Het uitgangspunt van dit boek is dat Chinese individuen van hun eigen inzet uit moeten kunnen gaan, ongeacht de beperkingen die hen door de staat worden opgelegd. Om hun belangen beter te kunnen verdedigen sluiten sommige individuen zich aan bij sociale bewegingen, die tot sociale protesten kunnen leiden.

Studies of Hong Kong society have long focused one-sidedly upon economic prosperity and political stability. Contributors to this volume redress this imbalance by taking a critical view of Hong Kong's political development from the perspectives of social conflict and collective action. Instead of looking at Hong Kong from the top, this volume documents the active role played by local actors from below (political groups, student activists, trade unions, women groups, environmentalists, and community organizers) and their impact on social and political development in Hong Kong society in the context of political transition and democratization, economic restructuring, and an emergent local identity.

This book and associated collection of visual data and sociological observations examine how the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) has been visually re-imagined, transformed, and utilized by its subalterns in the post-Handover period to reproduce their aspirations and demands for greater democracy and social justice while simultaneously contesting the hegemonic pressure exerted by China under the “One Country, Two Systems” ideology. It provides a rich visual description and narrative of how Hong Kong’s many repressed social and political actors have struggled to make their voices heard under its competitive authoritarian political system. The book addresses the growing scholarly interest in the visual analysis of global protests and social movements as salient sources of sociological data and on the creation of meaning. By innovatively tackling the visual culture and visuality of subaltern resistance in Hong Kong it contributes to our understanding of contentious SAR-China politics and the New Social Movement, and will be of great interest to Hong Kong, resistance, social movement, and visual studies scholars.

The starting point of this book is the acknowledgement that on one side Chinese individuals, freer from the constraints of the State, have to rely on their own efforts for their well-being and, on the other side, in some circumstances, they gather together to defend their interests. The individualisation of society goes hand in hand with the collective movements that emerged as a result of individual wants. There are not only internal factors leading to the emergence of collective forms of action, but also external ones and that's why the editors have chosen to encompass Hong Kong in their study. The authors argue that protest actions and movement taking place in the Mainland and Hong Kong have enabled both societies to expand their protest spaces. At a theoretical level, these developments lead us to reconceputalise citizenship as practised rather than as given.

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.

Focusing on the unique story of the "recolonisation" of Hong Kong since 2019, this book describes the environment of news gathering and publishing during this period and studies how this has connected to wider political, economic, and social changes. Media, Internet and Social Movements in Hong Kong considers the operation of the news media in this divided region to illuminate the unparalleled experience of the transfer of sovereignty of the territory from a liberal democracy to a semi-authoritarian regime. This book examines key aspects of news production that constrain media freedom in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) including the routines and concrete cases of censorship exercised by state authorities; self-censorship by news organisations, and the roles of the Chinese and HKSAR governments as key sources of news. The authors also discuss the norms and values of journalists and citizens in Hong Kong as forces resisting control as well as the popular use of social media in mobilising anti-government protests. This compelling text will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of journalism, media, and area studies, particularly those focusing on Greater China and the Asia-Pacific region.

A close-up look at the struggle for democracy in Hong Kong. Hong Kong in the Shadow of China is a reflection on the recent political turmoil in Hong Kong during which the Chinese government insisted on gradual movement toward electoral democracy and hundreds of thousands of protesters occupied major thoroughfares to push for full democracy now. Fueling this struggle is deep public resentment over growing inequality and how the political system—established by China and dominated by the local business community—reinforces the divide been those who have profited immensely and those who struggle for basics such as housing. Richard Bush, director of the Brookings Institution’s Center on East Asia Policy Studies, takes us inside the demonstrations and the demands of the demonstrators and then pulls back to critically explore what Hong Kong and China must do to ensure both economic competitiveness and good governance and the implications of Hong Kong developments for United States policy.

The Occupy movement in Hong Kong was sustained for about 80 days because of government tolerance, the presence of determined participants, and a weak leadership. The government tolerated the occupation because its initial use of force, in particular teargas, was counterproductive and provoked large-scale participation. Unlike other social movements, such as the 1989 Tiananmen movement, the Occupy movement reached its peak of participation at the very beginning, making it difficult to sustain the momentum. The presence of determined participants who chose to stay until the government responded was crucial to the sustaining of the movement. These self-selected participants were caught in a dilemma between fruitless occupation and reluctance to retreat without a success. The movement lasted also because the weak leadership was unable to force the government to concede or devise approaches for making a "graceful exit." Consequently, site clearance became the common choice of both the government and the protestors. This book develops a new framework to explain the sustaining of decentralized protest in the absence of strong movement organizations and leadership. Sustained protests are worth research because they not only reveal the broad social context in which the protests arise and persist but also point out the dynamics of the escalation or the decline of the protests. In addition, sustained protest may not only lead to more dramatic action, but they also result in the diffusion of protests or lead to significant policy changes.