CLM Insights Interview with Ching Kwan Lee

Ching Kwan Lee. Forever Hong Kong: A Global City's Decolonization Struggle. Harvard University Press, August 12, 2025. 344 pp. ISBN-10:0674290194; ISBN-

13:978-0674290198

Kwan Ching Lee CLM Issue 85 September 2025.pdf

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Insights Interview

You argue in the book that popular mobilization in post-1997 Hong Kong is a struggle for self-determination. Can you elaborate on the reasons behind this conclusion?

I argue in this book that Hong Kongers put up a struggle for decolonization. Self-determination was only one of its dimensions and possible outcomes. Historians and social scientists have long established that colonialism was not only the seizure of sovereignty by military conquest but also the imposition of colonial relations, identities, and cultures beyond state institutions. Therefore, popular struggle to decolonize historically also entailed more encompassing claims by the colonized and not only universal suffrage or electoral and constitutional reforms. This is very clear in Hong Kong, if you examine the totality of the protests and movements since the late 1990s. The demands far exceeded a narrow concern with elections, ranging from right to the city, rights to preserve local culture and memories, democratic urban planning, alternative lifestyles, liberal and critical education, a competitive rather than an oligopolistic economy, distributive justice, prioritizing locals, autonomy, self-determination, and even political independence.

In the book, I argue that over two decades, through collective mobilizations reacting to political economic ruptures created by both global capitalism and the Chinese Communist regime, Hong Kong people slowly but surely jettisoned their own colonial mentality and developed a decolonizing subjecthood, i.e., the agency to make their own history and determine their own destiny that includes but exceeds political institutions. What these movements cumulatively challenged were none other than the core principles of colonial hegemony, co-established by Britain and China since the early 1970s that had previously secured popular consent to colonial rule. After two decades of resistance, these core myths – “stability and prosperity,” “rule of law,” “free market utopia,” and “China as destiny” – no longer held sway. Hence a struggle for decolonization. When consent dissipated, in 2020 Beijing was compelled to use coercion in the form of the National Security Law. It is remarkable and significant that Beijing officials and statist scholars also use the rhetoric of “decolonization” to legitimize their agenda to rid Hong Kong people of their colonial nostalgia and Western values.

What are the responsibilities of Hong Kong’s two colonial masters – the British and the Chinese – for the tensions and crises that arose after the transfer of sovereignty in 1997?

All colonial masters rule to advance their own interests and capacities. Britain and China are no exception. Therefore, in this book I do not discuss “responsibility” and instead I discuss “interests” and “unintended consequences.” Also, it is a myth to think that crises and tensions plagued Hong Kong only after 1997. My first chapter debunks this by showing how before the 1970s, Britain and the PRC had shared interests to handle tensions and crises in Hong Kong through the use of force. They used the legal violence of the Emergency Regulations to deal with social unrest and political dissent, denying the populace of any meaningful democratic reforms or a path to self-determination, despite the United Nations having declared it a universal human right for all formerly colonized territories throughout the world. Most Hong Kong people – including a substantial segment of refugees and immigrants from Mainland China – did not develop much interest in or a capacity for political participation.

It was only since the late 1960s that Britain shifted to a more enlightened form of colonialism, using social reform to create popular support as a bargaining chip with China over the future of the colony. Without representation or participation in the high stakes closed-door Sino-British negotiations, Hong Kongers felt utterly powerless and anxious about the 1997 handover. But buoyed by the booming economy since the 1970s, they accepted the colonial myths cultivated by the two colonial masters that all they wanted was what Hong Kong already had: prosperity and stability, rule of law, free market utopia, and China as destiny.

After 1997, both the people and the political economy changed, partly as an unintended consequence of Beijing’s policies. First, it was Beijing that created its own adversary. What I mean is that the members of the young post-colonial generation who spearheaded the decolonization struggle were called to action by Beijing’s slogan that “Hong Kongers rule Hong Kong” under “One Country, Two Systems.” The expiration in 2047 of this China-initiated blueprint ironically instilled in them a sense of urgency to act swiftly to secure maximum autonomy before the deadline. This prompted an ever-intensifying process of politicization and popular protests as China continued to break its promise of autonomy. I emphasize in the book that China’s miscalculation and interventions in Hong Kong were only part of the equation. Crises and contradictions hailing from U.S.-led neoliberal capitalism – especially the Asian financial crisis and the anti-globalization movement – also powerfully shaped the political agency and aspirations of the post-colonial generations and the middle classes.

 What enabled the anti-extradition protesters in 2019 to form a broad coalition? What were the most striking aspects of the protests? 

The level of solidarity was among the most striking and unexpected aspects of the 2019 protest. I argue against the common view that social media and information technology were the main forces generating solidarity in protest. Instead, I identify five mechanisms of solidarity. First, there was what Durkheim terms “mechanical” solidarity based on like-mindedness and people’s compassion for each other. The ubiquitous slogan “Five Demands, Not One Less” was the most direct and unifying expression of the collective will, which was morally and emotionally forged by the ever-escalating police violence. The looming 2047 expiration date for One Country, Two Systems also cemented people’s conviction that this movement might be the last stand for Hong Kongers. Second, “reflexive” solidarity, based on a conscious overcoming of past fragmentation, was also at work. Between the 2014 Umbrella Movement and the 2019 protest, there was already reconciliation and reflections among the different activist factions. A willful consensus emerged on social media in the early days of the movement that this time people would have to overcome the acrimonious division between the militants and the moderates that had doomed the Umbrella Movement. Third, “organic” solidarity, rooted in an elaborate division of labor, made each protest possible. Over the course of six months, people came to realize how mutually dependent they were on one another to play their respective roles. An illustrated manual of twenty “occupations” – e.g. “dog killer” (frontline attacker), “magician” (Molotov thrower), “fire fighter” (tear gas extinguisher), “weatherman” (blocking cameras with an umbrella) – was widely circulated online, offering instructions and advice for citizens of varying physical strengths, interests, and resources to choose from. A fourth source of solidarity was the widespread practice of citizens incorporating resistance into their everyday lives. Protest solidarity was embedded in the preexisting organization of social life. For instance, bartenders would leave bottles on the streets for Molotov makers, citizens witnessing police abuse of young protesters would record their behavior with their iPhone cameras, and condominium residents would offer their security codes to protesters fleeing from riot police. Last but not the least, I also found coercive solidarity through the silencing and condemnation of dissenting values and internal criticisms of the movement.

You interviewed many participants in the protest movement of 2019. How did their participation in the protest influence or affect their identity as Hong Kongers? 

It was remarkable that the masses – 2 million out of a population of 7 million – joining the 2019 protests came from all walks of life. I call them the “pragmatic majority” who previously had been observers and bystanders to social protests. They were spearheaded by the “passionate minority” consisting primarily of the postcolonial generation. My research uncovers the many different interests, motivations, and pathways leading the participants to assume different roles in the protest. There were the black-bloc teenagers, whom I call “political freshmen,” who had no interest in politics prior to 2019 and who developed a strong Hong Konger identity by participating in a moral crusade for freedom and against police and regime violence. A bit older were the members of the Umbrella generation who were eager to resume the fight for a democratic and autonomous future, a vision nurtured during and since the 2014 Umbrella Occupation. They were joined by the middle classes and professionals whose “othering” of China emerged out of their experiences of discrimination and alienation in the corporate workplace that was dominated by red capital from the Mainland. Working class immigrants from China were a critical group offering all kinds of support for the young protesters. They embraced Hong Kong’s rule of law and civil liberties because they had learned what it is like to live without them in China. Through sustained participation in different forms protest over the course of six months, Hong Kongers were (re)born as members of a “political community in action.” Overall, it was not any ideology or leadership that made the movement truly broad-based. It was that for different reasons and from different social locations, the masses saw Mainland China and its Hong Kong agents as the main threat to their wellbeing. The lived experience of putting their bodies and minds on the line in an intense struggle lasting one year had an indelible impact on people’s identification as Hong Kongers that transcended generational, class, gender, ethnicity, and religious divisions in 2019.

You seem to argue that China’s harsh crackdown has achieved the opposite results. Instead of pacifying the city and uprooting the so-called pro-independence forces, China has succeeded in strengthening the cause of self-determination. Can you explain why this is the case?

The dialectical logic of suppression leading to radicalization is quite common throughout history. We saw this playing out in the early days of the 2019 movement, when the Carrie Lam administration resorted to a disproportionate police force to crush the citizens’ peaceful marches and insisted on pushing through passage of the extradition bill, ignoring the groundswell of discontent against such action. The result was a wholesale shift in public opinion and sympathy in favor of the protesters, allowing the struggle to expand to an unprecedented scope. Many people would say that, since 2020, Beijing has “won” with its imposition of the National Security Law. This law spells the end of One Country, Two Systems and puts Hong Kong under de facto control of Mainland officials in the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office of the State Council. China has now basically eliminated all liberal institutions in Hong Kong, and it has applied an extreme version of China’s social stability and national security governance to the city. Furthermore, the current geopolitical and economic tensions between China and the West do not provide a conducive environment for Hong Kong’s destiny to become a galvanizing issue, either locally or internationally. People are taking shelter in many forms of anti-politics in order to survive the steep economic downturn and the regime’s unrelenting purge of dissent, including imagined dissent.

However, does it mean the populace has been pacified? Suppression of expressions of resistance does not mean the eradication of resistance. Remember the famous saying from Chile, a country with rich experience of authoritarianism and state violence: “You can cut all the flowers, but you cannot stop spring from coming.” Call it the cunning or irony of history, the point is the same: history is a process full of unpredictable and unintended twists and turns. We do not need to look too far into the past to appreciate this. Who would have predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union? Many contemporary popular struggles against authoritarian rule – South Africa, Taiwan, South Korea, Northern Ireland, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere – all experienced nadirs similar to the one Hong Kongers face now, when no alternative to tyranny seemed possible. And then, one day, the tide turned.