Hong Kong Umbrella Movement Research Papers (original) (raw)

The past 10 years witnessed a resurgence of youth activism in East Asia. While some may consider it as simply reflecting a broader, general trend of young people reacting to the neoliberalizing world, this paper pays special attention to the changing cultural geographies of East Asia that underlie part of the picture. In 2014, the Sunflower movement in Taiwan was triggered by a group of young people who occupied the Legislative Yuan, paralyzed the establishment for 23 days, and brought about alternative politics, which soon was echoed by the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong during 26 September to 15 December the same year. This paper is interested in understanding how young people, walking away from the aforementioned urban uprising with their memories of participating in a sort of exceptional city for short time, carried on their aspiration for alternatives in their everyday lives. Finding inspiration from Victor Turner’s notion of liminoid and anti-structure, it attends to the activism embedded in everyday life. It also attends to the translocal, transnational interaction among young actors across cities in East Asia, with a focus on the act of place-fixing, which enables connection, collaboration, and circulation (of resources) through materialistic, transactive practices and can be compared to place-making.

- by Shu-mei Huang
- •
- Taiwan Studies, Hong Kong, Activism, Hong Kong Umbrella Movement

黃舒楣，伊恩，撐起雨傘的非常城市：遇見他者的閾限空間，考古人類學刊 (83期,2015年12月號)，頁25-56

- by Shu-mei Huang and +1
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- Social Activism, Hong Kong, Urban Social Movements, Hong Kong Umbrella Movement

One of the contested territory during the Umbrella Movement in the church is the usage of Scripture. This article addresses how political passages of the Bible are wrongly used to address a real and grounded issue of the protest in Hong... more

- by Ming Sing
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- Hong Kong, Civil disobedience, Occupy Movement, Hong Kong Umbrella Movement

Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink by Prof. Jeffrey Wasserstrom
Translated by Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal and Dom Rungruang

This paper situates Canada–China relations in the context of recent internet developments and debates about information and communication technologies (ICTs) infrastructure. I argue that protest events in Hong Kong surrounding the #occupycentral movement help us understand the tension between internet access, technological innovation and state centric forms of internet governance. By foregrounding the tension between the horizontal exchange of ideas and national surveillance and control, it is possible to identify important similarities between Canadian and Chinese state and the experience of internet users. In the wake of the Hong Kong occupy protests, it is possible to see how the internet promotes the practices of ‘Other Diplomacies’, functional relationships between citizen, market and foreign actors that present challenges for national regulation and traditional diplomatic mechanisms. The paper proposes a revival of the concept of Cyber-Diplomacy to better explain the challenges of state-to-state relations in an era of ICT innovation.

- by Dan Bousfield
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- Canada-China relations, Cyber Security, Cyber Diplomacy, Huawei

The 2014 Umbrella Movement was one of the most significant social and political events in recent Hong Kong history. This paper offers some initial reflections on the connections between the movement and broader issues related to civic education, critical thinking, and theories of education. First, it is suggested that the movement closely resembles a form of civic education known as " action civics " , offering an alternative pedagogy that might encourage more authentic civic participation. Second, the movement raises questions about how the teaching of critical thinking can be made more practically relevant to modern citizenship. Third, the deep political polarization associated with the movement indicates that civic education and critical thinking training need to pay attention to cognitive biases that affect political ideology. Finally, the Umbrella Movement reflects the failure of democratization in Hong Kong and coincides with increasing political pressures on the local education system. We discuss how political reality connects to issues about democratic education, critical pedagogy, and the idea of political neutrality in education.

- by Joe Y F Lau
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- Education, Critical Thinking, Civic Education, Hong Kong Umbrella Movement

Several Hong Kong theologians often reference the works of Hauerwas, a renowned American theologian, rather than other prominent voices in theological ethics; thus, the paper analyses selected Hong Kong theologians’ understanding of and engagement with Stanley Hauerwas’ theological convictions with reference to the Occupy Central and Umbrella Movements, and the Hong Kong theologians’ dialogue with each other around Hauerwas’ convictions. The self-proclaimed Hong Kong Hauerwasians’ engagement with Hauerwas’ convictions regarding the Occupy Central and Umbrella Movements makes an excellent starting place for Hong Kong Christians as a community to contemplate the public nature of their collective thoughts and actions.

- by Ann Gillian Chu
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- Political Theology, Stanley Hauerwas, Hong Kong, Hong Kong Umbrella Movement
- by Jung Joon Lee
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- History of photography, Hong Kong, Hong Kong Umbrella Movement

This paper argue that Christian churches should educate their congregants on sociopolitical issues, so that both the church and individual congregants can speak to the world prophetically, as a part of Jesus’ teaching in caring for the weak. Civil disobedience should not be the main means for the church to express social concerns. Rather, a godly life that witnesses Jesus as Lord should be how Christians exert their power to effect changes in society. This witness cannot be short-term, like civil disobedience is so often; it must be sustained and life-long.

- by Ann Gillian Chu
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- Christian Ethics, Hong Kong, Civil disobedience, Hong Kong Umbrella Movement

The aim of this paper is to highlight the influence of relative deprivation (RD), observed amongst a number of Hongkongese youth, on the process of radicalization of Hong Kong politics. The thesis of this paper is that the political radicalization of youth, noticeable particularly in recent years (e.g. more violent protests, the growth of nativist and localist organizations and the flourishing idea of self-determination of Hong Kong), can be an effect of RD. The findings conclude that the feeling of deprivation amongst youth refers to two spheres: “political values” and “welfare values”. The former concern the expectations of democratization of the political system and the latter relate to the feeling of dismantling the economic status and cultural identity ofHongkongers. The results of this paper are based on a small-range qualitative research (focus groups, in-depth interviews) conducted in April 2014, November 2015 and September 2016 on the group of HK students, scholars, journal...

- by Łukasz Zamęcki
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- Political Science, Hong Kong Umbrella Movement

The Sunflower Occupy Movement broke out in March 2014, shaking Taiwan’s political landscape and its relations with China. The Sunflower Movement preceded the Umbrella Movement in just a few months. These two campaigns fought for democracy and autonomy from China, both were mobilized by civil forces and led by the youth, and activists from both places interacted frequently for mutual empowerment. The former caused the suspension of a trade agreement between Taiwan and China, a severe blow to Beijing’s irredentism, while the latter failed to achieve the goal of direct election of the chief executive. This article will demonstrate that momentum for a contentious mobilization against CCP-KMT cooperation had been accumulating for several years before the outbreak of the Sunflower Movement, thanks to the activism of civic groups. That movement in turn transformed social attitudes toward China. First, the article accounts for the movement’s emergence and immediate impact, and analyzes strategic interactions in light of short-term political opportunity. It then illustrates the “long path to the Sunflower Movement” by focusing on the turn of discourse, the surging protest cycle, and new protest repertoires leading to the Occupy actions. Thirdly, it elucidates the transformative nature of the movement. The final section will compare the cases of Taiwan and Hong Kong in terms of youth politics, civil society, and the China impact.

- by Jieh-min Wu
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- Social Movements, China, Hong Kong, Contentious Politics

This paper analyses the vicissitudes of Hong Kong people’s waves of hostility toward visitors from mainland China, treating the hostility as exemplary of a more general but extensive problem of racialism in China. It has two intentions. First, it wants to understand historically how since the start of the twenty-first century, the simplicity of Hong Kongers’ confused response towards mainlanders has grown into a series of organized “anti-mainlander campaigns” and an allegedly “racist” phenomenon. Second, this paper seeks to document and investigate these sometimes-dangerous sentiments that characterise, confuse and overtake the Hong Kongers’ struggle for liberal democracy and regional autonomy. To do so is not to pattern itself on the Chinese state’s announced goal of policing HK’s status as a “special administrative region.” Although Hong Kongers derive small political benefit from such “campaigns,” they have few ways in which they can overcome the prospect of losing their distinctiveness and becoming one of the many cities of “global China.” Given the complex origins of this HK-mainland relationship in historical colonialism and global capitalism, and given the People’s Republic’s new power and status as a key player in the global capital order, Hong Kongers seek to express themselves through free speech, but doing so in a way which creates a public spectacle.

- by Ruth Y Y Hung
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- Censorship, Tibet, Racism, China

本文以2014年雨傘運動之後的流感隱喻作為研究主體，同時涉及與之相關的沙士隱喻，希望藉著疾病隱喻的話題來展現當下香港社會政治環境之矛盾，以及描繪出現時中港之間緊張的關係是如何被鞏固的。... more

- by Xianliang DONG
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- Cultural Studies, Hong Kong, Medical History, Hong Kong Umbrella Movement

Established in 1962, the Hong Kong Museum of Art was the first public museum in the city. It closed in August 2015 for a four-year renovation and spatial expansion of the facility, and reopened its doors in November 2019. The renovation happened precisely in the interstices of two important historical ruptures in recent Hong Kong history: the Umbrella Movement of 2014 and the ongoing Anti-China Extradition Movement that started in 2019. These movements are redefining the identity of the city and its people in contrast to the conventional Hong Kong cliché of transformation from fishing village to modern financial hub. Without addressing recent changes in cultural identity, the revamped museum rhetorically deploys obsolete curatorial narratives through exhibitions of Hong Kong art. This report critiques the representation of Hong Kongness in the revamped museum and argues that the latter is a soulless entity that overlooks the fact that both politics and art are now reconstructing local identities.

- by Vennes Cheng
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- Aesthetics, Museum Studies, Art and Politics, Hong Kong studies
- by Tin Ping Yeung
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- Political Philosophy, Art History, Contemporary Art, Performance Art
- by Gary Bettinson
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- Censorship, Film Studies, Chinese Studies, Transnationalism

Historical parallels, analogies, anachronisms and metaphors to the past play a crucial role in political speeches, historical narratives, iconography, movies and newspapers on a daily basis. They frame, articulate and represent a specific understanding of history and can be used not only to construct but also to rethink historical continuity. Almost-forgotten or sleeping history can be revived to legitimize an imagined future in a political discourse today.
History can hardly be neutral or factual because it depends on the historian’s, as well the people’s, perspective as to what kind of events and sources they combine to make history meaningful. Analysing historical analogies – as embedded in narratives and images of the past – enables us to understand how history and collective memory are managed and used for political purposes and to provide social orientation in time and space. To rethink theories of history, iconology and collective memory, the authors of this volume discuss a variety of cases from Hong Kong, China and Europe.

- by Andreas Leutzsch and +1
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- European History, Iconography, Film Studies, Cultural Heritage

This paper analyses Stanley Hauerwas’ theology in terms of how Christian ethics inform acts of civil disobedience. Before presenting its argument, this analysis first provides a working definition of the Christian view of civil disobedience as defined by Martin Luther King, Jr. It then argues that Hauerwas’ approach to civil disobedience would be that the church community contemplate what it means to be in Christ’s narrative, a process that involves Christology, ecclesiology, and eschatology. The paper presents its argument in these three parts. In regard to Christology, it argues that Christ’s narrative dictates the lives of Christians and includes acts of civil disobedience; thus Christians should focus on knowing who they are and are meant to be in Christ’s narrative, hastening the kingdom of God through non-violent, non-coercive, long-term communal relations that witness to the world at large. In regard to the church’s role in civil disobedience (ecclesiology), this section argues that the church as a community should remain focused on the manifestation of God’s kingdom as a slow witness to the world, rather than considering earthly political regimes at the forefront of Christian life and that the “church is church,” separate from political institutions. In regard to the individual Christian’s view of civil disobedience from now until the return of Christ (eschatology), the paper argues that Christians should have patience in the providence of God when facing earthly matters, considering that ends do not justify violent means, and that Christian conviction requires the transformation of the church community—a transformation that illuminates the world. This paper concludes that Hauerwas would argue that political decisions should be based on what it means to live as a Christian, rather than whether civil disobedience is right or wrong.

- by Ann Gillian Chu
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- Christian Ethics, Stanley Hauerwas, Hong Kong, Civil disobedience
- by Gary Bettinson
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- Queer Studies, Censorship, Film Studies, Film Theory

置身資訊化社會，人們於獲得媒體文本製作技術的門檻大幅降低的狀況下，怎樣以網絡集體創作方式，並將其作品上傳至網絡平台如YouTube表達其政治訴求？本文期望探討普羅市民介入政治方式的範式轉移，即從假手於文化中介人或政客，到自己親身上陣。換句話說，當社會菁英不再壟斷論述話語權，無法擔當文化身分的代言者之際，人們可以怎樣生產屬於自己的文化政治論述？這道問題於香港的語境演繹如下：「香港人」如何從下而上論述「香港」？「香港」如何由阿巴斯(Abbas 1997)眼中的「消失」，到馬傑偉(2013)聲稱的「重現」，再到本文主張於網絡世界裡「再造」？為回答以上問題，本文以雨傘運動流動占領「鳩嗚」衍生的網絡創作「日日去鳩嗚」為例，藉著追溯這系列音樂錄像如何在高登討論區被生產，以及其生產模式如何能以禮物經濟論去理解，從而探討網絡集體創作跟香港人身分認同的關係。

- by Ray Kwok-wai LAI
- •
- Internet Studies, Youtube, Hong Kong identity, Hong Kong Umbrella Movement

Cinema censorship is a relatively unexplored topic in the discipline of surveillance studies. While movies are frequent references throughout the scholarship, such citations tend to be limited to plot and imagery and overlook the ways in which the medium can be subject to state intervention or other forms of censorship and self-censorship. This essay uses the case of the 2015 Hong Kong independent film Ten Years to explore how cinema deserves to be considered alongside other media and communications whose vulnerability to institutional control and monitoring are already widely documented by surveillance studies. The film, which reflects Hong Kong residents' critique of mounting Chinese power, was the object of an aggressive vilification and repression campaign by the mainland Chinese government. It also spawned a grassroots defense in which audiences and filmmakers mobilized around the film as a symbol and site of civic discourse and political critique. Using the concepts of participatory media and online activism and connecting Ten Years with Hong Kong's 2014 " Umbrella " protests against Chinese rule, this essay shows how cinema invites the same interventions and interactivity as social media and other digital or communications technologies. Indeed, because Ten Years' history of populist activism resembles well-known instances of media mobilization such as the Arab Spring and Black Lives Matter, this essay demonstrates not only cinema's multiple dimensions of relevance for surveillance studies but also uncovers new global spaces whose film history will diversify surveillance studies.

- by Karen Fang
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- Media Studies, Censorship, Surveillance Studies, Hong Kong Cinema
- by hoyin Leung
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- Site-Specific Art, Art Theory and Politics, Hong Kong, Hong Kong Art

This article assesses the implications of the Umbrella Movement as it drew to a close. It explains how the movement morphed from the Occupy Central movement, and reviews the controversy raised over the city’s rule of law and constitutional relations with mainland China. Despite having amplified democracy supporters’ yearnings for universal suffrage, the movement, in which no compromise was offered by Beijing and the Hong Kong government, will likely deepen social cleavages and send the city toward an uncertain future.

- by Samson Yuen
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- Social Movements, China, Hong Kong, Contentious Politics

This article is an ethnographic exploration of the Umbrella Movement that occupied and re-spatialized the arterial streets of Hong Kong in late 2014. It examines how communities made up of hamlets of tent-dwelling demonstrators evolved, in particular, out of the Admiralty occupied area. Through a sense of communitas exercised among these communities, occupied areas were infused with 'pure potentiality' and transformed into liminoid spaces. As a result, the previously undifferentiated space of roads took on new meanings and was redefined to facilitate the discursive needs of these communities. Such transformation of space also reveals the tonality of life among the communities, and how they relate to each other through the moral idiom of care. While short-lived, the communal re-spatialization of the Umbrella Movement articulated images of a utopian Hong Kong as well as a critique of Hong Kong's political plight, often through irony and humor.

- by Yew-Foong Hui
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- Social Movements, Political Anthropology, Hong Kong, Liminal Space

This feature include three short essays I wrote for the ArtCo magazine in Taiwan to review the several art fairs and events in Hong Kong during the Art Basel month March 2015. The first comments on the Art Basel effect, that the market force has marginalized cultural institutions in the public sector. Culture cannot takes roots in the fast shifting cityscape and the open economy. The second reviews exhibitions at the Duddell's and Para Site that using politics as the catch phrase but with failing in challenging politic. The last one report about the dynamic of the two artist/ cultural districts, namely the Fotanian and the Island South Cultural district.

We develop an argument within which humor and humiliation can be analyzed in one dimension. This dimension is the strategies that opposing groups use in the non-violent protests. Within this framework, we show that opposing groups are likely to utilize differing strategies for socialization, mobilization and communication. Second, building on the existing literature on intergroup relations, we analyze the strategies of the gatekeepers (government supporters) as well as the challengers (protesters). To our knowledge, this article is the first attempt in the non-violent protests literature to analyze and theorize on the strategies of both groups. Third and probably our most important contribution is that we introduce a data driven, empirical analysis of strategic actions of the opposing groups in non-violent protests. We hope that this first attempt help opening up a field where qualitative and quantitative methods of scientific c inquiry can work together. To better capture and explore issues like humor and humiliation in a context of non-violent protests and strategic actions requires a hard work with an interdisciplinary perspective.

- by cheung chan fai
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- Utopian Studies, Hong Kong Umbrella Movement
- by Jonathan Ludwig
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- British History, Taiwan Studies, British Foreign Policy, China

Purpose-This paper aims to unravel how the formation of Hong Kong citizenship intertwines with controversies over global citizenship, national identities and local identity in post-handover Hong Kong. It aims to engage the case study of Hong Kong to the academic dialogue surrounding global citizenship, especially its contested compatibility with national identities and various political communities.

- by Gary Tang
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- Global Citizenship, National Identity, Hong Kong, Hong Kong Umbrella Movement
- by Paul O'Connor
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- Prefigurative Politics, Hong Kong Umbrella Movement

The aim of this paper is to highlight the influence of relative deprivation (RD), observed amongst a number of Hongkongese youth, on the process of radicalization of Hong Kong politics. The thesis of this paper is that the political radicalization of youth, noticeable particularly in recent years (e.g. more violent protests, the growth of nativist and localist organizations and the flourishing idea of self-determination of Hong Kong), can be an effect of RD. The findings conclude that the feeling of deprivation amongst youth refers to two spheres: " political values " and " welfare values ". The former concern the expectations of democratization of the political system and the latter relate to the feeling of dismantling the economic status and cultural identity of Hongkongers. The results of this paper are based on a small-range qualitative research (focus groups, in-depth interviews) conducted in April 2014, November 2015 and September 2016 on the group of HK students, scholars, journalists, and politicians. The analysis leads to the conclusion that without real changes in the political system of Hong Kong, the level of radicalization might further increase in the coming years.

- by Łukasz Zamęcki
- •
- Hong Kong Umbrella Movement

Social movements are voluntary events whose participants have the right to leave whenever they disagree with their leaders. For this reason, the legitimacy of social movements is often perceived as inherent and thus of only secondary importance. This article aims to repudiate this view by demonstrating that legitimacy issues can impose constraints and have significant impacts on the relationships and decisions of the leaders of social movements. In the case of the Umbrella Movement, bottom-up legitimacy challenges to movement leaders’ authority not only forced the leaders to reform their decision-making structure and even implement direct democracy, but also intensified the relationships among the leaders of different factions, ultimately undermining the leadership’s overall effectiveness.

- by Chi Kwok and +1
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- Social Movement, Legitimacy, Hong Kong, Hong Kong Umbrella Movement

In this chapter I explore how four African-initiated Pentecostal churches stage a campaign of spiritual warfare in Hong Kong. I foreground the spatial politics of this project at different scales. First, I look closely at how the four pastors of the churches rhetorically frame Hong Kong in a wider geopolitical imaginary which is indebted to the ‘global city’ paradigm of urbanisation. Second, I focus in detail on one particular technique of spiritual warfare, the prayer walk, which I suggest resembles a form of ‘psychogeography’ by which the churches seek to redeem urban space. The chapter draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Hong Kong at the time of the Occupy and Umbrella Revolution protests in 2014. I conclude by reflecting on how this campaign of spiritual warfare, when taken as a mode of inhabiting the city, can itself be understood as a form of ‘occupation’ in demonstration against precarity.

- by Benjamin Kirby
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- Religion, Christianity, Sociology of Religion, Political Geography and Geopolitics

For the second time in five years, citizens of Hong Kong mobilized in protest against proposed legislation that threatened to erode the Special Administrative Region's relative degree of autonomy from the People's Republic of China. The ensuing Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (Anti-ELAB) Movement subsequently became the largest social movement in Hong Kong's history. While the movement had peaceful beginnings, clashes between police and protesters turned increasingly violent over time. Under what conditions do primarily nonviolent movements escalate to violence? Given the widespread diffusion of social movements around the world, insights into potential explanations to this question are important for both policymakers and citizens alike. Regarding this question of violent escalation, the social movements literature suggests that movements make strategic decisions to escalate, are driven toward this outcome by state repression, or alternatively engage in nonviolent escalation. This paper argues that a combination of state repression and a determination of the inefficacy of nonviolence by movement actors influences the likelihood of violent escalation. In a qualitative case study of the Anti-ELAB Movement, this paper finds support for the hypothesis that a combination of state repression and the perceived ineffectiveness of nonviolent protest drives violent escalation. Biography Connor Weathers is currently a senior at Suffolk University in Boston, MA studying Government with a concentration in International Relations. His main research interests are focused on international conflict and American foreign policy. In addition to coursework, he has served for the past seven months as a Data & Analytics intern with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, assisting the federal government's COVID-19 response. He has also interned as a research assistant with a Professor of International Relations at Suffolk. Following the completion of his undergraduate degree in December 2022, Connor plans to pursue graduate study in the field of International Relations.

- by Connor Weathers
- •
- Social Movements, Violence, Hong Kong, Resistance Movements

The Umbrella Movement in 2014 drew attention to Hong Kong from across the world and triggered local artists to respond to the current social and political issues through their art. This article discusses three socially engaged projects created in response to the Umbrella Movement by two women artists: Birthday Cakes (2014) and Love China Love Hong Kong Thick Toast (2015) by Phoebe Man, and Singing Under the Moon for Today and Tomorrow (2015) by Jaffa Lam. This article investigates how the aesthetic regime of these projects is realized from a feminist perspective. It argues that women artists can intervene in the male-dominated representations of borders and spatial politics in Hong Kong art to create an alternative by adopting feminist art tactics. Moreover, women artists can take a step further to reconsider the mechanism of identity politics and pay close attention to relational forms in socially engaged art to achieve the dissensus of aisthesis. After all, it is the construction of a community of dissensus that resonates with the spirit of the Umbrella Movement.

- by Hong ZENG
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- Feminist Art, Women Artists, Chinese contemporary art, Socially Engaged Art
- by Gary Tang
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- Social Media, Hong Kong, Television, Political Mobilization

What does it mean to ‘share’ thought and experience in contexts enabled by new media platforms? Arguing that the affordances of those platforms play a formative role in social experience, fostering cross-cultural learning and change that might not otherwise have occurred, this chapter considers the transformative impact of new media on the situation of a white Western ‘expat’ working without Chinese language skills in a Cantonese-speaking university environment in Hong Kong. By exploring some of the genres of new media use that Hong Kong people have developed for dealing with the intense pressures of life in their city, the chapter also traces the way in which some ‘old’ new media uses informed aspects of the ‘Umbrella Movement’ that attracted world-wide attention when pro-democracy protesters occupied key urban sites for almost three months in late 2014.

- by Catherine Driscoll and +2
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- Digital Culture, New Media Studies, New social movements, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies

This paper traces the evolution of the US’s laws and policies toward Hong Kong running through the United States-Hong Kong Policy Act (US-HKPA), Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy (HKHRDA) to Hong Kong Autonomy Act (HKAA). The US-HKPA, enacted under the Clinton Administration, after the Tiananmen massacre but before the handover of Hong Kong, is a product of US’s China policy based on engagement policy. It represents a compromise between the Congress and Executive and reflects soft-law nature, of which the implementation is largely dependent on Executive discretion. After three decades of engagement polices and more than twenties of China’s resumption of sovereignty over Hong Kong, the US’ China policy gradually changes and has seen a significant turn under the Trump Administration. In the midst of US-China tension and with the bipartisan support from the Congress, the HKHRDA and HKAA strengthen the review, reporting and sanctioning mechanism on the human rights, democracy and autonomy in Hong Kong. Nonetheless, the Trump Administration decision to suspend the preferential treatment of Hong Kong under the US laws on the ground of the erosion of high degree of autonomy guaranteed by the Sino-British Joint Declaration and HKBL poses questions about legality and legitimacy under public international law and WTO law. We argue that the US’s sanctions against individuals and entities in undermining Hong Kong human rights, democracy and autonomy can be justified based on international human rights law given its limited scope, special designation and effectiveness and proportionality. We also argue that the trade related measures can be justified under general exception (public morals) and national security exception. We observe that the termination of preferential treatment based on separate customs territory status may cover four dimensions: rule of origin, tariffs, export control and currency. We submit that there is little guidance from GATT/WTO law on ‘full autonomy in the conduct of its external commercial relations and of the other matters provided for in this Agreement’, historical and comparison approaches may be adopted in appreciating whether Hong Kong still enjoys full autonomy in sustaining its WTO membership by virtue of separate customs territory status.

- by Chienhuei Wu
- •
- International Human Rights Law, WTO law, Hong Kong, One Country Two Systems

Through analysing Hong Kong’s protest culture, primarily focusing on the developments of the Occupy Central Movement and the Umbrella Movement, this paper argues that, in the case of Hong Kong, the language of rights and of democracy is so pervasive that the Christian understanding of the proper religio-political stance is informed by the secular narrative rather than the Christian narrative. The discourse on civic action in Hong Kong’s Christian community has been shaped by multi-faceted external forces such as Hong Kong’s relationship with its political overlords, the language of Western post-Christendom democracy, and Christian teachings. This paper will provide the historical context of protest in Hong Kong, Hong Kong’s relationship with Britain and China, and Christianity in Hong Kong, and will consider these factors in relation to the period in which protest became prominent. These factors are crucially relevant to the Hong Kong Christian community’s understanding of civic engagement after the Umbrella Movement, and this context is necessary to understand Hong Kong’s unique post-colonial trajectory of decolonisation, which led to a system of autocratic government control.

- by Ann Gillian Chu
- •
- Postcolonial Studies, Christian Ethics, Political Theology, Hong Kong

The rise of civic nationalism in both Hong Kong and Taiwan indicates a prominence of democratic liberal values which are contributing to the further rejection of an ethnonational Chinese identity imposed by Beijing. Using the 2014 Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong and the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan as case studies, this paper examines how the rise of civic nationalism is furthering the nation-building project of Hong Kong and Taiwanese identities. Following a comparison between the Umbrella Movement and the Sunflower Movement in terms of the sequence of events, the paper identifies the impact of the movements on both societies through an examination of the successes and failures of each movement, the rise of new political forces and party politics, as well as political institutions. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of the widening identity gap of Hong Kong and Taiwan from China.

- by Justin Kwan
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- Social Movements, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Civic Nationalism

On localism, militantism, and the links the Umbrella Movement

- by Trey Menefee
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- Social Movements, Chinese Studies, Chinese Politics, China studies