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Copyright of China Quarterly is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Anti-Extradition Bill protests in 2019 culminated in an unprecedented level of violence that departed from the established peaceful social struggles in Hong Kong. This paper examines the evolution of protest repertoires by analysing the interactions between protesters and state actors on a local and global scale. A dataset is presented to show the type, frequency and distribution of tactics. This paper reveals that structural and cultural changes as well as activists' cognitive, affective and relational transformations at the micro- and meso-levels were pertinent to tactical radicalization. Cognitively, militant tactics were pragmatic responses to state-sponsored violence and police violence. They were also the affective outcomes of grief and anger. These processes were intertwined with the relational dynamics that advocated horizontal mobilization and that shaped, and were shaped by, the political-economic interactions between China and the West. The result was an extensive use of violent tactics alongside innovations in non-violent tactics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impacts of state policies and NGO advocacy on female sex workers' identity and how they manage stigma. Comparing three groups of sex workers – those born and working in mainland China, those born and working in Hong Kong, and those born in mainland China who later migrated to Hong Kong and entered the sex industry – this paper suggests that differences in state policies on prostitution and the different degrees of visibility of NGOs campaigning for sex workers' rights are related to three strategies used by sex workers to construct a positive self-image to counteract the stigma they face: gendered obligation fulfilment, professional work and responsible citizenship. The paper illustrates that stigmatized-identity management involves complex relationships among individual interpretation, selection and mobilization of gender, work and citizenship scripts, which are contingent on structural features of the environment and may change during migration and relocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of China Quarterly is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper surveys the process of discursive contestation by intellectual agents in Hong Kong that fostered a counter-public sphere in China's offshore. In the post-war era, Chinese exiled intellectuals leveraged the colony's geopolitical ambiguity and created a displaced community of loyalists/dissenters that supported independent publishing venues and engaged in the cultural front. By the 1970s, homegrown and left-wing intellectuals had constructed a hybrid identity to articulate their physical proximity to, yet social distance from, the Chinese nation-state, as well as to appropriate their sense of belonging to the city-state, through confronting social injustice. In examining periodicals and interviewing public intellectuals, I propose that this counter-public sphere was defined first by its alternative voice, which contested various official discourses, second by its multifaceted inclusiveness, which accommodated diverse worldviews and subjectivities, and third by its critical platform, which nurtured social activism in undemocratic Chinese societies. I differentiate the permissive conditions that loosened constraints on intellectual agencies from the productive conditions that account for their penetration and diffusion. Habermas's idealized public sphere framework is revisited by bringing in ideational contestation, social configuration and cultural identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since colonial times to the present day, Hong Kong's position as a global financial centre is one of the enduring economic strengths of the territory. This success is often attributed to the distinctive role of the state, coined in the 1970s by the-then financial secretary, Sir Philip Haddon-Cave, as “positive non-interventionism.” The relationship between the market and the state has also been characterized as a form of corporatism, particularly in the financial sector as bankers were able to influence policy. However, closer examination of the behind-the-scenes relations between bankers and the state reveals a much more complex relationship, with the banks seeking protection that the government was not willing to provide. Moreover, the reluctance to regulate financial markets resulted in piecemeal interventions and weak implementation that undermined the stability of this sector and of the economy as a whole. This paper demonstrates the confusion over the concept and practicalities of positive non-interventionism, even for Haddon-Cave, and how the concept evolved towards a policy of “when in doubt, do nothing” during a period of financial instability. Along the way, the paper presents new evidence about the origins of Hong Kong's current banking structure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the diffusion of activism in post-colonial Hong Kong through the lens of the political regime and eventful analysis. It first reveals the institutional foundations of the hybrid regime that allowed the creation of a nascent movement society. It then explains how the historic 1 July rally in 2003 and a series of critical events since 2006 have led to a shift in scale and the public staging of street politics. A time-series analysis and onsite survey further capture the dynamics that spawned the collective recognition of grievances and reduced participation costs, leading to the Umbrella Movement. While the spontaneous, voluntary and decentralized organizational structure sustained protest momentum, the regime has adopted hybrid strategies to counter-mobilize bottom-up activism. The result is widening contention between the state and civil society and within civil society, or the coexistence of regime instability and regime longevity, a trend that is increasingly common in hybrid regimes encountering mass protests. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of China Quarterly is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Ten years after the handover, Hong Kong's media faced multiple pressures. There were few cases of outright prosecution of the media, but there were subtle political and economic pressures. Co-optation of media bosses, fear of losing advertising revenue and media takeovers by pro-Beijing figures brought some of the media into line. This brought editorial shift and self-censorship, as the media systematically shied away from stories that might antagonize Beijing, underplayed negative news for the government and gave the democrats less favourable coverage. Interviews with journalists showed little evidence of ostensible intervention from government officials or media bosses, but newsroom socialization and editorial gatekeeping are effective constraints. The constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press and the moral force of professional ethics lent the media the room to defend and negotiate their freedom, but the pervasive fear induced by the political environment invariably overpowered the resistance and constrained press freedom in Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of China Quarterly is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of China Quarterly is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines the origins and dynamics of an extraordinary wave of protests in Hong Kong in 2019–2020. Despite lacking visible political opportunities and organizational resources, the protest movement drew resilient, mass participation unparalleled in the city's history and much of the world. Drawing from original on-site surveys and online datasets, we conceptualize the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement as a form of "total mobilization from below." The totality of the mobilization depended on a set of interactive mechanisms: abeyant civil society networks concealed after the 2014 Umbrella Movement were activated by threats over extradition and institutional decay, whereas affective ties developed through conflicts and mutual assistance were amplified by digital communication. The movement's characteristics in terms of protest scale, mobilizing structure, use of alternative spaces, and group solidarity are examined. The spasmodic moments of mobilization are explained by a nexus of network building that took place in an unreceptive environment and at a critical juncture. The roles of threats and emotions in mass mobilizations are also analysed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the early perception of communism and its importance in Hong Kong from 1921 to 1934. Dual society of the colony with the British as the ruler and the Chinese as the ruled; Feelings of the main segments of the Hong Kong Chinese population in their first encounter with communism; Significant political events which were related to communism and Hong Kong.

This study examines civic solidarity in Hong Kong and Taiwan at key democratic moments. Using political cartoons published during the 1995 LegCo election campaign in Hong Kong and the 2000 presidential election campaign in Taiwan, our findings indicate that the cultural codes of liberty, though not typically considered part of traditional Chinese values, have become the dominant cultural source for discourse in civil society. Values of caring and state paternalism, which resemble subsets of Confucian values, exist as competing, alternate cultural codes. In Taiwan, politically-divided members of civil society appear to share the same cultural language, thereby fostering a basis for mutual engagement. Nevertheless, little mutual engagement is actually found among politically divergent discourses. In Hong Kong, even a shared cultural language cannot be documented. The conclusion discusses the broader implications of these findings for the inclusive potential of civic discourses, amidst competing identity claims, in Hong Kong and Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing literature has long recognized that a partnership has been forged between the PRC government and Hong Kong's capitalist class. However, the implications of such a partnership for HKSAR governance have yet to be thoroughly explored. By examining the formation of this partnership and its consolidation after 1997, this article argues that the business sector's direct access to the sovereign state has fundamentally changed the dynamics of state–business relations in the HKSAR. As a consequence of the partnership between Beijing and the business sector, business elites have taken their concerns straight to the mainland authorities whenever they see their interests affected by the post-colonial state. This kind of circumvention has become a part of post-1997 politics, undermining the relative autonomy of the post-colonial state and resulting in growing cleavages within the state–business alliance during the first 15 years of the HKSAR. Whether and how such a partnership will evolve in the aftermath of the 2012 chief executive election remains to be seen. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article is a case study of state-society-capital conflicts over the preservation of the Central Police Station (CPS) compound in Hong Kong during 2003-08. The conflict was between two fundamentally different approaches to urban space: a cultural economy approach that took culture and space as a source of economic profit, and an opposition discourse of preservation that emphasized cultural, historical and humanistic values as an end. The struggle turned out to be a moderate success for anti-commercialism. Drawing on and extending the notions of collective memory and spatial politics, this article examines how the various civil society actors, in their struggle against commercialism, sought to define and enhance the cultural value of the site through a variety of discourses and practices relating to history and space. It addresses the specific question of why and how certain constructions of collective memory succeed (or fail) to work with certain places in particular instances. The study shows that memories of the CPS compound contained both state-associated and people-associated accounts, between which the former prevailed. The state-associated account was embedded in a familiar, hegemonic story about Hong Kong, which, via an abstract process of symbolization around the notion of the rule of law, successfully turned the compound into an iconic symbol of identification for the city. Beyond this, the civil society actors sought also to generate a sense of lived space associated with the people, and the outcome was mixed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes the nature of contemporary Hong Kong-Japan relations in their economic, political and cultural dimensions. Identity and nationalism within Hong Kong; Changing Japanese commercial priorities; Influence of the handover of Hong Kong to China on the political economy of Hong Kong-Japan relations.

Examines the institutional framework, socio-economic context and outcome of Hong Kong's first post-handover legislative elections of May 1998. Retention of the key institutional features of the late colonial regime by drafters of the 1990 Hong Kong Basic Law; Repolarization of political life; Impact of the post-handover recession on democracy in Hong Kong.

Describes the political system of Hong Kong following its handover to China. Combination of liberal pluralism, corporatism and democratic-centralism; History of political development in Hong Kong; Preference of the population for candidates committed to Western-style democracy.

Reviews the legacy of British administration in Hong Kong, which closed on June 30, 1997. Importance of the preservation of the legal system to most Hong Kong people; How the court proceedings in civil and criminal litigations were held; Concern surrounding the start and progress in English and Chinese codification; Details on the British legal system; Illustration of cases which depicts the perils and predicaments of the Hong Kong legal system; Conclusions reached.

Explores aspects of the influence of Hong Kong and Taiwan popular culture on the China mainland. Hong Kong and Taiwan popular culture; Spread of Gangtai popular culture to China; Variables that explain this spread; Implications for Greater China.

Examines whether there has been a substantial change in Hong Kong's social life during the decade 1983 to 1993. Population; Housing; Social services; Employment; Leisure; Later trends; Sensitivity of people to political issues.

Studies economic integration within Greater China. Trade flows between China, Hong Kong and Taiwan; Trade intensity ratios; Role of Guangdong and Fujian in trade integration; Investment flows between China, Hong Kong and Taiwan; Trends leading to economic integration.