Citizenship,economy and social exclusion of mainland Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong

Hong Kong is often viewed as a Chinese immigrants' city. This article discusses three interrelated dimensions of the social exclusion of migrants designated as “new” Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong. First, it is argued that globalisation has triggered intense economic rivalry among world cities as they undertake economic restructuring. Second, the political attempts of territorial states to establish their own legitimacy and strengthen their governing capacity are major catalysts that induce the social exclusion of immigrants. Third, the nature and strength of local place-based social identity is vital to determine the difficulties new immigrants face in being included in the host society. After recounting the history of Chinese immigrants and their recent profile in Hong Kong, the article examines the relationships between Hong Kong's economic development and the state's immigration policies, and how Hong Kong's state policies have constructed a form of Hong Kong identity vis-à-vis Mainland Chinese, drawing out the mechanisms that determine the social exclusion of Mainland immigrants since the 1990s.

“We asked for workers but human beings came.” Max Frisch(quoted in Hollifield,2000:149)     

Support for and Opposition to Democratization in Hong Kong

It is not easy to say what proportion of Hong Kong residents support democratization. Although the overwhelming majority of Hong Kong people support universal suffrage of the chief executive, public opinion in Hong Kong is divided into two opinions about whether they should accept the Chinese-style of democracy in which candidates are selected before election by the Chinese Central Government to exclude pro-democracy camp candidates. The majority of Hong Kong citizens do not want a person from the pro-democracy camp who is not on good terms with the central government to become the chief executive, and the “Occupy” movement was not welcomed because of prolonged occupation of the major streets. It is not easy for the pro-democracy camp to persuade conservative ordinary people to support full-democracy, and even if they succeed in changing public opinion, the central government and mainland people will become the next obstacle. The future perspective of Hong Kong's democratization is not bright, but young people's demand for democracy is very strong and they may well change Hong Kong society. It may also be possible that a wave of political consciousness among the young could eventually also sweep mainland China.     

Constitution of Democratic Kampuchea

Given China's record of suppressing freedoms and brutalising nationalistically-distinct territories in its midst, the alarm of Hong Kong's 1997 status change from British to Chinese association was especially shrill. After more than a decade of Chinese association, some scholars remain pessimistic. Some have suggested that as if “by a thousand cuts” Hong Kong's autonomous powers will slowly succumb to full Chinese political assimilation. Others have suggested that Hong Kong's autonomy is already dead and remains vulnerable to the unilateral fiat of Chinese authorities. By contrast to these views, this paper will argue that Hong Kong is a polity whose constitutional order is defended by political entrenchment. It is a partially independent political entity which exercises constitutional powers that are robustly defended by the political-economic influence (rather than constitutional influence) which it exerts upon China's central government. As this paper will show, the fortunes of China's leaders are linked to the performance of Hong Kong's economy. And since the territory's economy rests upon the pillars of its autonomous institutions, press freedom, rule of law and civil liberties, this prevents maximalist interference from Beijing.     

The prostitute

Migrant domestic workers rarely take part in — let alone organize — public protests in the countries where they work. Public protests are virtually unheard of among migrant domestic workers in Singapore, Taiwan, and Malaysia, and especially in the Middle East and the Gulf States. Over the past decade and a half, however, migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong — mostly Filipinas and Indonesian women — have become highly active, organizing and participating in political protests. Hong Kong's migrant domestic workers protest in a place where they are guest workers and temporary migrants, denied the opportunity of becoming legal citizens or permanent residents. Increasingly, these workers, their grassroots activist organizations, and the nongovernmental organizations with which they are affiliated frame their concerns in terms of global, transnational, and human rights, not merely local migrant worker rights. This article takes the “Consulate Hopping Protest and Hall of Shame Awards” event — part of the anti-World Trade Organization protests in Hong Kong in 2005 — as an ethnographic example of domestic worker protest and as an entrée through which to ask what it is about Hong Kong and about the position of women migrant workers — whose mobility and voice is both a product and a symptom of globalization — that literally permits public protests and shapes their form and content. The article illustrates how migrant workers’ protests and activism have been shaped by domestic worker subjectivities, by the dynamics of inter-ethnic worker affiliations, and by the sociohistorical context of Hong Kong as a post-colonial “global city” and a “neoliberal space of exception.”     

Economic integration and the circulation of Hong Kong dollars in Southern China

As the economies of Hong Kong and southern China have in recent years become more closely integrated, the phenomenon of currency substitution has gained in importance. This article provides both theoretical and empirical analyses of the circulation of Hong Kong dollars in Mainland China. The observed phenomenon of currency substitution is first explained from both macro- and microeconomic perspectives. The empirical study then estimates the quantity of Hong Kong dollars circulating in southern China over the last fifteen years. Regression analysis indicates that the growth rate of Hong Kong's foreign direct investment in China, as well as the growth rate of trade between Hong Kong and China, and the difference in real returns between Hong Kong dollar denominated assets and Chinese renminbi denominated assets are some of the main determinants that have contributed to the widespread circulation of Hong Kong dollars in southern China     

Haven under erasure?: Hong Kong,global Asia and human rights

Discussions of Hong Kong's human rights situation tend to focus on the ex-colony's struggle to protect civil and political rights against the encroachment of the Chinese state. Without contradicting the well-grounded concern with Hong Kong's human rights future articulated in these discussions, this article offers a complementary narrative of human rights development in post-1997 Hong Kong that looks beyond the national frame of such discussions. Drawing attention to Hong Kong's position as a regional centre in the struggle for human rights in Asia under globalisation, the article argues that the activities of local and transnational human rights advocacy groups in the city show positive and promising possibilities of coalitional solidarity on the ground of human rights. Notably, the protests against national security legislation opened up opportunities of articulating diverse struggles for the rights of various social groups, including migrant groups, with the local struggle for civil and political rights. A perspective of Global Asia enables a reading of this important episode in Hong Kong's struggle for human rights that suggests more open-ended future possibilities than the common nationally-framed accounts.     

Conductive Activism: Anti-Sweatshop Campaigns across Hong Kong and Mainland China

This study looks at trans-border, anti-sweatshop campaigns and the transformation of cross-border activism between Hong Kong and mainland China. Examining two cases, it demonstrates the mechanism and processes of trans-border, anti-sweatshop campaigns and networks involving non-governmental agencies, student groups and workers. The study suggests that anti-sweatshop activism has been conductive and transferrable from Hong Kong to China in a way that has mobilised local civil society power, cultivated mainland activists and nurtured localised pro-labour activism. With Hong Kong activists acting as movement conveyers and mainland activists acting as adapters, anti-sweatshop activism has evolved. Once centred on marketplaces and consumers, it is now centred on production sites, and has moved domestic actors (including workers, students, scholars, media and consumers) from the margins to the centre. Anti-sweatshop activism has moulded itself to local contexts by rebuilding its strategies and tactics while coalescing with overseas networks to integrate strengths across the Hong Kong-Chinese border. Although the anti-sweatshop movement in China has its weaknesses, its evolution has the potential to gradually alter the power asymmetries between domestic and overseas activists.     

香港族裔经济中的印尼华侨与华人

20世纪七八十年代,有不下20万的印度尼西亚华侨自中国内地迁居香港;而近30多年来,印尼家务工人亦接踵而至,其在香港的人数现已超过13万人。这两群看似毫不相干的移民,在21世纪全球化以及区域移民的大语境下相遇,共同构建了香港经济活动中奇特的族裔景观,具体包括印尼食品店、服装店、手机店、家具店等等。基于文化背景、语言条件以及香港公民身份等因素,第一代印尼归侨以及千禧年前后开始定居香港的印尼华人或自己充当雇主,或在族裔经济中担任雇员,自然而然成为在港印尼族裔经济的先驱者与主要获利者。本文根据2013年到2016年初的田野调查和深度访谈,梳理在港印尼华侨华人的移民背景以及类别,探讨印尼华侨华人如何在印尼家务工人移民潮的推动之下,启动他们的族裔资源,使之成为具有商业用途的资本,从而促进了过去十多年来香港印尼族裔经济的蓬勃发展。     

Organised Informality and Suitcase Trading in the Pearl River Delta Region

ABSTRACT

Suitcase trade is a common activity along state borders in Asia. Existing scholarship has often viewed such suitcase trade as locally embedded activities characterised by informality. This article contends that this perception underestimates the diversity and complexity of suitcase trade. This is illustrated with a case study of the Pearl River Delta region of southern China, where thousands of suitcase traders carry goods across the borders between mainland China and its two Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macao. Several patterns of operation run in parallel, ranging from petty traders working alone to highly-organised group operators. While each individual transaction is small scale and based on informal networks, the entire chain of operations is run by syndicates that are highly organised, commercial, with well-defined divisions of labour, and on a large scale. We describe such a combination of organisational competence and informal networks as “organised informality.” The concept allows us to expand the analytical horizon to cover those cross-border exchanges that incorporate modern commercial practices in otherwise non-formal settings. It also bridges the oft-criticised dichotomies of formal-informal and licit-illicit.     

STATE-SOCIETY CONFLICT RADICALIZATION IN HONG KONG: THE RISE OF ‘ANTI-CHINA’ SENTIMENT AND RADICAL LOCALISM

Hong Kong has been facing an increasingly strong “anti-China” sentiment in recent years. More people are worried that existing Mainland-Hong Kong integration actually provides more opportunity for Beijing to exercise political control over Hong Kong, resulting in the loss of local identity. Political parties of the pan-democratic camp, which has been at the forefront of political activism since the 1980s, used to adopt a “milder” approach to oppose intervention from Beijing. However, with more Hong Kong people, especially localists, becoming sceptical towards this tactic, they have resorted to escalating things into “radical” protests or even bloody clashes with the authorities. During Chinese Lunar New Year 2016, a few hundred protesters joined the “Mong Kok Riot” and violently pelted police officers with bricks and glass, leading to more than 120 people being injured. The clashes may on the surface have been about hawker management issues, but, in fact, were fuelled by a growing discontent against the Chinese and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region governments. With more protesters prepared to take more radical actions against the authorities, state-society relations in Hong Kong are likely to enter an unprecedented period of tension.     

香港修例风波背后的深层次问题

香港2019年爆发的修例风波是香港回归祖国后遇到的最严峻的政治局面,也是“一国两制”在香港实践以来遇到的最大挑战。这场风波清晰地暴露了一系列严重妨碍“一国两制”在香港全面和准确贯彻的因素和情况。这些因素和情况包括:国家安全漏洞明显、政治体制内“自由”和“威权”失衡、“一国两制”的“另类诠释”存在、香港“核心价值”并不牢固、部分香港人“亲西方、抗中国”固有心态、国家宪法和基本法教育不到位、香港自由放任资本主义体制的缺失。中央对此已有察觉,并针对部分因素和情况制定了应对之策,从而为在香港全面和准确贯彻“一国两制”营造有利条件。     

Reflecting on Social Movement Unionism in Hong Kong: The Case of the Dockworkers’ Strike in 2013

By analysing the 2013 Hong Kong dockworkers’ strike, this article explores how workers, precariously situated in the world’s freest economy, fight for decent wages with the support of civil society. It is argued that the trade union movement in Hong Kong, a Special Administration Region of the People’s Republic of China, is a typical example of social movement unionism. It suggests that the rise of social movement unionism in Hong Kong was a practical strategy of social activists to support labour rights under the specific context of vulnerable structural power, weak institutional power, failed political unionism and a vibrant civil society. Social movement unionism has a “double-edged sword” effect on workers’ power: on the one hand, it has the potential to create societal power and strengthen associational power; on the other hand, it may compromise workers’ militancy and the possibility of stronger workplace bargaining power during workers’ struggle.     

关于香港建设国际研发之都的思考与建议

香港要提高竞争力,成功实现经济转型,在粤港澳大湾区建设中发挥关键作用,提升在国家经济发展和改革开放中的地位和功能,必须加快建设国际研发之都。香港有条件成为国际研发之都,但要解决好资金、人才、合作等三大挑战。与此同时,中央支持、香港与内地加强合作也至关重要。     

“一国两制”下的香港司法机关

香港特别行政区司法机关得到国际社会和香港本地社会的高度评价。本文阐述了香港司法制度的结构,包括法院的架构、规模以及双语法制;介绍了香港的法官制度,包括法官的任命和服务条件,法官的选拔、培训、考核和行为守则,对法官的投诉机制,法官的任期、薪酬待遇以及司法行政等;梳理总结了香港对司法独立和司法公义的制度保障。在“一国两制”的宪制安排下,香港司法也体现出特殊性。香港享有终审权,各级法院对基本法亦有解释权,但全国人大常委会颁布的基本法的解释,香港各级法院必须遵从。     

日本的香港研究综述

日本的香港研究历史悠久,近年来发展迅速。与中国内地、香港特区自身以及英美等西方国家的香港研究相比,日本的香港研究自有其特色。为便于学界对此有更多的了解,就研究主题与发表时序,逐一介绍近年日本对港研究的著作。由于日本香港研究触及香港社会的诸多议题,题材相对丰富,所以更适合就政治发展、社会经济、法律法规、文化艺术等视角逐一进行考察及综述。与此同时,也不可讳言,日本的香港研究存在种种不足,包括其对于内地与香港关系的偏见、研究取材的狭隘以及研究方法的滞后等等。从这个角度看,日本香港研究的成果值得国内学界关注,其局限也需要我们引以为戒。     

The Asian scholar and the American crisis

Abstract

National development strategies in many Third-World countries in recent years have tended to emphasize a number of Japanese-pioneered patterns, among them management methods and export-oriented industrialization. Both have been seen as crucial to Japan's rise as an industrial power; and, during the past decade, export-oriented industrialization has been behind the rise of the Asian “Gang of Four”—South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore.     

A critical note on UNDP's gender inequality indices

This article explains the diverse responses among the Chinese bourgeoisie in Hong Kong and Singapore to Chinese nationalist movements in the 1930s. In Singapore, the slogan of “Chinese buy Chinese goods” boosted the Chinese bourgeoisie in their business competition with Japan. The same slogan was used by the Chinese bourgeoisie in Hong Kong to emphasize increased sales of Chinese goods while Japanese imports were used by Chinese manufacturers in Hong Kong. I also interpret Chinese bourgeois nationalism in Hong Kong and Singapore as a move toward transnational economic citizenship. Emphasising their Chinese ethnicity, the bourgeoisie in Hong Kong and Singapore asked the Chinese government for favourable import tariffs. At the same time, the bourgeoisie requested the British for favourable tariffs, when they wished to export goods to markets in Britain and its colonies.     

Analyzing China's socialist revolution

Abstract

Recent trends in “China scholarship” include two dominant sets of goals and foci in examining China's socialist revolution. Exponents of the more traditional view, represented here by Lucian Pye's Mao Tse-tung, seek to explain it away as a pathological deviation from “normality” in social development. The extremism of Pye's book makes it almost a caricature of the worst in the first trend. By the same token this extremism makes the prejudices and assumptions on which this trend is based easier to perceive than would be the case with other more subtle works. The less traditional and less frequently published view, represented here by Nee and Peck's China's Uninterrupted Revolution attempts to comprehend the Chinese Revolution, historically and philosophically, as a meaningful process directed at increasing human liberation.     

The PRC,Taiwan, and the overseas Chinese

The rapid growth of China’s economy and its opening to the outside world have attracted a large volume of trade and investment from Hong Kong and Taiwan, creating an economic grouping with a total foreign trade in 1992 almost equal to that of Japan. The economic linkage of this “Greater China” with Southeast Asia’s overseas Chinese communities is steadily growing and will continue to do so for the rest of the decade, barring a sharp drop in the PRC’s growth rate, which seems unlikely.