Understanding the Political Culture of Hong Kong: The Paradox of Activism and Depoliticization

The Paradox of Activism and Depoliticization

Lam Wai-man

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317453017
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book challenges the widely held belief that Hong Kong's political culture is one of indifference. The term "political indifference" is used to suggest the apathy, naivete, passivity, and utilitarianism of Hong Kong's people toward political life. Taking a broad historical look at political participation in the former colony, Wai-man Lam argues that this is not a valid view and demonstrates Hong Kong's significant political activism in thirteen selected case studies covering 1949 through the present. Through in-depth analysis of these cases she provides a new understanding of the nature of Hong Kong politics, which can be described as a combination of political activism and a culture of depoliticization.

1

A Critique of the Claims of Political Indifference

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The Traditional Argument of Political Apathy

Conventional wisdom maintains that the people of Hong Kong have traditionally been politically apathetic. Even before study of political attitudes in Hong Kong gained momentum in the 1970s, scholars had already pointed to Hong Kong’s low registration rates and low voter turnout rates in the Urban Council elections,¹ as well as its absence of demand for constitutional change, as the earmarks of its political apathy. Two major lines of reasoning were developed to explain this apathy. The first was that postwar Hong Kong was a refugee society. The majority of Hong Kong residents had fled to the colony from mainland China to escape from political turmoil. Second, most Hong Kong residents were Chinese, and as such they were influenced by Chinese culture as characterized by family-oriented, apolitical values and submissiveness to a paternalistic government. The effects of the refugee mentality and Chinese culture in Hong Kong had manifested themselves as apathy toward public affairs and acquiescence to the decisions of the colonial Hong Kong government.²

Surveys on Political Attitudes

In the 1970s, publishing experienced a surge of scholarly work that sought to explain the perceived apathy and political stability in Hong Kong in terms of its people’s parochial political attitudes. Notable works include those published by Stephen Hoadley, Ambrose Y.C. King, and Siu-kai Lau. Although all these studies had a broader focus than those of their predecessors, they shared the two orthodox positions on Hong Kong’s political culture. First, political apathy or passivity was regarded as the hallmark of this political culture, and, second, having endorsed a similarly narrow and formal definition of political participation, political participation in the territory was judged to be minimal.

The Parochial-Subject Political Culture in Hong Kong

Following the political cultural approach of Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba,³ Hoadley and King⁴ set out to explore the political orientation of Hong Kong residents and came to similar conclusions. Notably, they concluded that the territory had a mixed parochial-subject political culture. A parochial-subject political culture is characterized by a strong sense of political powerlessness of the people. Also, they tend to avoid taking up political responsibilities and participate in politics minimally. Although their studies were relatively new attempts to investigate political culture in Hong Kong, they championed the explanation of a refugee mentality plus authoritarian Chinese traditions embedded in the traditional view of political apathy. For instance, Hoadley stated:

Why in a world of political upheavals is Hong Kong so internally stable? Part of the answer lies in the Chinese authoritarian tradition, part in the disinterest of “temporary” residents, and part in the “lifeboat theme.”⁵

There are methodological problems in their approach. The inadequacies of their arguments largely reflect problems in operationalization, substantiation, interpretation, and sampling of their studies. In addition, they give a narrow definition of political participation.

Both Hoadley’s and King’s studies have problems of inadequate operationalization and inconclusive substantiation.⁶ For example, although Hoadley’s paper contained a detailed introduction to the political cultural approach, he did not sufficiently operationalize the related concepts of cognitive, affective, and evaluative orientations. Nor did he investigate the orientations of respondents in detail. For his part, King structured his examination along the three types of political orientations proposed by the political-cultural approach, namely, cognitive, affective, and evaluative. Yet he failed to analyze the types of orientations separately within the four categories of political objects.⁷ As a result, their examination is incomplete.

Apart from the issues of operationalization and substantiation, another problem area relates to the nonrepresentative samples of both Hoadley’s and King’s studies. Part of Hoadley’s arguments was substantiated by the data drawn from a survey of students at a local university, whereas King’s study was based on the findings from a sampling of residents in the district of Kwun Tong.⁸ In both cases, it seems quite inappropriate to generalize the findings to the entire Hong Kong population.

Narrow Conception of Political Participation

If we can question the methodological foundations of the conclusion that Hong Kong’s people were politically apathetic and characterized by a parochial-subject orientation, can we cast similar doubt on the argument that the territory had minimal political participation? In particular, did the voter registration rates and voter turnout rates in Urban Council elections sufficiently reflect the level of political participation in the colony as was commonly assumed? The key seems to lie in deciding what counts as an act of political participation and what does not. From this perspective, Hoadley’s study of the patterns and trends of political participation in Hong Kong is worth exploring.⁹

Early in his discussion, Hoadley seemed to stray from the orthodox view of defining acts of political participation in terms of voter registration and turnout rates in Urban Council elections. He began with the claim that the proportion of Hong Kong Chinese who participated in politics had increased. This claim was substantiated by certain figures and observations pertaining to both formal¹⁰ and informal politics which, up until then, had been rarely suggested. For example, he notes that Hong Kong’s Chinese people had been involved in “less orthodox forms of political participation,” such as the campaign for Chinese to be an official language.¹¹

Hoadley sometimes pointed to a broader and more dynamic characterization of political participation relevant to a colony like Hong Kong. This definition of participation, far from being limited to voting in elections, includes factors such as involvement in political organizations as well as social and political issues. As chapter 2 will argue, a conception of political participation that is both inclusive and relevant is necessary for a meaningful examination of political culture in Hong Kong.

Yet, Hoadley did not pursue this idea to its logical conclusion. Instead of proposing that the Chinese community might be undergoing a process of political mobilization, he argued:

One may safely conclude that formal and voluntary Chinese political participation falls short as measured either by the potential for participation or by the actual participation rates manifested by non-Chinese. The Chinese Language Campaign seems to have stimulated a slight revival of registration, voting and Urban Council activity among Chinese, but the participation rates achieved barely exceeded the decade average and in some cases even fell short, suggesting that the up-turn was relative and temporary rather than significant of a trend.¹²

This argument was made with reference to five other sets of figures that were concerned exclusively with the Urban Council and the performance of the Reform Club of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Civic Association: (1) Out of the 250,000 to 300,000 persons eligible to register to vote since 1966, only 12 to 15 percent had done so by 1971; (2) the voter turnout rates dropped from 39 percent in 1967 to 24 percent in 1969 before increasing slightly to 26.7 percent in 1971; (3) from a high of fifteen candidates competing for five seats in 1967, the number of candidates dropped to ten competing for the same five seats in 1969 and 1971; (4) the membership of the Reform Club of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Civic Association was decreasing, and their ability to monopolize elections was eroding; and (5) an analysis of eight liberal motions and seconds during the 1965–66 Urban Council year showed that Chinese councilors were less frequently associated with these motions and seconds than were non-Chinese councilors when the relative size of the two groups was considered.¹³

This evidence can be challenged. First, Hoadley can be criticized for basing his examination on a narrow conception of political participation. In the end, Hoadley slid back toward a definition of political participation that consisted of little more than voter registration rates and voter turnout rates and, at most, participation in organizations with overt electoral missions. He ignored the immense area of informal politics, signified by public involvement in social and political issues, which he had addressed earlier in his paper. Consequently, he homed in on political participation as embodied in the traditional view of political apathy. The activities that were identified as acts of political participation were very limited.

The second criticism concerns the problem of an alternative interpretation. The data Hoadley presented may be interpreted in a number of ways besides the one he chose. For example, while the Reform Club of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Civic Association might have become less popular among the public, this waning interest cannot be taken as an indicator of the public’s loss of interest in politics. Actually, the public’s interest in politics could be expressed through numerous other channels. Their participation in the two organizations was simply one such expression.

A Critique of Siu-kai Lau’s Concept of Political Aloofness

Siu-kai Lau has developed by far the most sophisticated theory of political culture in Hong Kong.¹⁴ Not only has his theory been dominant up until now, but it has also influenced how subsequent theorists view today’s Hong Kong. In real politics, Lau was well known as a member of the colonial Hong Kong government’s think tank. Also, as a member of the Preparatory Working Committee and Head of the Central Policy Unit, he has been an outspoken advisor to China on Hong Kong affairs.¹⁵ The following sections examine major flaws in Lau’s theory. As local social and political movements flourished in the 1970s, proponents of the indifference framework had to admit the presence of such movements and explain why their presence had not interrupted the territory’s political stability. Lau’s theory represents a depoliticizing attempt, incorporating more self-interested motives than are actually expressed in Hong Kong politics and depriving it of political passion.

Dedicated to developing a locally relevant theory, Lau once expressed his objection to using political apathy as “the primary, or sole, causal variable to explain political stability in Hong Kong” as his predecessors did. From his perspective, the political passivity of the Hong Kong population was “merely a reaction to the social-cultural context” that could be expressed in different ways in different contexts. And the context that led to this apathy should command social scientists’ attention.¹⁶ However, Lau simply replaced the idea of political apathy with that of political aloofness. Based on an aloof political attitude, he stated, the Hong Kong people “assign a relatively delimited role to the polity, they depend on the government to execute this role, and they want to keep themselves uninvolved.”¹⁷

In general, he argued that the people of Hong Kong were in the main politically passive, partially because of their limited definition of the role of government and their strong sense of political powerlessness. Moreover, he stated that they would take part in politics only conditionally for advancing individual and family interests. The Chinese community in Hong Kong was thus characterized by utilitarian political attitudes resulting in only limited political participation of the community. In this study, the former part of Lau’s argument is called the “utilitarian political participation claim” and the latter part the “minimal political participation claim.” Together they form the two pillars of his theory of political aloofness.

Limited Definition of the Role of Government

Lau presented four types of evidence to substantiate his claim that the Hong Kong people had limited expectations of government. Only the first and second types will be examined here because they contribute most to his arguments. First, when asked what they regarded as the government’s primary responsibility, 57.3 percent of survey respondents selected “maintaining social stability.” Second, only 10.5 percent of respondents considered the government’s foremost responsibility to be “the construction of a democratic and egalitarian society.” In comparing these two findings, Lau claimed that “as long as the government can maintain social stability it will be accepted, and the level of political frustration among the Chinese will be held within controllable limits.”¹⁸ Having juxtaposed the findings in this way, Lau seems to be arguing that the people held very limited expectations of their government inasmuch as most of them considered the government’s primary responsibility to be that of maintaining social stability rather than promoting democracy and egalitarianism.

The survey question, however, contains an interesting ambiguity. First, does the question refer to what the Hong Kong government actually does, or, as Lau seemed to assume, does it refer to what the respondents wished it would do?¹⁹ Second, “primary responsibility” has a clearly different meaning from “sole responsibility.” When the respondents claimed that the government’s primary responsibility was to maintain social stability, they were not saying that the government should not assume any other responsibility. They could have had many other expectations of their government besides the maintenance of social stability. Data from Lau’s 1977 survey help to support this point. The survey reported that 50.5 percent of the respondents did not consider “the government to be good, as, aside from the maintenance of social stability, it had done few other things...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Abbreviations and Acronyms
• Foreword: Hong Kong Political Activism Rediscovered
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Hong Kong—Rethinking Political Activism
• 1. A Critique of the Claims of Political Indifference
• 2. An Alternative Understanding of Political Participation
• 3. A Multiple-Case Interpretive Approach
• 4. Rebutting the Minimal Political Participation Claim
• 5. Rediscovering Politics: Hong Kong between 1949 and 1959
• 6. Rediscovering Politics: Hong Kong in the 1960s
• 7. Rediscovering Politics: Hong Kong in the 1970s
• 8. Political Discourses and Political Activism
• 9. The Culture of Depoliticization and Political Activism
• 10. Conclusion
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index