Chinese Nationality and Coloniality of Hong Kong Student Movement, 1960–1970s

Abstract

Abstract The present study investigates the episode of Hong Kong student movement in the 1960s to 1970s inspired by the charismatic idea of the Chinese Nation. Unlike most other cases of nationalist politics in colonial societies, Chinese identity politics in Hong Kong not only failed to challenge fundamentally the legitimacy of the British colonial state. It also did not proselytise Hong Kong people towards Chinese national identification and preoccupy Hong Kong society with the Chinese Question thereafter. Propitious colonial modernisation experience acting upon a diasporic population, which found it hard to establish meaningful rapport with the Chinese Nation, had attributed to the eccentric trajectory of Chinese Nationalism in Hong Kong. Local societal and cultural formations were then the eclectic solution to the ideational paradox of colonial modernity and Chinese Nationality in Hong Kong, which, however, remains problematic on its own, and connects closely with the lingering coloniality observed in this post-colonial society.