Building the Queen’s Road: Hong Kong Identity Examined through Post-Colonial Theory

Abstract

Hong Kong’s reversion to Chinese rule in 1997 was preceded by active scholarly discussions on local cultural identity. Academic consensus quickly coalesces around the idea that Hong Kong identity emerged in the 1970s and is inextricably linked with postmodernist values such as freedom and democracy. However, the current literature has never convincingly articulated why Hong Kong identity has such a narrow construction, nor analyzed if the timing and manner of such discursive framing was motivated to benefit certain interest groups. By applying post-colonial theory to declassified British colonial dispatches in the National Archives between the 1930s and the 1970s, this research seeks evidence that Hong Kong identity was used by the British as a tool for control throughout colonial rule, with different iterations of identity constructed from time to time, of which the version described in the academic consensus is merely the latest in a lineage of transformations aimed at promoting British or Western interests. Research findings indicate that British rule constantly and unobtrusively shaped Hong Kong people’s perception of themselves to internalize colonial values, resulting in a fluid conception of identity over time that did not emerge only from the 1970s. The author proposes that further work be undertaken to disengage the study of Hong Kong identity from the objectification imposed by Western epistemology masquerading as modernity or similar paradigms. Instead, identity should be studied as subjectivity, focusing on the "point of view" of Hong Kong people for whom culture is experienced rather than essentialized.