing from 10 per cent in 2003 to nearly 18 per cent in 2013. In 2011, this group among the Hong Kong native population was 24 per cent. Although there is still a significant difference between the two populations, it is evident that the former is growing in size (Hong Kong Council of Social Service, Social Development Policy Bulletin, 2014: 14–16). The OWP scheme is a unique policy scheme that facilitates reunion of Mainland Chinese with family members in Hong Kong. The demographic statistics outlined above also show how OWP holders provide economic benefits to Hong Kong’s labour market (Hong Kong Council of Social Service, Social Development Policy Bulletin, 2014: 14–16).

Integration policy of the HKSAR government There is one official policy document which outlines the Hong Kong’s integration policy towards ethnic minorities and immigrants, “Legislating against racial discrimination” (Home Affairs Bureau, 2004). This document outlines three core integration policies: •

• •

“To provide practical assistance to members of ethnic minorities to facilitate their settlement in Hong Kong and their integration into the wider community”. “To address the problems of racial discrimination against ethnic minorities”. “To promote equal opportunities for all ethnic groups”. (Home Affairs Bureau, 2004: paragraph 23)

Whilst the Home Affairs Bureau document has outlined an integration policy towards ethnic minorities and immigrants, these guidelines do not contain specific measures to cover the integration of immigrants into Hong Kong society. Recently though, additional policies and programmes have been targeted at new arrivals from Mainland China which have sought to improve the social and economic integration process of these immigrants into Hong Kong society. However, the current policy frameworks devolve much of the responsibility for the integration of immigrants to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and social services in Hong Kong (Lee et al., 2012). An interview conducted with Miss Lai-Shan Sze from the NGO, Society for Community Organization (SoCO), outlined the pivotal role that NGOs play in providing active support to Mainland Chinese immigrants and their families, who often feel that they have no one else to turn to in Hong Kong society. A recent 2016 Report on the Survey of Discrimination against Mainland Residents in Hong Kong was conducted by the SoCO (SoCO, 2016: Policy Report: 1–2). This press release contained policy suggestions to the HKSAR government in seeking to help new Mainland immigrants integrate into Hong Kong society and reduce the discrimination that they have often faced. The SoCO’s report

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outlined three key policy recommendations for the government to provide legislation for Mainland Chinese immigrants to have avenues of appeal, ensure equal opportunities, and to reduce social disputes. The three main recommendations are outlined below:3 •

• •

The government and the Equal Opportunities Commission should set up a complaint mechanism to handle complaints of discrimination against new immigrants. There should be no differentiation policies on new immigrants and policies of differentiation should be removed. Social inclusion of new arrivals should be enhanced, as well as multiculturalism in primary and secondary schools, alongside the curriculum of universities. (SoCO, 2016: Policy Report)

The next section discusses the prevalence of anti-immigration attitudes in Hong Kong society towards Mainland Chinese immigrants based primarily on the OWP scheme that forms the primary focus of this chapter.

Theorising anti-immigrant attitudes in Hong Kong society Anti-immigrant sentiment is manifested in different forms and poses implications for the citizenry of a society. This section of the chapter provides an empirical analysis behind the problems Mainland Chinese immigrants on the OWP often face settling into Hong Kong society. This section of the chapter draws upon three complementary theoretical frameworks from the social psychology literature that are used in combination to explain this phenomenon, alongside qualitative interviews and survey data that examines the attitudes of Hong Kong citizens towards Mainland Chinese immigrants.

Ethnic competition model Ethnic competition theory has been advanced in the social psychological literature and can be applied to understanding the negative perceptions that Hong Kong citizens tend to hold towards Mainland Chinese immigrants. The classic model of ethnic competition theory outlines how ethnic in-groups often take an unfavourable stance towards outsider groups in societies (Blalock, 1967). According to this theory, Hong Kong citizens may hold high levels of anti-immigrant sentiment towards Mainland Chinese immigrants as they perceive them to be a threat towards existing economic resources. Recent surveys conducted by the Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd)4 verify this trend, with around 51 per cent of Hong Kong citizens outlining the need to reduce the number of Mainland immigrants (South China Morning Post, 2012). Ethnic competition theory also argues that labour market competition is the centripetal force which drives ethnic conflicts between groups in society. The logic of the theory holds that ethnic in-groups will react in a hostile manner to

Mainland Chinese immigration in Hong Kong 57 the introduction of another ethnic group into the labour market due to the perceived economic threat that this group poses in driving down wages. Financial insecurity is likely to increase and conflict between ethnic in-groups and ethnic out-groups may occur as a result (see Tajfel et al, 1971; Bonacich, 1972). When a dominant economic group is perceived to be threatened, it more or less follows that scapegoating takes place, with a minority ethnic group being attributed blame for declining economic conditions.

Petersen ethnic conflict model A more recent strand of ethnic competition theory has built on the classic ethnic competition model in the literature by examining the drivers of ethnic conflict between different groups in society (see Petersen, 2002; Kaufman, 2004; Varshney, 2003; Toft, 2005). Based on the work of Roger Petersen (2002), I term this third strand the “Petersen ethnic conflict” model and distinguish this model as separate from the classical ethnic competition model. The “Petersen ethnic conflict” model has investigated the role of psychological factors such as emotions (fear, hatred, rage, and resentment) as a key mechanism of ethnic violence in Eastern Europe. The central findings of this model show (1) that “fear” arises when people lose the stability of a government and can lead them to act against a threatening “other” group. (2) “Resentment” is seen as the most important mechanism for explaining ethnic violence. In a review of Petersen’s (2002) model, Kaufman notes that: “When changes in political power lead to changes in ethnic status hierarchies, previously dominant groups come to resent their decline in the pecking order and threaten violence against a group that is both higher in status and vulnerable to violent attack” (Kaufman, 2004: 148). Whilst the three main theoretical frameworks are complementary in answering the central research question set out, this chapter favours Petersen’s version of the ethnic competition model above the two frameworks. It constitutes a more fine-grained approach that offers a higher degree of explanatory power. Building on this theoretical framework, I apply this model towards understanding the mechanisms that have led Hong Kong citizens to hold negative attitudes towards Mainland Chinese immigrants. In this chapter, I argue, distinctively, that there is a dual mechanism at work in understanding the formation of anti-immigrant sentiment towards Mainland Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong. Rather than being attributed to the micro level, the Petersen ethnic conflict model suggests that this dual mechanism consists of “fear” and “resentment” towards the Beijing government, rather than being due to the classic ethnic competition model of economic factors or the social identity theory.

Social identity model This chapter draws on a third complementary theoretical framework, social identity theory, which focuses on the notion of identity. This theory outlines how a

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sense of superiority is obtained through a shared social identification process and not through economic categories (Huddy, 2001). As such, it can be mobilised to support a version of Petersen’s conception of the causes of ethnic conflict. According to social identity theory ethnic in-groups will apply favourable characteristics towards themselves and unfavourable characteristics towards outsider groups (Huddy, 2001). This theory can be applied to the perceptions held by Hong Kong citizens towards outsider social groups such as Mainland Chinese migrants. Research utilizing social identity theory has shown that a strong intergroup identity and consciousness existed prior to the return of the British handover of Hong Kong sovereignty to the People’s Republic of China in 1997 (Keung and Bond, 2002). Furthermore, social identity theory enables us to understand whether a large proportion of anti-immigrant sentiment amongst Hong Kong citizens towards Mainland Chinese immigrants is largely due to identity and cultural concerns. For instance, issues such as self-government and democracy are likely to be recognised as a contributing factor in the formation of anti-immigrant sentiment amongst Hongkongers.

Anti-immigrant sentiment: reviewing the evidence Economic integration Economic integration is often associated with successful participation in the labour market of the host country that an immigrant settles into. Immigrants entering into the labour market can encounter a number of problems in seeking work. A survey on the employment of new immigrant women was conducted by the SoCO and showed that immigrant women from the Mainland in particular are often discriminated against in the workforce, with the majority of them working in lowskilled jobs such as cleaners, garbage pickers, and restaurant workers (Sze, 2007). Another survey conducted in 2003 by the SoCO highlighted the problems of income inequality, with about 40 per cent of the new immigrant workers from Mainland China receiving lower wages than local people. Furthermore, 60 per cent of the Mainland women surveyed said that they had received inferior treatment from locals in Hong Kong in regards to labour employment (see Sze, 2007). According to the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, 380,000 new immigrants from Mainland China have settled into Hong Kong from 2000–2007. The vast majority of these new Mainland arrivals are made up of spouses and children. Around 90 per cent of these adult immigrants from the Mainland are married women and aged between 35 and 45. Official government statistics in Hong Kong have showed the high unemployment rate of new immigrants from Mainland China, with the income of these new immigrants being around 40 per cent lower than local Hong Kong citizens. Research has also consistently shown the income disparity between native Hong Kong citizens and Mainland immigrant workers (see Post et al., 2015). While income inequality between Hong Kong natives and Mainland migrants has decreased over this twenty-year period, it still remains considerably high.

Mainland Chinese immigration in Hong Kong 59 In an interview, Equal Opportunities Commission chairperson Dr York Chow highlighted a number of economic integration problems that new immigrants from Mainland China encountered. Recent census data from 2013 shows that about 46 per cent of the adult new arrivals (residing in Hong Kong for at least nine months) were employed. However, the data also shows that 47 per cent were economically inactive. Seven per cent were neither at work nor at school. About 24 per cent of the male adult new arrivals and 63 per cent of the female adult new arrivals were service and sales workers. Accordingly, 39 per cent of the male adult arrivals and 15 per cent of the female adult new arrivals were elementary workers. Furthermore, the utilization rate of employment-related skills training of the adult new arrivals was very low (less than 4 per cent.) Amongst those adult new arrivals who were currently working, only 28 per cent had received on-job training (Central Policy Unit, HKSAR, 2013). Therefore, this data demonstrates that a large proportion of Mainland Chinese immigrants have faced numerous difficulties not only in finding employment in Hong Kong, but also in receiving sufficient labour market training.

Prejudice and discrimination The interview with Dr Chow sheds further light on the prejudice and discrimination that Mainland Chinese immigrants often receive when seeking to integrate into Hong Kong society.5 In the interview, he outlined concerns that the EOC has about the treatment of OWP arrivals that have migrated from Mainland China. In spite of the status of new arrivals as Hong Kong residents, Mainland Chinese immigrants are often stereotyped as “lazy”, “having no contributions but seeking benefits”. Moreover, research has shown that they are generally perceived by mainstream Hong Kong society as being “an economic burden” and frequently encounter discrimination from Hong Kong citizens. A large part of discrimination has arguably been based on educational qualifications amongst the new arrivals, and the majority of new adult arrivals have taken unskilled jobs related to their educational qualifications and experience (Central Policy Unit, HKSAR, 2013). Dr Chow notes that data in the past two decades shows that cross-border marriages have increased from around 16,400 in 1986 to 21,860 in 2012, amongst which over 80 per cent are Mainland women marrying Hong Kong men. Furthermore, amongst the total 310,000 new immigrants arriving in Hong Kong from 2004 to 2011, 74 per cent were “Mainland brides”. In the stereotyped view of such families, the local husbands are perceived as mostly coming from the lower socio-economic group. Husbands in such families are typically unable to hold down a steady job, and their immigrant wives will often choose to have more children so as to increase their share of Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA) funding and chances of being granted public housing. Despite the fact that the per centage of new arrivals’ families receiving CSSA (7 per cent) was lower than that for general families (12 per cent) in 2010, some local citizens still embrace the stereotypes that these new immigrant families are social burdens

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and troublemakers, also portraying them as a drain on Hong Kong’s economic resources (Central Policy Unit, HKSAR, 2013). An interview conducted with Miss Lai-shan Sze from the NGO, SoCO, highlights the prejudice and discrimination that Mainland Chinese immigrants often face on a daily basis and which can have long lasting psychological effects. This has also been shown in recent academic research by Chou (2012a). In the interview, Sze remarked that part of the contention amongst Hong Kong citizens over Mainland immigration is driven by competition over scarce resources in Hong Kong such as housing, education, and transport. There is a dehumanization process that has taken place and the anti-locust campaign in 2012 encapsulated this trend (Liu, 2012). Furthermore, Sze outlined how she has experienced first-hand from cases handled by SoCO how a section of Hong Kong residents do not perceive Mainlanders as human beings and that this discrimination is often endemic in all walks of life, from Mainland Chinese taking public transport to picking up their children from school.6 Recent academic research has also highlighted the frequent prejudice and discrimination that Mainlanders and their families often face on a daily basis (see Post et al., 2015; Ou, 2015).

Language differences Another area that is fundamental for the process of integration is to speak the language of the host country. In Hong Kong, traditional Chinese script is used in everyday life and contrasts to the Mainland where simplified Chinese is adopted. In line with the theory of social identity, in Hong Kong Cantonese is seen as part of the very fabric and identity that has underpinned Hong Kong society (see Siu, 1996). The interview with Miss Sze Lai-Shan highlighted the problems that some Mainlanders on the family reunion scheme have had in speaking Putonghua in Hong Kong and also in being unable to speak Cantonese. This interview shows how some Mainland Chinese immigrants have felt discriminated against by a section of Hong Kong citizens and have been cast as an ethnic “out” group, in line with the classic model of ethnic competition. Furthermore, an interview conducted with a party activist centred on the importance of Mainland Chinese immigrants learning Cantonese in order to fully integrate into the culture of Hong Kong. Concerns were also voiced that not enough Mainlanders understood Cantonese and that this was a problem as Hong Kong is a predominantly Cantonese speaking city.7 However, in regards to how widespread this discrimination is amongst Mainland Chinese immigrants, the empirical evidence tells a different story from the interview that was conducted. Empirical evidence from Hong Kong census data in 2011 confirms that a large number of Mainland-born Chinese residents spoke Cantonese. In 1991 only around 50 per cent of new Mainland arrivals spoke Cantonese in their homes, however this increased to 80 per cent by 2006. Recent data shows that most of the adult new arrivals from Mainland China (96 per cent) spoke fluent or had moderate levels of Cantonese. Ninety-two per cent of new child arrivals from Mainland China spoke fluent or moderate Cantonese in their

Mainland Chinese immigration in Hong Kong 61 daily lives (Central Policy Unit, HKSAR, 2013). Recent census data has shown that there has been an increase in the number of Mainland Chinese immigrants speaking Cantonese and it is clear that more Mainland Chinese immigrants have a good command of Cantonese. Therefore, language does not appear to be a significant barrier in explaining anti-immigrant sentiment towards Mainland Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong, with the quantitative data showing little evidence for the classic ethnic competition or social identity models.

Surveying Hong Kong public opinion This section draws on comparative data on the general population’s attitudes towards Mainland Chinese immigrants and then proceeds to examine the perceptions that Mainland Chinese new arrivals have in experiencing both prejudice and discrimination in Hong Kong. In some cases, Mainland Chinese immigrants have faced frequent prejudice and discrimination with “verbal and even physical clashes taking place” (South China Morning Post, 2014). According to a SoCO survey conducted in 2001, “60 per cent of [Mainlanders] had been frequently subjected to racial vilification in public”. Furthermore, “[o]ver 90 per cent of [Mainlanders] felt that Hong Kong citizens racially discriminated against them, while over 60 per cent of them encountered racial discrimination when they sought help from a government department” (Sze, 2007). Recent public opinion research has shown the negative views that a large proportion of Hong Kong citizens hold towards Mainland Chinese immigrants and how this has wide implications for an inclusive Hong Kong society (Chou, 2012b). The Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) survey conducted in 2015 has further shown the negative perceptions that the Hong Kong population tends to hold towards Mainland Chinese immigrants. The main findings of the HKIEd survey showed that the tension between Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese citizens was at an all-time highwith the lack of integration between both groups. Of the more than 1,000 people that were surveyed, only 17 per cent of respondents stated that the number of Mainland Chinese immigrants should be increased, with 21 per cent stating that there should be a significant decrease and 29 per cent of respondents outlining that there should be a slight decrease in immigration levels. Furthermore, the HKIEd survey also showed that Hong Kong citizens generally held negative perceptions of new immigrants overall, but that this anti-immigrant sentiment was more pronounced for Mainland Chinese immigrants (see Chou, 2012b; South China Morning Post, 2012).

Public opinion trends amongst arrivals from the Mainland Research undertaken by the HKIEd has shown that about 17 per cent of new Mainland arrivals did not have any friends in Hong Kong and about 31 per cent had one to three friends even though they had been living in Hong Kong for more than nine months. The corresponding figures for new child arrivals from

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the Mainland were 9 per cent and 15 per cent respectively. Moreover, around 54 per cent of new adult arrivals did not know any of their neighbours, whilst 36 per cent stated that they knew one to three households in their neighbourhood. Only 7 per cent of the adult new arrivals and 7 per cent of the child new arrivals participated in activities with neighbours and this data highlights the problems that new arrivals from the Mainland have in integrating into Hong Kong society (Central Policy Unit, HKSAR, 2013). Recent survey data also highlights the high levels of anti-immigrant sentiment amongst Hong Kong citizens towards Mainland Chinese immigrants. Table 3.2 shows that 56 per cent of those new arrivals surveyed also stated that they believed Hong Kong people still could not accept new immigrants. Furthermore, Table 3.3 shows that 61 per cent agreed and 5 per cent strongly agreed that Hong Kong citizens held negative attitudes and prejudices towards new Chinese immigrants. The empirical evidence presented thus far has highlighted varying patterns. The qualitative interviews with Miss Lai-shan Sze and Dr. York Chow demonstrate that there does appear to be some support for the classic model of ethnic competition theory, in regards to Mainland Chinese immigrants being perceived as an economic burden amongst Hong Kong citizens, lacking educational qualifications, and this may in turn drive anti-immigrant sentiment. However, the quantitative data presented thus far in this chapter appears to show a different story from the qualitative interviews, in extending the narrative beyond economic factors such as scarcity of resources and the classic ethnic competition model. The next section examines cultural and identity themes that are also likely to play a role in explaining antipathy amongst some Hong Kong citizens towards Mainland Chinese immigrants.

Table 3.2 Do you think Hong Kong people still cannot accept new immigrants? Strongly agree Agree Disagree Strongly disagree Refused to answer

5% 56% 35% 1% 4%

Source: HKIEd Survey (2015)

Table 3.3 Do you think Hong Kong people have bias toward and misunderstanding of new immigrants? Strongly agree Agree Disagree Strongly disagree Refused to answer Source: HKIEd Survey (2015)

5% 61% 30% 1% 3%

Mainland Chinese immigration in Hong Kong 63 Table 3.4 Do you think you can be successful in Hong Kong? Very likely Likely Average Unlikely Very unlikely Don’t know/No opinion Refuse to answer

1% 9% 21% 20% 30% 19% 1%

Source: HKIEd Survey (2015)

Table 3.5 Do you think your children can become successful in Hong Kong? Very likely Likely Average Unlikely Very unlikely Don’t know No opinion

3% 30% 26% 6% 2% 28% 4%

Source: HKIEd Survey (2015)

Changing patterns of identity in Hong Kong society It is important to examine the role of cultural and identity factors that are also likely to play a role in explaining why some Hong Kong citizens hold negative attitudes towards Mainland Chinese immigrants. This section argues that a large part of the attitudes that Hong Kong citizens hold towards Mainland Chinese immigrants can be seen in broader terms as a manifestation of rising anti-immigrant sentiment in the context of rising localism in Hong Kong. This rise is directly related to the Umbrella Movement and does not manifest itself in economic factors as the classic model of ethnic competition argues. Furthermore, distrust of the Beijing government is also likely to be a factor in negative public opinion that some Hong Kong citizens hold towards Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong. The Public Opinion Programme at the University of Hong Kong has tracked the same question with representative surveys that has sought to tap the identity of citizens in Hong Kong since the handover of sovereignty in 1997. This identity question was first asked back in August 1997 and has been continuously run by the Public Opinion Programme at the University of Hong Kong, up to June 2016. The identity question asks Hong Kong respondents the following question: Would you identify yourself as a Hongkonger/Chinese in Hong Kong/ Hongkonger in China? This question enables survey respondents to provide multiple responses which can shed further light on the notion of citizenship and identity in Hong Kong. Table 3.6 on page 64 shows the main findings for the identity question from June 2008 up until June 2016.8

1007 1011 1003 1016 1026 1015 1055 1019 1001 1016 520 1013 1004 1007 1002 1016 1012

10–16/6/2016 3–7/12/2015 15–18/6/2015 10–16/12/2014 6–12/6/2014 9–12/12/2013 10–13/6/2013 14–17/12/2012 13–20/6/2012 12–20/12/2011 21–22/6/2011 13–16/12/2010 9–13/6/2010 8–11/12/2009 8–13/6/2009 9–12/12/2008 11–13/6/2008

42 40 36 42 40 35 38 27 46 38 44 36 25 38 25 22 18

香港人 Hongkonger (%)

Source: (Public Opinion Programme, Hong Kong University, 2016).9

樣本人數 Total Sample (N)

日期 Date of survey 25 27 27 24 27 28 24 33 23 25 21 28 31 24 32 29 29

中國的香港人 Hongkonger in China (%) 13 13 13 15 12 15 12 16 12 18 10 14 15 13 13 13 13

香港的中國人 Chinese in Hong Kong (%)

18 18 22 18 20 22 23 21 18 17 24 21 28 24 29 34 39

中國人 Chinese (%)

Table 3.6 Would you identify yourself as a Hongkonger/Chinese in Hong Kong/Hongkonger in China? 你會稱自己為 香港人/中國人/香 港的中國人/中國的香港人: (按次計算)

Mainland Chinese immigration in Hong Kong 65 The main findings from Table 3.6 show that there has been a substantial shift in identity amongst Hong Kong citizens since 2008. In June 2008, only 18 per cent of Hong Kong citizens stated that they felt their identity to be Hongkonger and 29 per cent stated that their identity was Hongkonger in China. Furthermore, 13 per cent of Hong Kong citizens stated that their ethnic identity was Chinese in Hong Kong and 39 per cent stated they would consider their identity to be more Chinese. Fast forward to 2015, and there are considerable differences in terms of identity amongst Hong Kong citizens in comparison to 2008. From the survey conducted from 3 to 7 December in 2015, 40 per cent of survey respondents stated that they identified themselves as being Hongkonger, with 27 per cent stating that they were a Hongkonger in China. In contrast, only 13 per cent of survey respondents outlined that they were ethnically Chinese in Hong Kong and 18 per cent stated that their identity was Chinese. The most recent survey that was carried out in June 2016 shows a slight increase amongst Hong Kong citizens stating that they identified as being Hongkonger, up by 2 per cent to 42 per cent, with those identifying as Hongkonger in China down by 2 per cent.10 Furthermore, the Public Opinion Programme at the University of Hong Kong has also shown that Hong Kongers’ attitudes regarding Beijing’s policies towards the city have declined to an all-time low, with a substantial increase from 56 per cent to 65 per cent in the number of Hong Kong citizens who stated that they are not proud of their Chinese identity (SCMP, 2016a). In the same survey conducted by the Public Opinion Programme at the University of Hong Kong, the researchers constructed an “identity index” that ranged between zero and one hundred.11 This identity index enabled the researchers to further examine which identity Hong Kong citizens identified the most with. Table 3.7 (found on page 65) outlines the key findings in showing that the majority of Hong Kong citizens stated that being a “Hongkonger” was still the most important identity to them, followed by “Asians”, and “members of the Chinese race”. Overall identification as “Chinese” and “citizens of the People’s Republic of China” (PRC) scored the lowest amongst respondents (Hong Kong Free Press, 2015; Public Opinion Programme, Hong Kong University, 2016). These empirical results highlight an increased pattern, with national identity amongst Hong Kong citizens increasing for those who consider themselves Hongkonger and a sharp decrease since 2008 of those Hong Kong citizens stating that they consider themselves ethnically Chinese. Table 3.7 Hong Kong identity index Ethnic Identity

Identity Index Score (0–100)

Hong Kongers Asians Members of the Chinese Race Global Citizens Chinese Citizens of the People’s Republic of China (PRC)

79 73 68 68 63 68

Source: (Public Opinion Programme, Hong Kong University, 2016).12

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This evolution of identity and citizenship is likely to have impacted the attitudes that Hong Kong citizens hold towards Mainland Chinese immigrants. In comparison to this set of data provided by the Public Opinion Programme at the University of Hong Kong, the recent HKIEd Survey conducted in 2015 has also shown a similar disconnect in the identity of new Mainland Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong. The HKIEd survey has shown that only 12 per cent of new arrivals believed they were Hong Kongers, with 42 per cent stating they were Chinese and 33 per cent considering themselves to be Hong Kong people in China. This survey highlights the fundamental differences of identity amongst the citizenry in Hong Kong (HKIEd Survey, 2015). The empirical results here provide evidence for the social identity theory in showing the conflicting notions of identity amongst Hong Kong citizens and new Mainland Chinese arrivals.

Rising anti-immigrant sentiment: the context of the Umbrella Movement More fundamentally the findings from the HKU Public Opinion Programme data (Tables 3.6 and 7) in this chapter seem to suggest that there is a conflicting notion of identity in being a Hongkonger and the issue of Chinese ethnic identity (see Mathews, 1997: 5). Scholars such as Mathews argue that these different notions of identity can be traced back to the pre-colonial era. Whilst the social identity theory has its merits, I argue that the “Petersen ethnic conflict” model has more explanatory power than both the classic ethnic competition and the social identity models combined, in explaining why Hong Kong citizens tend to hold anti-immigrant sentiment towards Mainland Chinese immigrants. Applying this theoretical framework to the Hong Kong context, I argue that there is a dual mechanism of “fear” and “resentment” at play, with recent political events in Hong Kong demonstrating the predominant issue of Hong Kong identity and rising antipathy towards the Mainland Chinese government. Firstly, it is conceivable that Hong Kong citizens’ negative attitudes towards Mainlanders can be attributed to “fear” and a sense of powerlessness towards the encroaching Mainland Chinese government under Xi Jinping and the perception that the HKSAR government does not represent them fully anymore. Most significantly, the Umbrella Revolution that took place in 2014 was characterised by the theme of Hong Kong identity amongst the Hong Kong citizenry, with the rise of nativist and localist political currents amongst the protestors. Thus, the fight for universal suffrage likely involved a “fear” mechanism through a constant anti-communist and anti-Mainlandisation sentiment in the community. Secondly, “resentment” may be caused by the perception amongst Hong Kong citizens that Hong Kong is in decline politically, whilst at the same time witnessing the rise in political power of Mainland China. More recently, the rise of identity and localism within Hong Kong was evident in the Mong Kok riots that took place in February 2016 and in the 28th February 2016 Legislative Council New Territories East Geographical Constituency By-Election result. Since the handover of sovereignty in 1997, a large proportion of Hong Kong citizens are likely to feel that there has been a significant change in their ethnic status hierarchy,

Mainland Chinese immigration in Hong Kong 67 with the supremacy of the Mainland Chinese government and a perception that Hong Kong is in decline. This may account for the growing self-identification of Hong Kong citizens as “Hongkonger” as opposed to “Chinese” and “citizens of the People’s Republic of China”, as demonstrated in Tables 3.6 and 3.7 of this chapter. Therefore, in accordance with the “Petersen ethnic conflict” model, these recent political events can be seen from a macro perspective that underlines Hong Kongers’ general antipathy towards the Mainland Chinese government and perceived “resentment” through interference with the political process in Hong Kong (SCMP, 2016b). Most significantly though, the empirical findings serve to highlight the growing political tensions between Hong Kong and Mainland China, close to twenty years after the handover of British sovereignty. The public opinion data presented above is not conclusive and further research is required in order to draw on more survey questions from public opinion surveys that can allow us to conduct large N statistical analysis through advanced statistical models. This will allow us to further investigate whether economic or cultural and identity factors play the predominant role in the formation of anti-immigrant attitudes amongst Hong Kong citizens towards Mainland Chinese immigrants. However, the empirical results presented in this chapter do provide a snapshot, and recent events such as self-government and democracy are likely to have contributed not just to the formation of anti-immigrant sentiment amongst Hong Kongers, but also to conflicting notions about identity and nationalism (Lo, 2015). The implications of anti-immigrant sentiment are profound and pose widespread implications for policy makers in Hong Kong and most importantly for relations between the Mainland Chinese and the HKSAR government.

Conclusion The formation of anti-immigrant sentiment amongst Hong Kong citizens towards Mainland Chinese immigrants appears to be driven by a dual mechanism of “fear” and “resentment” towards the Beijing government, rather than being due to the classic ethnic competition model of economic factors or the social identity theory. This conforms to the “Petersen ethnic conflict” model that was outlined previously in the chapter. Thus, the central argument that I made in this chapter was that a large part of the attitudes that Hong Kong citizens hold towards Mainland Chinese immigrants includes distrust of the Beijing government and is likely to be manifested in the negative opinions that they hold towards Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong. The recent Umbrella Movement is also likely to have facilitated higher levels of anti-Mainlandisation sentiment in the Hong Kong community. This chapter also argues that there is a conflicting notion of identity in being a Hongkonger and the issue of Chinese ethnic identity. Drawing on qualitative interviews with NGOs alongside public opinion data, the chapter shows that anti-immigrant attitudes towards Mainland Chinese immigrants is generally on the rise in Hong Kong. From a policy perspective, the empirical findings show that more must be done to improve the integration of Mainland Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong and

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in creating an inclusive society, with the current integration guidelines falling short of international standards. Most significantly, the empirical findings serve to highlight the growing political tensions between Hong Kong and Mainland China, twenty years after the handover of British sovereignty. Therefore, the ramifications of increased anti-immigrant sentiment towards Mainland Chinese immigrants are profound and are part of a wider picture that embody the concept of citizenship and the conflicting sense of identity in contemporary Hong Kong society. As 2047 looms ever closer on the horizon, more must be done to improve the integration of Mainland Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong and to create an inclusive society.

Interviews Lai-shan Sze (2014). June 2014. York Chow (2014). November 2014. Interview with Party Activist (2014). June 2014.

Notes 1 The author would like to particularly thank Benjamin Lam (Royal Holloway, University of London) for excellent research assistance. The author would also like to acknowledge the 50th Anniversary Scholarship and the Faculty of Social Sciences PhD Funding at the University of Kent that has helped contribute towards this book chapter. The author would also like to especially thank Civic Exchange, the Equal Opportunities Commission and the Bauhinia Foundation Research Centre for helpful advice throughout the project. 2 This chapter focuses on immigrants on the OWP scheme, primarily because this group has experienced the most difficulties in successfully integrating into Hong Kong society. 3 This report has been translated from Chinese into English. 4 The Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) is now known as the Hong Kong Education University since 2016. I refer to the HKIEd in this chapter as the surveys examined in this chapter were conducted under the name of HKIEd. 5 The rise of anti-Mainland sentiment amongst Hong Kong citizens alongside other contemporary issues has led the Equal Opportunities Commission to undertake a consultation review of its four anti-discrimination ordinances, in particular involving reform of the racial discrimination ordinance in June 2014. 6 A comprehensive review has recently been undertaken by the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) to harmonize the existing four anti-discrimination ordinances into one document, bringing the legal framework more in line with international law at the time of writing this chapter. The author of the chapter commends the EOC for undertaking this consultation, specifically in providing a public consultation on whether the racial discrimination ordinance should be expanded to cover nationality, citizenship, and residency. 7 The interviewee chose to remain anonymous. 8 Whilst the data for this survey question goes back to 1997, Table 3.6 presents the most recent findings. The columns “Mixed Identity” and “Don’t know” responses are not presented. The full version can be found here: www.hkupop. hku.hk/english/popexpress/ethnic/eidentity/poll/datatables.html

Mainland Chinese immigration in Hong Kong 69 9 The figures listed in Table 3.6 have been rounded to the nearest whole number. 10 This was the most recent survey carried out at the time that the chapter went to press. 11 Lower scores on the identity index variable indicate that the identity for the respective groups was perceived as being less important. Higher scores on this Identity index for the respective groups was perceived to be more important. 12 The figures listed in Table 3.7 have also been rounded to the nearest whole number.

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Kaufman, Stuart J. (2004). Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, and Resentment in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe by Roger D. Petersen. A Review. Slavic Review 63:1, pp. 147–148. Keung, D.K.Y. and Bond, M.H. (2002). Dimensions of Political Attitudes and Their Relations With Beliefs and Values in Hong Kong. Journal of Psychology in Chinese Societies 3, pp. 133–154. Lee, Kim-Ming, Law, Kam-Yee and Kwok, Kim. (2012). Social Integration of the Hong Kong South Asian Populations, August 2012, Working Chapter, pp. 6–7. Legislative Council Secretariat, Hong Kong’s Population Policy. (2012). IN02/13– 14, 4 February 2014, Hong Kong: HKSAR Government, www.legco.gov.hk/yr1314/english/sec/library/1314in02_20140204-e.pdf (accessed 1 October 2014). Liu, Juliana. (2012). Surge in Anti-China Sentiment in Hong Kong. BBC News, 8 February 2012, www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-16941652 (accessed 1 September 2014). Lo, Sonny Shiu-Hing. (2015). Hong Kong’s Indigenous Democracy: Origins, Evolution and Contentions. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Mathews, Gordon. (1997). Heunggongyahn: On the Past, Present, and Future of Hong Kong Identity. Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 29, pp. 3–13. Ou, Dongshu. (2015). Immigrants and Earnings Inequality Across Gender: Evidence From Hong Kong. Journal of Asian Public Policy 8:3, pp. 245–275. Petersen, RogerD. (2002). Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, and Resentment in Twentieth-century Eastern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Post, David., Pong, Suet-ling and Ou, Dongshu. (2015). One Country Two Peoples? Trends in the Assimilation and Separation of Hong Kong’s Mainland-born Population. Asian Population Studies 11:1, pp. 67–93. Skeldon, Ronald. (2014). Hong Kong’s Future Population and Manpower Needs to 2030. Technical Chapter. Bauhinia Foundation Research Centre, Hong Kong, www.bauhinia.org/document/doc173eng.pdf (accessed 1 September 2014). Siu, Yat-Ming (1996). Population and Immigration. In Mee Kau Nyaw and Si-ming Li (eds.) The Other Hong Kong Report 1996. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, pp. 326–347. SoCO. (2016). Hong Kong Association of Community Organizationsations (SoCO) 2016 Report on the Survey of Discrimination Against Mainland Residents– Hong Kong Press Release (in Chinese). 香港社區組織協會 (SoCO) 2016 年｢內地來港 定居人士受歧視情況問卷調查報告｣發佈會 新聞稿 pp. 1–2 (accessed 5 January 2017). South China Morning Post. (2012). Hong Kong Accepting Too Many Mainland Chinese Immigrants Survey Finds, Thursday, 22 November 2012, www.scmp. com/news/hong-kong/article/1088378/hongkongers-want-fewer-Mainlandimmigrants (accessed 1 February 2015). South China Morning Post. (2016a). Hongkongers’ Sense of Chinese National Pride and Opinion on Beijing Policy at an All Time Low, Survey Finds, Thursday 30th June 2016, http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/arti cle/1983656/hongkongers-sense-chinese-national-pride-and-opinion-beijing (accessed 2 July 2016). South China Morning Post. (2016b). Out of the Ashes: Three Months on, How Will Mong Kok Riot Change Hong Kong? Tuesday, 10 May 2016, http://www.scmp. com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/1942993/out-ashes-three-months-howwill-mong-kok-riot-change-hong (accessed 1 June 2016).

Mainland Chinese immigration in Hong Kong 71 Sze, Lai-Shan. (2007). New Immigrant Labour From Mainland China in Hong Kong. Asia Monitor Resource Centre, 28 September 2007, www.amrc.org.hk/alu_article/ discrimination_at_work/new_immigrant_labour_from_Mainland _china_in_hong_ kong (accessed 12 September 2014). Tajfel, Henri, Michael G. Billig, Robert P. Bundy and Claude Flament.(1971). Social Categorisation and Intergroup Behaviour. European Journal of Social Psychology 1, pp. 149–178. Toft, Monica Duffy. (2005). The Geography of Ethnic Violence: Identity. Interests and the Indivisibility of Territory. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Varshney, Ashutosh. (2003). Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Wong, S.L., Moore, M. and Chin, J.K. (2008). Hong Kong: Demographic Change and International Labour Mobility. In PECC-ABAC Conference on ‘“Demographic Change and International Labour Mobility in the Asia Pacific Region: Implications for Business and Cooperation. https://www.pecc.org/resources/labor/679hong-kong-demographic-change-and-international-labor-mobility/file

4

Hong Kong’s fragmented soul Exploring brands of localism Wai-man Lam

This research was triggered by an interest in the charge of localism as nativist in Hong Kong. As such, it analyses the features of the various brands of localism in Hong Kong and how they are constituted by nationalism, nativism, cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism, and other ideas. Theoretically, localism is antithetical with cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism. Nevertheless, localisms in Hong Kong are by nature hybrids aggrandised with traits of nativism and cosmopolitanism, and some versions of them even accommodate multicultural ideas. Situating the analysis in the literature of identity politics, the chapter further explicates how Hong Kong localisms signify the locals’ attempts of soul-searching and resistance to the rising dominance of national narratives, and represent their laborious efforts to face the challenge of identity that have emerged from Hong Kong’s decolonisation, firstly from Britain and then from China, with its historic handover of sovereignty in 1997. Drawing on an original content analysis of the related information and Facebook posts of various localist organisations alongside quantitative data, the development of Hong Kong localisms, which carries significant implications for the evolving meaning of “Hong Konger”; the Hong Kong-China relationship; and the future modes of social contestations in the polity is explicated. The central argument of the chapter bases the case of Hong Kong on the study of decolonisation, and develops along the lines of mutual compatibility between localism and other ideologies.1

Defining concepts As I will show, localisms in Hong Kong are by nature hybrids associated with a basket of ideas. To facilitate the discussion, this section briefly outlines these related concepts, without intending to go into the comprehensive debates among them.

Localism Localism describes a range of political positions that prioritise the welfare of the locals, such as the support for local production, the consumption of goods and services, local governance, and promotion of the local identity, culture and

Hong Kong’s fragmented soul 73 history. Concretely, the term localism can be understood from two different perspectives. Firstly, localism reminds us of the critics of globalisation, such as the variants of socialism, dependency theory, world-systems theory and Green activism, which criticise globalisation and international trade for having perpetuated capitalist exploitation of the less-developed world sectors and the natural resources of Earth. As such, these critics often call upon the establishment of selfsufficient local community economies organised in ways that empower people to conduct national affairs and business according to their own aspirations. Examples of such localist experiments include food cooperatives, support for locally owned businesses, community banks, and credit unions (Moore, 2014). Secondly, localism can be seen as a contrasting idea for the centralised government power. In this light, the autonomy of the subnational units is well respected and constitutionally protected by the national government, such as in multiculturalism and deliberative democracies that aim at respecting differences and engaging citizens in day-to-day participation in decisions that affect them (Tomas, 2006). The second perspective will be used in analysing Hong Kong.

Nativism While localism challenges globalisation and a centralised state, nativism refers to the populist opposition to immigration and ethnic or cultural minority groups. Nativists believe that immigrants and minority groups are unable to be assimilated with their distinct belief system and culture, and are thus harmful. Further, nativists tend to view their own community members as innately possessing certain exclusive cultural qualities. Nativism, therefore, is a political position of demanding a favoured status for the natives on the one hand, and opposing the claim of special protection for immigrants on the other (Entzinger et al., 2004; Groenfeldt, 2003). As such, it is commonly viewed as parochial and can only be associated with a narrow version of localism whereby original inhabitants are defended against the perceived threats from immigrants. Nevertheless, insomuch as nativism is employed by local communities to defend its members against the encroachment of centralised government power or plans, it is paradoxically associated with localist and even multicultural orientations. Nativism can thus mean the attempts of survival, revival or perpetuation of an indigenous culture in opposition to acculturation due to political reasons or globalisation.

Cosmopolitanism Similar to the above theories, cosmopolitanism is a theory about identity and relationship between self and others. Being cosmopolitan indicates that a person is influenced by different cultures, open-minded politically and forward-looking. In that, contrary to a parochial morality of loyalty or provincial outlooks, cosmopolitanism emphasises one’s obligations to other people not just in our community, but also including those we do not know (Nussbaum, 2008). There are four common strands of cosmopolitanism (Scheffler, 1999).

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Moral cosmopolitanism implies a form of identity which emphasises individuality, freedom and equality. An individual human being, instead of states or other forms of human associations, is regarded as the ultimate unit of moral concern, with each carrying equal worth of respect (Scheffler, 1999). Implied in this notion is egalitarian individualism that rejects nationalist and communitarian arguments on identity formation. The latter views hold that people’s identity is partly constituted and defined by their membership in social groups sharing a common history, culture, language or ethnicity (Nussbaum, 2008). Moral cosmopolitanism is associated with political cosmopolitanism which refers to the structures and forms of political life necessary for the creation of more democratic governance. The principles of equal worth and value of human beings as well as their active agency and personal responsibility can only be realised in a non-coercive and inclusive political process locally, translocally and globally. Cultural cosmopolitanism emphasises culture and the self, and is opposed to any suggestion, including strong ethno-national based nationalism, that the well-being, identity and capacity for effective human agency of individuals depend on their membership in a particular cultural group. The idea appreciates a multi-cultural environment where individuals exercise their inventiveness and creativity to construct new ways of life using the most heterogeneous and hybrid cultural materials. Economic cosmopolitanism is more often discussed among economists such as Milton Friedman (see, for example, Gunn, 2013: 22). It advocates for strict adherence to the rule of the marketplace, and cultivation of a single and free global economic market with minimal government involvement. Since the government is construed as an umpire in enforcing, defining and modifying such rules, its formation and operation are deemed to be inclusive and transparent (Burnell, 1986). Overall speaking, moral, political and cultural cosmopolitanisms though less so with economic cosmopolitanism suggest a worldview different from provincial or parochial outlooks and that rejects strong nationalism and coercive political process.

Multiculturalism Multiculturalism refers to the philosophy and measures of preserving group differences and protecting group rights of minority and disadvantaged communities to encourage tolerance of differences, based on the principles of self-determination and respect for subnational identities and communities. Important justifications of multiculturalism include communitarianism, liberalism and postcolonialism (Song, 2014). Charles Taylor, for example, regarded diverse ethnicities, languages and cultures as a precious heritage such that minority communities should be given specific schemes of rights to continue their traditions (Taylor, 1992; Song, 2014: para. 2.1). For liberals and multiculturalists such as Will Kymlicka, culture is the important context in which people make choices. Because members of minority communities are often disadvantaged compared to those of the

Hong Kong’s fragmented soul 75 majority culture, it is reasonable to give special protection to their culture and rights (Kymlicka, 1995; Song, 2014: para. 2.2). The postcolonial perspective regards that injustices done to indigenous groups in history shall be reckoned. Thus it is justified to grant minority communities special rights and protection, for example, the right of self-government, and develop an open model of intercultural dialogue between them and the society at large (Moore, 2005; Song, 2014: para. 2.3). Multiculturalists are met with critics. Of relevance here, it is the contention of cosmopolitanism that cultures are not isolated but interacting with and mutually influencing one another. As such, many cultures today are virtually hybrids and will continue to be so. Individual choices, instead of being facilitated by a single cultural tradition, actually stem from a variety of cultural sources. Another criticism of multiculturalism comes from critics who worry that the focus on culturaland identity-based politics may undermine multiracial and multiethnic solidarity and the respective struggles (Song, 2014: paras. 3.1–3.4).

The local identity and identity politics in Hong Kong History and development From after World War II to the early 1960s, Hong Kong as a British colony could be described as an open refugee society where the people were still strongly connected with Mainland China. Since the 1960s, various factors have brought about the transition from a refugee identity to the formation of a local identity of Hong Kong Chinese. In the 1970s, the rise of social movements gradually diluted the dominant authoritarian discourse of stability, depoliticisation and social control with values of democratic citizenship (see the chapters by Wing-sang Law and Ngok Ma in this volume). The struggle between the authoritarian and democratic discourses resulted in mixed colonial legacies, which in turn contributed to the cultivation of different values integral to today’s Hong Kong identity. Meanwhile, with the economic take-off in the 1970s, new neo-liberal economic narratives regarding the Hong Kong identity were engendered with particular emphasis on the community’s newly achieved prosperity and stability. In contrast, Mainland China was portrayed as backward, collectivist and authoritarian, and a threat to the free, individualist and prosperous Hong Kong. The Hong Kong consciousness which emerged possessed a strong economic accent reinforced by imagining Mainland Chinese as outsiders. Political events that occurred at the local, national and international levels in the 1980s and the 1990s brought about further challenges to the Hong Kong identity. The Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989 in Mainland China and the rising popularity of global norms of human rights in Hong Kong further catalysed the contents of the Hong Kong identity. There arose a new discourse with an emphasis on democracy, the rule of law and people's rights. In 1991, the enactment of the Bill of Rights provided a solid and legal protection of human rights in Hong Kong. Looking back, both globalisation and the British colonial

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rule had left their marks on the development of Hong Kong identity (Lam and Lam, 2012: 60–65).

Returning to China and the rise of localism Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997 and became a special administrative region under Beijing on the principle of “One Country, Two Systems”. In the post-1997 era, ideological reshaping backed by the Chinese authorities was apparent, including setting hegemonic standards of patriotism and other social and political measures. In the process, local identity has often been reconstituted, resulting in a scene of identity politics that works against the state’s original goal of nation building (Lam, 2005). For instance, in the area of education policy, national education has become the focus of civic education. In 2012, the government’s proposal to introduce moral and national education as a compulsory subject, however, suffered a major setback and was withdrawn after 90,000 protestors rallied outside the government headquarters. Meanwhile, patriotism is propagated at the wider societal level, highlighting China’s advancements. In the heated debates on universal suffrage for 2017, patriotism has been redefined and restated by the Chinese authorities as a criterion for choosing Hong Kong’s Chief Executive. Regardless of other core political values and aspirations, Hong Kong is re-emphasised, and in fact minimalised, by Chinese officials as an economic city. Economic integration with China is said to be the only way out for Hong Kong lest it becomes marginalised under global economic competition. Furthermore, it is not uncommon that Hong Kong people are depicted by pro-Beijing media as pathetically nostalgic for the colonial past, ungrateful for the economic benevolence, including the provision of a water supply from China, and discriminating against Mainlanders while also jealous of their success. So, how has identity in Hong Kong changed over time? Over the years, polls found that the majority of respondents claimed a dual identity of Hong Konger and Chinese except in the several years subsequent to the political handover and until 2014. The proportion of people who regarded themselves as being a Hong Konger has risen over the years, and surpassed the dual identity as the most popular option since 2014. The proportions of only Chinese has also increased but with obvious fluctuations (see the chapters by James Downes and Ngok Ma in this volume). The growing sense of alienation of certain individuals has incited activism, radicalism, protectionism and even separatism in the Hong Kong polity. Activism and radicalism in particular have been on a surge in recent years, with growing intensity of local efforts to explore, protect and nourish their political identity and beliefs. In the rising tide of politicisation, there was an increasing number of participants, civic groups and new media agents of varied backgrounds involved, from the demonstration against the national security bill (2003) to the local heritage preservation movements (2006 and 2007), the Anti-Express Rail Protest (2009), the De facto Referendum Campaign (2010), the Protest against National

Hong Kong’s fragmented soul 77 Education (2012), the Occupy Central Movement which became the Umbrella Movement (2014), and the latest Mong Kok Unrest (2016). Importantly, campaigning and protesting strategies have become mainly action-oriented, diverse and sizeable, confrontational and radical, demanding ultimately a truly democratic government and genuine autonomy for Hong Kong. The idea of protectionism that dichotomises Hong Kong and the Mainland has prevailed with the rising concerns that Mainlanders are depriving the locals of essential consumer goods and public services, such as the scramble for maternity beds and powdered milk for infants, the access to public spaces and transport facilities, and the increasing inflation to local property prices (see the chapter by James Downes in this volume). The government is left with limited choices, resulting in the introduction of a series of policies that run contrary to the authorities’ aim of integration, such as banning unwarranted Mainland women from delivering at public hospitals, and limiting Mainlanders’ multiple entries into Hong Kong. The separatist trend gained momentum in Hong Kong after the Umbrella Movement, and developed into a movement both on the Internet and in actual political discourses and practices, varying from simple angry calls for “Mainlanders to get out of Hong Kong” to self-rule and political independence. Amidst the drama of identity politics, contrary to achieving nation building, Hong Kong has become further polarised and more than ever detached from the state. Writing in 2012 (Lam, 2012: 206–208), I observed that the political sphere in Hong Kong has been ever expanding with rapid politicisation on all fronts of issues. Growing political activism is signified, firstly, by the people’s general awareness of their political values and rights, and their readiness to uphold these values and assert these rights. Secondly, political activism is signified by the people’s reduced fear of politics and increasing willingness to challenge the political authority. Thirdly, political activism is signified by political activists’ proactive challenges to the fundamental and mainstream social and political values. Fourthly, political activism is signified by the growing use of radical tactics. People have become more willing to break the conventional standards of social peace and order, and employ bodily action tactics to catch public attention and challenge the authorities. The activists resorted to targeting the perceived root causes of the matter and aimed at fundamentally transforming the political vision of the public. These observations were testified to in the Umbrella Movement in 2014 and the more recent Mong Kok Unrest in 2016.

Various brands of Hong Kong localism As localism emerges as a political agenda in Hong Kong, the very notion of understanding localism and local interests has also become a contested ground. Even the former Financial Secretary John Chun-wah Tsang had spoken on these matters, claiming that local consciousness “could be a positive and constructive force that makes Hong Kong a better place and benefits Hong Kong as a whole” (Tsang, 2015). Worthy of note, the broader the interpretation of localism, the

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greater the possibility of having more issues politicised in the discourse of the protection of local interests. According to my rough estimation, more than 45 such localist organisations have been formed in just the past two years after the Umbrella Movement in 2014. In terms of their nature, these organisations can be broadly categorised into three types, including community-oriented organisations, professional organisations, and political organisations. Among the political organisations, there are the selfdetermination and pro-independence camps, with the latter further differentiated into three factions, namely, Hong Kong Nation, Hong Kong Independence, and City-State Autonomy. As observed, the interpretations of localism are varied, as well as reflected in the political platforms of the localist organisations. As such, their demands are different, ranging from policy demands related to community and social needs, to political demands for high autonomy of Hong Kong from China, and the independence of Hong Kong. Also, their preferred strategies and tactics are different as well. In terms of the choice of action venues, they span from the community to the international arena. In terms of the tactics used, they span from the systematic construction of a Hong Kong localism discourse to political persuasion, collective mobilisation, confrontation and others. Among these organisations, some are known for their preference for using confrontational and radical tactics to attain their goals and arouse public attention. Nevertheless, despite their varied nature, focuses, demands and tactics, these groups do conjoin on the political agenda of defending Hong Kong’s local culture and values, and striving for true democracy and high political autonomy as well as the right of self-determination on Hong Kong’s future after 2047 when the Basic Law’s promises of “One Country, Two Systems” expire. Selected organisations will be analysed according to the characteristics of their brands of localism. Whenever appropriate, further analysis will be made of their embedded views of the meaning of Hong Kong people and identity, the Mainland China, the Chinese and Hong Kong governments as well as their political demands.

Community-oriented organisations From 2014 and notably after the Umbrella Movement, there emerged a tide of the formation of community organisations by locals driven by social consciousness, namely former participants of the Umbrella Movement and young activists of other movements mentioned above. According to my approximate estimation, more than 15 community organisations have been formed. While some of the organisations aim at running in the District Council elections in November 2016 to continue the democratic spirit in Hong Kong, others are formed for arousing social concern, empowering local residents, consolidation of community spirit and monitoring the authorities through community work and public education. Nevertheless, despite their different focuses, these organisations obviously target the visible expanding community influence of the pro-establishment camp

Hong Kong’s fragmented soul 79 strategically, in a way which is noticeably more resourceful than the pan-democratic camp. Examples of these community-oriented organisations include Fixing Hong Kong (in Chinese 維修香港) which aims at providing low-cost or free of charge house repair services for poor people and strengthening community spirit; Wan Chai Commons (in Chinese 灣仔廣義), and TaiPosunwalker (in Chinese 埔向晴天) which strive for building a sustainable and caring community in Wan Chai and Tai Po respectively (both are districts in Hong Kong). For illustration of the nature of community-oriented organisations, a short analysis of TaiPosunwalker’s Facebook page (TaiPosunwalker, 2016) was made. This district based organisation was formed in August 2014, and its core leader Yung-wai Lau has successfully won a seat in the District Council Elections in 2016. Its Facebook page indicates that its current organisational focus is on environmental issues as a means to arouse residents’ community concern. Also, the organisation cares about the prevalence of social injustices in Hong Kong and exposes certain District Councillors who are incapable of protecting citizens’ interests. As an end, they hope to gather strength to monitor the government, urge for a balance between economic development and public interests, and protect Hong Kong’s core values, which are the Western universal values such as freedom and human rights. A quantitative content analysis of its 176 Facebook (FB) posts between 1st January and 24th June 2016 indicates a variety of concerns. Among these posts, 68 posts are about Hong Kong’s current affairs, such as critiques of deteriorating freedom of speech and the Link Reit’s monopoly of public housing estates’ shopping centres, and call for voter registration. There are 22 posts on community affairs, such as bus re-routing in the district and improvement of district facilities. Another 25 posts are on knowledge sharing, notably public education such as environmental concerns, and 15 posts on information sharing, such as traffic news. The rest include 44 posts on publicity of the activities of the organisation, its District Councillor Yung-wai Lau and friendly organisations, and 2 other unclassified posts (see Table 4.1 below). With reference to the case of TaiPosunwalker, a few observations can be made about the community-oriented organisations. Firstly, these organisations embody a clear sense of localism in terms of their focuses on protecting the respective Table 4.1 A Content Analysis of TaiPosunwalker’s Facebook Posts (1 January–24 June, 2016) Focuses of the posts

No. (per cent)

Current affairs Community affairs Knowledge sharing Information sharing Publicity of activities Others Total

68 (38.6) 22 (12.5) 25 (14.2) 15 (8.5) 44 (25) 2 (1.2) 176 (100)

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communities’ interests and empowering the residents against social injustices and power domination. Secondly, this strand of localism is neither parochial nor nativist as the organisations also actively promote concerns for the society at large and the core values of Hong Kong. This is well reflected in the majority of TaiPosunwalker’s FB posts concerning current affairs, and its District Councillor Yung-wai Lau’s comment that, “it is undesirable to distinguish local affairs from the Legislative Councillors’ agendas (author’s translation)” (Hong Kong Apple Daily, 2015). Thirdly, the posts under study do not reflect the organisation’s explicit views on the Hong Kong identity. Nevertheless, many of the posts aim at enhancing readers’ political knowledge and participation while some others are about media freedom, protection of Hong Kong’s core values, and issues alike. On the whole, the organisation is critical of the domination of the proestablishment camp at the district level, and strives to monitor the Hong Kong government when needs arise. All these can be interpreted as manifestations of the Hong Kong identity. In sum, the case of TaiPosunwalker demonstrates a type of non-nativist “community-oriented localism”, which is a hybrid embedded with social democratic beliefs and ideas of moral, cultural and political cosmopolitanism. As all the posts analysed are not on immigrant issues, I am unable to definitively conclude if this localism accommodates multiculturalism.

Professional organisations In the post-Umbrella Movement period in Hong Kong, more than 15 professional organisations have been formed. Examples include the Progressive Lawyers Group (in Chinese 法政匯思) dedicated to promoting the core values of Hong Kong, such as the rule of law, democracy and justice; the Médecins Inspirés (in Chinese 杏林覺醒) aiming at promoting political concern in the sector and universal suffrage in Hong Kong; the ArchiVision (in Chinese 思政築覺) committed to promoting political reforms and genuine democracy in Hong Kong. Like the community-oriented organisations analysed above, the formation of these professional organisations signify the post-Umbrella Movement generation's strife for a genuinely democratic Hong Kong. Some of them ran in the Functional Constituencies (FCs) of the Legislative Council Elections in September 2016 as a challenge to the dominance of pro-establishment professional and business forces in the sectors. For illustration purpose, a similar analysis of the Facebook page of the Progressive Lawyers Group and its posts (Progressive Lawyers Group, 2016a) between 1st January and 24th June 2016 is made. The organisation aims to “arouse civic concern on political reform and other social issues in Hong Kong (author’s translation)”. Among the 195 posts during the period examined (see Table 4.2 on page 81), a remarkable majority of 105 posts were about current affairs, 55 on knowledge sharing/short stories, 27 on publicity of activities, and the remaining eight on professional matters. The posts on current affairs include criticisms of the Chinese authorities’ unlawful arrests and detention of five Hong Kong booksellers (the Lee Bo Incident) as

Hong Kong’s fragmented soul 81 Table 4.2 Analysis of Progressive Lawyers Group’s Facebook Posts (1 January–24 June, 2016) Focuses of the posts

No. (per cent)

Current affairs Knowledge sharing/short stories Publicity of activities Professional Total

105 (53.8) 55 (28.2) 27 (13.9) 8 (4.1) 195 (100)

an open violation of “One Country, Two Systems” and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Grundy, 2016), criticisms of the Hong Kong Secretary for Security for smearing refugees (Cheung, 2016) and the government’s consideration to quit the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment claimed to block fake refugees (Cheng, 2016), and commentary on Hong Kong localism. The posts on knowledge sharing/short stories are all characterised by a more casual style of writing. While most of them are related to legal or political issues in Hong Kong, their genres vary from relatively light ones, such as a short story on one’s holiday, to relatively informational or serious issues, such as Hong Kong’s legal tradition and the Duty Lawyers’ Scheme. While the posts on publicity of activities are selfexplanatory, the professional posts are about news of the Law Society of Hong Kong, election of its Council Members, urging its members to vote (around the time, it was rumoured that two pro-Beijing candidates of the sector were vehemently supported by the “heavyweight” of the Law Society in the election), and the Law Society’s decision for a unified qualifying examination for solicitors by requiring prospective solicitors to pass the new Common Entrance Examination (Chu, 2016). Several observations can be made on the brand of localism signified by the Progressive Lawyers Group and organisations alike based on the above analysis. Firstly, the posts convey a clear support for promoting the core values of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong identity. The core values are the Western universal values such as the rule of law, judicial independence, democracy, human rights, freedom and justice. And the Hong Kong identity is constituted by such core values and makes them especially worthy of preservation. These beliefs are well manifested in the organisation’s criticism of the unlawful arrests of the booksellers. As commented by the Progressive Lawyers Group: The HKSAR government has the power to enforce Hong Kong laws within Hong Kong. PRC laws (save for national laws contained in Annex III of the Basic Law) shall not be applied in Hong Kong, and China’s enforcement agencies shall not enforce PRC laws within the territory of Hong Kong. The Lee Bo Incident sparked concerns that China did not strictly comply with the Basic Law. The HKSAR government must investigate into this matter so as to prevent any further erosion to the rule of law in Hong Kong. (Progressive Lawyers Group, 2016b)

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Secondly, Hong Kong is viewed as a community and the organisation has expressed a strong sense of local identity and belonging to the city. As commented by the Progressive Lawyers Group: The government has taken all the efforts to “China-nise” the education system in Hong Kong, through promoting nationalist education, Putonghua teaching Chinese, and Simplified Chinese, while local culture has been largely neglected. This has led to the growth of localism and a corresponding lowered nationalist identity for which the Hong Kong government is solely responsible. There are persons wanting to become Chinese yet rejected due to their ethnic background and skin colour. At the same time, there are communities wanting to preserve their innate culture but marginalised on all fronts. It would all end up discarding the national identity. For a nation to earn popularity, the correct way is to respect differences, embrace freedom and multiplicities (author’s translation). (Progressive Lawyers Group, 2016c) Thirdly, similar to community-oriented organisations analysed above, this localism is not nativist. The above two features do signify localism. Nonetheless this kind of localism is heavily informed by cosmopolitanism, notably moral, cultural and political cosmopolitanism. This can be seen from the organisation’s dedication to Western universal values, and criticism of the smearing of refugees, discriminatory practices, and the idea of quitting the UN Convention to block fake refugees. It is also reflected in the criticisms made by the organisation’s founder Kin-fung Yam on (other) radical localists and their tactics: In the process of advocating for democracy and freedom, differences in opinions are normal. What is important is the adherence to universal values, and mutual respect for each other allowing differences among organisations. However, if the inherent values of certain activists deviate from universal values, despite similarities on certain goals and campaign platforms, these organisations could not work together on moral and practical grounds. In other words, to achieve sustainable social transformation, innate values are more important than superficial goals (author’s translation). (Yam, 2016) Fourthly, the organisation is critical of the social injustices in Hong Kong, as well as the Hong Kong and Chinese governments, and perceives both governments as hindrances to the protection of Hong Kong’s core values, the Western universal values. This can be seen from its “Statement in relation to the events overnight in Mong Kok”: “In the aftermath of the 1967 protests, the British colonial government quietly accepted the errors of its oppressive ways and took steps to address the root causes of social problems at the time. It is now incumbent upon our

Hong Kong’s fragmented soul 83 government to stop playing politics with the events overnight and loosen the noose which it has tightened around the people of Hong Kong in recent years”. (Progressive Lawyers Group, 2016d) In sum, the case of Progressive Lawyers Group, and organisations like it, demonstrate a type of “civic localism” which is informed by cosmopolitanism and liberalism and accommodates multiculturalism. This localism strongly emphasises protecting Hong Kong’s core values as a way of upholding Hong Kong’s political autonomy vis-à-vis China. It is action-oriented but is against violent means.

Political organisations: self-determination or independence? Localist political organisations can be categorised into the self-determination and pro-independence camps with the latter further categorised into three factions, namely Hong Kong Nation, Hong Kong Independence, and City-State Autonomy.

The self-determination camp One example in this camp is Youngspiration (in Chinese 青年新政), which aims at defending local culture, freedom and high autonomy, and building a Hong Kong nation which embraces Hong Kong’s core values and protects the local interests. It has proposed a referendum on the future of Hong Kong in 2021. Youngspiration has gained popularity and won one seat in the District Council Elections in November 2015 and two seats in the Legislative Council Elections in 2016. However, the pro-independence statements of the two Youngspiration legislators Baggio Leung and Wai-ching Yau during their swearing-in session triggered the interpretation of Article 104 of the Hong Kong Basic Law by the Chinese National People’s Congress, which clarifies that legislators must swear correctly, completely, and solemnly according to the oath script. Otherwise, their right to assume office will be deprived. The two legislators subsequently lost their seats. Another notable example of the self-determination camp is Demosisto ¯ (in Chinese 香港眾志), a political party launched by student activists including Joshua Wong, which aims at achieving democratic self-determination in Hong Kong through non-violent direct actions and popular referenda. Differentiating itself from radical localists (Kwok, 2016), Demosisto¯ also ran in the Legislative Council Elections in 2016 and Nathan Law won a seat. As stated on the website of Demosisto¯ (Demosisto¯, 2016a), it aims at building a Hong Kong with “multiplicity and social progressiveness”. Politically, not satisfied with just the demand for high autonomy of Hong Kong from China, Demosisto ¯ aims at achieving the democratic self-determination of Hong Kong through non-violent means and international campaign. It also proposes to draft “a Charter of Hong Kong” for Hong Kong beyond 2047 (when Hong Kong’s

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Basic Law expires) reflecting citizens’ views collected through referenda. Interestingly, though emphasising the uniqueness of Hong Kong and the importance of preserving its core values, namely Western universal values, the organisation has rarely, if ever, described Hong Kong as a “nation” which marks its difference from other localist political organisations including Youngspriation. The organisation, instead, reiterates the idea of people’s sovereignty as a justification for its idealistic discourse. Demosisto¯ aims at achieving social multiplicity. It believes that: . . . Defining the character of Hong Kong relies neither on the superiority nor inferiority of specific groups of people. Rather, it is constructed by the society as a whole along with its historical background, humanitarian values and common experiences of the citizens. All these features form our conception of the unique character of the city, bringing us together in a sense of belonging. We believe that difference in ethnicity does not come into conflict with our conception of local protection and resistance. . . . What we have to do is to re-grasp our bargaining power by constructing an analysis of Hong Kong’s present and an imagination of its future based on our historical experiences, and liberate ourselves from the dictating, imperialistic governance of the CPC [Communist Party of China], without falling into the emotionally-appealing trap of populism that divides among “us” and “them” based on nationality. (Demosisto¯, 2016b) The organisation also aims at building a just society, a self-sufficient Hong Kong (one that is not reliant on Mainland China for basic necessities including water and food supply, etc.), and an education system that nourishes citizens on critical thinking rather than “brainwashing” citizens. Founders of Demosisto¯ see Hong Kong as undeniably unique; they have not directly dealt with the question about whether Hong Kong is a nation, though. The genuine interests of Hong Kong people lie in being able to determine for themselves their present and future relationships with China, and the furtherance of their core values. So, neither has Demosisto¯ answered the question whether Hong Kong should fight for political independence, although “the China factor” is viewed as the greatest obstacle to the realisation of the organisation’s goals. Nevertheless, in the perspective of the Chinese government, the organisation’s demand for self-determination is no different from a de facto demand for independence. On the whole, Demosisto¯ signifies a kind of “civic localism” similar to the professional organisations, which embrace Hong Kong and its cosmopolitan values and accommodate multiculturalism.

The pro-independence camp In regards to the pro-independence camp, they vary on the continuum between complete independence to an autonomous state under the Chinese government.

Hong Kong’s fragmented soul 85 The following sections analyse the factions of Hong Kong Nation, Hong Kong Independence, and City-State Autonomy.

Hong Kong Nation Briefly speaking, the Hong Kong Nation was better described as a discourse rather than a faction due to its subsequent development. It was originated from the Undergrad, the official publication of the Students Union of the University of Hong Kong. The idea was proposed by the editorial board of the newsletter before the Umbrella Movement in the fall of 2014, and was further consolidated after the Movement. According to the former chief editor of the publication Kai-ping Leung, they aimed at finding a direction for Hong Kong’s political future, and establishing a feasible, rational and debatable discourse on Hong Kong localism amidst the various controversies on localist ideas (Leung, 2014; STANDNEWS, 2016). The Undergrad has earned its name in particular after being accused former Chief Executive Chun-ying Leung of advocating independence (Cheung and So, 2015). In August 2015, several former editors of the Undergrad founded the organisation Watershed (in Chinese 時代思進) which aims at reconstructing and arousing public concern for Hong Kong’s local history and culture to advance the Hong Kong identity. Similar to Benedict Anderson’s idea of imagined community and the concept of civic nationalism, this group defines Hong Kong as a nation per se on the basis of its common history and common values. It proposes the idea of Hong Kong people as a people who embrace the core values of Hong Kong, including the Western universal values of freedom, democracy and human rights, and one who possesses a strong sense of belonging to Hong Kong. Hong Kong people so defined are Hong Kong residents who may or may not be ethnic Chinese. This may include minority groups within the Hong Kong population, such as the descendants of South Asians born and living in Hong Kong. Even Chinese immigrants would be welcomed if they genuinely embraced Hong Kong’s core values and committed to Hong Kong. The status of Hong Kong people can be acquired and the requirements are not that strict. In such a definition of Hong Kong people, Chinese-ness is not of utmost importance. It is thus regarded as a view aiming to eradicate the Chinese-ness of Hong Kong. In fact, members of this discourse express strong identification with their Hong Kong identity but not so much with the Chinese identity, which, after all, is “foreign” to them. Regarding public policies, this discourse promotes “Hong Kong first” policies which give priority to local interests. Democratisation and better protection of Hong Kong people’s rights and freedom are goals to be achieved. Regarding Hong Kong’s relationship with the Chinese government, this discourse regards the latter as an authoritarian regime but nonetheless exhibits no explicit demand for Hong Kong independence. The members instead demand complete autonomy of the city and try to stay rational instead of populist in dealing with issues of Hong Kong’s political future. With regard to operational tactics, public education and campaigns are used while neither direct action or confrontations are rejected.

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Worthy of note, the Hong Kong Nation discourse is not nativist. One may even say it shares certain similarities with civic localism analysed above. Specifically, first of all, Hong Kong people are not defined in terms of their innate essence. Instead, the qualities of Hong Kong people can be acquired and learnt. The members regard Hong Kong people as unique but not innately pure, sacred or superior. Secondly, it is a localism that promotes both Hong Kong values and the protection of Hong Kong’s interests vis-à-vis the interests of the Chinese government and other regions in China. It is guided by concerns for both the values and pragmatic interests of Hong Kong. Thirdly, by making the boundary of the Hong Kong community admissible and allowing minority groups already here and immigrants from the Mainland and other places to acquire the status, rights and protection of Hong Kong people under certain conditions, Hong Kong Nation localism is in fact proposing a multicultural framework. While proposing a multicultural framework for Hong Kong’s general public to embrace its minority groups, Hong Kong Nation localism is in itself representing a multicultural proposal put forward to the national government of China as the authoritarian sovereign to embrace Hong Kong as a minority region. Theoretically, localism could sound narrowing but in this case, it is not. Lastly and interestingly, this Hong Kong Nation localism entails cosmopolitan orientations. Having adopted Western universal values as Hong Kong’s core values, and aiming at promoting such values as part and parcel of the Hong Kong identity and features of the new Hong Kong, this localism is embedded with traits of moral, political and cultural cosmopolitanism. It is at the same time contending against hegemony and Chinese supra-nationalism. Overall speaking, this discourse of localism is a hybrid. The fact that these different ideas can coexist in one single discourse or identity speaks to two key points. Firstly, there exist multiple sources of cultural traditions in Hong Kong that on the one hand have provided the localists with different ideas and conceptual categories to formulate their ideas, while on the other hand are awaiting to be reconciled. Secondly, the discourse of Hong Kong Nation localism demonstrates that localism can go hand-in-hand with multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism, although the latter two are theoretically in conflict with localism. In the case of Hong Kong, multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism serve as compatible denotations of Hong Kong Nation localism. Ultimately, localism has to be analysed in context in order to understand its specific meaning and practical and philosophical implications. Noteworthy, alongside the Umbrella Movement, the discourse of Hong Kong Nation has become much popularised among the localists including the nativist pro-independence activists. This has rendered the original meaning of the term altered and imprecise. In its altered form, the Hong Kong Nation no longer stands as a civic nation but rather a nation in the nativist sense and in its own right.

Hong Kong independence The faction of Hong Kong Independence was originated with the formation of nativist groups such as the Hongkonger Front (in Chinese我是香港人連線),

Hong Kong’s fragmented soul 87 Hong Kong Localism Power (dissolved in June 2016), Hong Kong Blue Righteous Revolt (in Chinese 港人自決藍色起義), and the Hongkongers Come First (dissolved in September 2014). The Hongkongers Come First made its name in 2013 after four of its members broke into the central barracks of the People’s Liberation Army in Hong Kong, carrying a colonial Hong Kong flag, and calling for the army to get out of the city. As the pro-independence ideas in Hong Kong have become widespread since 2015, more organised political groups of the kind also appeared. These include the Hong Kong Indigenous (in Chinese 本土民主前線) which aims at defending Hong Kong localism and striving for genuine autonomy and democracy for Hong Kong. The organisation does not shy away from violent protest actions, and some of its core members were heavily involved in the 2016 Mong Kok Unrest mentioned above. Its member Edward Tin-kei Leung ran in the New Territories East By-election of the Legislative Council in February 2016 and failed, yet remarkably won 15.4 per cent of the total votes. Although Leung planned to run again in the Legislative Council Elections in 2016, he was finally barred from the election. He subsequently declared electoral support for Baggio Leung of the Youngspiration. Another political party, the Hong Kong National Party (in Chinese 香港民族黨), formed in March 2016, advocates for building a Hong Kong nation-state with political independence. This group has invoked immense criticisms and close monitoring from the authorities. Its convener Ho-tin Chan planned to run in the Legislative Council Elections in 2016 but was barred from standing due to his pro-independence positions. Also, in June 2016, the former founder of the now dissolved Hongkongers Come First formed the Alliance to Resume British Sovereignty over Hong Kong and Independence (in Chinese 香 港歸英獨立聯盟). In general, this faction is embedded with ideologies ranging from fighting for political independence from Beijing to total independence with British protection. They originated as reactions to certain public policies and developments of Hong Kong-Mainland integration considered harmful to Hong Kong people’s interests and/or favouring the interests of Mainland Chinese. Areas of concerns include the increasing amount of cross-border trading activities which have affected the daily life of the people and the government’s plan to develop northeast Hong Kong. This faction is relatively more diverse in terms of the backgrounds of its members and their platforms but some of the members entered into strategic cooperation during the electoral campaigns of the Legislative Council Elections in 2016. Moreover, the proposers agree on the common ground that Hong Kong should gain political independence and self-rule, and implement “Hong Kong first” public policies with priority or even exclusivity for local residents. They go strongly against Chinese immigrants and tourists, and any policies that would facilitate China’s assimilation of Hong Kong or its encroachment on local affairs including the “One Country, Two Systems” implementation in Hong Kong. Besides, democratisation and the protection of Cantonese as the official dialect are also important goals on the path to independence.

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Members of this faction in general perceive China as foreign to Hong Kong’s interests and identity, and as such they do not care about Chinese nationalism. Rather, Hong Kong is perceived as their real home. Hong Kong’s interests and culture are seen as worthy of preservation. Some of them tend to romanticise the past British colonial rule in Hong Kong, and identify with Britain psychologically and politically. As such, they criticise City-State Autonomy (which will be analysed below) for their masked “One Country, Two Systems” agenda, and consider it a shame to enhance the Chinese-ness of Hong Kong people. This faction embraces Hong Kong as a nation in a vague sense because of its shared interests and culture, and its distinct political challenge of cultural assimilation by China and Chinese immigrants. It is thus common to find some of them waving the Dragon-Lion flag (the nickname of the British Hong Kong flag) to distinguish themselves in protests and demonstrations. Regarding their tactics of mobilisation, they widely utilise the new media, such as Facebook and YouTube. In street protests, direct, radical and confrontational actions are commonly employed. They appeal to people’s discontents with the Chinese and Hong Kong governments with similar sentiments of their own, and are thus regarded as populists. This faction of Hong Kong Independence localism is nativist. First of all, they attempt to eradicate the Chinese-ness (de-Chinese) of the Hong Kong people and “otherise” the Mainland Chinese, and carry a strong Hong Kong (qua British) identity. Hong Kong people are those who are current Hong Kong residents and who at the same time render support to the protection of local interests. Thus this status of Hong Kong people cannot quite be acquired, and may not even include minority groups currently living in Hong Kong. Secondly, it is localism per se for its strong proposal to protect Hong Kong’s practical interests, vis-à-vis those of the Chinese government and other regions in China. Thirdly, because of its non-accommodation of Chinese immigrants, it is hardly multicultural. Its members have attempted to secure special protection of Hong Kong from political and cultural acculturation and hegemonic rule of China, it however ends up being hegemony itself. Lastly, its ideologies go against cosmopolitanism. Although some of the faction members employ the language of democracy and rights in defence of local interests, their actions have deviated from the requirement of cosmopolitanism, which accepts cultural differences and multi-ethnicity. Overall speaking, it rejects Chinese nationalism but instead has actually created a restrictive view of Hong Kong nationalism. It is a hybrid of ideas with right-wing populist inclinations signifying the intensity of conflicts between Hong Kong and China in all aspects yet to be reconciled.

City-State autonomy City-State Autonomy localism was proposed by a scholar named Wan Chin (also Wan-kan Chin, Horace Chin) (see, for example, 陳, 2011; 羅, 2014) who started to gain popularity via the Internet at the beginning. His groups of supporters established Dr. Chin’s Support Group, and then Hong Kong Resurgence Order

Hong Kong’s fragmented soul 89 (in Chinese 香港復興會). Chin and the group allied with Raymond Wong’s Proletariat Political Institute and Yeung-tat Wong’s Civic Passion in running in the Legislative Council Elections in 2016. They promoted a constitutional reform to be achieved by a de facto referendum, in the form of a by-election triggered by the resignation of one legislator from each of the five geographical constituencies of the Legislative Council Elections. In a similar manner to Hong Kong Independence, the ideas of this group were originated from the discontents with the deterioration of governance of Hong Kong under the “One Country, Two Systems” model, where Hong Kong’s uniqueness is seen as quickly eroded and the city Mainlandised. The group pledges to fight for protecting Hong Kong’s interests and dignity, proposes in the long run to establish a local political party that could get rid of the democratic politicians and “absentee middle-class” (in Chinese 離地中產), and maintains a dual emphasis on democratisation and policies for the welfare of ordinary people. Policy-wise, this group can be considered the same as Hong Kong Independence on fighting for adopting a “Hong Kong first” attitude in public policies. Regarding Hong Kong-China relations, this group adopts an antipathetic attitude towards China and considers it as corrupt, and the Communists as insincere and incapable of sustaining and promoting traditional Chinese culture. The group promotes the idea that Hong Kong is the only place in China which has preserved and could possibly advance authentic hua-xia (Southern China) culture. Evidently, in the same way as Hong Kong Independence, the group is strongly against Chinese immigrants and tourists and labelled them as locusts, and contend against any policy aiming at increasing Hong Kong-China integration. Nevertheless, instead of promoting independence from China, which seems unfeasible, the group aims at establishing a genuine autonomous Hong Kong with the status of a city-state that could maintain a distance from China while not antagonising it. Regarding Chinese nationalism, the group is ambivalent, though. Because of its adherence to hua-xia culture, the group is criticised for advancing cultural nationalism and promoting Hong Kong as a small China in the big China. Chinese-ness, therefore, is not given away but reinvented. While Mainland China and Mainland Chinese are viewed as the other, Chinese culture is not. Although the interests and sacredness of Hong Kong are defended, minority groups are excluded because they are not even Chinese. This conception of the Hong Kong people, as one who embraces hua-xia culture and Hong Kong’s special interests, is even more restrictive than that portrayed by Hong Kong Independence. Regarding the tactics used for mobilisation, this group shares a lot of similarities with Hong Kong Independence: populist, radical, confrontational and emotion-driven, and frequently using the new media as a tool to propagate its agendas. In the same way as Hong Kong Independence, City-State Autonomy localism is nativist. Firstly, the definition of Hong Kong people is restrictive and its status is hard to be acquired. Secondly, this group promotes a localism that focuses on the natives’ pragmatic interests. Different from Hong Kong Independence, though, it holds strong beliefs in the cultural Chinese uniqueness and mission of Hong Kong which is worthy of special protection. Thirdly, the group exhibits little

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emphasis on the cosmopolitan nature of Hong Kong identity except for proclaiming democracy as one of its goals. Lastly, although the group was established to fight for greater autonomy for Hong Kong, it is hardly multicultural due to its lack of belief that Mainland Chinese immigrants can be assimilated and educated, and its lack of attention to the rights of minority groups in Hong Kong and the rest of China. To replace Chinese nationalism, it resorts to the cultural superiority of the Hong Kong qua hua-xia culture, which in turn has become yet another hegemony. This is a typical case in which nativism, multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism do not accommodate one another. Overall speaking, City-State Autonomy localism is right-wing populist, in which the marginal is left to negotiate his/her identity for survival in the grand national discourse.

Hong Kong localism(s): a basket of opportunities and ideas One may wonder about the future development of the various brands of localism in Hong Kong. How will they fare? Analysis of contentious politics has often drawn insights from the political process model (the political opportunity theory). According to the political scientist Hanspeter Kriesi, the political opportunity structure consists of the components of cleavage structures, political institutions, configuration of political actors, including their alliance and conflict structure, and the strategies of public authorities and political actors (Kriesi, 2004: 70, Figure 4.1). The theories provide explanations for collective action from a structural perspective. Nonetheless, with regard to the rise of political action, they have not paid sufficient attention to the role of political identity and values, ideological traditions, and “meaning construction”. Political identity, to be the primary factor that guides political participation, nevertheless, does not arise from a vacuum. It is a process of meaning construction. According to Manuel Castells, identity is the process of “the construction of meaning on the basis of a cultural attribute or a related set of cultural attributes” (Castells, 2010: 6). There are three types of identity. Firstly, legitimising identity introduced by the dominant institutions of the society establishes authority and domination. Secondly, resistance identity produced by the political actors who are being dominated, excluded or stigmatised forms communities and resistance. Thirdly, project identity representing the new identity and social movement built by political actors redefines their self-understanding and position in the society and transforms the society (Castells, 2010: 8). As such, identity building is a catalyst for social changes and a form of activism, functioning as both a political strategy and a cultural and political goal for the activists (Bernstein, 2005: 59–63; Heywood, 2013: 160–169). Thus, like any political discourses and practices in Hong Kong, the development of localisms is constituted by the overall local political culture in Hong Kong according to the theories of identity politics, and the development of political system, the strategies of the authorities and the alliance structure of political actors based on the political process model.

Hong Kong’s fragmented soul 91 Furthermore, while Hong Kong localisms signify the locals’ attempts to resist Hong Kong’s deteriorated governance and the lack of genuine democracy and autonomy, as well as the rising dominance of national narratives, they also testify to the people’s search for an identity without China. As such, the attempts to deal with the city’s decolonisation from Britain and then from China are by nature soul-searching. Thus, to answer the question about how localisms in Hong Kong will fare requires further exploration of the ideological traditions of the fragmented Hong Kong soul.

Conclusion The above analysis sheds light on the features of the emerging brands of localism in Hong Kong and their relationships with a basket of ideas. The theoretical framework shows that localisms in Hong Kong are by nature hybrids aggrandised with traits of nativism and cosmopolitanism, and some versions of them even accommodate multicultural ideas. Through an analysis of the community organisations, professional organisations and political organisations formed after the Umbrella Movement, the article shows that, in the case of Hong Kong, localism emerges as community-oriented localism, civic localism, and pro-independence variants including Hong Kong Nation, Hong Kong Independence, and CityState Autonomy. These localisms have varied degrees of traits of nativism, localism, cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism. They signify the locals’ attempts at soul-searching and resistance to the rising dominance of national narratives, and demonstrate that there exist multiple sources of cultural traditions in Hong Kong waiting to be reconciled.

Note 1 Owing to limited space, this paper will not deal with the theoretical relationships between the ideologies of cosmopolitanism, liberalism, neo-liberalism, and social democracy.

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5

“You have to fight on your own” Self-alienation and the new Hong Kong nationalism Luke Cooper

There is widespread agreement that the Umbrella Movement represents a turning point for the nature of protest in Hong Kong civil society, and societal attitudes to the Mainland and the Special Administrative Region government (SAR) more generally. Although the scale of the protests was not without precedent – as annual pro-democracy marches have often enjoyed similarly significant levels of support (Ma, 2009; Sing, 2012) – the willingness of large numbers to engage in civil disobedience, and even forcibly resist attempts by the police to remove them, marked a clear change in attitude vis-à-vis previous mass movements (Cai, 2017). This intense confrontation between an insurgent group on the streets and the ruling authorities left wider Hong Kong society politically polarised between those who supported and opposed this new, and particularly radical, movement (The Centre for Communication and Public Opinion Survey, 2015, 2014). A traditional ambivalence and caution, which has been a long-term feature of public attitudes to democratisation in post-handover Hong Kong (Lee and Chan, 2007), has now given way to this heightened politicisation and accompanying polarisation within a societal context still characterised by Beijing’s intransigent opposition to full democratisation. Consequently, difficult questions have been posed to Hong Kong’s traditional pro-democracy movement. The groups and individuals making up this component of the Umbrella Revolution are proud of their history, identifying strongly with the movements of the 1980s (interview with Benny Tai, 2015; interview with Hong Kong Citizens activists, 2015; interview with Globalisation Monitor activists, 2015; interview with Wong Chi Chung, 2015). They positively embrace the label of the “Tiananmen Generation” to emphasise their solidarity with the movement crushed in Beijing on June 4 1989 and to locate their own struggle for democracy in Hong Kong within an all-China movement against one-party rule (interview with Wong Chi Chung, 2015). As Szeto Wah, one of the iconic leaders of the 1980s, put it in 1997: If there are no improvements in China, then there is no future for Hong Kong. If there is no future for Hong Kong, then there’s no hope for China. (cited in Herschensohn, 2000: 52)

“You have to fight on your own” 95 For this generation the deep interconnection between the struggle for democracy in Hong Kong and the fate of one party rule on the Mainland has been taken for granted. If this all-China, and crucially all-Chinese,1 approach forms one part of the classical political orientation of Hong Kong’s civil society, the other, related element, is a tendency to seek progressive change through dialogue with Beijing.2 Encouraged by the reform era initiated in 1979 Szeto sought to engage Beijing and even took a seat on the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in 1983. Although his relations with the CCP were irrevocably broken by Tiananmen, which saw Szeto banned from the Mainland for backing the protestors, the spirit of gradualism he conveyed has retained a strong hold on the “common sense” of Hong Kong’s civil society. Both these tendencies – a pan-Chinese orientation and a gradualist approach to political reform – found themselves challenged in the Umbrella Revolution by the rise of localist political currents and attitudes amongst protestors. This localist consciousness tends towards rejecting the “one country, one struggle for democracy” view in favour of an assertive advocacy of Hong Kong’s autonomy, and, in the case of some organised localist actors, even advocates its independence. They combine this with a related rejection of any compromise with the Chinese authorities, and, most controversially, direct much of this militancy against the Mainland Chinese, whether in the form of tourists or migrants that have settled in the polity. While the traditional movement is far from diminished, it is widely accepted that localist groupings significantly advanced in their support and influence as a result of the Umbrella Revolution, particularly amongst the young. “Soon after the Umbrella barricades finally came down”, described one evidently sympathetic commentary, “an even more radical youth movement began, protesting noisily and aggressively against Mainland tourists and shoppers” (Hemlock, 2015). The youthfulness of this movement is noteworthy in itself given participants in these groupings tend to have little, if any, memory of life prior to the handover. For these layers lived experience of Chinese sovereignty thus appears to have had the opposite impact to that envisaged by the “one country” element of the historic compromise: the creation of social pressures inclining a section of the young to reject a Chinese element to their identity. Political scientists exploring the role of identity for the new social movements in Hong Kong face terminological challenges given the polity’s complexity. In everyday Hong Kong discourse, nationalism or patriotism would generally refer to the pro-Beijing parties that promote a Chinese nationalist politics, rather than the “localists” that advocate Hong Kong independence. Moreover, Hong Kong localism is also a diverse and still emerging set of dispositions that eludes a straightforward definition (see the chapters by Wing-sang Law and Wai-man Lam in this volume). Nonetheless, sections of the localist movement do increasingly identify with the language of political nationalism (interview with Edward Leung, 2015). It is this highly ideological form of nationalist-localism that provides the subject matter of this chapter. While recognising that it remains a minority current, I argue that the profile and growing

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support for these new Hong Kong nationalists has emerged organically out of the polity’s geopolitical circumstances. A critical application of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (Anderson, 2006), which sees national identity as a collectively constructed subjectivity, provides the lens through which the empirical argument is explored. As a framework Anderson’s approach is highly germane to illustrating the tensions found in the “borderlands” of national identities, where competing imaginations often exist in tension to one another. Such strains reflect both the complexity and the causal power of the collective imagination as a factor in the transformation of society. But the weaknesses of Anderson’s theory are equally evident in the case of Hong Kong. Not only does Anderson have a highly benign view of nationhood as a form of emancipation, he also fails to locate the emergence of this form of identity within geopolitical circumstances and the uneven distribution of power therein. Hong Kong nationalism problematises these positions, for it is so powerfully shaped by the nature of the polity’s colonial history, and the re-colonisation the return to China entailed. The polity’s new localist-nationalists exhibit high levels of selfalienation and their rise reflects the complex power relations between Hong Kong and Mainland China.

Cultures of modernity: theorising the imagined community Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities; Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism formed one dimension of a wider turn towards critical approaches to the formation of the national community (Anderson, 2006; Chatterjee, 1986; Gellner, 1983; Hobsbawm, 1990; Nairn, 2003). A shared rejection of a primordial basis for this form of identity existed among these writers, which challenged its “taken-for-granted” sensibility in modern society. Anderson saw national identity as a collective process of imagining that fosters a seemingly innate sense of “we” amongst strangers who could never possibly all meet one another (Anderson, 2006: 5–7). For Anderson this culturally rooted artefact, the national imagined community,3 was a historical product of Western modernity with three core facets. Firstly, the nation was always a geographically bounded or “limited” collective subjectivity because “. . . no nation imagines itself coterminous with mankind” (Anderson, 2006: 7). Secondly, and related to this “contained” nature, for Anderson, nations necessarily promoted the ideal of sovereign self-government of their own people as an alternative to dynastic rule, whether it be a foreign or domestic absolutism,4 even if they did not for other nations that they wished to subordinate (ibid). For Anderson the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw a “living pluralism” in beliefs and outlooks emerge conducive to a re-visioning of the nature of statehood on the basis of self-government (ibid). Thirdly, he also saw the nation as a solidaristic “community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each. . . [it] is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship” (ibid). As these precepts suggest, Anderson viewed the nation in normative and Eurocentric terms. He appeared to take the subjective rationalism of the European Enlightenment at face value and credited

“You have to fight on your own” 97 it with invoking a vision of freedom for which “the gage and emblem . . . [was] the sovereign state” (ibid). This normative view of national identity is clearly illustrated by Anderson’s concern to disentangle nationalism from racism (Anderson, 2006: 149) and his rejection (Anderson, 2006: 5, see also p. 141) of Tom Nairn’s claim that nationalism is a “pathology of modern developmental history . . . an inescapable neurosis” with an ever-present potential for fear and hatred towards the other (Nairn, 2003: 347). As a result, postcolonial scholars, in particular, have subjected Imagined Communities to critique. They have attacked Anderson’s apparent blind spot on the agency of non-European peoples in the construction of the modern state system (Chatterjee, 1996), as well as his reluctance to highlight the often racialised, modes of exclusion – the counterpoint of “them” so important to the solidarity of “us” – that the national imagined community has involved (Gilroy, 1987: 44–51). Connecting both these problems is arguably Anderson’s failure to incorporate conflicting relations between societies into an account of the emergence and development of national identity as a sociological phenomenon (Cooper, 2015). These may include the cultural diffusion of ideas across polities, external pressures to compete socioeconomically, the colonial denial of sovereignty by an external power, and the othering arguably entailed by the social construction of borders. Scholars working in the discipline of International Relations (IR) have cast such processes in terms of the uneven and combined development of societies (Allinson and Anievas, 2009; Anievas and Nisancioglu, 2015; Cooper, 2015, 2013; Davidson, 2009; Matin, 2013a, 2013b; Rosenberg, 2013, 2010). Adopting the parsimonious assumption that in a world of multiple societies development will be in large part shaped by intersocietal relations, uneven and combined development challenges the “methodological nationalism”, which equates the concept of society with the nation-state (Chernilo, 2006). The latter approach has the effect of excluding from the sociological analysis of a single society those causal processes that derive from its interaction with multiple other such communities (Rosenberg, 2006). If our explanandum is the emergence of nations, then this fallacy is arguably particularly egregious, for it leads one to neglect those explanans that derive from the “outside-in” (Gourevitch, 1978) for the construction of the limited boundaries central to the national community. As Tom Nairn argued, the uneven and combined development of societies with differing capacities to leverage power in the world system was central to the spread of national identity and nationalism (Nairn, 2003: 327). Less powerful states constructed a shared sense of community to mobilise for modernisation, which led to the “conscious formation of a militant, inter-class community rendered strongly (if mythically) aware of its own separate identity” (ibid). Its imagined qualities, ethnicity, language, even skin colour, were taken from local traditions and homogenised into the national spirit (ibid). National revolutions against European colonial powers followed such logic as the struggle for territorial sovereignty found legitimacy in the language of national destiny and salvation. This provided a vocabulary for imagining the people in a manner that fused a past sense of being with a future sense of becoming. But the same geopolitical struggle for power – and

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accompanying myths of awakening – also shaped the genesis of nationalism and national identity in Europe (Cooper, forthcoming). Uneven and combined development has thus fostered a universal spread of nations and nationalism and has given fluidity and complexity to their interrelations; not least because the othering qualities of nationalism are such that one era’s liberator can be another’s aggressor. Even in its earliest origins modern Chinese nationalism (Mitter, 2004, 2000) combined a progressive struggle for national sovereignty with an incorporation of Western racial categories to assert a HanChinese racial homogeneity (Cooper, 2015). This socially constructs, in a modern, racial form, a particular set of boundaries between the inside and outside consistent with the notion of “the foreign” or alien in human history. Kees van der Pijl argues that this self-alienation emerges historically through the necessarily dispersed nature of development across locales (van der Pijl, 2010: 4). But this alienation of the self reaches its epitome once the nation-state asserts a monopoly on foreign relations, which universalises the nation as an ossified and internally homogenous form of imagined community (ibid). Van der Pijl thus sees the construction of imagined communities based on ethno-cultural difference, not as a form of emancipation, but a new stage in the evolution of the anterior condition of self-alienation. Once the national is seen as emergent of the intense geopolitics of the modern era, Anderson’s benign view becomes problematised as its selfalienating dimensions are exposed. In this sense, Anderson is right that explaining the “colossal sacrifice” made in the name of these identities requires an exploration of the “cultural roots of nationalism” (Anderson, 2006: 7), but they are also shaped by geopolitics and the uneven distribution of power between the strong and the weak. In what follows, I refer to this modified use of Anderson’s theoretical approach as a post-Andersonian conception of the nation. Understanding the way in which the power relations connecting the inside and outside of a geopolitical community shape the shared sense of “who we are” is arguably especially important to the construction of postcolonial national identities of the mid- to late twentieth century and after. For Anderson China was the consummate example of the limited bounds so essential to the national community. “Even the largest of them”, he said, referring, of course, to the populous and expansive East Asian state, “encompassing perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if elastic, boundaries, beyond which lie other nations” (Anderson, 2006: 7). An enquiring into Hong Kong national identity takes place at these elastic, contested borders. Here one finds the tensions typical of the national community; the questions of who lies outside and inside these imagined boundaries, and how they map onto the territorial claims and cultural identity of the state, remain live ones across the whole of China. But this is especially so for those numerous peoples within the Chinese state who either reject a categorisation of their identity in these terms or see their “Chinese-ness” as overlapping with other local or national identities (Liew and Wang, 2004) – a phenomenon found in the diverse locales of Tibet (Smith Jr., 2008), Xinjiang (Kung, 2006), Shanghai (Wasserstrom, 2009), Inner Mongolia (Han, 2011), and even in Taiwan with its peculiar status of non-sovereign independence (Hughes, 2013).

“You have to fight on your own” 99 These ambiguities and tensions can be seen in post-Andersonian terms as a clash of bounded imaginations, at some moments overlapping in a seemingly benign form, and at others held to be in a bitter state of contradistinction. If imagined communities emerge out of how social development is formed by the interconnections that take place between locales distributed unevenly across geographical space, its national form has a distinctive ability to achieve a scale far beyond the local unit, but also to homogenise this space in a manner that makes cultural differentiation difficult. As such, the tensions in the metaphorical or geographical “borderlands” always have a latent potential for conflict. This is more than evident in the contemporary strength of local identity in Hong Kong (Fung, 2004, 2001; Lai, 2011), which has been heavily marked by the nature of the “One Country, Two Systems” settlement. But “being Hong Konger” has a longer providence (Mathews, 1997) stretching back to the colonial era, and the privileged economic status Hong Kong enjoyed in relation to the Chinese Mainland. Before analysing the militant political nationalism found in the Umbrella Revolution, one must consider what a post-Andersonian theory of Hong Kong identity looks like.

Imagined communities, one or two? Between Chinese and Hong Konger The coloniality that forms the central component of Hong Kong’s relationship to modernity provides a series of historical reference points and experiences, which problematise its relationship to the imagined community of “China”. Hong Kong’s distinctiveness vis-à-vis other territories on the “borderlands” of Chinese nationhood lies in the sheer length of time it was under European colonial control. Given that its annexation by the British long preceded the development of Chinese nationalism – which typified nationalism per se in being objectively modern while subjectively primordial (Anderson, 2006: 5) – then this very obviously problematises Hong Kong’s relationship to Chinese-ness. Only in the late nineteenth century did a Chinese nation with subjectively coherent interests – defining itself in the colonial-territorial terms typical of the modern West – emerge (Cooper, 2015; Dirlik, 2010: 146–147). Meanwhile, Hong Kong itself was only a small fishing village at the time of its annexation (Pomerantz-Zhang, 1992: 8). In 1842 the polity lacked the modernism often thought of as foundational to Hong Kong life, and the “lift off ” of the Chinese national spirit only occurred around half a century later. This means those wishing to place the territory in an external relation to China have clear factual evidence they can draw on. As such, the polity’s historical evolution and imagined sense of shared memory has become a central site of conflict between those who wish to assert either its Chinese or Hong Kongese character. As Gordon Mathews put it back in 1997, how one judges these debates is firmly predicated on what one considers “China” to be: Hong Kong’s precolonial history may . . . support a Hong Kong identity apart from China as much as a Hong Kong identity as a part of China. The

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These contested interpretations of how China should be imagined are evident in the differences that exist amongst the new Hong Kong localists. Some identify with a traditional, i.e., pre-communist, Chinese identity, but overlay this with the assertion of a distinctive set of cultural facets that define Hong Kong people (interview with Wong Yeung-tat, 2015). Others reject any kind of cultural or ethnic affinity to China and promote instead a politically grounded “civic nationalism” based on a discourse of self-government (interview with Edward Leung, 2015). While the latter is nominally free of culturalist categories, they tend to be reinserted implicitly through attributing derogatory traits to Chinese Mainlanders (ibid). But no matter how the Chinese polity is viewed by the new Hong Kongers it forms an ever-present relational construct, as these geopolitical realities shape the assumptions of their own political imagination. Hong Kong’s difficult search for its own collective subjectivity has, in this sense, been defined against two impositions onto it of dominating visions: a Chinese culture that draws on historical diasporic connections and cultural affinities, on the one hand, and an alternate image of Hong Kong as a multicultural and commercial beacon of Westernisation in “the East”, on the other. Milton Friedman gave the clearest expression of the latter when he argued Hong Kong constituted “an almost laboratory experiment in what happens when government is limited to its proper function and leaves people free to pursue their own objectives” (Masse, 1980). Friedman viewed the polity as a blank slate, offering controlled conditions for an experiment in market forces, rather than a complex historical community with its own intuitions, beliefs and imaginings. While this may appear radically different to the monolithism of its Chinese nationalist antipode, common to both these imaginings is a denial of the subjectivity of the local population, their creative capacities, and, crucially, their capacity for selfgovernment. As Ackbar Abbas argued at the time of the handover, the denial of Hong Kongers’ agency, i.e. their ability to be “change making” cultural and political subjects, is central to the polity’s coloniality: The result is that stories about Hong Kong always turned into stories about somewhere else, as if Hong Kong culture were somehow not a subject. This is a case of what Freud calls “reverse hallucination”. . . if hallucination is seeing what is not there, then reverse hallucination is not seeing what is there. (Abbas, 1997: 25) This “reverse hallucination” was evident in the ritualistic performances at the 1997 handover ceremony; while the British vision of Hong Kong was multicultural, bilingual and international, the Chinese chose performative repertoires that emphasised patriotic love for the motherland, envisaging it in singular-national terms. As such, the event was notable for the absence of the local subject as a creative agent:

“You have to fight on your own” 101 The British ceremonies suggested themes of internationalisation and multiculturalism, while their Chinese alternatives suggested patriotism and nationalism . . . The British leaders presented a bilingual and multicultural vision of Hong Kong, conveniently avoiding the sordid origins of their acquisition of the colony during the opium wars and a history of dictatorship – mostly benevolent but dictatorship nonetheless – and institutionalised racial discrimination. The Chinese leaders stressed a reunited motherland, symbolised musically by the return of émigré musicians Yo Yo Ma and Tan Dun to celebrate the occasion. Patriotic songs stressed the theme of loving China, in this case conveniently avoiding the fact that most Hong Kong residents are in the city because they or their family members of previous generations left the motherland to avoid economic hardship or political persecution. (Witzleben, 2002: 130) Against these imposed imaginations the reality, of course, is that Hong Kong culture reflected the hybridity (Fung, 2004; Kraidy, 2005; Young, 2005) of multiple “combined” cultural influences (Matin, 2013a) within which notions of “East” and “West” themselves were not static, homogenous forces. As Barry Sautman has shown, Hong Kong’s overlapping racial and class stratifications (Sautmann, 2004) belie the simplistic application of East-West binaries. Nonetheless, the myths implied by this imagined cleavage are real enough and serve to deny the distinctive subjectivity of Hong Kong and justify its political debasement. Disenfranchisement thus intersects with a politics of cultural blindness. The Chinese government’s outright rejection of the formal representation right of Hong Kong people to negotiate together with the delegates of Britain and China over the post-1997 arrangements typified this attitude. Hong Kong’s experience of decolonisation, therefore, arguably took a recolonizing form. This process of re-subordination to an external power reflects, in turn, the contradictory nature of the Chinese national imagination, as both a historical victim of Western colonialism – with the handover of Hong Kong seen as key to remedying these past wrongs – and aspiring “Great Power” in its own right, willing to deny self-government to polities on the periphery of its national domain (Cooper, 2015: 498). Developmentally, however, Hong Kong’s story hardly typifies the experience of other colonised states. Since the 1970s, which saw conscious efforts to modernise the polity following the riots of 1967 and its rapid economic expansion as one of the four original “Asian Tigers”, Hong Kong has not suffered from the systemic underdevelopment often seen as characteristic of a colonial legacy. Consequently, at the time of the handover Hong Kong was considerably, and quite obviously, much more prosperous than the Mainland. This relative economic privilege and political subordination thus characterised the Sino-Hong Kong relationship. As Abbas noted: When sovereignty reverts to China, we may expect to find a situation that is quasi colonial, but with an important historical twist: the colonised state, while politically subordinate, is in many ways not in a dependent subaltern position but is in fact more advanced – in terms of education, technology,

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The “displaced chronologies”, which eschew any kind of stadial development trajectory, Abbas describes here are of particular interest to those utilising the idea of uneven and combined development. According to the latter the formation of such hybrid regimes arises from multiple societies that do not only develop at different paces, but also interact in ways that subvert any linear temporality. Favourable circumstances and successful adaption of existing techniques can, on occasion, allow some states to leapfrog their hitherto more developed rivals.5 But Hong Kong’s highly non-linear development, both in 1997 and over the last two decades, also provides a clear illustration of how such processes are heavily imbued with unequal power relations. In this condition of complexity, economic power and cultural capital can become juxtaposed to political disenfranchisement and alienation. Since the handover, China has, of course, experienced its own economic boom, turning the country into a major industrial power, enriching the party elite and creating a growing consumer class. But this relative evening out of economic levels of development between the two polities has not served to stabilise their relations, or to quieten demands for universal suffrage in Hong Kong. The business elite, which coalesced as a conservative faction in Hong Kong politics in the 1980s (Sing, 2004: 87–89) have pursued a pro-Beijing policy. And more migrants have moved to the polity, creating tensions over their integration (see the chapter by James Downes in this volume). Meanwhile, the benefits of Sino-Hong Kong economic integration have been far from universally shared. Grievances at long hours, a lack of social security, and poor quality housing are widespread, with activists in the movement identifying them as key factors motivating dissent (interview with Umbrella Revolution participant [b], 2015; interview with Chui Wai Chan, 2015). Among the nationalists, however, this often spills over into anti-migrant views that allege Mainlanders have preferential treatment in accessing social welfare (interview with Edward Leung, 2015; interview with Civic Passion activist, 2015; interview with Wong Yeung-tat, 2015). This is contrary to the claim of the polity’s main independent trade union federation that points out Mainlanders have to wait three years for access to social housing and one year for access to security benefits – the latter was until recently some seven years (interview with Chui-wai Chan, 2015). Added to these tensions have been controversial education reforms. Attempts to increase Mandarin speaking through the creation of a trilingual schools system since 1997 have been resented (Evans, 2013), and the aborted attempt to introduce “patriotic” education was bitterly opposed (Chan, 2013). A sense that Hong Kong’s distinctive identity is under threat in the era of Chinese sovereignty has consequently emerged. In this context the deepening interconnection between Hong Kong and China has exacerbated conflicts over identity, belonging and the construction of the outside. Each of these tensions represents a dispute over how the imagined boundaries

“You have to fight on your own” 103 of “one country” should be drawn. They emerge out of a geopolitical relationship that denies Hong Kong self-determination and finds an acute expression in the emergence of the new nationalists. The construction of the Mainlander as the other to be pushed to the outside of the imagined bounds of the Hong Konger, and a parallel search for internal cultural-national cohesion, provides an outlet for the discontent fostered by the denial of home rule. Those who anticipated the “gradual dissolution” of this localist identity in 1997 hoped to see an “autonomous, critical, independent Chinese identity” emerge in its place (Mathews, 1997: 13). But such a social construction of a democratic Chinese political subject has not emerged. A refocusing on “the local” as an outlet for dissent logically, therefore, makes sense in these conditions. This new localism is not simply continuous with its pre-1997 form (Law, 2009b, also see Wing-sang Law’s chapter on localism in this volume). In the post-Umbrella Movement conjuncture a highly politicised and radical variant of it has developed and won growing support.

Hong Kong’s new nationalists: an alienated political imagination Two prominent organisations of the localist movement are Civic Passion and Hong Kong Indigenous. These groups played a key role in the Umbrella Revolution, but neither identify with the original call for civil disobedience made by Benny Tai (Tai, 2013). They are keen to disassociate themselves from the “traditional” Hong Kong pro-democracy camp (interview with Edward Leung, 2015; interview with Civic Passion activist, 2015; interview with Wong Yeung-tat, 2015) and they have both expanded their profile and influence significantly in the aftermath of the Umbrella Movement, even though their membership numbers remain low. Despite only claiming around fifty members in July 2015 (interview with Edward Leung, 2015), Hong Kong Indigenous won over sixty thousand votes in a New Territories by-election in February 2016 (Hong Kong Electoral Office, 2016). The result was lauded by sympathetic commentators as evidence of “a highly motivated new wave of protesters with a vote, who believe that the only ways of dealing with malign interference in Hong Kong’s affairs are by direct action and confrontation” (Scotford, 2016). Civic Passion may be numerically larger than Hong Kong Indigenous, but they still only claim around three hundred members (interview with Wong Yeung-tat, 2015). However, their media outlet, Passion Times, enjoys a remarkable following of nearly four hundred thousand people on Facebook (“PassionTimes 熱血時報,” n.d.). Social movement activists in Hong Kong, who take a critical stance towards the anti-Mainlander xenophobia that animates the politics behind these movements, admit that they have become significantly more influential after the Umbrella Revolution (interview with Globalisation Monitor, 2015). The disaffiliation of four student unions from the Student Federation for its allegedly leftist and pan-democratic views has also been taken as an indicator of the rise of localism amongst the young (ibid). If, following a post-Andersonian theory, one expects othering to form an everpresent dimension to the construction of the national community – as prejudice

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and xenophobia are arguably inherent cultural qualities of the construction of homogenous boundaries between the inside and outside – then nationalism gives a politicised and ideological expression to these imagined distinctions. In the absence of self-rule, the Hong Kong context shows the negotiations that always occur over imagined identity, whether to think of oneself as a local, a national, an alien, and so on, may become an outlet for a radicalisation taking place over governance that cannot find an expression in any substantively democratic political process. The concept of self-alienation has been applied to describe feelings of estrangement of the employee within the atomised corporate context (Costas and Fleming, 2009), but a similar sense of despair and disenfranchisement can also be seen in the struggles over belonging typical of the construction of the “them” and “us” in the national imagined community. Building upon van der Pijl’s (2010) account of the construction of the foreign as a form of self-alienation and Costas and Fleming’s (2009) use of the concept in the workplace environment, one can argue that there are three dimensions of self-alienation particularly germane to understanding the emergence of political nationalism in the Hong Kong context. Firstly, “self-awareness of failure”, which Costas and Fleming see as “the definitive feature of self-alienation” (Costas and Fleming, 2009: 360), forms a core component of localist consciousness after the defeat of the Umbrella Revolution, with the inability to realise change and a deep estrangement from institutions fostering a sense of hopelessness and despair. Secondly, Hong Kong’s distinctive status within the “one country” of China allows for alternatives to be visualised, i.e., freely expressed, debated and even campaigned for, but denies the possibility of ever bringing them to life. This creates a situation “where the imaginary authentic self is visualised, but cannot be realised . . . This sense of unattainability entails a reflexive moment in which the subject realises they have become someone they do not want to be” (Costas and Fleming, 2009: 362). The existential crisis of a Hong Kong identity denied free expression and resisting pressure to fit “alien” impositions from the outside, accords closely with this alienated sense of being arising from the involuntary construction of a collective self. Thirdly, the dissonance between the longed for collective subjectivity of a selfgoverning Hong Kong polity and the geopolitical denial of this aspiration, creates a desire for actions that are perceived as meaningful in a context where the overall goal is seen as virtually impossible. A resulting tendency to target the Mainlander – either as tourist, shopper or migrant worker – is arguably a key outcome of this condition of collective self-alienation. It emerges out of the modern form of foreign relations (Pijl, 2010: 4) and reflects the specificities of Hong Kong’s combined development with China as a historically privileged but politically disenfranchised polity. Actions that are meaningful, and seemingly possible, are attractive to alienated actors in conditions where the primary goal of democracy, self-government and sovereignty, are out of reach. Self-awareness of the impossibility of these demands can lead logically to a refocusing of struggles on the terrain of the visual and imaginable, but with the choice of “targets” arguably reflecting a deeply xenophobic logic (Garrett, 2014: 20–21). But it is one in which the nature of Hong Kong’s relatively privileged social development

“You have to fight on your own” 105 fosters a narrative of superiority and elitism towards Chinese Mainlanders, casting these layers in largely pejorative terms. Equally, however, one must recognise the mutual stereotyping, discrimination and essentialisation present in the culturally constructed borders of the Hong Kong-Mainland relation. Cases of the Peking University professor who described Hong Kongers as “dogs” who “cheat”, “swindle and defraud” (ChinaHush, 2012), or the editorial of the state newspaper, the Global Times, that attacked the “pupulism” (sic) of a public overly concerned with animal rights (Badcanto, 2014), demonstrate the mutually reinforcing nature of this othering. A theme across these perceptions of Hong Kong is the accusation that the polity has uncritically adopted Western values (ibid) and suffers from a “remaining colony syndrome”, which fosters a sense of inferiority to the West and superiority to China (ChinaHush, 2012). If such viewpoints exhibit the danger of xenophobia inherent in the construction of the closed and homogenous boundaries of the national imagination, they also create a reinforcing spiral of alienation in Hong Kong-Mainland relations. Indeed, discursive expressions of self-alienation are present in the arguments of the new localist movement. They combine a great deal of energy and commitment to the cause with a deep pessimism about the prospects for their strategic aims. It may appear initially as a paradoxical combination, but it reflects their visualisation of an imagined self-governance and their alienated recognition that this is, at the present time, merely a dream. For Hong Kong Indigenous “there is no hope, no future” (interview with Edward Leung, 2015), while Civic Passion admits their demands lack realism: I mean fighting for democracy in Hong Kong is also not that practical I would say. Because we are not buying guns, we are not having a real armed revolution. But the recent rise of local consciousness, it is something that we have to fight for our own new power . . . It is something that is attached to ourselves and that is something that Hong Kongers reconsider whether we should have our own political system. That something matters. But not claiming we are the Tiananmen generation because something that happened in China, I don’t know how many thousands of miles away . . . How many years ago . . . (interview with Civic Passion activist, 2015) A deep sense of estrangement from the Mainland motivates such positions: Hong Kong people have the sense that if they want to achieve our goal of universal suffrage, if you want to retain our culture, then you have to fight on your own. You have to save your own community, save your own Hong Kong, because they are going to oppress you anyway. (interview with Edward Leung, 2015) This political form of alienation emerges out of the semi-colonial nature of Hong Kong’s relationship to Mainland China. The radical asymmetry of power between

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the Chinese state, on the one hand, and Hong Kong’s pro-democracy citizenry, on the other, feeds not only a sense of alienation as powerlessness, but also as separation and estrangement, consolidating this militantly localist subjectivity. A spatial separation – that “we have to fight on our own”, not orientating to events “thousands of miles away” – consolidates a further temporal, intergenerational division. Membership of the 1989 generation is rejected and a discontinuity in the political subject, “a recent rise of local consciousness”, is asserted as the only truly radical potentiality. Inevitably divisions occur over how this new political imaginary of localist discourse situates itself within Hong Kong’s colonial history. Activists from Civic Passion appear more concerned to locate their Hong Kong nationalism within the Chinese cultural tradition. They argue that “Hong Kong, and to a certain extent Taiwan, are the only successors of traditional Chinese culture or tradition” (interview with Civic Passion activist, 2015). British rule is credited with allowing the local population to preserve an attachment to this cultural tradition “destroyed” on the Mainland, but it is far from eulogised (ibid). This Sinographic vision of the polity draws heavily on anti-communist themes, criticising the simplification of the traditional language with the development of written vernacular Chinese (báihuà, 白话) in the post-war period (ibid). In contrast, the civic nationalism of Hong Kong Indigenous invokes themes reminiscent of the globalism seen in the British curated performances at the 1997 handover ceremony (Witzleben, 2002: 130). Indeed, at times they appear to be quite effusive about the experience of British colonial rule: The success of Hong Kong was built on all these systems, built by the foreigner, built by the British, built by the colonial ruler. (interview with Edward Leung, 2015) Such remarks imply a considerable denial of the historical agency of Hong Kong people in establishing the polity’s modernity, which stands in clear tension to the organisation’s opposition to the colonial relationship with the Mainland today. But these outlooks on British rule are far from restricted to the more ideological groups. One participant in the 2014 protests, who cited differences with the “fascist” Civic Passion but defined himself as a localist who is supportive of Hong Kong independence, also referred to the era of British rule as “the good old days”, seeing it as period of economic prosperity and respect for the rule of law (interview with Umbrella Revolution participant [a], 2015).6 This shared, collective memory has evidently been transmitted to those among Hong Kong’s millennial generation: It’s clear that before 1997 Hong Kong was so good, Hong Kong people could live happily, they could make their own living. It was not that hard to have their own house or own apartment. It was not that hard to get a job with a better salary. (interview with Edward Leung, 2015)

“You have to fight on your own” 107 These kinds of struggles over memory and historical reality are familiar constructs of the national imagination. The romanticising of the past serves to consolidate the identity of the community in the present, securing boundaries between “them” and “us” so important to this form of self-alienation. In constructing these boundaries the immigrant from the Mainland (see James Downes’s chapter in this volume) has become the key “other” within the polity, accused of gaining preferential access to housing, refusing to learn Cantonese, and failing to integrate into Hong Kong’s cultural life: We cannot choose those who want to live with us. We are forced. . . Some of them in our opinion came to Hong Kong not because of these values, but just because of welfare, like public housing. But the point is the original Hong Kong people were already suffering. You know the housing problem. A lot of Hong Kong people cannot get an apartment already. But if you allow the uncontrolled immigration to persist in Hong Kong then our problem would go worse. And the cultural background of those immigrants and Hong Kong people are quite obvious. They do not want to learn – some of them, some of those immigrants do not want to engage in Hong Kong culture, they do not want to learn to Cantonese, they remain to speak Mandarin. If you go to Tin Shui Wai in Hong Kong, or Sheung Shui, you can see quite a lot of people talking Mandarin, not Cantonese. In some area I can hardly hear any Cantonese. It was quite problematic to me, because our own language is going down, declining . . . (interview with Edward Leung, 2015) Whereas critical studies of anti-migrant attitudes in Hong Kong have often found these prejudices to form part of a “general lack of sympathy for the poor” (Leung, 2004: 106), this does not appear to fit with the stress on social hardship that forms part of the Hong Kong Indigenous narrative. Moreover, their professed affinity for the poor is also combined with a notionally welcoming attitude to non-Chinese migrants: Every immigrant from anywhere, no matter what the cultural background or whatever language you use, if you acknowledge what Hong Kong is, the history of Hong Kong, if you respect and agree with our core values, our way of living, our culture, then you can join Hong Kong, you can be one of us. (interview with Edward Leung, 2015) These remarks tell us something deeply rooted about the distinctive nature of Hong Kong’s position on the metaphorical “borderlands” of the Chinese national imagination. Its economic modernisation placed it historically within a position of privilege to the Mainland and also fostered an ideology of modernity that embraced this status distinction at the top of a cultural hierarchy, one from which it was easy to look down upon China. Hong Kong was imagined as open,

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global, and multicultural, whereas China was closed, parochial and plagued by a Maoist cultural monolithism. An alienated sense of a paradise lost is evident in these Hong Kong nationalist imaginings: a confusion over “who we are”, a lost purposefulness and sense of tangible agency, and a despair at the seemingly immovable new state. If the Chinese elite looks more global than ever before, then the temptation, clearly realised in some of these attitudes of the nationalists, is to cast the lower class Mainlander as “the other”; the carrier of a still-uncultured and monolithic Chinese-ness into the polity.

“A very subjective way of thinking” Despite the absence of substantive democracy, the “One Country, Two Systems” framework means that Hong Kong nonetheless maintains substantial institutional differentiation with its own currency, common law court system, and, crucially, political rights and freedoms denied to those on the Mainland. This institutional and cultural context, which reflects Hong Kong’s combined social development with China, Britain, and the wider world, has created a space for this alienated nationalist sensibility to take root. “One country, two systems” allows such a collective subjectivity to be expressed, visualised and freely cultivated, but denies its realisation in self-government. The sense that these freedoms are constantly being eroded in the present, and the countdown to the end of special autonomous status, has created a constant fear of negation for the new nationalist imaginary, one that motivates the militant survival strategy the localists favour. But the tragedy of casting the Mainlander as “the other” can be seen in the threat it poses to any future transnational solidaristic engagement. From the perspective of the Chinese Mainland, and given Beijing’s own desire to present the Umbrella protestors as an anti-Chinese conspiracy, Hong Kong enjoys special privileges that it appears ungrateful for. The possibility of a breakdown in solidarity is obvious, even if it might be mitigated by the existence of democratic actors within Hong Kong promoting a more tolerant and open message. These problems of xenophobia and division are rather endemic to the national imagination. Anderson recognised the remarkable ability of nationalism to inspire sacrifice, even to the point of dying for one’s country. “The idea of the ultimate sacrifice”, he argued, “comes only with an idea of purity, through fatality” (Anderson, 2006: 144). This intriguingly secular sense of redemption through the common cause captures something about the national spirit. But it also poses a question of ends: what exactly are the goals of this grand and morally purposeful sacrifice? Nationalists can offer only a circular answer to such questions. This rather poignant and intriguingly self-aware remark of a Hong Kong localist is telling in this regard: Nationalism is a very subjective way of feeling. If I asked Hong Kong people, would you sacrifice for Hong Kong or for China? They would answer that they would sacrifice for Hong Kong, not for China. (interview with Edward Leung, 2015)

“You have to fight on your own” 109 Such remarks indicate a fascinating self-realisation of the circularity of the national appeal to “sacrifice for the nation because of the nation”. Anderson is right about the secular redemption this entails, but it also involves a homogenisation of the bounds of the community; to clarify who is worthy, and who is not worthy, of making a sacrifice for. These are the alienated boundaries currently being negotiated in Hong Kong. But this case also provides grounds for critiquing Anderson’s theory. Firstly, the alienated nature of these boundaries accords more closely with van der Pijl’s understanding of the self-alienating nature of the national community and the social construction of the foreign, than it does Anderson’s insistence on the benign character of national selfhood. Secondly, it demonstrates the significance of politicised intersocietal relations, encompassing both the contested movements of people across borders and the quasi-colonial power structures in non-sovereign states, to the formation of the national imagination – a dimension of the process that Anderson also overlooked. Hong Kong’s unique combined development with the Chinese Mainland entails cultural privileges, a rapidly shifting socio-economic relationship, and a colonial form of governance. On countless occasions national identity has proven to be central to the politics of modernity, particularly for its mobilising power in tackling a colonial relationship. It is the highly peculiar, perhaps truly unique, nature of the latter in Hong Kong, as a polity at once privileged and thoroughly subordinated, which has shaped the political physiognomy of the new generation of nationalists.

Interviews Chan Chui Wai (2015), Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU), 27 July 2015. Edward Leung (2015), spokesperson for Hong Kong Indigenous, 31 July 2015. Wong Yeung-tat (2015), founder Civic Passion, 24 July 2015. Interview with Globalisation Monitor activists (2015), 16 July 2015. Civic Passion activist (2015), 22 July 2015. Umbrella Revolution [a] participant, 28 July 2015. Umbrella Revolution participant [b], 30 July 2016. Benny Tai (2015), 29 July 2015. Interview with Hong Kong Citizens activists (2015), 29 July 2015. Wong Chi Chung (2015), 21 July 2015.

Notes 1 For a sophisticated analysis of the rise of Chinese nationalism within Hong Kong from the 1970s onwards see Law, 2009a. 2 The name of the campaign Szeto chaired until his death, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, established to express support with Chinese protestors in May 1989 and continued thereafter to commemorate the repression they suffered, also reflected his Chinese nationalist mores. 3 Many types of community and identity could be imagined. For it simply requires the creation of group subjectivity amongst a range of people who could never all meet one another. 4 This is not, of course, to claim that all nations are democracies. But, rather, that the rise of the nation as the universal political form – and the collapse of dynastic states, which preceded them – have meant that modern authoritarian rulers base

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their legitimacy on the national interest, grounded in national sovereignty, and the cohesion they bring to the governance of such a political community. 5 Japan was, of course, the famous classical example of this in the East Asian context (Allinson and Anievas, 2009, pp. 58–62). 6 This participant was loosely involved in the Umbrella protests and unlike the young activists drawn to the localist groups was of the older generation who had strong memories of British rule. Given that he had for many years attended the annual commemoration of the Tiananmen massacre but now described himself as a localist supportive of independence, his views may indicate the broader shift in the civil society movements favourable to the emergence of these nationalist currents.

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“You have to fight on your own” 111 Cooper, Luke. (2015). The International Relations of the “Imagined Community”: Explaining the Late Nineteenth-Century Genesis of the Chinese Nation. Review of International Studies 41:3, pp. 477–501. Cooper, L. (Forthcoming). Rationalist or Nationalist? The Eighteenth Century Public Sphere. In J. Christie and N. Degirmencioglu (eds.) Cultures of Uneven and Combined Development. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers. Costas, Jana. and Fleming, Peter. (2009). Beyond Dis-identification: A Discursive Approach to Self-alienation in Contemporary Organizations. Human Relations 62:3, pp. 353–378. Davidson, Neil. (2009). Putting the Nation Back Into “The International”. Cambridge Review of International Affairs 22:1, pp. 9–28. Dirlik, Arif. (2010). Culture in Contemporary IR: The Chinese Provocation. In R. Shilliam (ed.) International Relations and Non-Western Thought: Imperialism, Colonialism and Investigations of Global Modernity. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, pp. 139–156. Evans, Stephen. (2013). The Long March to Biliteracy and Trilingualism: Language Policy in Hong Kong Education Since the Handover. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 33, pp. 302–324. Fung, Anthony. (2001). What Makes the Local? A Brief Consideration of the Rejuvenation of Hong Kong Identity. Cultural Studies 15:3–4, pp. 591–601. Fung, Anthony. (2004). Postcolonial Hong Kong Identity: Hybridising the Local and the National. Social Identities 10:3, pp. 399–414. Garrett, Daniel P. (2014). Counter-hegemonic Resistance in China’s Hong Kong: Visualizing Protest in the City. New York: Springer. Gellner, Ernest. (1983). Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Gilroy, Paul. (1987). There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation, 1st ed. London: Century Hutchinson. Gourevitch, Peter. (1978). The Second Image Reversed: The International Sources of Domestic Politics. International Organization 32:4, pp. 881–912. Han, Enze. (2011). The Dog That Hasn’t Barked: Assimilation and Resistance in Inner Mongolia, China. Asian Ethnicity 12:1, pp. 55–75. Hemlock. (2015). Special Feature: Hong Kong SAR at 18 – One Country; Incompatible Systems. Hong Kong Free Press, www.hongkongfp.com/2015/07/01/specialfeature-hong-kong-sar-at-18-one-country-incompatible-systems/ (accessed 22 March 2016). Herschensohn, Bruce. (2000). Hong Kong at the Handover. Lanham and Oxford: Lexington Books. Hobsbawm, Eric J. (1990). Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hong Kong Electoral Office. (2016). 2016 Legislative Council New Territories East Geographical Constituency By-election – Election Result, www.elections.gov.hk/legco 2016by/eng/results.html?1461405405037 (accessed 23 April 2016). Hughes, Christopher. (2013). Taiwan and Chinese Nationalism: National Identity and Status in International Society. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Kraidy, Marwan (2005). Hybridity, or the Cultural Logic of Globalization. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Kung, Lap-Yan. (2006). National Identity and Ethno-religious Identity: A Critical Inquiry Into Chinese Religious Policy, With Reference to the Uighurs in Xinjiang. Religion, State and Society 34:4, pp. 375–391.

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Lai, Mee Ling (2011). Cultural Identity and Language Attitudes – Into the Second Decade of Postcolonial Hong Kong. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 32:3, pp. 249–264. Law, Wing Sang (2009a). Indigenizing Colonial Power and the Return to China. In W.S. Law (ed.) Collaborative Colonial Power: The Making of the Hong Kong Chinese. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, pp. 151–176. Law, Wing Sang (ed.). (2009b). Collaborative Colonial Power: The Making of the Hong Kong Chinese. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Lee, Francis L.F. and Chan, Joseph M. (2007). Taking Both Sides Into Consideration: Ambivalence in Public Opinion on Political Reform in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Leung, Hon-Chu. (2004). Politics of Incorporation and Exclusion: Immigration and Citizenship Issues. In A.S. Ku and N. Pun (eds.) Remaking Citizenship in Hong Kong: Community, Nation and the Global City. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, pp. 97–114. Liew, Leong H. and Wang, Shaoguang. (eds.). (2004). Nationalism, Democracy and National Integration in China. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Ma, Ngok. (2009). Social Movements and State-Society Relationship in Hong Kong. In K.E. Kuah-Pearce and G. Guiheux (eds.) Social Movements in China and Hong Kong: The Expansion of Protest Space. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 45–63. Masse, Graham. (1980). Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose (Video), www.youtube. com/watch?v=tH06M_nYWAw&nohtml5=False (accessed 7 April 2016). Mathews, Gordon. (1997). Heunggongyahn: On the Past, Present, and Future of Hong Kong Identity. Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholar 29:3, pp. 3–13. Matin, Kamran. (2013a). Redeeming the Universal: Postcolonialism and the Inner Life of Eurocentrism. European Journal of International Relations 19:2, pp. 353–377. Matin, Kamran. (2013b). Recasting Iranian Modernity: International Relations and Social Change. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Mitter, Rana. (2000). The Manchurian Myth. Berkeley, LA and London: University of California Press. Mitter, Rana. (2004). A Bitter Revolution: China’s Struggle With the Modern World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nairn, Tom. (2003). The Break-Up of Britain: Crisis and Neo-Nationalism. Champaign, IL: Common Ground. PassionTimes 熱血時報. (n.d.). www.facebook.com/passiontimes (accessed 23 April 2016). Pomerantz-Zhang, Linda. (1992). Wu Tingfang (1842–1922). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Rosenberg, Justin. (2006). Why Is There No International Historical Sociology? European Journal of International Relations 12:3, pp. 307–340. Rosenberg, Justin. (2010). Basic Problems in the Theory of Uneven and Combined Development. Part II: Unevenness and Political Multiplicity. Cambridge Review of International Affairs 23:1, pp. 165–189. Rosenberg, Justin. (2013). The “Philosophical Premises” of Uneven and Combined Development. Review of International Studies 39:2, pp. 569–597. Sautmann, Barry. (2004). Hong Kong as a Semi-Ethnocracy: “Race”, Migration and Citizenship in a Globalized Region. In A.S. Ku and N. Pun (eds.) Remaking

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6

The development of Hong Kong identity From local to national identity Stephan Ortmann

“Despite the salience of [the] sense of separate Hong Kong identity in recent decades, few have ever seriously advocated that Hong Kong become independent,” Mathews, Ma and Lui wrote in their 2008 book Hong Kong, China: Learning to Become a Nation (Mathews, Ma and Lui, 2008: 12). At the same time, Thomas Kwan Choi Tse moreover argued, “[t]he general public and many young people have become less resistant to national education and Hong Kong’s integration with China as time has gone on” (Tse, 2007: 245). Finally, Kaeding suggested in 2011 that “(t)oday, the national identity of Hong Kong as a part of the PRC is unquestionable” (Kaeding, 2011: 259). In the same year, Hong Kong as a City-State was published, providing the most detailed argument for separating Hong Kong from China (Chin, 2015). Its author, Wan Chin, was later described as the father of Hong Kong nationalism (Cheung, 2015). The idea gained in prominence when, in the 2015 policy address, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying publicly criticised a book with the title Hong Kong Nationalism published in 2014 by the Hong Kong University student paper Undergrad. Since then, the issue has played a prominent role in Hong Kong politics, especially in District Council and Legislative Council elections. A few thousand rallied in favor of independence following the banning of pro-independence candidates for the Legislative Council elections in August 2016. A few thousand also protested against independence in October of the same year following a show of Hong Kong nationalism during the oath-taking ceremony of two newly-elected Legislative Councilors. What accounts for this significant and unexpected shift in Hong Kong’s identity politics? This chapter will seek to provide answers for this development. In order to understand the resurgence of the Hong Kong identity, this chapter traces the changes in the personal identity among university students, who have played the most prominent role in the process. The study is based on qualitative semi-structured student interviews over three years (2013–15), which took place in my social research methods class during the fall semester.1 It was a class assignment in which students were required to conduct semi-structured interviews on their local and national identities, how they became aware of the identity, and what it meant for them. The large size of the class of around 100 students means that there is a wealth of insightful qualitative information, even if it is not

The development of Hong Kong identity 115 necessarily representative either of all students or the Hong Kong population as a whole. Although randomly assigned, students potentially influenced each other’s views. The data provides interesting insights into a crucial period of identity development before, during and after the Umbrella Movement. The interviews thus reveal how the identity construction of students has been influenced as a result of the massive protest movement.

Identity and identity politics To make sense of the complexity of identity politics in Hong Kong, it is necessary to define the concept of identity. The dictionary definition includes basically two different notions: the individual identification with something and the sameness of a person within a group. Both of these notions coexist uncomfortably in the modern world. The former basically constitutes a voluntary act by an individual while the latter is enforced from the outside. Identities are thus often inclusionary in permitting new members to become part of a community but also exclusionary by allowing only some to become members. This becomes important in regard to the nation, which is a modern phenomenon that consists of an “imagined community” that by its nature excludes some members because it is limited to a territory that seeks sovereignty (Anderson, 1983; Gellner, 1983). The degree of inclusiveness toward new members is at the heart of the distinction between civic and ethnic national identity (Shulman, 2002). This idea can be found in Friedrich Meinecke’s use of the terms Kulturnation and Staatsnation, a cultural nation and a state nation (Meinecke, 1928), as well as in Hans Kohn’s distinction between Eastern and Western nationalism (Kohn, 1944). These concepts sought to make a distinction between illiberal forms of nationalism which existed widely and a liberal form of national identity that was predicated on the notion that allegiance to the nation was not because of human characteristics but rather belief in the political institutions of a democratic country that worked in the interest of the people, a political community that was open to those who held the same beliefs. As such, the nation became a daily plebiscite of the people, as Ernest Renan argued in 1882 (Renan, 1995). The least inclusive form of identity is the racial identity, which is often neglected in the distinction between civic and ethnic national identities. This is reflected in the common understanding that the term ethnic group is linked to physical characteristics such as colour of skin or other forms of appearance. Smith’s understanding of ethnic nationalism only pays scant attention to the potency of the visible criteria in the formation of nations (1986). Central to his theory is the use of the term “ethnie” which combines cultural similarities and historical community (Smith, 1986), and thus hides the more nefarious use of genetics and appearance to discriminate one group from another. The latter has been labeled as “race” despite the fact that biologically all human beings are of the same species. Much of the research on national identity conflates cultural elements and racial features as part of an ethnic identity (e.g. Olzak, 1983). Differences in skin tone and other physical characteristics are, however, quite distinct from other forms

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of cultural features, although they can be tied to each other. Racial politics plays an important role in China’s irredentist politics. Although the Chinese state is conceptualised as a multi-ethnic state, the Han race is considered dominant in the discourse, while the other races are less significant and need special assistance (see Cooper, 2015). Moreover, the state also conducts “race based” identity politics by promoting Han migration to regions at the periphery such as Tibet and Xinjiang while repressing the local culture to contain separatist sentiments (Horowitz and Yu, 2015). Obviously, this implies that Han Chinese people are seen as more supportive of the Chinese nation-state. In the case of Hong Kong, research has shown that recent immigrants are indeed more supportive of the government (Wong et al., 2016). Clearly, the civic identity is the most inclusive form of national identity but unfortunately the openness inevitably reached its limitations with an increasing number of immigrants, which gave rise to counter-movements that subscribed to more exclusive forms of identity in order to assert the right to exclude the new immigrants (Chen and Szeto, 2015). This has been called nativism because it seeks to protect the interests of locally born people over immigrants (Chavez, 2003). Another form of identity politics is the emergence of ethnic separatism, which according to Anthony D. Smith (1979) has three stages. It starts first with the development of a modern bureaucracy and the institutionalisation of education that promotes critical thinking, both of which undermine traditional forms of institutions. As a consequence, the old social structure experiences a legitimacy crisis and the intelligentsia becomes unhappy. This in turn triggers nostalgia and a search for an ethnic community. In the second stage, the conflict becomes politicised in the context of state regulations and economic imbalances. Last but not least, the conflict increases when there is an indifferent and inconsiderate bureaucracy. As he argues, “if differential development, or worse dependency, follows ethnic lines, and there is growing governmental intervention and assimilation, the chances for ethnic separatism are immeasurably enhanced” (Smith, 1979: 24). These aspects come into play as China seeks to integrate the former British colony into the state. Finally, a last form of identity politics which is relevant for the situation in Hong Kong is irredentism, which is the attempt to reclaim territory believed to have been lost in the past. In order to legitimise the one-party regime, the restoration of the Chinese empire to its past greatness has become an essential aspect of the national discourse. The narrative emphasizes past national humiliations, which were experienced at the hands of Western and Japanese forces, and seeks the inclusion of all territories that once belonged to the empire at some point in its history including Taiwan, Diaoyutai/Senkaku Islands, and the South China Sea (Chang, 1998). Moreover, it also asserts that China must be a unitary state in which local provinces cannot have residual power as all autonomous power is delegated from the central government (Ma, 2013). A federal system, for instance, is rejected by the Communist government (Hung and Kuo, 2013) despite significant de facto decentralization (Zheng, 2007). This is justified by the belief that greater de jure local autonomy could lead to a return of local competing

The development of Hong Kong identity 117 warlords that would seriously weaken the empire. Naturally, this has significant consequences for the definition of Hong Kong’s “high degree of autonomy” and for the interpretation of “One Country, Two Systems” which emphasises central government control while the potentially subversive capitalist system remains separated from the socialist system in the Mainland (Ma, 2013). In response to growing Chinese influence, an ethnic identity movement has emerged in Hong Kong. However, the identity faces significant challenges as its legitimacy has been questioned on racial grounds and overlapping cultural similarities. This is reflected in the discourse on “national identity” in Hong Kong, which always refers to the support of Hong Kongers for the Chinese nation (Mathews, Ma and Lui, 2008; Tse, 2007; Morris and Vickers, 2015). A Hong Kong national identity is at best seen as illegitimate and at worst an affront against nature (Chung and Tai, 2014). The people of Hong Kong must, so the assumption goes, develop a feeling of national identity to China, especially since the territory has reverted to Chinese control in 1997. Moreover, from an international legal perspective there is little support for Hong Kong independence (Ghai, 1997; Lo, 2016). Finally, asserting national self-determination faces a practical obstacle due to the power imbalance between the city-state and one of the world’s largest countries. As the fight for independence would unlikely be successful, many potential supporters of independence are deterred from the idea. A similar situation exists in Taiwan where a majority prefers the status-quo over a formal declaration of independence (Tseng and Chen, 2015).

The Chinese identity in Hong Kong The Chinese identity in Hong Kong has a number of different dimensions. It is first and foremost a cultural identity which makes connections to an ancient mythical China. Secondly, the Chinese identity is also a racial identity which stresses physical appearance and bloodlines (Tse, 2014). Thirdly, it has become an important political identity. Identification with a political notion of Chinese identity has become synonymous with support for the PRC government. As such, it has been the most contested form of identity in Hong Kong. Last but not least, the interviews show that support for the Chinese identity has been highly contingent on perceived successes such as economic growth, international presence and Olympic fame. Many Hong Kongers see themselves as culturally Chinese. The population uses Chinese characters, speaks a variant of Chinese (Cantonese), celebrates Chinese festivals such as the Lunar New Year and Ching Ming Festival, among many other Chinese traditions. One interviewee (2015–22) who considered herself primarily a Hong Konger, said: “(My father) always told me some Chinese folk stories which raised my interest in Chinese culture.” This student held an exceptionally positive attitude toward China. Aside from the parental influence, this appears also to be due to the student’s lack of interest in current affairs. While this case was an outlier among the interviews, many students do recognise Chinese elements as part of their identity. In particular, there is a sense that Hong Kong

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has preserved the traditional culture better than the Mainland. One interviewee referred to marriage customs and childhood education as elements Hong Kong has preserved (2014–7). As such, the Chinese cultural identity contributes more to the Hong Kong identity than to the Chinese identity. To claim that China is only a cultural identity, however, ignores the racial dimension of Chinese-ness. Physical appearance and place of birth are crucial aspects of the racial identity, which is deeply embedded, even in the global city of Hong Kong. According to the 2011 census, about 94 per cent of the population are considered Han Chinese. Many Hong Kong people have deep family roots on the Mainland. As one student asserted in 2013: “I am 10% Chinese because my skin is yellow. . . Therefore (I) cannot argue that I am not a Chinese” (2013–13). These perceived racial bonds are a powerful tool in seeking to incorporate Hong Kong into the Chinese state. The official race discourse in China argues that blood should be the defining feature of identity and inform political behavior. For instance, the first Chinese American ambassador to China, Gary Locke, was criticised as someone with “yellow skin” but a “white heart”, derisively referred to as “banana”, because he represented American interests (Forsythe, 2014). As tensions between Hong Kong and the Mainland have grown, some Chinese have argued that discrimination of Mainlanders by Hong Kongers is unnatural because they have the same blood (Hung, 2014). Another attempt to counter the desire to create a separate Hong Kong identity, pro-Beijing activists have sought to divert attention to so-called “fake refugees” (Leung, 2016). This seeks to tap into existing racial prejudices about more darkly skinned Hong Kong residents who make up a significant minority in the territory. As a number of studies have shown, racial discrimination against these ethnic groups remains a serious problem in Hong Kong (Sautman, 2004; Chan et al., 2015). Aside from the cultural and racial identities, there is also a political Chinese identity evident in the students’ responses. In fact, many students recognise that Hong Kong is part of China. For instance, when they fill out documents they may have to state “China” as their country. Some also identify themselves as Chinese when traveling in order to avoid complex explanations about the difference between Hong Kong and China. From the Chinese perspective, however, there is an expectation of support for the Chinese state and the Communist Party. Democracy activists, who are viewed as a subversive force of the one-party regime, have consequently been regarded as traitors against the Chinese nation and an enemy in close contact with foreign forces. In particular, the active support for the democracy movement in 1989 led to this perception (Lam, 2005). In contrast, the pan-democrats have sought to counter this perception by stating their own patriotism which was only in opposition to the ruling party but not the Chinese nation. This was made highly explicit in the name given to the organization formed in solidarity with the Tiananmen protests of 1989, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China. As the bloody crackdown shook Hong Kong society to the core, the activists saw it as an important task to fight for democracy in China to secure Hong Kong’s own democratic future. Their version of the Chinese political nation thus envisioned a united

The development of Hong Kong identity 119 democratic regime (Chan and Chan, 2014). Together with the strong identification with the Chinese culture and race, some of the democrats promoted a form of nationalism which held a deep resentment toward the Communist Party because it was seen as a destroyer of Chinese culture (Lam, 2005). Last but not least, there is also a pragmatic Chinese identity which depends on the successes of China in the world. Progress of China in economics or sports appears to have increased affinity for a Chinese identity among some of the respondents. Especially during the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, identification with China ran high. One student who sees herself as primarily a Hong Konger stated: “[When] China was the host city [in 2008], I think China did a great job. And China is always among the top three countries which have the most medals. So at the time I felt proud as a Chinese” (2013–92). China’s rapid economic growth has also been viewed positively by some Hong Kongers, who saw the economic gap between the two places slowly narrowing. However, the flair of the Olympic Games had largely lost its luster by 2014 when attention turned to domestic politics and, specifically, the long-anticipated promise of universal suffrage. The economic successes were also largely overshadowed by many of its negative consequences, from environmental pollution to the lack of product quality, as will be shown in the following section.

Resisting the Chinese identity Despite strong cultural and racial links, there is a strong desire to resist the Chinese identity and identify as a Hong Konger or a Chinese Hong Konger. The interviews reveal three main reasons which motivate young Hong Kongers to reject the Chinese identity: the negative perception of Chinese customs and habits, the economic and cultural impact of China on Hong Kong, and authoritarian one-party rule. By far the most prominent factor is opposition to the misbehavior of Mainland Chinese. Even many who feel attachment to some mythical image of China in the past express strong distaste for the current state of Chinese society. This draws heavily from the personal experiences of Hong Kong people but is also influenced by media reports. One interviewee reported: “When I turn on the television, I can see many negative news from China. For example, the Chinese people make black food [with poor quality] and many people get sick after eating it” (2015–71). A common response is to view Hong Kongers as the better Chinese. This is reflected in the preservation of traditional Chinese culture. For example, Hong Kong still uses traditional Chinese characters, which Hong Kongers tend to view as superior. A widely-shared poster on social media showing simplified and traditional characters showed for instance that in the simplified version the character for heart has been removed from love, which exemplifies the perceived lack of moral behavior of Chinese society (Chor, 2015). Many students claim to have been deeply influenced by the media. Even as China’s economy rose, Hong Kongers continued to maintain this sentiment. As Eric Ma asserts, there was “a growing sense of self-confidence, a belief that vis-à-vis China, Hong Kong is a

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better place to live” (Ma, 2007: 152). As one student succinctly stated: “I think Hong Kongers are actually superior to the Chinese and so I think this is part of the reason for my identity” (Interview 2015–67). There has also been anger at Mainland Chinese visitors for their “uncivilised” behavior. Issues of particular concern are public defecations, the unwillingness to queue up, noisy and arrogant behavior, eating on the public transport, etc. As a reaction, many assert a stronger Hong Kong identity. For instance, one interviewee said, “When I see Chinese people doing uncivilised actions in Hong Kong then I wish to be different from those uncivilised Chinese visitors” (2013–66). This has resulted in a number of students asserting that they are ashamed of their Chinese identity: “I will determine my identity as a Hong Kong people because actually sometimes I feel quite shameful of being a Chinese, so I don’t try to consider myself as a Hong Kong Chinese” (2015–6). And another exclaimed, “I think the behavior of those Chinese recently is really shameful to me” (2015–99). In addition to the perception of a great cultural divide between the two places, many also mention the negative impact of China on Hong Kong’s economy (Yew and Kwong, 2014). The growing number of Chinese visitors has significantly strained the resources in the densely populated city. A number of cases have drawn particular attention of the public. One of the most prominent issues was the massive arrival of expecting mothers from the Mainland who wanted to give birth in Hong Kong so that their children can have the right of abode. At one point, there were 35,000 births annually accounting for a whopping 40 per cent of total births. As one interviewee stated, “the Mainland pregnant mothers came to Hong Kong to compete with the local mothers to take all the resources and social welfare from the locals” (2013–95). Inspired by the issue of Mainland mothers, on February 1, 2012, activists crowd-funded an ad in the Apple Daily which described visitors from the Mainland as locusts that drain the territory of resources (The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 1, 2012). In 2013, the Hong Kong government announced a ban on Mainland mothers giving birth in the city but every year around 800 mothers continue to circumvent the ban by entering at a late stage and triggering emergency services (Tsang, 2016). Another hot topic has been the problems resulting from large numbers of tourists and day traders, known as parallel traders, who enter Hong Kong daily for exporting products from the city because of their higher quality or product safety. While some businesses have profited from the influx, the sheer number of such traders has overwhelmed the city’s infrastructure. The massive cross-border trade has occasionally led to shortages of some staple products, as was the case involving milk powder, which became a highly sought after commodity in 2008 when the chemical melamine was found in many milk products in China (Sharma and Paradakar, 2010). Already in September 2012, protesters rallied against parallel traders in the border town of Sheung Shui, which had seen a massive increase of people near the train station. According to one interviewee, “I live near Sheung Shui MTR station and the parallel traders are always stuck there and we can’t enter the station very easily” (2014–51). In addition, it has directly affected the local economy: “Many pharmacies have been built for [the Chinese] to shop.

The development of Hong Kong identity 121 Many of the local stores have been forced to close down because of the high rent and the inflation that they have brought to us” (2015–1). Last but not least, the differences in the political system are frequently mentioned as a crucial reason for rejecting the Chinese identity. Overall, there is a strong opposition against the authoritarian Communist Party regime because many students place great value on freedom of speech and the rule of law. There are basically two dimensions to this issue. On the one hand, there is a sense of superiority in Hong Kong with its liberal institutions and rule of law. Many contrast Hong Kong’s advanced system to that of the Mainland. On the other, there is a growing sense that the superior system in Hong Kong is under threat from the Mainland. Political problems in Hong Kong are thus blamed on the growing influence of the Chinese government over the city-state. This enhances the rejection of the Chinese identity. As one student argued, “[China’s] government is authoritarian, while in Hong Kong, we are more likely acting democratically, but not fully” (2015–41). When it comes to China’s political system, interviewees have a wide range of complaints. The most common issues are the massive environmental pollution, the censorship of the media, the lack of personal safety, weak product standards, and the prominence of fake goods. As Hong Kong has a relatively free media, news from China frequently shakes the confidence of the local population in the Chinese government. In particular, media reporting of government misbehavior and its effects has a strong impact. One interviewee, for instance, stated: “There is much corruption in China and [the Chinese] even make some fake things to harm the health of others” (2015–6). Another concern is China’s environmental pollution. As one interviewee asserted, “It is a bit dirty in China, so I don’t really like to travel to China” (2015–59). This also affects Hong Kong as, for instance, the territory imports water from the Dongguan River, which needs to be purified before it can be used. An interviewee stated: “We buy the water from Mainland China and [it] is expensive and dirty. It makes Hong Kong people sick” (2015–32). Moreover, although the majority of students believe that Hong Kong’s political system is generally superior, there is a growing concern over its slow decline, which is due to greater Mainland interference in local affairs, usually referred to as “Mainlandisation” (Yew and Kwong, 2014). In the interviews of 2013, the main concern was the attempt to introduce so-called moral and national education, which among other things, took a one-sided positive spin on China’s history and politics. It glossed over historical events such as the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen massacre and, according to a leaked teaching booklet, described the Chinese government as a “progressive, selfless, and united ruling group” (cited in Chen and Leong, 2012). Speaking about a family member, an interviewee in 2013 said, “I think the most important reason that my brother considers himself a Hong Konger is the incident of the national education. He thinks that the PRC or some organization is trying to brainwash [students] and make them little slaves of the PRC” (2013–58). The interviews of 2014 and 2015 show that the most significant event for the increasing disenchantment with China was the 79-day Umbrella Movement. For

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instance, one interviewee stated: “I think the biggest issue that affected my sense of belonging is the Umbrella Revolution because it is a protest of Hong Kong people asking for democracy in Hong Kong. This raised my sense of belonging to be a Hong Konger, to fight for our freedom and also democracy. So after this issue, I increasingly considered myself as a Hong Kong people” (2015–88). The failure to achieve any kind of compromise on political reforms led to a complete disillusionment with the Chinese leadership. While Hong Kongers were fighting for democracy, the Communist Party’s primary motive was to maintain tight control over the election process. Only candidates approved by the central government would be allowed to compete in chief executive elections. The Chinese government’s proposal could not even sway moderate democrats and thus united the very fragmented pan-democratic camp. Many of the students report that the movement constituted a period of political awakening. As a consequence, perceptions of China sank to a new low. As one student said, “nowadays the China government has more control on the Hong Kong government” (2015–42). The lack of significant progress in the direction of democratization and the growing threats to Hong Kong’s core values such as freedom of speech and the rule of law, have led to calls for full autonomy and even independence. This represents a fundamental shift in Hong Kong politics as the topic had been taboo only a few years earlier. As one student asserted in the year of the Umbrella Movement, “The people who are on strike, including me, are hoping for democracy. But it seems that the Chinese government disagrees with it. So, this may lead Hong Kong people to think further that we are Hong Kongers, that we don’t want to be Chinese, and that we want to be independent” (2014–4).

The rise of a civic Hong Kong identity Despite a traditionally strong Chinese racial identity, a civic Hong Kong identity has emerged as early as the 1960s (see the chapter by Wing-sang Law in this volume). The new identity saw Hong Kong as culturally Chinese but politically superior to the Chinese Mainland, with support for the legal system and civil liberties (Tsang, 2004). Surveys have shown the existence of a civic identity and shifts in how the population identifies. The first was conducted in 1985 which revealed that 59.5 per cent identified primarily as Hong Konger2 while only 36.2 per cent identified as Chinese. The question was changed to include an option to claim to be both Hong Konger and Chinese in 1990, which only 12.1 per cent claimed. Overall, the numbers were similar to five years earlier with 57.2 per cent Hong Konger and Chinese 26.4 per cent. The people choosing the option both reached their zenith in 1992 with 21.1 per cent. In 1995, two years before the handover, half of the population saw themselves as Hong Kongers while 30.9 per cent saw themselves as Chinese. There appeared to be a slight trend toward increasing Chinese identity (Lau, 1997). Starting in 1996, the Chinese University changed its survey to four different choices which are Hong Konger, Hong Konger but also Chinese, Chinese but

The development of Hong Kong identity 123 also Hong Konger and only Chinese. The first round showed that there were about the same who identified as only Hong Kongers (25.2 per cent) as those who identified only as Chinese (25.7 per cent). However, this had changed dramatically in 2014 when only 8.9 per cent saw themselves only as Chinese. The number of those identifying as only Hong Kongers, however, was 26 per cent, not very different from 1996. The second category experienced a strong increase from 32.9 per cent in 1996 to 42 per cent in 2014 while many of those who had originally identified as Chinese now considered themselves also as Hong Kongers (Centre for Communication and Public Opinion Survey, 2014). Since 1997, there has been another survey on the same topic conducted by the Hong Kong University Public Opinion Programme which also distinguishes between four different primary forms of identity (Chinese, Hong Kong-Chinese, Chinese Hong Konger, and Hong Konger). The survey similarly demonstrates that there is an overall increasing sense of Hong Kong identity. Those identifying as Hong Kongers declined from 34.9 per cent in 1997 to only 18.1 per cent in June 2008 before rebounding to 41.9 per cent in June 2016. The Chinese only identity meanwhile also peaked in 2008 with 38.6 per cent and has since significantly declined to 17.8 per cent which coincided with the Olympic Games in Beijing (Hong Kong University Public Opinion Programme, 2016). However, the support for China proved to be ephemeral and in the years afterwards, the trust in the central government declined rapidly as political events became much more prominent (Steinhardt, Jiang and Li, 2016). By 2016, 67 per cent of residents identified as either Hong Kongers or Hong Kongers in China. The civic identity arose out of the fact that the British colonial government became more receptive to the demands of the population. Following the 1966 and ’67 riots, the government established the District Officer Scheme in 1968, which provided a direct line of communication between the people and the government. Although participatory democracy was not an option, the colonial government enabled greater participation in politics. Starting in 1952, a number of members of the Urban Council were elected directly. By 1956 half of all the members were elected, although by a small number of eligible voters. Electoral reforms continued in the 1980s. From 1982, an increasing number of district council members were directly elected. The Legislative Council also started to be reformed with indirect elections first in 1985 and direct elections in 1991. At the same time, Hong Kong saw the emergence of pressure groups, which increased in size and strength in the 1970s and 80s bringing an increasing number of protests to the city (Wong, 1985). The British system in place also prided itself in the principle of the rule of law and generally promoted ideas such as freedom of speech and the freedom to assembly although there were a number of cases in which the colonial administrators violated those ideas. The right to protest gave many groups the ability to voice their concerns, and the government was viewed as responsive to popular demands. An example is the creation of the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) in 1973, which followed a protest movement that was triggered by a corrupt official who had fled to Britain (Ortmann, 2012).

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While political participation has become part of the Hong Kong identity, political movements such as the anti-national education campaign and the Umbrella Movement have strengthened it. The protests were often framed as a fight for the future of Hong Kong and thus made students willing to contribute more to the society. There is a strong desire to shape the future of which the students will be part. While many Hong Kongers in the past considered emigration, quite a few of the interviewees declared they are proud of their origin and do not want to move to another place. This is a significant change which reflects the emergence of a truly separate Hong Kong identity, which will be discussed in the next part.

Toward a separate Hong Kong identity While the Hong Kong identity is not a new phenomenon, the desire to create a separate cultural identity is (So, 2016). This runs counter to the previous scholarly consensus which had asserted that “Hong Kong people identify with China and the Chinese nation in an ethno-cultural sense, while they largely reject CCP rule and its associated values” (Kaeding, 2010: 21). While Kaeding’s work had identified specific cultural aspects within the Hong Kong identity such as Cantonese, a hybrid culture and a local popular culture, he argued that these features were slowly disappearing with the end of colonialism due to globalization and growing prominence of Chinese nationalism (Ibid.). Since then, the cultural identity has not only made a comeback but is slowly replacing the Chinese identity, which a majority of students reject. Aside from a minority of students who hold a positive view toward China, it is possible to distinguish between three types of students: 1) those who see themselves as both Hong Kongers and Chinese but are deeply ashamed about their Chinese-ness, 2) those who see themselves as separate Hong Kongers but acknowledge the fact that Hong Kong legally belongs to China, which cannot be changed, and 3) people who see themselves as Hong Kongers and are unwilling to accept the fact that Hong Kong belongs to China. The last group is still a relatively small minority among the students in the interviews, although the majority rejects control by the Chinese government. The following discussion will reflect both on the content of Hong Kong’s cultural identity as well as the political, cultural and economic reasons for its emergence. The main reason for identifying with a separate Hong Kong identity is the place of birth and the experience of growing up in the city. Although most of the students were small children during the handover, many still argue that the colonial history makes Hong Kong unique: “Hong Kong is historically very different from China in different aspects (. . .) because of the colonial background” (2015–7). In addition, shared historical events have brought Hong Kongers together. As one interviewee stated: “Hong Kong people have experienced the same collective experiences, so that I have the sense of belonging to Hong Kong” (2013–97). Many see the contrast with Mainland China in the city’s romanticised past. One student, for instance, asserted: “Hong Kongers are representing the endurance and hard-working style which was widely propagated in Hong

The development of Hong Kong identity 125 Kong as the Lion Rock Spirit” (2014–101). The iconic mountain overlooking Kowloon is frequently mentioned as a symbol of Hong Kong’s collective experience. It also played a prominent role during the Umbrella Movement when activists unfurled a large yellow banner calling for true democracy. This changed the Hong Kongers’ perceptions concerning the achievement of democracy as students were willing to sacrifice for this goal during the 79-day street occupation. An important reason for the emergence of a separate identity is the difference in the stage of economic development, which may have narrowed in recent years but is still very large. On the one hand, Hong Kong is an advanced market economy while China, at least in per capita terms, is still a developing economy. This means that Hong Kongers have other expectations in life. While many Chinese, especially of the older generation, still remember the days of economic hardship, most Hong Kongers want more than merely economic benefits out of life. As one interviewee made clear: “China is a developing country, which means that the well-being of humans and the social values are different from that of a developed region like Hong Kong” (2015–80). In addition, this difference has also deterred many from considering a move to the Mainland. As one student argued, “Hong Kong is more important for me because it provides lots of opportunities to me. (. . .) You know that if you want to find a job in Mainland China, you have to have many relationships, which is guanxi” (2015–18). There is a strong sense that Hong Kong’s political culture is separate from the Mainland. At the heart of the Hong Kong identity are the city’s core values, which are almost entirely liberal values. They include the values of freedom of speech, the rule of law, and the right to participate in politics. As one interviewee stated: “To me, Hong Kong is (. . .) a nice place where I have freedom of speech and I can do what I want. I am proud of being a Hongkonger” (2015–100). Another interviewee asserted: “We have a very well-developed legal system which is the first reason that encouraged me to think that I am a Hong Kong people rather than a Chinese” (2013–102). It is therefore not surprising that the fight for democracy during the Umbrella Movement strengthened the Hong Kong identity. For instance, one participant noted at the time: “In the past, I didn’t feel proud because there’s nothing to be proud of but recently during the Umbrella Movement, in which I participated, I have become more of a Hong Konger because people are staying together to fight for the same goal” (2014–66). A consensus among interviewees is that the most important defining character of the Hong Kong identity is the language, as one interviewee made clear: “As I can speak Cantonese, I think Hong Konger best describes me. (. . .) I think people who can speak Cantonese may be local Hong Kongers. (. . .) Hong Kong people mostly use Cantonese and write in traditional Chinese characters while the Mainland Chinese mostly speak Mandarin3 and use simplified Chinese, which is the main difference between the two” (2014–8). In recent years, a growing number of people are not only speaking but also writing in colloquial Cantonese using Chinese characters normally only rarely used in standard Chinese and the occasional English letter. This new written form of Cantonese is difficult to read

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for speakers of other Chinese languages and cannot be translated using Google Translate (Currently there is a project seeking to add Cantonese translation). In addition, Hong Kong’s status as a global city and an intermediary between China and the West is very important. As such, some interviewees mention the English language as part of their identity. One interviewee said, “the university in Hong Kong is mostly in English while in China it is mostly in Putonghua. This is very different. As I grew up in this environment, I feel that I am a Hong Konger” (2015–68). While English thus remains important, the proficiency in the language has declined since the handover. To strengthen the attachment with the Chinese nation, it was decided that the majority of schools should use Chinese – at first primarily Cantonese – as the medium of instruction, thus reducing the level of competency (Poon, 2010). The level of spoken English has declined, which is visible in universities where many students struggle with their English skills. The language issue is related to the attachment to a particular combination of Western and Chinese/Eastern culture that many Hong Kongers consider to be their own unique culture: “[Hong Kong] is a place which mixes Western and Eastern culture, which is why I really like Hong Kong” (2015–53). For instance, some would state that Hong Kong’s festivals include both Chinese and Western ones, although many do not celebrate all the festivals: “Not only do we have Chinese festivals but we also have Easter and Christmas in Hong Kong as public holidays. As part of Western culture it makes us different from China” (2015–102). Adopting Western habits then becomes a form of resistance. One interviewee, for instance, asserted that he did not like Chinese food and preferred Western and Japanese food instead (2015–41). In addition to an affinity to Western culture, many consider Hong Kong’s pop culture as a source of pride (Kaeding, 2011). As one interviewee stated: “Hong Kong has a unique and diverse culture, including eating style, language, movies, TV, and pop music. I think that this culture deeply influenced my Hong Kong identity” (2013–97). Similarly, another interviewee said: “We watch Hong Kong TV shows and listen to Cantonese pop and all of this makes me feel I’m a Hong Kong people” (2014–100). Although these serve as a source of identification, they have also been in decline since the handover. The much larger movie market in Mainland China has meant that many directors had to target the taste of Mainland moviegoers. The same goes for singers who can attract a much larger audience in China primarily through performances (Chu, 2013). The dependence on the Mainland became apparent as the Chinese have threatened artists with boycotts in response to their support for the pro-democracy protests. Although this induces self-censorship among some artists, it has also created a countermovement to support outspoken artists and a revival of Cantonese pop music (Chou, 2016). There is a belief that Hong Kong is a much more internationalised place than the rest of China. One interviewee, who was proud of Hong Kong because he could buy many international products in Hong Kong, asserted: “Compared with Hong Kong, China is not a place full of international culture” (2015–70).

The development of Hong Kong identity 127 Advertisements on television, print media, as well as on the Internet are generally different, which has resulted in a distinct way of life. As one interviewee stated, “Hong Kong is definitely different and can be distinguished from China because we are having a different culture, a different living standard, a different atmosphere, and different stuff” (2015–76). There is also a sense of superiority: “Hong Kongers have a better sense of taste than the Chinese. For instance, they are more fashionable” (2014–51). The combination of Western and Eastern culture is viewed as a “natural part of life” and thus constitutes an important distinction vis-à-vis China (Chan, 2002).

Conclusion Hong Kong has experienced a significant transformation of the identity politics in recent years. The most recognisable change is the rejection of the Chinese identity and the emergence of a separate ethnic Hong Kong identity with growing demands for independence. This is a surprising turn of events considering that previous research had indicated a slow process toward a greater identification with the Chinese nation. Despite the introduction of national education and the emphasis on Chinese national symbols such as flag raising ceremonies and the singing of the national anthem, young people have become the strongest advocates of a separate Hong Kong identity. This was mainly due to the failure of the political reform process. Instead of finding a compromise with moderate democracy supporters, the Chinese government insisted on a proposal that would have kept future elections for the chief executive under tight central government control. In response, massive protests occurred in 2014 with profound consequences for the identity politics. The Umbrella Movement strengthened the Hong Kong identity because it was an attempt to defend the home of the participants from external as well as internal domination. The movement was filled with slogans about fighting for Hong Kong and its future. The unique liberal system inside of an illiberal political system is seen as increasingly under threat. Perhaps it was not surprising, therefore, that as Hong Kong’s political autonomy declined, a separatist movement emerged. One may ask, what could be done? The interviews clearly demonstrate that creating a stronger identification with the Chinese nation is not a question of education because perceptions are shaped through many different channels. Instead, the main change needs to happen in China. This involves both political and cultural changes that would make China more attractive in the eyes of young Hong Kongers. However, at the moment there is very little progress in this regard. The Chinese government under Xi Jinping has even moved in the opposite direction by concentrating power in the central government, rejecting fundamental political reforms, and increasing repression against dissidents. As democracy remains out of reach, calls for independence have strengthened and are likely to strengthen further if the government continues to threaten the core values of Hong Kong.

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Notes 1 The course is primarily for the interdisciplinary bachelor programs Asian Studies as well as International Studies, which includes students with various interests. It should also be noted that social science is rarely the preferred major of students and thus there are students who are not really interested in social issues as well. 2 The author calls it Hongkongese. 3 Officially referred to as Putonghua, or the “Standard Language”.

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The development of Hong Kong identity 129 Chor, Laurel. (2015). Graphics Showing Why “Hong Kong Is Not China” Go Viral. Coconuts HongKong, July 2, http://hongkong.coconuts.co/2015/07/02/ graphics-showing-why-hong-kong-not-china-shared-widely (accessed 7 January 2017). Chou, Oliver. (2016). Singing Up for Canto-pop – Hong Kong Musicians Take Their Message to the World. South China Morning Post, April 4, www.scmp.com/news/ hong-kong/education-community/article/1933210/singing-canto-pop-hongkong-musicians-take-their (accessed 16 December 2016). Chu, Yiu-Wai. (2013). Lost in Transition: Hong Kong Culture in the Age of China. New York: SUNY Press. Chung, Robert and Tai, Edward. (2014). Ethnic Identity of Hong Kong People: An Academic Question Turned Political. In Jenn-hwan Wang (ed.) Border Crossing in Greater China: Production, Community and Identity. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 219–239. Cooper, Luke. (2015) “The international relations of the ‘imagined community’: Explaining the late nineteenth-century genesis of the Chinese nation.” Review of International Studies 41, no. 03, pp. 477–501. Gellner, Ernest. (1983). Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Ghai, Yash. (1997). Hong Kong’s New Constitutional Order: The Resumption of Chinese Sovereignty and the Basic Law. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Forsythe, Michael. (2014). A Parting Shot at U.S. Ambassador, Inspired by Mao. The New York Times, February 28, http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/ 02/28/a-parting-shot-at-u-s-ambassador-inspired-by-mao/ (accessed 13 December 2016). Hong Kong University Public Opinion Programme. (2016). People’s Ethnic Identity. HKU POP Site, June 21, www.hkupop.hku.hk/english/popexpress/ethnic/ (accessed 22 July 2016). Horowitz, Shale, and Yu, Peng. (2015). Holding China’s West: Explaining CCP Strategies of Rule in Tibet and Xinjiang. Journal of Chinese Political Science 20:4, pp. 451–475. Hung, Ho-fung and Kuo, Huei-ying. (2013). “One Country, Two Systems” and Its Antagonists in Tibet and Taiwan. In Ray Yep (ed.) Negotiating Autonomy in Greater China: Hong Kong and Its Sovereign Before and After 1997. Copenhagen: Nias Press, pp. 179–206. Hung, Ruth Y.Y. (2014). What Melts in the “Melting Pot” of Hong Kong? An International Journal of Asian Literatures, Cultures and Englishes 8:2, pp. 57–87. Ip, Iam-Chong. (2015). Politics of Belonging: A Study of the Campaign Against Mainland Visitors in Hong Kong. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 16:3, pp. 410–421. Kaeding, Malte Philipp. (2010). Marketing Identity in Taiwan and Hong Kong: Electioneering in Two Twenty-first Century Chinese Democracies. Unpublished PhD Thesis, Baptist University of Hong Kong. Kaeding, Malte Philipp. (2011). Identity Formation in Taiwan and Hong Kong: How Much Difference, How Many Similarities? In Gunter Schubert and Carsten Storm (eds.) Taiwanese Identity in the 21st Century: Domestic, Regional and Global Perspectives. London: Routledge, pp. 258–279. Kohn, Hans. (1944). The Idea of Nationalism: A Study in Its Origins and Background. New York: Macmillan Company. Lam, Wai-man. (2005). Clashes of Political Discourses: Nationalism and Democracy in Hong Kong. GIS Working Paper, No. 15.

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7

Visual and discourse resistance on the “China factor” The cultural formation of the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong Wai-kwok Benson Wong

In approaching the Umbrella Movement, attention has been paid to the institutional and political contestation between the government and the protestors within the physical space of Hong Kong. This includes such cases as police brutality and suppression on September 28, 2014, the occupations of Admiralty, Causeway Bay, and Mong Kok applying pressure on the government from October to December 2015, the negotiation between student representatives and the government, and the eventual termination of the occupation as protestors withdrew. However, another important arena is the virtual space of the Internet, where netizens have designed pictures, taken photos, posted images with modifications, and produced short texts addressing the conflict (see Wong, 2013a). Such creations are not just reflections of personal and collective desire; they show the perception, observations, and affections of protestors, their relationship with the political, institutional, and social contexts, and their intention to challenge taken-for-granted assertions, values, and practices. After the movement, the salience of visual resistance arousing public attention has been adopted consistently against pro-Beijing propaganda. The findings drawn from such images can be constructive for our understanding of the cultural formation of the movement, focusing on the consequences with which China influences Hong Kong. In this chapter, photos, pictures, and texts are chosen in connection with the China factor. The “China factor,” according to Jieh-min Wu, can be defined as the increasing economic and political influence of the Beijing authorities over Taiwan (2012). Wu adopts the functional perspective to study the institutional, economic, and political hegemony and influence over China. However Chi-yan Lam (2014) developed the concept by introducing cultural and ideological dimensions that buttress the China factor. Lam argues that these involve aspects of nationalism, unification, benevolence, and dependence, which have constructed a set of hegemonies that were internalised and circulated through the media and pro-Beijing/pro-government organizations when they launched their events and activities for the youth with the purpose of undermining and devaluing local culture and identity, imposing instead the culture of Mainland China. Above all, the China factor has a symbolic meaning, actualised in the aspects of dominance, hegemony, dependence, and decay.

The Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong 133 Resistance in response to the increasing influence of the China factor has become obvious and vibrant. This chapter examines how resistance has an impact on the cultural domain. Hence, cultural resistance, in the forms of visual and discourse resistance, is adopted to identify, describe, and interpret how such a resistance is intended to introduce subversive, radical, and challenging ideas, as well as perspectives against ideas and practices perceived by resisting agents as subservient, dependent, and dehumanizing. Visual and discourse resistance may not be as obvious a field of inquiry as examining the direct action used during social protests, but such critical ideas and perspectives show how movements employ art forms to challenge audiences among the public and attack pro-regime actors using creation, imagination, and demonstration. By adopting photos taken during social protests as a theme, Daniel Garrett (2012, 2015, 2017) aims to identify and describe what he observed and pictured during protests and rallies. In his approach, a common theme (e.g., counterhegemony) is introduced, then he collects the photos surrounding this theme with a description of their contents, including banners, artistic designs, musical or drama performances, and speeches, finally summing up with his observations of political activism, including historical and political contexts leading to the protests and the various responses of the participants. He has contributed to composing photo essays for documentation, and his photo essays can be developed and interpreted further by addressing the following questions: 1

2 3

Apart from expressing grievances and discontent toward the government and the associated policies/issues, is this actually a collective project conducted by participants with shared goals and beliefs aiming to challenge the taken-for-granted and dominant understanding in order to generate new meanings for these events? If it is a meaning-construction and reproduction project, what are the shared premises and features behind these visual outputs? In what ways has a rhetorical approach been used deliberately for such artefacts to articulate and promote claims or beliefs in a relevant and consistent manner?

As Alan Finlayson (2007) argues, a rhetorical approach is aimed at intentionally shaping and presenting a belief in order to create public communication in a particular way, and such a presentation can be contestable and contested, meaning that “undecidability” and “uncertainty” are detached so that an understanding can be established, maintained, and circulated in connection with the shifting historical and social contexts in which they are deployed. By focusing on the presentation of the China factor through visual resistance, the negativity, pessimism, and “horridness” of China is articulated consistently and creatively, not because of rationally and evidently justifying what they believe or argue, but by demonstrating explicitly their affection for China, as well as their disillusionment, antagonism, desperation, and fear. In addition, visual resistance can represent

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how the politics of culture, in which symbols are deployed creatively and assertively, is actualised. Zdzislaw Mach has adopted from Raymond Firth’s study of the essential components of culture with the following four functions: (1) expressing emotions with content and values; (2) communicating in a synthetic and shorthand way, appealing directly to the emotions and semiconscious association, and avoiding intellectual and rational elaboration, ultimately stimulating action; (3) articulating knowledge and perception; and (4) serving as social control, since cultural symbols are used and explained dominantly by the powerful (Firth, 1973; Mach, 1993: 36–37). As a consequence, “China” is reconstructed and reproduced in different kinds of symbols showing identical meaning.

Hegemonic: relationships between China and Hong Kong One major tension between Hong Kong and China lies in the nature of the historical and geopolitical relationship between the two polities – in other words, on whether they have equal footing or have an imbalanced and unequal geopolitical relationship. To address this issue, one crucial question is how to define “China” within the existing contexts. As is well known, there are, in fact, “two” Chinas: the People’s Republic of China (PRC), established in 1949, and the Republic of China (ROC), established in 1912, which then moved to Taiwan in 1949 due to the defeat of the Kuomintang in the Civil War. As a result of this, the power of Mainland China shifted politically and territorially. In order to establish and consolidate its legitimacy – in other words, to become a legal and recognised government in the eyes of the Chinese as well as the international community – “China” has been adopted strictly and continuously as defined by the Beijing authorities under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The territorial claim is based on describing how China is legitimised in ruling the geographical area. One common statement – “XXX has been China’s territory since ancient times” – is adopted consistently to demonstrate ownership of and dominance over its territories. Sovereignty is stressed heavily by the Beijing government because the occupation and ownership of the territories can be defined with dominance (Zhu) and power (Quan), which is the reason why the term “sovereignty” is interpreted as “Zhuquan” in Chinese. To recap the above discussion, hegemony has been articulated and then reproduced on the basis of political dominance and the historical succession of the past dynasties and government. On this basis, a hegemonic national consensus is established by means of education, media, and propaganda. In order to challenge and even refute the political hegemony imposed and promoted by the PRC authorities, a counter-framing of the hegemonic discourse has been produced and circulated in the online media by oppositional currents in Hong Kong. In other words, these actors seek to redefine relationships between China and Hong Kong with reference to the differences between them and the perceived necessity of delinking the two places in historical and political terms.

The Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong 135 Photo 7.1 (page 135) shows a sticker presented in Admiralty, one of the occupation areas during the Umbrella Movement. It is likely that some of the supporters of the Umbrella Movement designed and circulated this sticker. Based on my observation, the same sticker can also be found in Mong Kok and Causeway Bay, two other occupation areas, during the same period. In contextualizing the sticker, the following features can be identified: (1) the perception of the Umbrella Movement’s supporters toward how China rules Hong Kong; (2) how the supporters respond to Mainland China’s policy toward Hong Kong, especially its political and institutional influence on local political settings; (3) the response to the official advocacy of China’s Hong Kong policy, including “One Country, Two Systems,” with Hong Kong people ruling Hong Kong; and (4) a projection of the possible ways of redefining the relationship. Hong Kong is symbolised as Hong Kong Island with the slogan, “Hong Kong is not part of China.” Hong Kong Island is chosen because of the historical significance. First, it is the initial area occupied by the British in 1841 during the Opium War (1839–42), and it became a colony under the Treaty of Nanjing (1842), when what was imagined at the time to be a permanent cession to Britain was granted. Second, Hong Kong Island has been a political, cultural, and

Photo 7.1 Hong Kong is not a part of China

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business centre during the period of colonial rule, with government headquarters and the central business district located in the coastal area of the northern part of the island and with the founding of the University of Hong Kong in 1911. In addition, a strong visual effect is created to show the difference between the two places by highlighting “is not” and “China” in red. However, the slogan also implies the existence of an unequal geopolitical relationship between the two places, as “part of ” indicates the hierarchical reality within which China is deemed superior and Hong Kong inferior. Photo 7.1 shows the difference between two places, but the linkage that it is a part of is addressed explicitly for questioning and disagreement. By comparing it to another remarkable photo published in The Wall Street Journal on 18 November 2015 in relation to the 2018 Hong Kong’s World Cup qualifying match between Hong Kong and China (http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/ images/BN-LI017_hk2_G_20151117181706.jpg), the latter seems to be more assertive. In the latter, the Hong Kong fans held signs with the word “BOO”, Chinese national flags redesigned with the star that symbolises the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) replaced by the Chinese character “greed” (Tan), and banners reading “HONG KONG IS NOT CHINA”. Relatively speaking, the latter seems to be yet more performative in terms of clearly separating Hong Kong from China, as the two places are no longer even visualised in a hierarchical manner or historical relationship. Against the context of this photo, “Hong Kong is not China” provides the strong and firm message that China and Hong Kong are two separate and divergent places without relationships or connections. In order to bolster this message further, some audiences showed leaflets marked “BOO.” Before the formal beginning of the match, some local audiences began booing the Chinese national anthem, leading to the punishment of the team, imposed by Hong Kong soccer officials (Steger and Huang, 2015). In this regard, the visual impact was demonstrably formidable because the visual action conveyed a direct and “triggering” message to the Beijing authorities regarding the relationship between China and Hong Kong. In addition, this photo is deployed by Wang Dalei, one of the members of the China soccer team, who posted it at the Weibo page and shared his views. Weibo is the largest social media platform in Mainland China. Given the banning of such online platforms as Facebook and Twitter, Mainlanders can only legally activate and share information through such officially-approved platforms. After posting for several hours, however, he deleted this post without justification. However, his post could be screenshot before deletion, then forwarded and circulated. He expresses his feeling in response to the photo as quoted below: I do not know about politics. I just realise that I am a Chinese. I am proud of being a Chinese. I love my motherland! I just like the ordinary Chinese who are holding the beating heart. Thank you for continuously supporting the China Team. I know that television audiences have been together with the China Team. Despite being unable to win the match, I have something to tell you: We are proud with your presence! Thank you! About this

The Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong 137 photo. . . . . . CNMD [N.B. Its full form in pinyin is “Cao Ni Ma De”; that means “fucking your mother”.] (Memehk.com, 2015) Contextually, the remark in which he states “I don’t know about politics” is ironic, as he has demonstrated how politics is presented rhetorically: “China,” “Chinese,” and “motherland” are used constantly. When responding to the Hong Kong audience, he chose to deploy the negative and shameful remark about which “Hong Kong is NOT China.” Another particular is that his remark was expected to receive the resonance of his fans, as reflected in his expression of pride and gratitude for their support, which aimed to buttress the popular recognition that he has claimed. In this light, his choice of the photo for posting online is hard to view as unpremeditated. Rather, the picture was likely chosen for the purpose of demonstrating his political stance. Going beyond the text, Wang does represent the country in this respect, as his post is not purely a personal and individual reflection of what he has observed, but a representation and demonstration of the capacity of the country, as a member of the China soccer team. His remark, to a certain extent, conveys the hegemonic version of how to understand the relationship between China and Hong Kong, since the claim that “Hong Kong is NOT China” is politically and historically incorrect in his eyes. Second, only the patriotic definition in positioning Hong Kong is accepted, without alternatives. Third, the adoption of CNMD vividly presents the operation of the relationships using foul language: China is superior whereas Hong Kong is inferior; China serves as the dominant male whereas Hong Kong serves as the subservient female (mother); China is destined to be the dominating actor, whereas Hong Kong is the submissive one. Above all, Hong Kong can do nothing other than accept China’s penetration, influence, intervention, and control. “Fucking,” by politically contextualizing its intended and unintended meanings mentioned above, can fully manifest the hegemonic mentality of the user of the word. By analysing the implicit meanings of both photos, the statement that Hong Kong is NOT China can be interpreted as a concrete response from the supporters of the Umbrella Movement about how Hong Kong should face the penetration by China: separation is the only and ultimate method to resolve the political crisis. Instead of settling the political crisis in line with the current constitutional foundation – that is, through the enforcement of higher degrees of autonomy under the Basic Law – an assertive and perhaps even radical remark is adopted to draw the attention to both the Hong Kong people and the Beijing authorities. For the former, the formula of “one country” has superseded two systems, proceeding to one system, showing that the Beijing government has not kept this promise due to political and institutional intervention, leading to power abuse by the Chief Executive and an unrepresentative legislature. As such, the adoption of the radical and shocking remark is a possible way to express affection, with the aim of persuading Hong Kong to abandon this formula as illusionary and without prospect. However, the Beijing authorities regard this as an insult, as it is intolerable and unacceptable that Hong Kong, being a small dot on the map

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of Mainland China, has tremendous political, economic, and cultural influence over the surrounding region and that it is possible to develop and propagate such a disastrous and subversive idea to challenge and even undermine the government’s attempts to impose patriotism on the territory after 1997. In sum, “Hong Kong is NOT China” can be regarded as a demonstrative remark produced by some of the supporters of the Umbrella Movement aimed to indicate that China should be responsible for the political crisis and that the separation of the two places is the only way to defend their local interests.

Featuring and highlighting the differences Apart from the two images discussed above, differences between China and Hong Kong can also be manifested in different dimensions inspired by everyday experience and observation. In the following section, seven images, covering political orientation, language, and habit, are discussed. They were extracted from a webpage designed by Local Studio HK (http://www.localstudiohk.com). When surfing its index page, a blue flag printed with “Hong Kong is NOT China” with the territory of Hong Kong is shown and raised over a blue sky, expressing, evidently, that localists and perhaps pro-independents are engaging in the project. With reference to the artefacts that they have produced, the major line for framing is to highlight Hong Kong having its uniqueness in terms of language, habit, and cultural practices, so that such differences can be featured and then presented concretely. In framing localism, the following rhetorical framework is adopted: • • • •

•

No similarities, but many differences, between China and Hong Kong; a dual dimension is adopted for presenting their differences; Hong Kong is positive and valued, whereas China is negative and appalling; to set up a common pattern of presenting these images, the left-hand side with red represents China and the right-side with blue denotes Hong Kong. Apart from producing this visual difference, red is the official colour adopted by the Chinese Communist Party/People’s Republic of China; and the selection of the socially, culturally, and politically symbolic items, highlighting the key features with captions for illustration.

The above approach can be regarded as a counter-framing of the dominating thoughts that prevailed and circulated in the mainstream media and official propaganda, as quoted from Tung Chee-hwa, the ex-Chief Executive of HKSAR government from 1997 to 2004, whose speech focuses on the glory and might of China: The younger generation should open their minds to learn about the nation, as President Xi Jinping said: “[We] should stress heavily the history and culture of our nation and national education in delivering education to young people so that they recognise the comprehensiveness of the Chinese civilization, the inspiring ups and downs of modern Chinese history, showing the glorious road in strengthening itself, acknowledging further the new China

The Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong 139 [meaning China since 1949] which went through a rough road and then made achievements, understanding further “One Country, Two Systems,” insisting on the development of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and fulfilling and connecting domestically between the China dream and the Chinese renaissance. (Lai, 2015) Tung furthers his assertion at a conference hosted by the South China Morning Post, a pro-Beijing English newspaper in Hong Kong, saying that: The truth is that China is pursuing peace and shared prosperity, which is important for China and its relations with our neighbours and the world as a whole. This is our very clear-cut strategic intent. . . . We believe in a more open, inclusive world and one that is interconnected. This is what the One Belt, One Road [initiative] is about . . . (Shi, 2016) The dominant ideology, referring to the above extracts, highlights the following particulars: (1) the culture and history of China is enduring, great, and exceedingly civilised; (2) the existing regime can further bolster such greatness; and (3) economic and peaceful development brought by China can be beneficial to the world. To challenge the hegemonic discourse and to re-establish the different facets of local identity, Figures 7.1 to 7.7 are designed to contrast China and Hong Kong. Figures 7.1 to 7.3 (pages 140–141) can be integrated by focusing on how power relationships are perceived and constructed. In Figure 7.1 on page 140, a negative interpretation is made of subservience and self-devaluation under the current regime in China, whereas challenging the authorities in a hidden but direct way is presented as allowable in more democratic Hong Kong. When decoding the image, body language is another important aspect of its meaning: a man kowtows to an authoritarian figure in China, but another man shows an obscene hand gesture to the same figure in Hong Kong, buttressing the visual impact in regard to how power relationships can be demonstrated vividly and divergently through such mutual interactions. In Figure 7.2 on page 140, the concept of two different places is employed. One key observation is that while the traditional building with the flag of the Chinese Communist Party is shown, on which a hammer and sickle are used, the national flag of the PRC is not intentionally adopted because it is understood that China is ruled in the form of party dominance rather than governed in the form of a nation-state. Hong Kong, on the other hand, is symbolised by Lion Rock instead of the familiar picture using Victoria Harbour and commercial buildings along the coastal area of Central District and Wan Chai. This is intended to show that Hong Kong should not be acknowledged as an economic city or a financial centre, but visualised as a political city, demonstrating that the Hong Kong people strive for self-determination and genuine democracy. Indeed, there is a tendency of these social movement actors to alter Lion Rock’s meaning from traditional diligence and endurance in the face of difficult

Figure 7.1 Relationships between China and Hong Kong

Figure 7.2 Hong Kong is not China

The Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong 141

Figure 7.3 The World in the eyes of Chinese and Hongkongers

conditions at the colonial outpost, which is named the “Lion Rock Spirit,” to one focused on striving for genuine democracy in the face of similarly critical situations, as a big yellow banner at the top of the hill during the Umbrella Movement demonstrated. In other words, Lion Rock has come to symbolise the determination and persistence of the local people against the dominance, manipulation, and threat of the Beijing authorities. An umbrella, as an icon, is used to symbolise Hong Kong at first, transforming the meaning of this icon as an independent polity to the equivalent of a hammer and sickle that represent the CCP. The slogan “Hong Kong is not China” aims to further impress the clear and unambiguous separation and divergence of the two places. Such a difference is further enforced in Figure 7.3 (page 141) through the adoption of a different vision. In depicting China, the nation is designed intentionally so that its vast territory covers the half of the globe instead of showing the original scale. In addition, the PRC territory, marked with five stars, is centred with Taiwan not shown, implying the mentality of the superiority over and intimacy with China, showing that China is the only influential country in the world. In the eyes of the localists, the PRC territory, as revealed in the image, is performative and purposeful, demonstrating China’s dominant and hegemonic position, which is recognised by Taiwan intentionally not being shown, which means that Taiwan is NOT (the People’s Republic of ) China, making the image consistent with the “Hong Kong is NOT China” message. Hong Kong, on the other hand, is depicted as having a worldview manifesting its openness to, and connectedness with, the outside world. To

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recap the above interpretation, China is depicted to be authoritarian, traditional, and ethnocentric, resembling an ancient dynasty or regime that has adopted a closed-door policy, but Hong Kong is presented as indigenous, subversive, and open, with the goal of reproducing the visual differences between two places in a drastic manner. Apart from the images, Chinese characters can also be constituted as an impactful way to show visual effects by using the difference between the simplified and standard/traditional Chinese characters. To briefly recap the historical background of this language development, the simplified Chinese characters have been adopted and circulated in Mainland China under Mao Zedong since the 1950s with the aim of helping the illiterate people learn Chinese with ease. It was intended originally as a transition to Romanizing Chinese by adopting the Latin alphabet, though this aim was never realised. In the light of upholding the principle of ease of writing, the characteristics of the simplified Chinese characters are (1) to modify and simplify the writing pattern by deleting or alternating selected parts of a character and (2) to use another simple Chinese character with the identical pronunciation to replace the previous one, which is complicated in structure. However, the adoption of the simplified version may distort the original meaning of the character, especially when Chinese characters look like a picture that shows overt meaning. In Figure 7.4 (page 142), the illustration and interpretation behind the selection of the same character, “LOVE”, with two different versions have been clearly made. “LOVE” is chosen with the following

Figure 7.4 Love

The Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong 143 premises: (1) it is one of the common characters, used widely to express affection that can be attentive in framing; (2) this chosen character has its specific meaning delivered by showing differences; and (3) the meaning can be structured to demonstrate the negativity of China and positivity of Hong Kong. In interpreting the simplified version, “there is no heart in their love” is not only about featuring the character, but it is also intended to criticize the Chinese, whose love is perceived as fraudulent and hypocritical, without genuineness and authenticity. In other words, love has become instrumental to fulfilling personal interests. If the simplified Chinese character serves as a symbol representing the PRC, it is paradoxical that when the PRC propagandises love in different aspects – such as loving (Ai) the country (Guojia), motherland (Zuoguo), party (Dang), citizens/people (Min) – this is actually producing the opposite message. In other words, the idea of people loving country, motherland, party, and citizenship is treated as only a slogan, a pretentious response to the party-state propaganda as well as a remark that is, in reality, self-contradictory. Alternatively, the traditional/standard Chinese character, whose heart is shown over the central part of the character, is intended to demonstrate love with hearts and minds as well as substance. The remark on the figure (“we keep love, conscience, and traditional culture”) aims to pinpoint indirectly that love, as an icon of the simplified Chinese character, has lost its original meaning since morality, self-reflection, and respect have vanished. Apart from the character selected deliberately to distinguish China and Hong Kong, foul language, as shown in Figure 7.5 on page 143, is adopted with the

Figure 7.5 Fuck your mother

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purpose of reinforcing the intended verbal and affective impacts, as the foul language is considered to be the important dimension of sub-culture, of which it is a deviant but common way of everyday communication in a casual or a conflicting way. In Chinese culture, given the oppression of and discrimination against women in society, figures associated with the fact that mother is the symbolic figure of the seniority of the female at home and in the family, the undesirable impact is identical, insulting individual mothers as well. In selecting a performative and purposeful remark to buttress the rhetorical impact with reference to the social practice of everyday language, “fucking your mother” can be seen as a typical and acknowledged remark that is easily resonant. In fact, using the Cantonese curse “fuck your mother” is common in informal and casual everyday communication in Hong Kong and the surrounding Cantonese-speaking cities in Guangdong province such as Guangzhou (LearnCantoneseFast, 2012). It represents a medium to attack verbally another person during conflict or to express affection forcefully in times of anger and excitement. Going beyond the character itself, the real focus is not on insulting the mother but on the contestation between Putonghua (Mandarin) and Cantonese (the local dialect). The history and sophistication of these two languages are used to demonstrate the superiority of Cantonese, as reflected when “2,000 years in history” is indicated, with 9 tones that are rich in verbal expression, compared with Putonghua, which has “300 years of history” and only 4 tones. In contextualizing the war on discourse between Putonghua and Cantonese, the marginalization and exclusion of other dialects and the consolidation of the official imposition of Putonghua as a sole official language should be noted. Looking back to 2010, hundreds of Chinese took to the streets in Hong Kong and Guangzhou to defend Cantonese, as they regard it as one of their most important treasures. During the campaign, the participants expressed their grievance against the regional officials in Mainland China increasing Putonghua broadcast programs and cutting such programs produced in Cantonese (newsdesk.org, 2010). In fact, such an arrangement shows that the Beijing authorities intend to consolidate their cultural hegemony and regard Cantonese as a threat. In other words, the PRC’s increasing promotion of the Chinese language, in forms of Putonghua and simplified Chinese characters as a global idiom (Ding and Saunders, 2006), marginalise dialects and exclude the traditional/standard Chinese characters on the grounds of upholding language purism (Chi, 2015). Apart from dialects, conflicts between Putonghua and Cantonese have been further expanded into those deploying the traditional/standard Chinese characters and simplified Chinese characters, as implied in both Figures 7.4 and 7.5 (on pages 142 and 143). In Hong Kong, the traditional/standard characters have been circulated widely and formalised historically and culturally, whereas the simplified one serves a functional purpose when having communication with, and doing business in, Mainland China and Singapore, as well as for promoting local tourism. Given the dependence on Mainland visitors in the past years after the introduction to the Individual Visit Scheme (IVE) in 2003 and Multiple Entry Visit Scheme (M-Permit) in 2009, which led to the revitalization of tourism and retail sectors. Based on a study conducted by Yun-wing Sung (2015), while the contributions of IVS visitors to total value added and employment were not

The Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong 145 large, the contribution of IVS visitors to the growth of employment was large, as tourism is labour intensive. Among the four key industries of Hong Kong, tourism was the number one contributor to the increase in employment. Increase in M-Permit visitors from 2010 to 2013 likewise contributed little to growth of GDP (1.1%), but it contributed to growth in employment (4.5%). Above all, given the economic dependence on Mainland China in both schemes, the Hong Kong people are advised to accept and even tolerate Mainland Chinese visitors, using the term “inclusion” (Baoyung). As Rita Fan, a pro-Beijing politician, said: Although some Mainland visitors behave in an uncivilised way during their stay in Hong Kong, the Japanese visitors also behaved in this manner in Hong Kong 30 years ago, so the Hong Kong people should tolerate and be inclusive in face of Mainland visitors. (Standnews, 2015) Additionally, some shops and restaurants adopt the simplified Chinese characters only for promotion and information, implying that only Mainlanders are welcome because their stronger purchasing power is regarded as helping profit making as well as economic growth. Indeed, there is a growing trend for the use of simplified Chinese script in large advertising banners, and promotional materials more generally, amongst shops in Hong Kong and Macau. This has angered many Hong Kong residents that see it as a threat to their culture. Furthermore, the perceived misconduct of Mainlanders, as explained below, can trigger the antagonism of the Hong Kong people. In Figure 7.6 on page 145,

Figure 7.6 The toilet seat

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poor hygienic conditions, as shown in the dirty shoe marks over the toilet seat and some faeces left on the ground, are shown to generate feelings of resentment in those who see the image. In contextualizing, the picture reinforces the impression that the Chinese lack a civic-minded mentality and only “look out for themselves”. Second, there is the common perception that they do not protect, and even may destroy, public facilities and premises. In the face of these perceptions and the poor reputation of Mainland tourists, the tourism administration in China has issued guidelines on “civilised travelling” (Li, 2014). However, the Hong Kong people are depicted as conscientious, considerate, and hygienic in protecting the public premises and facilities, as the toilet seat and floor are clean. It is important to highlight the visual impacts brought by this photo, as the cleanliness of the toilet seat instantly produces the affection, leaving a deep impression and reinforcing an established perception. Such an impression and perception can in turn associate with the defined group of the people who are doing so. In Figure 7.7 on page 146, copycat culture in Mainland China and creativity in Hong Kong are depicted through the deliberate use of certain keys. The repeated copying and pasting in China is the message conveyed on the left-hand side of the photo, whereas the creation of different keys with different colours in Hong Kong is demonstrated on the right-hand side. Apart from the contrasting impact, the figure appears to ask the audience whether China is destined to follow the copycat culture. The following quotation provides a possible context for this:

Figure 7.7 Copycat versus creativity

The Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong 147 In fact, security experts will tell you that Mainland Chinese don’t fear personal reputation risk when committing fraud. And in a perverse way, Chinese employers value new employees who possess foreign intellectual property even if it is stolen. . . Innovation and creativity are not rewarded in the Chinese commercial or educational sectors, which emphasise rapidly monetizing activities and rote learning. Obeying authorities ensures stability and eventual success. Gaining favours from regulators and party elites is the surest path to good fortune. Unfortunately, it is precisely this type of closed-minded thinking coupled with cronyism and exclusive capitalism with Chinese characteristics that will continue to kill innovation and stifle creative thinking across China. That explains why China’s big Internet companies are basically copies of their Western counterparts. . . Copying and reverse engineering accelerated new product launches, but eroded China’s competitiveness. Stealing intellectual property has enormously benefited Chinese companies. But, it has crippled their ability to develop the next version or innovate. (Guy, 2016) By analysing the above quotation, three particulars should be noted: First, a profit-driven mentality undermines creativity because making profit in a speedy manner, rather than investing in innovating to develop new products, is the primary concern. Second, state patronage of copycat culture should be addressed; in other words, stealing new ideas and techniques from foreign corporations should be regarded as patriotic, politically correct, and morally justified in the pursuit of Chinese interests. And finally, intellectual property, innovation, and creativity are not protected in a de facto sense in Mainland China, despite legislation passed to prevent copycat practices. As a result, the formation and intensification of the copycat culture has formed a vicious cycle, leading to the erosion of creativity. To recap the above description and interpretation, the contrasting depictions of China and Hong Kong are identified and featured in their political and cultural dimensions, emphasizing dominance, hegemony, and degeneration under the PRC, whereas liberalism, openness, and creativity are reiterated in the Hong Kong context.

Conclusion This chapter deployed images and photos, supplemented with the selected texts, to identify and interpret how the “China factor” has impacted various facets of everyday life in Hong Kong and China. I also examined the cultural formation of the Umbrella Movement in light of the China factor, noting that, currently, political, economic, and cultural dependence on and integration with China is in force due to different aspects of government policy, including the introduction of the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) to the Mainland and Hong Kong, the construction of the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong High Speed Rail, the implementation of the Individual Visit Scheme, the implementation of

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Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect and Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect, and the promotion of One Belt, One Road initiative. In this respect, the official discourse of Mainlanders’ contribution to Hong Kong’s economy prevails (Wong, 2015). Under enforcement through national and patriotic education, which introduced China study tours at the school level as well as in the civil service to implement its moral and national education plan, and the promotion of “New Hong Kong People,” with its affirming of national identity and excluding of local identity, the government has produced an assertion emphasizing that Hong Kong people need identity after 1997, so it is necessary to re-establish China’s identity under the official initiative, but the PRC/CCP is the only option seen for defining this political identity (Wong, 2013b). In view of the above contexts, the increasing hegemony imposed by the Beijing authorities and then enforced by the Hong Kong government has become critical to arousing the awareness of those Hong Kong people who feel that their local culture is under threat. Further, overdependence on Mainland China has undermined Hong Kong’s local autonomy. The economic and commercial benefits arising from such visit schemes mentioned above have provided the political resources for the PRC to forge an unholy alliance with the local capitalists, professionals, and elites who believe that they will get benefits by cooperating with the Beijing authorities. In other words, pro-Beijing supporters with vested interests serve as de facto mouthpieces and agents, actively promoting integration with Mainland China while remaining submissive to political dominance and decay, followed by cultural assimilation and elimination such as the adoption of the simplified Chinese characters and Putonghua and the marginalization of the standard/traditional Chinese characters and Cantonese. In fact, the implementation of Putonghua to teach Chinese is a typical example of how Cantonese is devalued and marginalised politically with the government’s encouragement. To a certain extent, the outbreak of the Umbrella Movement can be seen as a response to such threats, and the “China factor” is a key impetus for the mobilizations in both places, since the hard line political turn of the Xi regime has brought about the serious repression of civil liberties, while the Mainland’s economic dominance threatens the life chances of the younger generation in the local communities. In the face of the above conditions, resistance has become the only choice for those who are determined to question and challenge existing power relationships, institutions, and practices. In this connection, a deep reflection upon the past, the city, its destinies, and the future provides a possible path along which the Hong Kong people can be positive of what they have achieved and preserved and critical of the political and social inequality and marginalization arising from the current government. Most importantly, compromise and appeasement without boundaries only undermines the city. Therefore, the first and most important step is that of reframing official advocacy and propaganda in such a way that the uniqueness and strength of Hong Kong should be rediscovered and stressed with the ultimate goal of collective self-empowerment and reassuming self-determination. Self-determination, to a certain extent, can be understood as a response to dominance, hegemony, and dependence, and it can be actualised by creating

The Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong 149 such images and visual resistance in the public sphere, making the demonstration effect possible.

Reference “Asking for being inclusive to the uncivilized behaviors of mainland visitors. Rita Fan: Thirteen years ago, the Japanese were also doing the same thing,” Standnews, 29 September 2015, at https://thestandnews.com/society/范徐麗泰-若去中國 化-港變-無根的一代-籲包容內地客不文明-30年前日本人都係咁/ [Accessed on 4/6/2016]. “Cantonese speakers defend their language”, newsdesk.org, 3 August 2010, at http://newsdesk.org/2010/08/03/cantonese-speakers-defend-their-language/ [Accessed on 4/6/2016]. Chi, Wai Tim, 2015, “Politics of the Cantonese”, Cultural Studies@Lingnan, 46, at http://commons.ln.edu.hk/mcsln/vol46/iss1/11/ [Accessed on 5/6/2016]. Ding, Sheng and Saunders, Robert A., 2006, “Talking up China: An Analysis of China’s rising cultural power and global promotion of the Chinese language,” East Asia, 23(3), pp. 3–33. Finlayson, Alan, 2007, “From beliefs to arguments: Interpretive methodology and rhetorical political analysis,” British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 9, pp. 545–563. Firth, Raymond, 1973, Symbols, Public and Private. London: George Allen and Unwin. Garrett, Daniel, 2017, “Contesting China’s tourism wave: Identity politics, protest and the rise of the Hong Kong City state movement”, in Claire Colomb and Johannes Navy ed., Protest and Resistance in the Tourist City. Oxon: Routledge (e-book). ———, 2015, Counter-hegemonic Resistance in China’s Hong Kong: Visualizing Protest in the City. Singapore: Springer (e-book). ———, 2012, “Visualizing protest culture in China’s Hong Kong: Recent tensions over integration,” Visual Communication, 12(1), pp. 55–70. Guy, Peter, “China never really stopped being a copycat, and that’s why its tech companies aren’t changing the world”, South China Morning Post, 10 April 2016, at http://www.scmp.com/business/article/1934779/china-never-really-stoppedbeing-copycat-and-thats-why-its-tech-companies [Accessed on 4/6/2016]. Lai, Zhi Chun, “The Younger Generation should open its mind, learn from and embrace the country”, Wen Wei Po, 25 November 2015, at http://paper.wenweipo. com/2015/11/25/PL1511250006.htm [Accessed on 8/6/2016]. Lam, Chi-yan, 2014, Constructing hegemony: Patriotic united front on the youths in post-handover Hong Kong. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis. Hong Kong: The University of Hong Kong. LearnCantoneseFast 2012, “Dirty Cantonese Curse Words and Cantonese Cuss Words,” 25 December, at https://youtu.be/yaxM36kuTTc [Accessed on 7/6/2016]. Li, Amy, “Rude awakening: Chinese tourists have the money, but not the manners,” South China Morning Post, 31 December 2014, at http://www.scmp.com/news/ china/article/1671504/rude-awakening-chinese-tourists-have-means-not-manners [Accessed on 4/6/2016]. Local Studio HK, http://www.localstudiohk.com [Accessed on 7/6/2016].

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Mach, Zdzislaw, 1993, Symbols, Conflict and Identity: Essays in Political Anthropology. New York: State University of New York Press. Memehk.com 2015, War between China and Hong Kong. Available from http:// news.memehk.com/posts/12124 [Accessed on 4/6/2016]. Shi, Jiangtao, “China ‘the new driver’ to boost global economic growth, says Tung Chee-hwa,” South China Morning Post, 2 December 2016, at http://www.scmp. com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2051099/china-new-driver-boostglobal-economic-growth-says-tung [Accessed on 4/6/2016]. Steger, Isabella and Huang, Macro, “In 0-0 Draw, Hong Kong Soccer Fans ‘Boo’ Chinese Anthem – On Paper”, The Wall Street Journal, 18 November 2015, at http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2015/11/18/in-0-0-draw-hong-kongsoccer-fans-boo-chinese-anthem-on-paper/ [Accessed on 7/6/2016]. Sung, Yun-Wing, Ng Alex C.Y., Wu Yubao., and Yiu, Alex W.H., 2015, The Economic Benefits of Mainland Tourists for Hong Kong: The Individual Visit (IVS) and Multi Entry Individual Visit Endorsements (M-Permit). Hong Kong: Shanghai-Hong Kong Development Institute. Wong, Wai Kwok Benson, 2015, “Discrimination against the Mainland Chinese and Hong Kong’s Defense of Local Identity,” in Richard Greggory Johnson III ed., China’s New 21st-century Realities: Social Equity in a Time of Change. New York: Peter Lang, pp. 23–37. ———, 2013a, “Interpreting political image of Donald Tsang in alternative media”, Cultural Studies@Lingnan, 33, at http://commons.ln.edu.hk/mcsln/vol33/ iss1/4/ [Accessed on 6/6/2016]. ———, 2013b, “’Who need identity?’ National education and identity politics,” Journal of Local Discourse 2012: Government-Business Collusion. Taipei: Azoth Books, pp. 87–102. Wu, Jieh-min., 2012, The Imagination of the Third Type of China. Taipei: Zuoan.

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From past to future Hong Kong’s democratic movement Benny Y. T. Tai

Hong Kongers have been striving for democracy for more than thirty years. The ultimate aim stated in Hong Kong’s constitutional instrument, the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (“Basic Law”), is that Hong Kongers can elect the Chief Executive (“CE”) and all members of the Legislative Council by universal and equal suffrage. This is still not reached. This article aims to examine the chance for Hong Kong to establish a genuine democratic system in the future. To project a possible path that Hong Kong’s democratic development may take in the coming years, the past of Hong Kong’s democratic development must first be reviewed. The pace and the form of the changes in Hong Kong’s political system in the past thirty years were shaped by two main factors. The first was the stance of Hong Kong’s sovereign. In the past years, all important decisions concerning Hong Kong’s political system were made by her sovereigns, primarily on the basis of their concerns rather than the democratic wish of Hong Kongers. The second was the political attitude of Hong Kongers. They have changed from being apolitical to highly politically motivated in their desire to establish a democratic system in Hong Kong. These two factors are still influencing the trajectory of Hong Kong’s democratic development. Looking ahead, if the Chinese Communist Party (“CCP”) still refuses to loosen her grip over Hong Kong, the chance to establish a genuine democratic system in Hong Kong is small. The opportunity will only come if the CCP is prepared to adjust her policy towards Hong Kong or is so occupied by internal problems that she has no room to care about matters happening here. However, if that opportunity comes, Hong Kongers must be ready and have developed the capacity to grasp it. Democratic development in Hong Kong may also “loop back” and bring changes to the political landscape in China. The first part examines why there was no large-scale democratic movement in Hong Kong, even though Hong Kong had reached a high level of economic development in the 1980s, and why there was still no advancement in Hong Kong’s democracy after a very sizeable democracy movement in 2014. The second part projects what may be the future of Hong Kong’s democracy in light of China’s political development. The third part gives suggestions on what Hong Kong’s democratic movement can do now.

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The past: sovereigns and people Looking at Hong Kong’s education level and economic growth, Hong Kong should have achieved democracy or Hong Kongers should have developed at least a strong demand for democracy long ago (Sing, 2009). The political reality was that a truly large-scale democratic movement did not come to Hong Kong until early 2013. High education level and advanced economic development should be strong democratization forces and can only be offset by even stronger counteracting factors (Huntington, 1991). Two such factors existed in Hong Kong’s past political context. The first factor was the stance of her sovereign masters concerning the nature and the reason for introducing democratic reform in Hong Kong. The second factor was the motivation and determination of Hong Kongers towards the introduction of democratic elections in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong’s sovereigns Hong Kong’s sovereign masters have never wholeheartedly supported genuine democratic reform in Hong Kong. All the changes to the political system of Hong Kong in the past thirty years were initiated and designed by her sovereign masters. All democratic reforms were introduced to serve primarily the political interest of the masters rather than out of a respect for the political right of Hong Kongers to self-govern. Hong Kong had been a British colony till 1997. To the British during the colonial years, democratic reform was never on the political agenda. Only in the late 1970s, when the lease over the main part of the Hong Kong colony, the New Territories, was going to expire in less than 30 years, did the British start to prepare for Hong Kong’s democratization because it was believed serious consideration must be given the future of Hong Kong (Tai, 1999). The true intention of the British was self-serving. The British wanted to show to the world they were not being irresponsible in handing six million free people back to an authoritarian state. With seeds of democracy planted in the soil of Hong Kong, they could claim that the retreat of the British Empire was glorious as the people in Hong Kong would still be able to benefit from the British legacy in the years to come. Though the scale of democratization during that short period was small, it might have aroused the desire in Hong Kongers for more democracy after their first such taste of democracy. Though the then Premier of China, Zhao Ziyang, had promised university students in Hong Kong that Hong Kong’s return to the motherland would be a democratic one, the CCP has her own understanding of democracy. Her version of democracy is democratic centralism or democracy with Chinese characteristics. This system may involve elections, but only on the condition that the high authorities know the result before the votes are cast. The CCP found it difficult to reject a suggestion from the British side during the negotiation of Hong Kong’s future that elections should be introduced into

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Hong Kong’s political system. Denying Hong Kongers their right to elect their own political leaders might suggest that the Chinese side was meaner than her counterpart. At that time, the CCP was just beginning her economic modernization. She also wanted to present a good image to the world that China was peaceful and open-minded. In Hong Kong’s return to China, not only was democracy promised but also a high degree of autonomy. The CCP knew that so long as Beijing retained the final power to give substantial meanings to Hong Kong’s constitutional provisions concerning autonomy, democracy and universal suffrage, anything could be manipulated. Nothing would be out of control or deviate from her grand plan of unifying China through the “One Country, Two Systems” policy. The CCP’s version of “One Country, Two Systems” is always to have “One Country” as the premise of “Two Systems”. Hong Kong as a special administrative region is allowed to practice autonomy but only on the condition that it cannot threaten the interest of the CCP. The format of allocating powers to Hong Kong, the design of the systems in Hong Kong, and the actual exercise of the autonomous powers by Hong Kong must be totally based on this conception of “One Country, Two Systems” (Tai, 2002). Universal suffrage was set to be the ultimate aim of constitutional development in the election method of the CE and all members of the legislative in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. When and how Hong Kong’s election systems could develop were pre-determinately stated in the Basic Law. A ten-year timetable was included in the Basic Law giving an impression that universal suffrage could be introduced in 2007. However, when the CCP judged in 2004 that the time was not ripe for launching universal suffrage in Hong Kong because she still could not win the hearts of Hong Kongers, universal suffrage to be introduced in 2007 was postponed to 2012 (Chen, 2004). A similar assessment was made in 2007 and the introduction was further postponed to 2017 (Chen, 2008). Knowing that further delay might hurt the legitimacy of both the CCP and the Hong Kong government, the plan to introduce universal suffrage into Hong Kong in 2017 could not again be held off. The CCP this time had to resort to another strategy. Meanings of relevant provisions of the Basic Law would be manipulated to ensure the system of universal suffrage to be introduced in Hong Kong must only produce persons responsible to govern Hong Kong to be people that the CCP can trust. This top-down model of political change allows the master to set the activation, pace, scope and form of changes according to her interests. If the master’s interest conflicts with the interest of Hong Kongers, there was no question that it must be Hong Kongers’ interest that would be sacrificed.

The depoliticization and pragmatism of Hong Kongers Hong Kongers themselves were also to be blamed. Though their sovereign masters dictated all systemic changes, Hong Kongers could have resisted. Yet, they

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had not. Hong Kongers were still not ready to make a big enough sacrifice to reclaim their democratic rights from their sovereign masters. Many generations of Hong Kongers were migrants from Mainland China. To many of them, Hong Kong was just a borrowed place in borrowed time (Miners, 1991). The Hong Kong dream was to grasp any available opportunity to make as much money as possible so that one and one’s family could enjoy a life as affluent as it could be. Crowded and busy, many people in Hong Kong were always searching for better places either for raising their children or for their retirement. Hong Kong was just a transit or stepping stone for migrants to find their settlement. With this kind of opportunistic and pragmatic mindset (Lam, 2004; Ma, 2011), it was natural that democracy was not high in most Hong Kongers’ agendas. Though the struggle for democracy in Hong Kong had begun about thirty years before, participants were few at the beginning. They were limited to a small circle of intellectuals and university students influenced by democratic thoughts learnt from the West and inspired by waves of democratization in other parts of the world. Mass recognition of the value of democracy was activated not from things internal but by the student movement in Beijing in 1989 demanding democracy. More than a million Hong Kongers joined hundreds of rallies in the spring and summer of 1989 supporting the democratic movement in China. Throughout the years, more than half of the population might have supported democracy in Hong Kong as reflected from public opinion polls and results of the geographical constituency elections of the Legislative Council. However, if these supporters of Hong Kong democracy were asked whether they would actively engage in the struggle, the percentage would dramatically drop. Most supporters of Hong Kong’s democracy were free riders or just wanted to be on the side that would win. Asking them to pay a personal cost to win a public good like democracy for the whole community would be counterintuitive, even for many keen supporters of democracy in Hong Kong. A landmark change in the attitude of Hong Kongers came in 2003 (Peterson, 2005). After six years of dissatisfactory governance by the First CE, Tung Cheehwa, and the untactful attempt to legislate national security laws in Hong Kong, the anger of Hong Kongers mixed with fear burst out in the historical rally on 1 July 2003 with more than half a million people marching together in the street. As a result, the legislative exercise was aborted and Tung resigned 18 months later. More people started to question the legitimacy of the current system as there was no guarantee that the CE elected would stand firm to protect the interest of Hong Kongers. The demand to have the direct right to elect political leaders rather than being handpicked by the CCP started to grow in Hong Kong. Democrats in Hong Kong were in a dilemma. They knew that the continuing use of measures within the legal boundary, such as demonstrations or rallies, would not be strong enough to push the fundamental position of the CCP on this critical issue. However, resorting to illegal means would be too radical to most people, even if it were non-violent. After years of practice of law compliance,

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breaching law for a just cause overstepped the understanding of the rule of law of most people in Hong Kong. Civil disobedience as a means to attain justice was considered to be extreme or radical even by many activists in Hong Kong’s democratic movement, not to mention the general public of Hong Kong.

Occupy Central In 2012, C.Y. Leung was elected to be the Fourth CE of the HKSAR by a 1200-member Election Committee. The Election Committee was elected from a very narrow electoral base composed of only less than 5 per cent of eligible voters in Hong Kong. The most important task of C. Y. Leung was to initiate a process of constitutional reform to design and enact the election method of the Fifth CE in 2017 to attain the ultimate aim of universal suffrage. This would be the litmus test of the degree of substantive autonomy that the CCP was prepared to allow Hong Kong to have. In a political system vesting most of the powers in its CE, releasing control over the selection of the CE would allow Hong Kongers to exercise a genuinely high degree of autonomy. Mass rallies and other lawful methods used in democratic movements in the past thirty years were clearly not strong enough to loosen the tight hold of the CCP on the selection method and process of electing the CE. One can foresee that under the proposed system the CCP would shrewdly employ her powers under the Basic Law. The constitutional reform process would be manipulated to produce an election method that could ensure any CE elected through the socalled “universal suffrage” must be a person whom the CCP could trust or who at least would not be antagonistic towards them. The changes in the political attitude of Hong Kongers may well have established a much stronger base for more assertive social action to demand democracy, but they still had to be consolidated and the different democratic forces better coordinated. With this as the background, I suggested in early 2013 that Hong Kongers should resort to civil disobedience if they really wanted to have democracy in Hong Kong. The “Occupy Central with Love and Peace” Movement (“OCLP”) was initiated in March 2013 by me, Chan Kin-man, an associate professor in sociology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Chu Yiu-ming, a retired Baptist pastor and a veteran social activist. Most of the democratic forces in Hong Kong were soon united under the umbrella of OCLP. The ultimate goal of OCLP was to push for an election method for the CE of the HKSAR that could have satisfied the international standards on universal suffrage provided under Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights applicable to Hong Kong through Article 39 of the Basic Law. The international standards on universal and equal suffrage include at least three requirements: that every eligible voter has an equal number of votes, equal weight for each vote and no unreasonable restriction on the right to stand for election. Any restriction must be justifiable on objective and reasonable criteria. A restriction that can be used to screen out a candidate purely on grounds of

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political opinions would surely not be considered reasonable (United Nations Human Rights Committee, 1996). In addition, the nomination method of candidates must ensure genuine choice in the elections (Forsyth et al., 2014). The planned civil disobedient action was to have at least 10,000 people occupying main streets in Central, the main business district of Hong Kong. The protesters were expected to adhere strictly to the spirit of non-violence and not physically struggle with the police. All protesters would only peacefully sit down on the street waiting to be removed by the police by whatever degree of force that would be used upon them. The “Occupy Central” action might create some social disturbance but that was not the main objective of the non-violent action. The US civil rights leader and Noble Peace Prize laureate, Martin Luther King, Jr., outlined the spirit of civil disobedience in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (King, 1991). According to King, a civil disobedient act, like other non-violent actions, is illegal, but a person who has committed a civil disobedient act will voluntarily surrender herself to the authorities and is willing to bear legal responsibility. According to conditions for civil disobedience set by King, one must first collect enough information to ascertain whether injustice does exist. Existing mechanisms to change the unjust law or system must be exhausted first. One must also carefully calculate the cost that might be incurred before taking part in any civil disobedient action. The Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong in “An Urgent Call for Earnest Dialogue and Resect Regarding Universal Suffrage and Civil Disobedience” added another condition (Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong, 2013). The act of civil disobedience must be a just and proportionate response to the injustice that it reasonably seeks and hopes to prevent or remove. OCLP committed itself to these principles of civil disobedience in organizing the “Occupy Central” action. Through the action, it was hoped that Hong Kongers would be alerted to the injustice and unfairness of a system of election that could not satisfy the international standards on universal and equal suffrage. Civil disobedient acts would only be committed after OCLP’s proposal on the election method of the CE was not accepted by the CCP after negotiation. OCLP believed in multiple dimensions of democracy. People should have the right to make their choices independently in a democratic process. In addition, they should only make the decision after a detailed and well-designed deliberative process in which they receive adequate and balanced information on the options and are facilitated to understand the underlying ideas and viewpoints of people holding different opinions. To the former notion of democracy, i.e. competitive democracy, must be added the latter notion of democracy, i.e. deliberative democracy (Fishkin, 2009). Since OCLP’s goal was to strive for democratic elections in Hong Kong, the process to determine the actual proposal on the election method of the CE naturally must also be compatible with the spirit of democracy. To bring in a higher quality of democracy, a deliberative process was designed and incorporated to facilitate participants to choose the concrete proposal after they had considered detailed and balanced information on the pros and cons of different proposals

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and listened conscientiously to people holding different viewpoints. A series of deliberation meetings were organised to achieve this objective. Three proposals were selected in these deliberative meetings and were put forward for Hong Kongers to select in a “civil referendum”. More than 790,000 Hong Kongers participated through an electronic platform by casting their votes through their mobile phones, the Internet or at polling stations. The proposal which got the most support was formally put forward to the Hong Kong government for consideration. The proposal included an element of civil nomination in the nominating procedures, a procedure of nominating a candidate by a prescribed number of citizens. As King said, the objective of civil disobedience is to raise the concern of other people with the injustice in the existing laws or systems. Winning people’s sympathy and support may cause them to join or even initiate subsequent actions to change the unjust laws or systems. The goal of OCLP was the same. In preparing for the deliberative meetings and the civil referendum, the works aimed also to prompt more Hong Kongers to understand the meaning and significance of universal and equal suffrage as a fundamental right enjoyable by all people. Hong Kongers were also impelled to reflect on the role of civil disobedience in striving for democracy and justice in Hong Kong and consider whether they were prepared to pay a higher personal cost for realising the ideal. At the beginning, not many Hong Kongers could understand the meaning of civil disobedience. Even fewer would accept or practice it. But after the work of OCLP over more than twenty months since early 2013, at least one-third of the population supported using civil disobedience as a means to strive for genuine universal suffrage in Hong Kong. This represented an important change in the political and legal culture of Hong Kong. Even though the majority of the population was still against civil disobedience, supporters of civil disobedience had reached a critical level making it difficult for the Hong Kong government to ignore their demands.

The CCP takes a hard line Throughout the process of constitutional reform, the CCP emphasised that the power to nominate CE candidates must be vested in the Nominating Committee (“NC”) only, and that the power must be a substantive one. The CCP was clearly against civil nomination because it would either bypass the nomination procedures of the NC or at least undermine the substantive power of the NC to nominate candidates. The CCP also emphasised that the CE must be a person who “loves the country and loves Hong Kong”, which was another means for Beijing to retain de facto control over who could be elected as the CE. In selecting the CE, the CCP might still care about the person’s capability to govern Hong Kong effectively and their enjoyment of substantial public support in Hong Kong, but these qualities were not as important as their trustworthiness in safeguarding the interest of the sovereign at all times.

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In June 2014, the State Council published the “White Paper on the Practice of the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ Policy in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region”. It was stated that the policy of “One Country, Two Systems” required all those who administer Hong Kong, including the CE, to have the responsibility of safeguarding the country’s sovereignty, security and development interests. Therefore, they must love the country and must be patriots to ensure that the practice of “One Country, Two Systems” in the HKSAR would not deviate from its right direction. On 31 August 2014, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (“NPCSC”) issued a decision on the election method of the CE (“831 Decision”). The NPCSC laid down specific and very strict requirements on the election method of the CE by universal suffrage in addition to the determination that starting from 2017 the selection of the CE could be implemented by the method of universal suffrage. The number of members, composition and formation of the NC has to be made in accordance with the number of members, composition and formation method of the Election Committee for the 4th CE. The NC can only nominate two to three candidates for the office of CE in accordance with democratic procedures. Each candidate must have the endorsement of more than half of all the members of the nominating committee. This decision dashed any hope for genuine universal suffrage.

Umbrella Movement The “831 Decision” proved that OCLP’s strategy of creating social tension by posing a threat of civil disobedience to force the CCP to make concession in the constitutional reform failed. In September 2014, OCLP began to plan for the occupy action. The original plan was to occupy a pedestrian area in Central on 1 October, the National Day. It was expected that the police would remove protesters peacefully sitting down on the street not too long after their permission to stay expired. Students in Hong Kong organised class boycotts from 22–26 September 2014 to pave the way for the occupation day. Events developed beyond everyone’s expectation. On the day, 26 September 2014, at around 10 p.m. students gathered outside the Government Headquarter Office and jumped into and occupied a public square, which was at the time closed for public use. A few hundred protesters supporting the students gathered in the public areas outside the Government Headquarter Office. Police tried to use pepper spray to disperse the crowd, but failed. More people joined the students on the next day. OCLP also joined the protesters. As people had gathered, OCLP announced an early start of the “Occupy Central” action in early morning on 28 September. The site was moved to the public areas outside the Government Headquarter Office. Supporters of OCLP were called to join the occupation outside the Government Headquarter Office. Around noon on 28 September 2014, the police enclosed the area outside the Government Headquarter Office preventing people from joining the hundreds

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there. Out of everyone’s expectation including the police themselves, thousands of citizens swarmed into the main roads. The traffic was abruptly stopped. When that happened, the police took a more drastic move to disperse the protesters blocking roads by firing tear gas at them. These 87 canisters of tear gas had changed the fate of Hong Kong. Not only did they fail to disperse the protesters, but the firing of tear gas at peaceful citizens provoked even more Hong Kongers to come out of their safe homes and march in the streets. People were angry and heart-broken. The wave of occupation was almost unstoppable. Protesters occupied main streets in Admiralty, Mongkok and Causeway Bay, all busy districts in Hong Kong, for as long as 79 days. The occupiers were not scared off by tear gas, pepper spray, batons, attacks by hired thugs or even the threat of bloody clearance by the People’s Liberation Army. Different from the past, a new generation of democrats was born. Compared with their predecessors, they are more assertive, resilient, flexible, pluralistic and innovative. Their style of civil disobedience was not the same as the one advocated by OCLP. Protesters preferred not to sit on the street passively waiting to the removed and arrested by the police. Armed with defensive “weapons” like plastic wrap, upturned umbrellas, medical masks, and foam mat shields, they stood firm to defend every barricade at the front. All these characteristics were reflected in the occupied areas though expressed in different styles during the unforgettable 79 days. The movement had evolved into something very different from the original Occupy Central plan. Faced with such an unprecedented scale of civil resistance, C. Y. Leung first resorted to violent suppression. But for some unknown reasons, the police stepped back from scaling up the degree of force after the use of tear gas could not drive away the crowd. It is possible that the CCP did not want to see bloodshed on the streets. It was rumoured that the Hong Kong police received a last minute command from the CCP to stop firing rubber bullets at the protesters. The Hong Kong government then altered its strategy from confronting the protesters to playing a waiting game. Knowing the prolonged occupation of roads would generate social inconvenience beyond a level many Hong Kong citizens, who were already unexpectedly forbearing, could tolerate, it was hoped that the protesters would be worn down and worn out by the delay tactics. To a certain extent, this was successful. Popular support of the occupation started to drop after the occupation lasted for more than one month. However, there were still many protesters who steadfastly decided to stay until the action could bear fruit in the political reform. All occupied areas were finally cleared in midDecember 2014 on the basis of injunction orders issued by the courts.

Government proposal vetoed The second round of consultation of the constitutional reform was postponed when the occupation started. The two-month consultation was resumed in January 2015 after three months of postponement when all occupations ended.

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The CCP was not prepared to make any concession in this round of constitution reform. Even with a 79-day-long occupation, in the political dispute on Hong Kong democratic development, the CCP did not move an inch. PanDemocratic Camp legislators also were not prepared to back down. The government proposal for the election method of the Fifth CE in 2017 was finally vetoed by the Legislative Council in June 2015. As a result, the Fifth CE in 2017 will have to be elected through the same election method as the Fourth CE in 2012. The CE, so elected, will not have the legitimacy to deal with the ever-worsening governance conditions. In a Hong Kong without genuine universal suffrage, more governmental crises and political gridlock can be expected. If the goal of OCLP or the occupation during the Umbrella Movement was to successfully reform the existing election system of Hong Kong to satisfy international democratic standards on universal suffrage, then these actions have not attained the objective, at least up to this very moment. However, OCLP knew the chance of reaching this goal could not be high from the beginning. There is no precedent in the history of civil resistance or civil disobedience that systemic injustice can be removed at one go. It is within the plan that Hong Kong may need years of work before the democratic goal can be achieved. What is important is to lay a sound foundation through continuous actions to prepare for future success. In the twenty months’ work of OCLP in organizing the “Occupy Central” action and the unprecedented 79-day occupation, a solid groundwork is now in place. The political culture of Hong Kongers has irreversibly changed. People are much more receptive to civil disobedience. Many are also ready to make more sacrifice for Hong Kong’s democracy. Seeds of hope for democracy have been deeply planted in Hong Kong’s soil.

The future: political developments in China and Hong Kong Before we can decide what can be done now to advance Hong Kong’s democratic movement, we must first look at what may be the future of Hong Kong’s political development. To project what would be the future of Hong Kong’s democracy, it is reasonable to assume that the two factors influencing the past developments would continue to have a significant impact on the future: the will of the sovereign and the will of Hong Kongers. The CCP exercising the sovereign power over Hong Kong for the years ahead will continue to block any major advancement in Hong Kong’s democracy out of her anxiety that Hong Kong would become an anti-Communist base. This concern arises from the CCP’s assessment of her own governance status in the whole China. Hong Kong will have no chance to practise true democracy unless the CCP is willing to change its stance on Hong Kong. Whether the CCP is prepared to make such a change depends on the political development not in Hong Kong but in China. The impact of such changes might spill over and allow democracy to come to Hong Kong at the end. Would there be such a fundamental change in the political landscape in China? If yes, when would that happen and what will that be?

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The future must be full of questions. There might not be any definite answers to these questions but the answers would surely determine the future of Hong Kong’s democracy.

China at a crossroads David Shambaugh, a well-known China watcher, published an article in the Wall Street Journal in 2015, predicting that the “endgame of Chinese communist rule has now begun” (Shambaugh, 2015). In his book China’s Future published in 2016, Shambaugh provides more insightful views on the future of China under President Xi Jinping (Shambaugh, 2016). According to Shambaugh, China has now reached a political crossroads, and there are four options lying before the leaders of the CCP: 1 2 3

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Neo-Totalitarianism (the kind of personal despotism and personality cult practised by Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution); Hard Authoritarianism (the current path being taken by President Xi with tight control over all sectors of the society); Soft Authoritarianism (the ruling model adopted by former President Hu Jintao allowing a limited degree of freedoms for the civil society and the people); Semi-Democracy (something similar to the current political system of Singapore).

Shambaugh believes that if China were to regress to the state of neo-totalitarianism, the country would inevitably go on a steep decline or even collapse eventually. In the meantime, the current political path of hard authoritarianism adopted by Xi Jinping, which he predicts will most likely be embraced as the ruling model that will guide China through the period ahead, may result in partial and incomplete reform and relative economic stagnation. The eventual collapse may only be delayed. On the other hand, if the CCP returns to the kind of soft authoritarianism adopted by former President Hu Jintao, then the country may be able to continue with its moderate reform, which might bring about partial political change, but the root problem of the CCP’s governance still cannot be resolved. In Shambaugh’s opinion, only through an evolution to semi-democracy, similar to that which has been practised in Singapore, can the outdated mode of governance of China be truly transformed into a modern state. Under this model, a multi-party system, partially free elections, judicial independence, parliamentary politics, limited freedom of press, a professional and efficient bureaucratic system, free market economy and a legal system that guarantees basic human rights will have to be introduced to China. Although Shambaugh believes semi-democracy is the best option for both China and the CCP, he remains pessimistic about the prospect of China adopting it in the short term. He sees it as unlikely that Xi Jinping would voluntarily

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relinquish the absolute power he has amassed over the past years. If China under Xi Jinping regressed to neo-totalitarianism as happened during the time of Mao Zedong, its future would be anything but promising, according to Shambaugh. Even though one might not necessarily agree with Shambaugh’s analysis and point of view on China’s future, one thing that he has pointed out is certainly beyond dispute: China is definitely at a historical crossroads and her economic reforms have reached a decisive yet delicate stage. Social and cultural changes brought by the modernization processes introduced by the CCP coupled with globalization are shaking the power foundation of the regime. More Chinese people are not satisfied with the CCP, especially because corruption is deeply rooted in the CCP’s mode of governance. The CCP might have developed multipronged methodologies to handle the growth of social unrest but its prevalence means this is only buying stability by providing material concessions to protesters (Lee and Zhang, 2013; see also Ringen, 2016). Stability seems to be maintained but the authoritarian regime remains vulnerable. If the CCP fails to maintain economic growth, resulting in a fiscal crisis, there may no longer be any ready cash for her to buy stability and she could not rely on “performance legitimacy” as the justification for her domination. The widening gap between China’s fast-growing economy plus rising public awareness about civil rights and its backward laws has given rise to a social force that could topple the communist regime. Therefore, in order to continue to survive and rule, the CCP must introduce the long awaited political reform. If she were to introduce genuine political reform, it must include some kind of electoral reform. Hong Kong would be the best place to conduct electoral experiments. This is the opportunity of Hong Kong’s democratic advancement. What would happen if the CCP collapsed? It might inevitably result in a period of widespread chaos or even civil wars across the country. But after a period of political turmoil, people in certain regions across the Mainland who share the same cultural and language identities might unite to form several independent political entities. If these entities have the wisdom to see the need to find ways to reconnect with each other in a constitutional manner, they may become the building blocks of a Chinese federation (Davis, 1999). That will be another opportunity for Hong Kong’s democratic advancement. The perception of the future of China will inevitably shape Hong Kongers’ perception of Hong Kong’s future.

Hong Kong also at a crossroads Like China, Hong Kong is also at a crossroads, and the four exits at Hong Kong’s crossroads may correspond with the four exits of China’s crossroads. The exits of Hong Kong are: 1

“One Country, One System” (Hong Kong totally integrated with the Mainland systems);

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Undemocratic Autonomy (the governance system under the Basic Law as understood by the White Paper); Democratic Autonomy (Hong Kong practicing a true democratic system in her self-governance); Independence of Hong Kong.

If China were to regress to neo-totalitarianism, it is very likely that Hong Kong would be merged totally with the other parts of China and become one of the many cities in the Mainland. This is surely an option that most Hong Kongers could not accept. Ironically, as predicted by Shambaugh, regression to neo-totalitarianism might lead to the final collapse of the CCP, and this might create an unimaginable opportunity for Hong Kong to become independent. When China is thrown into a complete chaos or even fallen into civil wars, the uncertainty over the sovereignty of the whole of China will make the improbable choice of independence during peacetime become possible. Hong Kongers may get the recognition from the international community to become an independent state to avoid Hong Kong being dragged into the crisis in China. If hard authoritarianism under Xi Jinping continues, undemocratic autonomy in Hong Kong will be the best match. This will also be the most likely choice of the CCP. The Hong Kong system will remain different and separate from the Mainland system, but the people governing Hong Kong must be those that the CCP can trust so that its interests will be well protected. A genuine democratic election is unlikely to come, and all Hong Kongers could have would be a kind of universal suffrage with Chinese characteristics in which all candidates to important political offices would have to be screened first by the CCP. If Shambaugh is right that hard authoritarianism would not be sustainable in China as limited reform could not break the stagnation or stop the decline, then it follows that similar events will also happen in Hong Kong. Undemocratic autonomy would not resolve the governance deadlock in Hong Kong, and the deep polarization in Hong Kong society would further deteriorate. Both hard authoritarianism and undemocratic autonomy are very unstable systems. Uncertainty will be high in the coming years. Most Hong Kongers would be satisfied if Hong Kong could exercise democratic autonomy. It is not possible to achieve democratic autonomy under neototalitarianism or hard authoritarianism, but this outcome would have a better chance under soft authoritarianism in China. According to Shambaugh, moderate reform would be introduced under soft authoritarianism, but the changes could only be partial. These changes might pave the way for further development into a semidemocracy, bringing to China a range of political goods. Democratic autonomy in Hong Kong is compatible with the semi-democratic environment in China. It is likely that the demand for independence in Hong Kong would be significantly weakened, and a positive and trusting relationship would then be re-established between Hong Kong and China.

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The future of China is full of uncertainties and so will be the future of Hong Kong as their fates are mingled together. The choice of the leaders of the CCP will surely affect the development in Hong Kong, but the choice of Hong Kongers may also influence the decision of the Chinese leaders. Therefore, it is still important for Hong Kongers to know where they are up to after the Umbrella Movement.

The present: what can we do now? The Umbrella Movement must be the landmark of Hong Kong’s democratic development. The 79-day occupation has changed Hong Kong. After the end of the occupation in the Umbrella Movement, Hong Kong with its democratic movement enters into a new era. We can call this the Post-Umbrella Era. In this new Hong Kong, the society becomes more pluralistic, horizontal, networked and autonomous. No authority, norm or political power can flatten or suppress the pluralistic thoughts, values and actions blossoming in the community. More and more people will not accept hierarchical social relationships. Instead, people enjoying equal status will interact, but not be led in the newly developed horizontal relationships. Every autonomous individual will have her own thinking and the capacity to actualise it in her own ways. Yet, individuals are not dissociated from each other but will be connected as nodes in multi-nucleate and overlapping networks. In this network relationship, what is needed is not a charismatic leader but active members. Active members playing the role of coordinator can connect other members in the same network closely and link separate networks together. Hong Kong’s democratic movement in the Post-Umbrella Era must respond to this latest phenomenon by evolving into a new form.

Which exit? This new phenomenon in the Post-Umbrella Era can release much political energy for the democratic movement but may also generate more internal conflicts dissipating its political energy if there is no good coordination among the different democratic forces. In facing the uncertainties in Hong Kong and China, different people in the democratic movement have their own preferences in Hong Kong’s crossroads. There are three main groups which we can refer to as the Two-systemists, Self-determinationalists and Independentists. Two-systemists hope that the CCP will one day honour her promise in the Basic Law and allow Hong Kong to introduce genuine universal suffrage. Self-determinationists have lost hope in the “One Country, Two Systems” and the Basic Law. They believe that Hong Kongers should enjoy the right to self-determination (International Commission of Jurists, 1992; Wong, 2007). Though they do not support independence of Hong Kong, they insist that Hong Kongers should have the right to determine Hong Kong’s political status through a referendum and decide the economic, social and cultural development of Hong

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Kong through democratic governance in its internal affairs (Rosas, 1993: 232). They will demand a re-negotiation with the CCP to establish a new autonomous arrangement between Hong Kong and China. Like Self-determinationalists, the Independentists also have no trust in the CCP and the Basic Law, but they believe that only if Hong Kong becomes an independent state could Hong Kongers actually practice democratic governance. However, if the CCP collapses and China falls into disarray, Two-systemists, Selfdeterminationalists, and Independentists might all join together to support the independence of Hong Kong, as this may be the only way for Hong Kong to survive in the turmoil. They may have different preferences in the Hong Kong crossroads and may take different paths to reach their preferred exits. No one at this stage can tell who is right as the futures of Hong Kong and China are both full of uncertainties. However, they do have one thing in common, which they see as in the interest of all Hong Kongers, which is the belief that Hong Kong people need to be more self-conscious of their identity as Hong Kongers (Laurinavičiūtė, 2013). In this way, they hope that the democratic forces can continue to grow and consolidate in this long fight for democratic governance in Hong Kong.

Enlarging the capacity of Hong Kong’s democratic movement Though Two-systemists, Self-determinationalists and Independentists may have different goals, the democratic movement of Hong Kong needs a new form of organization and to develop new strategies in this new era to coordinate and consolidate different democratic forces. To creatively reorganise Hong Kong’s democratic movement, the traditional leader-follower structure will have to be abandoned. Instead, we can compile two covenants. The first one is a personal one and the other is social. The personal covenant is a set of encompassing principles delineating the spirit of the democratic movement like non-violence, equality and fairness. Most supporters of democracy should not find them difficult to embrace. People who have endorsed the personal covenant publicly or privately are expected to live by these principles not only in the public sphere but also in their private lives. There will be no monitoring mechanism but its enforcement relies totally on signatories’ self-discipline or peer support. The social covenant includes policy suggestions and action plans on different governance arenas. The draft of each governance arena will be prepared together by concerned civil society groups, interested or affected citizens, academics, and experts in the selected field. Deliberative meetings on the draft of the social covenant will be organised. Citizen from all backgrounds will engage in dialogue with the assistance of facilitators. Views collected can be incorporated hoping that consensus can be reached on the final draft of the social covenant. The whole community will then ratify the final draft through an unofficial and non-binding referendum. The deliberative and authorization processes are to bestow legitimacy to the social covenant, which provides the foundation of

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Hong Kong’s democratic governance. The policy suggestions and action plans can be used as benchmarks to evaluate and monitor decisions and actions of the undemocratic government. The covenants also can be the basis of the new constitution for Hong Kong when it is needed. Hong Kong’s democratic movement also needs to rethink her strategy so as to continue non-violent resistance in fighting for democracy in Hong Kong. From the experiences of other places, one key factor for civil resistance action to succeed is resilience (Schnock, 2013). Resilience means the ability of the civil resistant movement to withstand and recover from repression, sustaining its campaign despite the actions of opponents aimed at constraining or inhibiting their activities (ibid). Especially in confronting very powerful opponents like in the case of Hong Kong, one should not expect the action would be successful in a single attempt. Resilience will then be very much needed. The question is how resilience can be developed for the civil resistance movement. Facing the severe and ruthless repression by the CCP, people may lose heart and feel powerless. A firm conviction on the cause of the movement in the supporters is very much needed. But dissidents must also have concrete methods to remain resilient in their struggle. This is exactly the situation Hong Kong’s democratic movement is encountering at this moment. One way to remain resilient is to adjust strategy and method at different stages of the struggle. Unlike violent acts, non-violent acts aim not to overthrow the system directly but to weaken the legitimacy of the governing regime or system. All authorities rely on the voluntary acceptance of the people they are governing to sustain their governance. The ruling regime does not need active support from the people. If most people voluntarily and in some cases unconsciously support the regime out of ignorance, apathy, habit or fear, the regime’s power can be maintained. But if non-violent actions can alert more people to see the illegitimacy and injustice of the regime or the system, more will be unwilling to continue to accept the rule voluntarily. The chance of bringing systemic change will then be increased (Chenoweth and Stephan, 2011; Engler and Engler, 2016). There are different kinds of non-violent actions (Schock, 2005; Sharp, 1973). Direct actions are those that are public, political and confrontational, disturbing social order, like a demonstration, rally, sit-in and occupation. Even though direct action may disturb social order to a certain extent, its function is the same. Its purpose is not to rock the regime or the system directly but to challenge the authorities and, should they respond by inflicting violence against peaceful protesters, undermine their legitimacy. The higher degree of force the state uses, the bigger would be the impact on the legitimacy of the regime or system. Indirect actions are low profile and relatively non-political acts in daily life that cause no disturbance to social order, like symbol wearing, street performance, exhibition and community organization. If the goal of changing the unjust system cannot be achieved by direct action, the movement will then have to wait for another opportunity. Before it comes, the strategy is to change to the indirect action. It can have three effects. First, the legitimacy of the unjust regime or system can continue to be weakened day by day. As indirect actions are not political,

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the chance of being suppressed will be lower. Second, indirect actions can further consolidate and develop the organization of the opposition forces. Third, indirect actions can bring further cultural transformation. A kind of indirect action is parallel institution building (Bartkowski, 2013: 350). Parallel institution building refers to the setting up of an alternative unofficial institution performing similar functions of an existing official institution. It serves the same purpose of discrediting the current system by exposing its systemic injustice. People can easily identify them as they observe the two institutions operating in parallel. This can also demonstrate the robustness of the civil society, in that it has the capacity to replace the official institutions. The legitimacy of the existing system will then be further questioned. An example of parallel institution building is that Hong Kongers can organise a civil election of the CE in parallel with the official election and elect a Civil CE. The official election system excludes millions of voters in Hong Kong but the civil election system is open for all eligible voters to nominate a civil candidate and vote through an electronic voting platform. Even though the Civil CE does not enjoy any official status or formal powers, together with the political parties in the democratic camp represented in the Legislative Council, the Civil CE can form a shadow government. Enjoying an even higher legitimacy than the official system, the works of the official CE and his government can be rigorously monitored by the parallel institution established. To organise a large scale direct action, the legitimacy of the existing regime or system must be weakened to a critical level and the civil resistance movement must also be well organised with enough people awakened and sufficient strength accumulated. This may just take time. By shifting to indirect action, the civil resistance movement can better prepare itself for another direct action when time is ripe. If the following direct action is still not successful, strategy will be changed again back to indirect action until the final success. History tells us that if dissidents can persist and not give up, understand the logic and comprehend the wisdom of civil resistance, adjust and mix strategies elastically they will succeed in the end. In almost all social movements, protesters disagree over the strategic function of using violence. It is also natural that some protesters in a peaceful movement may shift to support the use of violence when the non-violent means cannot deliver immediate result and protesters have to face imminent suppression. In other words, it is the authorities that drive peaceful protesters to become violent. Even among non-violent protesters, some may consider it is beneficial to the movement if there is a radical wing advocating the use of violence in advancing the same goal. It is called the radical flank effect (Schock, 2005). They believe that the authorities may be more willing to listen to their claims and reach compromise with them because violent protesters must be more difficult to deal with. However, the radical flank effect does not necessarily result in positive outcomes. It can also generate negative outcomes because the advocacy of violence in the same movement may turn many moderate supporters away. Whether the radical flank effect will be positive or negative may have to be determined by the political culture of the community. Knowing that most Hong

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Kongers are mild and gentle even when they are protesting, it is strongly advised that the democratic movement of Hong Kong should not risk exploiting the radical flank effect, as tolerance of the use of violence may backfire. There should also be negotiation inside the toolbox of civil resistance (Johnston, 2008). Civil resistance is to end the injustice of the society and negotiation is to reach an agreement: the two seem to be totally unrelated. On the one hand, many civil resistance activists consider negotiation to be compromise, causing split, defeatism, and weakness in faith in the cause of the movement. On the other hand, people believing in negotiation will either think that a spirit of civil resistance is too militant for successful negotiation, or is too passive and feeble in generating sufficient bargaining power to negotiate with the opponent. However, the two, though they are different, have also a lot of commonalities. If they can be used synergistically, both can be more effective in reaching their goal at the end. Civil resistance and negotiation both engage in conflict resolution. Civil resistance aims to end the conflict by first exposing the cause of the injustice, and negotiation aims to end it by finding a solution to remove the injustice that can be accepted by all stakeholders. In this conflict resolution process, the issue of power imbalance must be dealt with. The stronger side may not even see a need to enter into negotiation, as the other side may be too weak, posing an insufficient threat to her interest. Civil resistance can play a key role for the door of negotiation to be opened. Non-violent acts can awaken more people’s concern with an unjust system and weaken its legitimacy, and they will not quiescently accept the unjust rule. If more will turn to support the civil resistance movement, power will be added to this side. If more people can forsake ignorance, apathy, cynicism, selfishness and fear, the power of the civil resistance movement can then be built up gradually to a point that the opponent cannot ignore. As King said, “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue” (King, 1991: 71). In other words, the purpose of civil resistance action is to create an opportunity for negotiation to start. Even if the civil resistance action can gather mass participation generating great pressure on the opponent, it still may not be able to achieve its goal directly. The pressure needs to be converted into bargaining chips through negotiation. Negotiation does not have to be hard bargaining. A problem-solving approach can be adopted. By actively listening to the opponent’s discourse, the core needs, interests and perspectives of the opponent can be ascertained. This would be the opponent’s baseline. If there can be more creativity, a solution can be worked out that will not cross the opponent’s baseline but can achieve one’s goal at the same time. Dispute will have the chance to be resolved and justice will not be a mere possibility but become an actuality (Fisher and Ury, 2011). In this process of dispute resolution, civil resistance is like planting the seeds and negotiation is like reaping the harvest of the struggle. It is critical in finding the right moment to enter into negotiation. Non-violent action usually comes before negotiation, but the opposite can occur and the two can sandwich one

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other. When to end the direct action and when to start negotiation requires a lot of wisdom. This is very much in need in Hong Kong’s democratic movement. Through acquiring a better understanding of how civil resistance works, developing different tools of civil resistance like direct actions, indirect actions and negotiation, and accumulating the wisdom to use the different civil resistance methods strategically, the democratic movement of Hong Kong may still need to wait for a right moment to launch another strike. The opportunity may come when there is a big change in China.

Conclusion: tail wagging the dog? The crossroads in China and Hong Kong are interconnected. Though the democratic movement in Hong Kong primarily aims at the political development in Hong Kong, the work in Hong Kong may loop back and influence the development in China (Gilley, 2004). Hong Kong may have a role in bringing changes in China in the future as in the past (Tsang, 2004). First, Hong Kong’s biggest strength lies in her freedom of information and free speech. Hong Kong can be the Mainland’s window to the free world through which new and progressive ideas can be introduced into the Mainland when drastic changes are under way. Second, unlike their Mainland counterparts, Hong Kong citizens are free from political persecution, thanks to the long-established rule of law and highly developed judicial system. Hong Kong can serve as a supply base for the democratic movement in the Mainland in recruiting and training new members, as well as planning for actions and raising funds. Third, in case the democratic movement on the Mainland is being suppressed, Hong Kong can serve as a sanctuary for the dissidents or a stepping stone to asylum in a third country. For now, the most important task before Hong Kong is to preserve and defend her unique characteristics such as freedom of speech, freedom of information and the rule of law. These are elements that make Hong Kong fundamentally different from other Mainland cities, so that when the time comes, we can be a key player in the changes in China.

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Davis, Michael. (1999). The Case for Chinese Federalism. Journal of Democracy 10:2, pp. 124–137. Engler, Mark and Engler, Paul. (2016). This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century. New York: Nation Books. Fisher, Roger and Ury, William Ur. (2011). Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, revised ed. London: Penguin. Fishkin, James. (2009). When the People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Forsyth, Christopher, Ghai, Yash, Davis, Michael. (2014). “Academic Roundtable on Universal Suffrage and Nomination Procedures: Imperatives from Article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) for the election of Hong Kong’s Chief Executive” organized by the Faculty of Law of the University of Hong Kong on 20 March 2014, www.law.hku.hk/ccpl/events/Article25ICCPR.html (accessed 19 December 2016). Gilley, Bruce. (2004). China’s Democratic Future: How It Will Happen and Where It Will Lead. New York: Columbia University Press. Huntington, Samuel P. (1991). The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. International Commission of Jurists. (1992). Countdown to 1997: Report of a Mission to Hong Kong. Geneva: ICJ. Johnston, Peter D. (2008). Negotiating With Giants: Get What You Want Against the Odds Negotiating With Giants. Cambridge, MA: Negotiation Press. King, Martin Luther Jr. (1991). Letter From Birmingham City Jail. In Hugo Adam Bedau (ed.) Civil Disobedience in Focus. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 68–84. Lam, Wai-Man. (2004). Understanding the Political Culture of Hong Kong: The Paradox of Activism and Depoliticization. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Laurinavičiūtė, Lina. (2013). Peoples: The Perspective of International Public Law. Jurisprudence 20:1, pp. 91–118. Lee, Ching Kwan and Zhang, Yonghong. (2013). The Power of Instability: Unravelling the Micro-foundations of Bargained Authoritarianism in China. American Journal of Sociology 118:16, pp. 1475–1508. Ma, Ngok. (2011). Value Changes and Legitimacy Crisis in Post-industrial Hong Kong. Asian Survey 51:4, pp. 683–712. Miners, Norman. (1991). The Government and Politics of Hong Kong, 5th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Peterson, Carole. (2005). Hong Kong’s Spring of Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the National Security Bill in 2003. In Fu Hualing, Carole J. Peterson and Simon N.M. Yong (eds.) National Security and Fundamental Freedoms: Hong Kong’s Article 23 Under Scrutiny. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Ringen, Stein. (2016). The Perfect Dictatorship: China in the 21st Century. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Rosas, Allan. (1993). Internal Self-Determination. In Christian Tomuschat (ed.) Modern Law of Self-Determination. Dordrecht: M. Nijhoff. Schnock, Kurt. (2013). The Practice and Study of Civil Resistance. Journal of Peace Research 50:3, pp. 277–290. Schock, Kurt. (2005). Unarmed Insurrections: People Power Movements in NonDemocracies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Shambaugh, David. (2015). The Coming Chinese Crack-up. Wall Street Journal, 6 March 2015. Shambaugh, David. (2016). China’s Future. Cambridge: Polity Press. Sharp, Gene. (1973). The Politics of Nonviolent Action. Boston, MA: Porter Sargent. Sing, Ming. (2009). Hong Kong at the Crossroads: Public Pressure for Democratic Reform. In Ming Sing (ed.) Politics and Government in Hong Kong: Crisis Under Chinese Sovereignty. London and New York: Routledge. Tai, Y.T. Benny. (1999). The Development of Constitutionalism in Hong Kong. In Raymond Wacks (ed.) The New Legal Order in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Tai, Y.T. Benny. (2003). One Country Two Systems: The Two Perspectives. Macau Law Journal 2002, pp. 143–163. Tsang, Steve. (2004). A Modern History of Hong Kong. London: I.B. Tauris. United Nations Human Rights Committee. (1996). General Comment No. 25, http:// tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/treatybodyexternal/Download.aspx?symbolno=C CPR%2fC%2f21%2fRev.1%2fAdd.7&Lang=en (accessed 19 December 2016). Wong, Yun-Bor. (2007). Autonomy and Protection of Fundamental Rights in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Hong Kong: LexisNexis.

Index

“831 decision” 1, 158 Abbas, Ackbar 100–2 activism 76 Alliance in Support of the Patriotic Democratic Movement in China (ASPDMC) 38, 44–5 Alliance to Resume British Sovereignty over Hong Kong and Independence 87 Anderson, Benedict 85, 96–8, 108–9 anti-Express Rail Link (XRL) controversy 28–9, 76 anti-immigrant sentiment 51, 56–63, 66–7, 107 anti-Mainland discourse 29–30, 42, 66, 89, 100, 102, 105, 107 anti-national education movement 44, 124 ArchiVision 80 Article 23 39 autonomy 13, 36–7, 40, 43, 77, 95, 155, 163 Baodiao movement 20 Barth, Frederick 31 Basic Law 2, 13, 27, 40, 47–8, 78, 83, 151, 153, 155, 164 Beijing democracy movement 37–8, 44 Bernacchi, Brook 18 Boundary Closed Area 53 candlelight vigils 44–5 Cantonese language 23–4, 60–1, 87, 107, 117, 124–6, 144 Canton-Hong Kong strike 16 Carroll, John 15–16 Castells, Manuel 90 Central District occupation 5, 7, 158–9 Central Government Liaison Office (CGLO) 40

Chan, Ho-tin 87 Chen, Yun 47, 114 see also Chin, Wan Chief Executive (CE): Chinese control of 157–8; civil election of 167; election of 1, 37, 151, 155, 157–8, 160, 167; powers of 155, 158 Chin, Wan 30, 88–9 China: anti-independence of 48; copycat culture of 146, 146i, 147; democracy movements in 37–8, 44, 154; depictions of 75, 142, 147; differences with 135–9; distrust of 63; economic reform of 24, 162; and ethnic separatism 116; handover to 13–14; human rights in 41; imagined community of 99–100; integration with 13; national consciousness of 20–1; opposition to 119; political hegemony of 134–5, 138–9, 141–2, 148; political ideology of 20–1; political reform in 6, 13, 162–4, 169; political system of 121, 161–2; racial identity in 116; resentment of 66–7; and sovereignty 134; symbolic reproduction of 134 China factor: defining 132; resistance to 133–5, 147–8 China’s Future (Shambaugh) 161 Chinese characters 142–5 Chinese communism: distrust of 37–8; resistance to 9, 37–8, 42 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 16–21, 29, 121–2, 134, 151–3, 155, 157, 159–60, 162–3, 166 Chinese elites 15–17 Chinese identity: anti-democratic 47; cultural 26, 117–18, 120, 124; and democratisation 5; and dual identity 4, 15, 22, 24, 36; ethnic 37; and Hong Kong identity 38–9, 46; political 118–19, 121; pragmatic 119; racial

174

Index

117–18, 122; resistance to 119–22, 127; rise of 35 Chinese language 20 Chinese Mainlanders see Mainland Chinese Chinese nationalism 90; and belittlement of Hong Kong identity 23, 26; development of 99; and local consciousness 21, 88; and NationalistCommunist conflicts 16; pro-Beijing 95; and racial homogeneity 98; and refugee society 17; and repatriation 37 Chinese National People’s Congress 1, 83 Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference 95 Chiu, Stephen W. K. 3 Chou, Kee-lee 60 Chow, Pui-ha 39 Chow, York 59, 62 Cinema City Company 23 City-State Autonomy 78, 83, 88–90 civic identity 116, 122–3 civic localism 83–4 civic nationalism 85, 100, 106, 115 civic participation 73 Civic Party (CP) 43–4 Civic Passion 89, 103, 105–6 Civic Square occupation 44 civil disobedience 5, 10, 45, 94, 103, 155–60, 166 civil referendum 157 civil resistance 168–9 Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) 147 collective memories 29, 106–7, 125 collective self-alienation 104–5 colonialism 29, 99 see also Great Britain community organisations 78–9, 79, 80, 82 Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA) 59 constitutional reform process 155–60 consultative democracy 22 copycat culture 146–7 Corbyn, Jeremy 11 cosmopolitanism 82–3; cultural 74–5; defining 73; economic 74; and local consciousness 26–7, 86; moral 74; political 74; types of 73–4 Costas, Jana. 104 cross-border marriages 59 cross-border trade 120–1 Crouch, Colin 6 cultural aesthetics 6–7 cultural cosmopolitanism 74

cultural identity 117–18, 124 cultural integration 52 cultural nationalism 19–20, 89–90, 115 cultural resistance 133 cultural transformation 167 culture: Chinese 100, 106, 117–19; components of 134; copycat 146–7; and cosmopolitanism 73–5; hua-xia 89–90; hybrid 75, 101, 124, 126–7; local 13, 15, 23, 25–7, 29–30, 78, 82–3, 85, 107, 116, 132, 148; majority 75; political 16, 35, 90, 125, 157, 160, 167; popular 23–4, 26, 126; preservation of 88, 105 day traders 120 decolonisation 9, 14, 22, 36, 72, 101 De facto Referendum Campaign 43–4, 76 democracy movements: and Article 23 39; and autonomy 37, 40; Beijing (1989) 3, 24, 154; civil disobedience in 155–60, 166–7; and civil resistance 168–9; and de facto referendum 43–4; dimensions of 156; and disenchantment with China 121–2; and dual identity 38; and election reform 6, 13, 155–60; emergence of 3; and engagement with Beijing 95, 154; global 6–8; historical 152–3; and identity politics 34; and localists 45, 47–8, 103; and negotiation 168–9; non-violent actions in 166–9; participation in 154–5, 159; personal covenants of 165; and political activism 151, 159; and political identity 118–19; post-Umbrella Movement 80–1, 94, 161–4; and powerlessness 106; and protection of lifestyles 38–40; protests for 94; and resilience 166; and resistance to communism 37–8; and self-government 18–19; social covenants of 165; and sovereigns 151–3; strategies of 166–7; support for 1; theme of 37; threat to China by 46; and universal suffrage 18, 153; and values 46; Western influence on 36 Democratic Party 44 democratic repatriatists 37, 48 democratic return 21, 32n3, 33n4 Demosisto ¯ 83–4 Deng, Xiaoping 32n3 depoliticisation policy 17–18, 22 direct actions 166–7, 169 discourse resistance 133 Dr. Chin’s Support Group 88

Index economic cosmopolitanism 74 economic integration: with China 76, 102; and competition 60; defining 52; and immigration policies 54; and labour market 58; and unemployment 52, 59 education policy 4, 44, 76, 102 elections: civil system of 167; under colonial rule 18, 35, 123; democracy movements for 43, 45–7, 152–7; exclusion in 167; intervention in 40, 122, 127, 157; post-colonial promises for 37; reform in 6, 13, 155–60 English language 20, 126 ethnic competition theory 56–7 ethnic conflict 56–8, 60–1 ethnic identity 31, 37, 117 ethnic minorities 55–8 ethnic nationalism 115 ethnic separatism 116 failure 104 Fan, Rita 145 fear 51, 57, 66 Finlayson, Alan 133 Firth, Raymond 134 Fixing Hong Kong 79 Fleming, Peter 104 foul language 143, 143, 144 freedom of information 169 freedom of speech 36, 46, 79, 121–3, 169 free market capitalism 2, 24 Friedman, Milton 74, 100 Frontier Closed Area 53 Gang of Four 21, 24 Garrett, Daniel 133 geopolitics 97–8, 134, 136 globalisation: criticism of 73; effects of 162; and localism 73; social trends of 8 Golden Jubilee Incident 35 Governor 1, 18 graduates see students/graduates Grandiose Hong Kongism 27 Great Britain: colonial rule of 15, 18, 106, 152; and democratization 152; depoliticisation policy of 17–18, 22; handover 13–14, 100–1, 106 handover: British ceremonies of 100–1, 106; Chinese ceremonies of 100–1; powerlessness in 13–14 higher education 8 Hong Kong: anti-China sentiments in 41, 44–5, 75, 89; anti-immigrant sentiment

175

56–63, 66–7; autonomy of 13, 36–7, 40, 43, 77, 95, 155, 163; collective memories of 29, 32; colonial period of 1–2, 14–15, 29, 75, 99, 152; creativity of 146–7; decolonisation of 9, 14, 22, 72, 101; democracy movements in 1, 3, 6, 18, 29, 36–47, 106, 151–69; depictions of 139, 142, 146i, 147; development of 28; economic integration of 102; economic success of 2, 24, 125; historical significance of 135–6; hybrid regime of 1–2, 6, 8–9, 101–2; international culture in 126–7; as a nation 85, 88; nationalism in 19–20, 34; political culture of 160, 167–8; political participation in 123–4; political reform in 162–4, 169; politics of 17–22, 34–5, 77, 121–2, 125, 151; pro-independence movements in 1–2, 4, 48, 95, 117; as a refugee society 17; self-determination in 46–7, 164–5; social problems in 7; universal suffrage in 1, 6, 18, 42, 45, 47, 153, 155–6 Hong Kong, China (Mathews, Ma, and Lui) 114 Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China 25, 118 Hong Kong as a City-State (Chin) 114 Hong Kong Basic Law see Basic Law Hong Kong Blue Righteous Revolt 87 Hong Kong-China relations: and Article 23 39–40; balance of power in 105–6, 117, 139; Chinese elites in 15–17; constitutional reform 40; criticism of 26; cross-border trade in 120–1; cultural divide in 120; discourse of 148; and economic privilege 101–2, 107, 109, 117; geopolitics of 134, 136; identity in 16, 114–17; redefining 134–5; reevaluation of 25, 29–30; self-alienation in 105; social conflicts in 30; tensions in 67; and visual resistance 135–8, 140–1, 141, 143–7 Hong Kong Civic Association 18 Hong Kong Democratic Self-Government Party (HKDSGP) 18 Hong Kong Democratic Socialist Party 18 Hongkonger Front 86 Hong Kong identity: anti-Chinese 119–20; and anti-immigrant sentiment 63; apolitical 22–3, 35; baby-boomer 19–20, 35; changes in 76; Chinese 22, 36–7, 66, 88, 98; civic 122–3; colonial

176

Index

14–15, 75–6, 124; complexity of 31; compromise in 37–9; contested borders of 98, 107; cultural Chinese 117–18, 122–4; and democracy 34, 44–6, 75; development of 114, 148; and disenchantment with China 124; and handover 36; identity index 65; international culture in 126–7; and language 60–1, 125–6; and local consciousness 17–19, 23–7, 80–2, 86, 95; and nationalism 17, 20, 26; overlap of 15–16, 21; and popular culture 23–4; post-Andersonian 99; post-handover 38; refugee society 75; rise of 122–4; search for 100; and self-alienation 104; self-identity 41, 41, 64–7; separate 124–7; and student movements 20–1, 35; and Tiananmen Square massacre 25–6; and Umbrella Movement 46; values of 81, 83–4 Hong Kong Independence 78, 83, 86, 88–9 Hong Kong Indigenous Party 87, 103, 105–7 Hong Kong Institute of Education (HKIEd) 56, 61, 66 Hong Kong Localism Power 87 Hong Kong Nation 78, 83, 85–6 Hong Kong Nationalism (Hong Kong University) 114 Hong Kong National Party 87 Hong Kong New Wave 23 Hong Kong Resurgence Order 88 Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) 54–5, 66–7, 81, 94 Hong Kongers: activism of 3–4, 76–7; cultural Chinese 117–18; and democracy 4, 154–7; dual identity of 4, 8–9, 15–16, 38, 67, 76; identification as 122–3; left-right spectrum of 8–9, 11n1; participation in transition 13–14; political apathy of 2–3, 22, 25, 154; political attitudes of 151, 155; pragmatism of 154 Hongkongers Come First 87 Hu, Jintao 161 hua-xia culture 89–90 human rights 41, 75 identity: civic 116, 122–3; cultural 117–18, 124; defining 9, 115; dual 4, 8–9, 15–16; ethnic 37, 117; and inclusiveness 115; intergroup 58; legitimising 90; and meaning

construction 90; personal 114–15; political 118–19; and popular culture 23–4; pragmatic 119; project 90; racial 115–18, 122; resistance 90; and social groups 74; types of 90 see also Chinese identity; Hong Kong identity; national identity; political identity identity cards 17 identity index 65 identity politics 13, 119; and Article 23 39; and civic participation 90; and de facto referendum 43–4; defining 115; and democracy 34–48; and ethnic separatism 116; and irredentism 116–17; and nation building 76; posthandover 38; rise of 48; transformation of 127; and Umbrella Movement 45–7 Imagined Communities (Anderson) 96–7 imagined community 85, 99–100, 104, 115 immigration policy: and ethnic minorities 55–6; and families 54–5; flexibility of 53; historical 53–4; and integration 54–6 see also One Way Permit scheme (OWP) income inequality 58 Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) 123 indirect actions 166–7 integration: defining 52; and discrimination 59–62; economic 52, 58–60, 76; and ethnic minorities 55–6; and immigrants 55; and language differences 60–1; problems with 53; and public opinion 61–2; social 52, 55 intergenerational conflict 28 intergroup identity 58 international culture 126 Internet: social media 136; and social protests 132; and visual resistance 136–7 irredentism 116–17 June 4 massacre see Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989 Kaeding, Malte Philipp 114, 124 Kaufman, Stuart J. 57 King, Ambrose 34 King, Martin Luther, Jr. 156–7, 168 Kohn, Hans 115 Kriesi, Hanspeter 90 Kuan, Hsin-chi 3

Index Kuomintang (KMT) 16–18 Kymlicka, Will 74 labour market competition 56, 58 Labour Party 18 Lam, Chi-yan 132 language differences 60–1 Lau, Siu-kai 2, 35 Lau, Yung-wai 79–80 Law, Nathan 83 Lawson, George 6 League of Social Democrats (LSD) 43–4 Lee, Martin 32n3, 49n3 Lee Bo Incident 80 left-right spectrum 8–9 Legco elections see Legislative Council elections Legislative Council elections 43, 47, 80, 83, 87, 89, 114, 123, 151 legitimacy crisis 5, 13 legitimising identity 90 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (King) 156 Leung, Baggio 83, 87 Leung, Chun-ying 2, 30, 46, 85, 114, 155, 159 Leung, Edward Tin-kei 87 Leung, Kai-ping 85 Lion Rock spirit 28, 46, 49n5, 125, 141 Lion Rock symbolism 125, 139, 141 local consciousness: benefits of 77; and cosmopolitanism 26–7; and economics 24; and media 31; and politics 21–2, 25; and popular culture 23–4; of the post-handover generation 28–30; right-wing 30–1; and self-awareness of failure 104; and social movements 20–1; subjectivity of 27; support for 31 local heritage preservation movements 76 localism: and candlelight vigils 45; civic 73, 83–4; and community organisations 78–9, 79, 80, 82; and cosmopolitanism 73, 82–3, 86; defining 72–3; development of 90–1; and globalisation 73; hybridity of 72; and identity 100; and multiculturalism 74–5, 86; nationalist 95–6; and nativism 73, 89; organisations for 78; and political activism 77–8, 83–90; politics of 9–10, 47–8; and professional organisations 80–3; and pro-independence movements 95, 103; and radicalism 103; rise of 76; and social media 79, 79, 80–1, 81; types of 77–8

177

Local Studio HK 138 Locke, Gary 118 Lui, Tai-lok 3, 35, 38, 114 Ma, Eric 38–9, 114, 119 Ma, Man-fai 17 Mach, Zdzislaw 134 Mainland and the Special Administrative Region see Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Mainland Chinese: contact with 39; cultural differences with 13; depictions of 24, 145–6; integration of 15, 52–3; as “locusts” 29, 60, 89; tourism of 30, 40, 42, 120, 145–6; uncivilised behavior of 120, 145–6; and use of social services 30, 42, 77, 120 see also anti-Mainland discourse Mainland Chinese immigrants: crossborder marriages of 59; dehumanization of 60; discrimination against 51, 55–63, 66–7, 76, 118; economic integration of 58–9; fear of 51, 57, 66; identity of 66; and immigration policies 53; income inequality 58; increase in 53; integration of 67–8, 107; and language differences 60–1; as the “other” 107–8; postwar influx of 42; and prejudice 59–62; public opinion on 61–2, 62, 63; resentment of 51, 57, 66; support for 55; as temporary citizens 15, 17; and use of social services 59, 102 Mandarin language 23–4, 30, 102, 107, 125 Mao, Zedong 24, 161–2 Mason, Paul 7–8 Mathews, Gordon 99, 114 Médecins Inspirés 80 Meinecke, Friedrich 115 methodological nationalism 97 modernity: and coloniality 99; and national identity 96–7 Mong Kok Unrest 7, 51, 66, 77, 82, 87 moral cosmopolitanism 74 multiculturalism 74–5, 86 Nairn, Tom 97 national education curriculum 4, 44, 76–7 national identity: anti-Communist 119; civic 115–16; ethnic 115; and exclusion 97; formation of 96–7; and geopolitics 97–8; liberal forms of 115; and modernity 96–7; normative view of

178

Index

96–7; post-Andersonian 98–9, 103–4; pragmatic 39; racial 115–16; and support for China 117 national imagination 107–8 nationalism: anti-communist 20; Chinese 20–1, 23, 25–6, 37, 86, 88, 90, 99; in Chinese cultural tradition 106; civic 85, 100, 106; conflict in 48, 67, 89; cultural 20, 26; cultural roots of 98; emergence of 96; and globalism 106; Hong Kong 88, 95–6, 99, 106; and identity politics 34, 38; left-leaning 19; methodological 97; official framework of 29; political 26, 95, 99, 104; pragmatic 38–9; rejection of 74; and sacrifice 108–9 nationalist-localism: emergence of 95–6; and self-alienation 96, 109 national security bill 76 National Security Bill (Article 23) 27 nation building 76 nativism 73, 88–9, 116 negotiated revolutions 6 negotiation 168–9 neo-Confucians 19 Ng, Margaret 33n5 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) 55, 60 non-violent actions 166–9 NPCSC see Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC) Occupy Central with Love and Peace (OCLP) 1, 45–6, 77, 155–60 Occupy Wall Street movement 5 OCLP movement see Occupy Central with Love and Peace (OCLP) “One Country, Two Systems” approach 6, 13, 24, 34, 36, 43–4, 47, 76, 78, 89, 108, 117, 153, 158, 164 One Way Permit scheme (OWP) 42, 51–2, 54, 54–6 On Hong Kong as a City-State (Chin) 30 othering 97–8, 103, 105, 107–8 pan-democratic party 28, 31, 118 parallel institution building 167 parallel traders 120 Passion Times 47, 103 patriotic faction 20–1 patriotism 4, 76, 95, 118 Patten, Chris 38 People’s Liberation Army 87, 159 People’s Republic of China (PRC) 134, 141

personal covenants 165 personal identity 114–15 Petersen, Roger 57–8 Petersen ethnic conflict model 57, 66–7 photo essays 133 plebeian citizen consciousness 23–4 political activism: growth of 77, 158–9; mobilisation tactics 88; pro-independence 78, 83–90; and radicalism 77; for self-determination 78, 83–6; and social media 88; types of 3–4 political cosmopolitanism 74 political culture 16, 35, 90, 125, 157, 160, 167 political identity see identity politics political nationalism 26, 95, 99, 104 political opportunity theory 90 political reform: all-China 94–5; gradualist approach to 95 politics: absence of 34–5; and apathy 2–3, 22, 25; Chinese intervention in 39–40, 42; and de facto referendum 43–4; and depoliticisation policy 17–18; post-1997 38–9; and self-governance movement 18–19 popular culture 23–4, 26, 126 post-democracy 6 post-handover generation: and collective memories 29; and identity 27; and intergenerational conflict 28; and local consciousness 28–30; and political discontent 28 pragmatic identity 119 pragmatic nationalism 38–9 prejudice 59–61 pressure group movements 35, 123 professional organisations 80–3 Progressive Lawyers Group 80–1, 81, 82–3 pro-independence movements: Chinese opposition to 48; factions of 84–90; growth of 1–2, 4, 94; international legal support for 117; and localism 78, 83–6; and protests 114 project identity 90 Proletariat Political Institute 89 protectionism 77 protests: civil disobedience in 155–60, 166; independence 114; non-violent actions in 166–7; scale of 94; use of violence 167; virtual space of 132 Public Opinion Programme (HKU) 63, 65–6, 123 public trust 5

Index Queen’s Pier protest 28 racial discrimination 118 racial identity 115–18, 122 radical flank effect 167 radicalism 76–7 Reform Club of Hong Kong 18 refugee society 17, 75 Renan, Ernest 115 Republic of China (ROC) 134 resentment 51, 57, 66–7 resilience 166 resistance identity 90 reverse hallucination 100 rule of law 9, 14, 16, 36–8, 46, 75, 80–1, 106, 121–3, 169 sacrifice 108–9 Sanders, Bernie 11 Sautman, Barry 101 Scholarism 44 self-alienation: collective 104–5; and identity 104; in imagined community 104; and nationalist-localism 96, 109; and nation-state 98; and powerlessness 106; and self-awareness of failure 104 self-determination 46–7, 78, 83–4, 103, 117, 164–5 self-government 18–19 self-identity 41 separatist movement 77 Shambaugh, David 161–3 Sino-British Joint Declaration 13, 33n5, 37, 40 Sino-British negotiations 21–2, 24, 36 Smith, Anthony D. 115–16 social covenants 165 social faction 20 social identity theory 57–8, 66 social injustice 82 social integration: defining 52; and ethnic minorities 55 social media 136 social movements: Chinese language 20; European and North American 10n1–11n1; and local consciousness 20–2; and politics 28; post-democracy 6; post-Umbrella Movement 78–80; and pressure groups 35; rise of 3 social protests: global 5, 8; left-right spectrum of 8; photo essays of 133; and public mistrust 5; Star Ferry (1966) 18 Society for Community Organization (SoCO) 55, 58, 60

179

sovereigns: and democratic reform 152–3; political decision-making by 151 sovereignty 134 Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC) 40, 48, 158 Star Ferry Pier riot 18–19, 28 state nation 115 status quo: dissatisfaction with 27–8; and handover 36, 38 student movements: anti-colonial 36; anti-national education 44; and Chinese nationalism 21, 35–6; and personal identity 114–15; pro-democracy 22, 154, 158; social faction of 20; Western influence on 35 students/graduates: in democracy movements 7; left-right spectrum of 9; Mainland Chinese 30; national education of 44; personal identity of 114–27 Sunflower Movement 46 Sung, Yun-wing 144 Sze, Lai-shan 55, 60, 62 Szeto, Wah 49n3, 94–5 TaiPosunwalker 79–80 Taiwan: China factor in 132; and Chinese culture 106; identity in 98; as part of China 116, 134; resistance in 21; selfdetermination in 46; status quo in 117; views of Hong Kongers by 17; and visual resistance 141 Taylor, Charles 74 Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) 23 Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989 24–5, 44–5, 75, 118 “Touch Base Policy” 32n1 tourism 30, 40, 42, 120, 144–6 trilingual education 102 Tsang, John Chun-wah 77 Tse, Thomas Kwan-choi 114 Tu, Elsie 18, 21 Tung, Chee-hwa 53, 138–9, 154 Umbrella Movement (2014): and antiimmigrant sentiment 63, 67; and the China factor 133–5, 147; cultural aesthetics of 6–7; and democracy movement 164; demographics of 6–8; and disenchantment with China 121–2; and election reform 160; and identity politics 45, 66, 77, 125, 127; and legitimacy crisis 5; and localism 77–8, 95; and nature of protest 94–5; and public mistrust 5–6; rise of 1–2;

180

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role of students and graduates in 7; slogan of 46; and social protests 5–6; virtual space of 132; and visual resistance 132, 135–6, 141 Undergrad 85, 114 unemployment 52, 59 United Nations Association of Hong Kong (UNAHK) 18 universal suffrage 47; and Chief Executive election 158; constitutional reform for 155–7; denial of 1, 42; implementation of 158, 164; international standards for 155–6; movements for 6, 18, 45, 160; proposals for 156–7; timetable for 153 utilitarian familism 2 Van der Pijl, Kees 98, 104, 109 visual resistance: and the China factor 132–4; Chinese characters in 142, 142, 143; and copycat culture 146–7; foul language in 143, 143, 144; imagery of

138, 140–1, 141, 142–3, 145; photo essays as 133; and stickers 135–6; virtual 132, 134, 137 Wan Chai Commons 79 Wang, Dalei 136–7 Watershed 85 Weibo 136 Wong, Joshua 44, 83 Wong, Raymond 47, 89 Wong, Yeung-tat 89 Wu, Jieh-min 132 xenophobia 10, 103–5, 108 Xi, Jinping 66, 138, 161–3 Yam, Kin-fung 82 Yaumati Boat People incident 35 Youngspiration 47, 83–4, 87 Zhao, Ziyang 32n3, 152