After Autonomy: A Post-Mortem for Hong Kong’s first Handover, 1997–2019

by Daniel F. Vukovich

This book offers a sharp, critical analysis of the rise and fall of the 2019 anti-extradition bill movement in Hong Kong, including prior events like Occupy Central and the Mongkok Fishball Revolution, as well as their aftermaths in light of the re-assertion of mainland sovereignty over the SAR. Reading the conflict against the grain of those who would romanticize it or simply condemn it in nationalistic fashion, Vukovich goes beyond mediatized discourse to disentangle its roots in the Basic Law system as well as in the colonial and insufficiently post-colonial contexts and dynamics of Hong Kong. He examines the question of localist identity and its discontents, the problems of nativism, violence, and liberalism, the impossibility of autonomy, and what forms a genuine de-colonization can and might yet take in the city. A concluding chapter examines Hong Kong’s need for state capacity and proper, livelihood development, in the light of the Omicron wave of the Covid pandemic, as the SAR goes forward into a second handover era.

190 pages, Hardcover

First published September 22, 2022

Reviews

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

A City-State and Its Discontents...

This book offers two things: a lucid reflection on the 2019 ELAB protests and a proposal for what can realistically come next—I’ll focus on the first mostly. With the ELAB protests so far away now, separated from us by time and a resolute National Security Law (and with our ‘humanitarian’ affect so charged into Ukraine, Taiwan, etc for the time being), Vukovich offers a refreshing perspective devoid of political orientalism, NED dollars, and overt romance (as well as China’s own cultural nationalism, if it really has to be said…). If we can say that both sides claimed “external influence” as the main problem (CIA Color Revolution for Beijing and sects of the Western left nominally aligned with the PRC, or Evil Chinese Totalitarian Overreach for the ELAB movement), the discontents of 2014, 2016, 2019, and all those years in between have really been about Hong Kong’s state and civil society caught in the waves of a constantly changing global capitalism-imperialism. Make no mistake, these events would obviously have still occurred without the decades of imperialist intrigue and dark money that made celebrity-activists like Joshua Wong high-profile leaders of the movement.

One of the cruxes of the matter is a particular sort of Hong Kong localist identity, emergent from but not fully reducible to the legacy of British colonialism (which is not a condemnation but a simple observation—imagined communities are complicated). As for what I would add, Vukovich does not really mention the legacy of immigration controls (the Touch Base Law, racist narratives about ‘anchor babies’, etc) or more importantly, the specific class character of the mass movement and the pan-democrats in general (Vukovich says “middle-class aka bourgeois,” but I think “labor aristocracy” would be useful considering the rapid development of Hong Kong pre-1990s and the scapegoating of China in the ELAB discourse). To get to the main point, the problem that media, social media, and academic discourse has skirted around is the extreme fascist-esque, if not fascist, xenophobia endemic in the movement (this would refer both to the overt racists and their silent but complicit accomplices). For those in Hong Kong, this is basically an open secret. This xenophobia is the main point, and there is no getting around it if one wishes to wax eloquently about localism and “place-based identities” and the Great Sinophone Uprising Against the Mainland Chinese Empire.

If you want to get a sense of this now, try the ultra popular 2015’s Ten Years on Netflix with its depiction of Chinese-orchestrated false flag operations, Red youth guards egging bookstores, wanton bulldozing of houses, the destruction of the Cantonese language, etc. That this sort of overt yellow peril discourse is paraded around should be indictment enough of this whole schlock. The nativist demarcating lines are clear: Hong Kong is autonomous, democratic, free, culturally rich, liberal—a “global” pillar of cosmopolitanism for the Asian world unlike those wretched, ugly, and authoritarian-loving Mandarin-speaking mainlanders (that the working class [which does not so easily align itself with the pan-democrats] and superexploited domestic migrant workers [who quite literally reproduce Hong Kong] are left out of the conversation should be an immediate tell that this is bullshit). The fear then is that Hong Kong becomes just another gloomy mainland Chinese city, because clearly mainland China is homogenous and all its cities are the same! As is happening in Taiwan, one can see the Schmittian Cold War friend/enemy oppositions here: pro vs anti ELAB, pro vs anti democracy, autonomy vs censorship and despotism, individuals vs the state, etc etc etc. As Vukovich makes clear, it comes down to the dyad of “a true Hong Kong identity versus a “mainland Chinese identity””.

There is much to be angry about in Hong Kong, especially if you are a member of the dying labor aristocracy. Massive inequality, the housing crisis, an utter lack of social welfare or a tradition of even social democracy, poor and apolitical governance… one can either point towards the shiftings of global capitalism, as well as the lack of a proper decolonization though the Basic Law as Vukovich points out (meaning that British era colonial structures persist despite the handover of sovereignty), or one can blame China (as synecdoche for all those mainlander “locusts” up north). For the movement, the latter is easier. If one is to believe the cultural studies academics or whatever, Hong Kongers are an oppressed minority within their own city-state, and the Chinese empire is actually recolonizing Hong Kong. To be honest, this is an unhelpful way to look at history. If we engage with empirical reality rather than textual analysis, it’d be more correct to say that, if anything, the social woes of Hong Kong have only been exacerbated by Beijing’s inaction (“one country, two systems”). Deng’s “Get Rich” crew cared little about Hong Kong’s localist identity politics or about a real sort of decolonization, and it is only recently that Beijing has realized the consequences of this error (and of course, there is real danger of Beijing leaving Hong Kong on its own without comprehensively tackling the problem of decolonization beyond the re-assertion of sovereignty. One recalls Zhou Enlai's dismissal of the Cultural Revolution riots). Remarkably, leaving the pan-democrats’ grievances about spies and rumored disappearances to the side, Beijing remained mostly on the sidelines until it finally formalized the National Security Law (which was obviously a direct response to the nihilistic and wanton violence of the protests, as well as the unabashed solicitation of monetary and political support from President Trump and the United States—one does not need to be an apologist for China’s every action to recognize the obvious fact that China takes shit seriously). In a twist of fate, the ELAB radicals failed to even get their own Tank Man moment—what they got instead was a swift and smooth dismantling of the grounds for them to organize and even exist at all. That the state did not subject the protestors to harsher and more brute repression is quite surprising.

As a denouement, it should be clarified that the particular form of xenophobic nativist localism that reached its peak in the 2019 protests and its utterly nihilistic and fascistic ‘burnism’ (“if we burn you burn with us”) is not the end-all-be-all. Whatever happens next (which will be dealt with on the terms of integration since integration is inevitable) will change the forces that structure Hong Kong identity and culture, but the fantasy that Cantonese will be banished or whatever is just that: a fantasy which reflects the racialized anxieties of that particular “structure of feeling.” As much as nationalism and identity is often instituted top-down, the raw materials of identity formation are complex and rich and not so easy to “authentically” capture. Hong Kong identities are diverse just as mainland Chinese identities are—one can only be optimistic for a future localism that is not predicated on Occidentalism, Sino-Orientalism or Cold War oppositions. As for what comes next—Vukovich’s chapter on decolonization is worth the read.

…

That the ELAB protests took place in 2019 seems somewhat surreal to me—what's three years feels like a decade now with the timespace-distorting vicissitudes of the pandemic. I personally remember a whirlpool of discourse and slogans, accelerated through Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, etc and glowing mainstream press reports of the ever-valiant yellow protestors fighting for freedom against the dread HKPF—and its shadowy ruler of course, Xi Jinping's Beijing. The absolute level of affect felt—of alignment with The Movement, The "Revolution of Our Time"—was to put it plainly, insane. If there is an analogue today, it is most obviously the Ukraine War. As much as we might lament it, schlock like Harry Potter and Star Wars and 1984 really did prepare us to take the reflections/representations of political-economic reality so much more seriously than we take political-economic reality as such. Revolution of Our Time! Five Demands, Not One Less! Don’t You Mean West Taiwan! Russian Warship, Go Fuck Yourself! Slava Ukraine!

[Robert M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not an easy read but still very good and in a nice, even literary or forceful style.... This is a "green"book that is a mix of yellow and blue as the author says. That means it critiques the 2019 movement and the so-called hong kong "democrats" or "radicals" before and after the riots and violence that effecitvely ended the first handover period. Vukovich finds this movement -- from 1997 on -- almost inherently xenophobic in that it was not only often flat-out racist and chauvinist and anti-immigration, but also in that even the less reactionary, mainstream 'democrats' always wanted nothing so much as separateness and de-facto independence from the mainland sovereign. This will upset the apple-cart that is media discourse and "China expert" discourse inside and outside of academia.

But where this critque gets really intersting is in the critcism of the Basic Law system not for falsely promising a western electoral system (which is does NOT do) but becasue it is a rather simplistic and lame framework that promises everything and nothing to both sides-- to the mainland/loyalist people and the liberal/localistic people. Even more importantly, for Vukovich, the handover arrnagement and years that followed said and did nothing about colonialism OR de-colonization. So in many ways HK is still the same old colonial enclave, with a massive identity crisis aka false sense of superiority and inferiority.

There are a lot of other things in the book-- thoughts on identity politics, what forms de-colonization have to take, and how HK was woefully un-prepared for the pandemic due to its gung-ho liberal capitalist state.

But Vukovich thinks this will almost have to change and is aready changing. As he says in a refrain that frequently appears in the text, "We shall see."

The book is expensive compared to trade presses but can be found online. While it will bother those in the "yellow" or nativist camp, let alone the cos-playing radicals online, this is an important counter to the celebrations of 2019 and HK in general that of course entirely ignore its xenophobia and actual poltics.