Citizenship, Identity and Social Movements in the New Hong Kong

Localism after the Umbrella Movement

Wai-man Lam, Luke Cooper, Wai-man Lam, Luke Cooper

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351802253
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Asian American Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

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.

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 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 tragi-comedy-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 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 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 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 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 post-war 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 anti-communism 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 right-wing 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 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, neo-Confucians promoted Chinese cultural education and gained widespread support from Hong Kong youth. But th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Decolonisation deferred: Hong Kong identity in historical perspective
• 2 Changing identity politics: the democracy movement in Hong Kong
• 3 Mainland Chinese immigration in Hong Kong: analysing anti-immigrant sentiment
• 4 Hong Kong’s fragmented soul: exploring brands of localism
• 5 “You have to fight on your own”: self-alienation and the new Hong Kong nationalism
• 6 The development of Hong Kong identity: from local to national identity
• 7 Visual and discourse resistance on the “China factor”: the cultural formation of the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong
• 8 From past to future: Hong Kong’s democratic movement
• Index