AAS Annual Conference 2018 Panel – Hong Kong as a Postcolony: Twenty Years of Chinese Rule

Postcolonial Hong Kong is a world historic experiment on the co-existence between a liberal capitalist society and its authoritarian communist sovereign. The past two decades of Hong Kong- Mainland integration and contention have inspired popular fears of recolonization or internal colonization by China, but also new passion and imagination among the younger generation and civil society activists about Hong Kong’s political future. The 2014 Umbrella Movement, in which 1.2 million citizens participated in the 79-day occupy movement in downtown Hong Kong, was just the tip of an iceberg. This watershed event was both the culmination and the source of deep- seated institutional, political and economic conflicts and struggles involving different segments of Hong Kong society, the Hong Kong Government, and Beijing’s proxies in the territory.

Taking stock of twenty years of momentous change, this panel analyzes Hong Kong’s postcolonial transformation under Chinese rule in four key arenas: political economy, rule of law, migration, and cultural production. Together, the papers address these questions –Do China’s economic interests in Hong Kong conflict with its political imperatives of control? Why has rule of lawbecome an intensely contested terrain in Hong Kong-Mainland relation, and with what consequences for Hong Kong’s political economic future? How are Mainland Chinese migrants to Hong Kong racialized and ethnicized, spurring an anti-immigrant nativist movement? How has the Hong Kong film industry navigated its integration with the Chinese market, with what consequences for Hong Kong’s cultural production and identity?

The Panel 

Organizer:

Ching Kwan Lee
University of California, Los Angeles, California
Professor
cklee@soc.ucla.edu

Chair:

Eliza W.Y. Lee
University of Hong Kong
Professor
ewylee@hku.hk

Paper presenters:

Ho-fung Hung
Johns Hopkins University, Maryland
Professor
hofung@jhu.edu

Carol Jones
University of Birmingham
Professor
c.a.g.jones@bham.ac.uk

Susanne Y.P. Choi
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Professor
choiyp@cuhk.edu.hk

Victor Shin
University of Hong Kong
Assistant Professor
vicshin@hku.hk

Discussant:

Ching Kwan Lee
University of California, Los Angeles, California
Professor
cklee@soc.ucla.edu

Presentations:

China’s State Capitalism and Its Discontents in Hong Kong

Migration, Nativism and Nationalism: The Hong Kong Dilemma

Power Unrecognized: The Dilemma of Economic Integration between China’s and Hong Kong’s Film Industries

The Rule of Law and the Arts of Resistance: Modes of Governance in Colonial and Post-Colonial Hong Kong