Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T13:11:07.076Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Loyalist, Dissenter and Cosmopolite: The Sociocultural Origins of a Counter-public Sphere in Colonial Hong Kong

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2021

Edmund W. Cheng Open the ORCID record for Edmund W. Cheng [Opens in a new window]
Edmund W. Cheng*
Affiliation:
Department of Public Policy, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China. Email: ew.cheng@cityu.edu.hk.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper surveys the process of discursive contestation by intellectual agents in Hong Kong that fostered a counter-public sphere in China's offshore. In the post-war era, Chinese exiled intellectuals leveraged the colony's geopolitical ambiguity and created a displaced community of loyalists/dissenters that supported independent publishing venues and engaged in the cultural front. By the 1970s, homegrown and left-wing intellectuals had constructed a hybrid identity to articulate their physical proximity to, yet social distance from, the Chinese nation-state, as well as to appropriate their sense of belonging to the city-state, through confronting social injustice. In examining periodicals and interviewing public intellectuals, I propose that this counter-public sphere was defined first by its alternative voice, which contested various official discourses, second by its multifaceted inclusiveness, which accommodated diverse worldviews and subjectivities, and third by its critical platform, which nurtured social activism in undemocratic Chinese societies. I differentiate the permissive conditions that loosened constraints on intellectual agencies from the productive conditions that account for their penetration and diffusion. Habermas's idealized public sphere framework is revisited by bringing in ideational contestation, social configuration and cultural identity.

摘要

摘要

本文审视香港在殖民时代后期，知识分子的话语争夺历程，是如何在中国大陆边缘，形成一个回异的公共领域。二战后，流亡的中国知识分子，利用该殖民地的模糊地缘政治，推动自主出版，参与文化阵线，建立一个属于遗民和异见者的他乡。到 1970 年代，本土和左翼知识界，建了一种混合身份认同，以表达他们地理上比邻，社会上却区隔的国族身份，以介入社会不公，来反思对该城邦的归属感。借着审阅文化刊物和访问公共知识分子，本文尝试拿捏这回异的公共领域的内涵：第一，与各种官方论述相抗衡的另类声音；第二，容纳不同世界观和主体性的多元场域；第三，在非民主的中国社会中培育行动主义的重要平台。我尝试将放宽知识群体约束的许可条件，与解释其渗透力和扩散性的生产条件，区分开来。透过引入话语争夺、社会形塑和文化认同的视角，本文重新审视哈贝马斯理想化公共领域的框架。

Keywords

public spherecultural identityintellectual historysocial movementsdiscursive contestationHong Kong公共领域文化认同思想史社会运动话语争夺香港
Type
Special section: “Revisiting the Public Sphere in 20th- and 21st-century China”
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 246 , June 2021 , pp. 374 - 399
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of SOAS University of London

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abbas, Ackbar. 2001. “(H)edge city: a response to becoming postcolonial Hong Kong.” Cultural Studies 15(3/4), 621–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ahmed, Sara. 2004. “Affective economies.” Social Text 22(2), 117–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Bickers, Robert, and Yep, Ray. 2009. May Days in Hong Kong: Riot and Emergency in 1967. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.Google Scholar
Calhoun, Craig. 2012. The Roots of Radicalism. Tradition, the Public Sphere, and Early 19th-century Social Movements. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carroll, John M. 2005. Edge of Empires: Chinese Elites and British Colonials in Hong Kong. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chan, Koonchung. 2007. Shihou: bentu wenhua zhi (Aftermath: An Ethnography of Local Culture). Hong Kong. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cheng, Edmund W. 2016. “Street politics in a hybrid regime: the diffusion of political activism in post-colonial Hong Kong.” The China Quarterly 226, 383–406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheng, Edmund W. 2020. “United front work and mechanisms of counter-mobilization in Hong Kong.” The China Journal 83, 1–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheng, Edmund W., and Yuen, Samson. 2019. “Memory in movement: collective identity and memory contestation in Hong Kong's Tiananmen vigils.” Mobilization 24(4), 419–437.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheung, Kwai-yeung. 2000. Jinyong yu baoye (Jin-yong and the Press). Hong Kong: Ming Pao Publishers.Google Scholar
Chiu, Stephen Wing-kai, and Lui, Tai-Lok (eds.). 2000. The Dynamics of Social Movements in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.Google Scholar
Chow, Yiu Fai. 2017. “Hong Kong creative workers in mainland China: the aspirational, the precarious and the ethical.” China Information 31(1), 43–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
City Magazine. 1976–1997. Hong Kong: City Publisher.Google Scholar
Cohen, Paul A. 1974. Between Tradition and Modernity: Wang T'ao and Reform in Late Ch'ing China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
CUSP (Chinese University Student Press). 1969–1997. Hong Kong: Chinese University Student Publication Editorial Committee.Google Scholar
Foreign and Commonwealth Office. 1972. Activities of New Left Groups amongst Students and Youth of Hong Kong. FCO 40/364. The National Archives.Google Scholar
Fraser, Nancy. 2014. “Transnationalizing the public sphere: on the legitimacy and efficacy of public opinion.” In Fraser, Nancy and Nash, Kate (eds.), Transnationalizing the Public Sphere. New York: Polity Press, 8–42.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. 1989. The Structural Transformation of The Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Harvard, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hong Kong Federation of Students (eds.). 1983. Xianggang xuesheng yundong huigu (A Review of Hong Kong's Student Movement). Hong Kong: Wide-angle Publisher.Google Scholar
Hu, Ju-ren. 1997. “Fuguan xiansheng yu Xianggang” (Fuguan and Hong Kong). In Luo-fu, (eds.), Xianggang di ren he shi (Hong Kong's People and Things). Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 3–35.Google Scholar
Hung, Ho-fung. 1995. “67 Trauma and the making of ‘Hong Kong people’: a tentative search for the repressed.” Hong Kong Cultural Studies Bulletin 4, 27–35.Google Scholar
Hung, Ho-fung, and Ip, Iam-chong. 2012. “Hong Kong's democratic movement and the making of China's offshore civil society.” Asian Survey 52(3), 504–527.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobs, Jane. 1961. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Ku, Agnes S. 2001. “The ‘public’ up against the state: narrative cracks and credibility crisis in postcolonial Hong Kong.” Theory, Culture and Society 18(1), 121–144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ku, Agnes S. 2019a. “Performing civil disobedience in Hong Kong.” In Alexander, Jeffrey, Palmer, David, Ku, Agnes and Park, Sunwoong (eds.), Civil Sphere in East Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 84–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ku, Agnes S. 2019b. “In search of a new political subjectivity in Hong Kong: the Umbrella Movement as a street theater of generational change.” The China Journal 82, 111–132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lam, Wai-man. 2004. Understanding the Political Culture of Hong Kong: The Paradox of Activism and Depoliticization. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Lau, Siu-kai. 1984. Society and Politics of Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press.Google Scholar
Law, Wing-sang. 2009. Collaborative Colonial Power: The Making of the Hong Kong Chinese. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.Google Scholar
Law, Wing-sang. 2014. “1960–70 niandai Xianggang di huigui lunshu” (The reunion discourse in Hong Kong in the 1960s–70s). Reflexion 19, 117–140.Google Scholar
Law, Wing-sang. 2018. “Shenfen zhengzhi wang hechuqu” (The quo vadis of identity politics). In Cheng, Edmund W. and Yuen, Samson (eds.), Sheyun niandai:Xianggang kangzheng zhengzhi di guiji (An Epoch of Social Movements: The Trajectory of Contentious Politics in Hong Kong). Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 19–36.Google Scholar
Li, Joseph. 2019. “A Hong Kong intellectual in the cultural revolutionization: the humorous quotations from Man Yan-kit.” Hong Kong Studies 2(1), 1–12.Google Scholar
Lui, Tai-lok. 2012. Na sizeng xiangshi di qishi niandai (The Déjà Vu of the 1970s). Hong Kong: Zhonghua Publisher.Google Scholar
Luo, Xianglin. 1971. Guofu zai Xianggang zhi lishi yiji (The Historical Traces of Dr. Sun Yat-sen in Hong Kong). Hong Kong. Chu Hai College Publishing Committees.Google Scholar
Ma, Ngok. 2007. Political Development in Hong Kong: State, Political Society and Civil Society. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.Google Scholar
Ma, Ngok. 2012. Xianggang bashi niandai minzhu yundong koushu lishi (Oral History of Hong Kong's Democracy Movement in the 1980s). Hong Kong: City University Press.Google Scholar
Man, Yan-kit. 1967. Wanrenjie yulu (Quotations from Man Yan-kit). Hong Kong: Universal Publisher.Google Scholar
Mark, Chi-kwan. 2004. Hong Kong and the Cold War: Anglo-American Relations, 1949–1957. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ming Pao Monthly. 1966–1997. Hong Kong: Ming Pao Publisher.Google Scholar
Mok Chiu-yu. 1997. The Life and Times of Ng Chung Yin. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Arts Centre.Google Scholar
Ngo, Tak-Wing (ed.). 1999. Hong Kong's History: State and Society under Colonial Rule. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Panku. 1967–1973. Hong Kong: Panku Publisher.Google Scholar
Pepper, Suzanne. 2008. Keeping Democracy at Bay: Hong Kong and the Challenge of Chinese Political Reform. London: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Rea, Christopher. 2015. The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, Priscilla. 2016. “Cold War Hong Kong: the foundations.” In Roberts, Priscilla and Carroll, John M. (eds.), Hong Kong in the Cold War. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 15–25.Google Scholar
Saich, Tony. 1985. “Through the past darkly: some new sources on the founding of the Chinese Communist Party.” International Review of Social History 30(2), 167–182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, James. 1990. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Seventies BiWeekly. 1970–1972. Hong Kong: The 70s Editorial Board.Google Scholar
Seventies/Nineties. 1970–1997. Hong Kong: Zhenshan Publisher.Google Scholar
Shih, Shu-mei. 2007. Visuality and Identity: Sinophone Articulations across the Pacific. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Siu, Helen F. 2016. Tracing China: A Forty-year Ethnographic Journey. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snow, D.A., and Benford, R.D.. 1992. “Master frames and cycles of protest.” In Morris, A.D. and Mueller, C.M. (eds.), Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 133–155.Google Scholar
Soifer, Hillel D. 2012. “The causal logic of critical junctures.” Comparative Political Studies 45(12), 1572–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Undergrad. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Student Publication Editorial Committee.Google Scholar
Theroux, Paul. 2010. Fresh Air Fiend. Taipei: Marco Polo Publisher.Google Scholar
Tsang, Steve. 2004. A Modern History of Hong Kong. London: IB Tauris.Google Scholar
Veg, Sebastian. 2017. “The rise of ‘localism’ and civic identity in post-handover Hong Kong: questioning the Chinese nation-state.” The China Quarterly 230, 323–347.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vogel, Ezra F. 2016. “Milestones in the history of the Universities Service Centre for China Studies.” The China Journal 75(1), 1–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wang, David. 2007. Houyimin xiezuo: shijian yu jiyi di zhengzhixue (Post-loyalist Writing: The Politics of Time and Memory). Taipei: Maitian.Google Scholar
Warner, Michael. 2002. Publics and Counterpublics. New York: Zone Books.Google Scholar
Wasserstrom, Jeffrey N. 2020. Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink. New York: Columbia Global Reports.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weintraub, Jeff. 1997. “The theory and politics of the public/private distinction.” In Weintraub, Jeff and Kumar, Krishan (eds.), Public and Private in Thought and Practice: Perspectives on a Grand Dichotomy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1–42.Google Scholar
Wu, Xuan-ren. 2001. Xianggang wenshe shiji: chubian 1961–1980 (A History of Hong Kong's Learned Societies Vol. 1, 1961–1980). Hong Kong: Caijizuhe.Google Scholar
Yep, Ray. 2008. “The 1967 riots in Hong Kong: the diplomatic and domestic fronts of the colonial governor.” The China Quarterly 193, 122–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yuen, Samson, and Cheng, Edmund W.. 2020. “Deepening the state: the evolution of China's united front work in post-handover Hong Kong.” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 53(4), 136–154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhang, Jie Ping. 2014. “Tanpai (yi)：yiguo liangzhi yu minzhu Xianggang” (Showdown I: one country two systems and Hong Kong democracy). New York Times Chinese Edition, 18 June.Google Scholar