Status Updates From 異國兩制: 從香港民族主義到香港獨立

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China, although undeniably part of "the Orient" and a historical victim of Western colonization, is at the same time an expansive colonial power with its own deployments of orientalizing knowledge/power to rationalize its domination of others: ethnic minorities (inc minorities who were once part of nations like Tibet), citizens of HK, citizens of Taiwan, and the broader so-called Chinese diaspora.

"chauvinism in past era mutated to pathological self-affirmation, obsessively repeated in a failed attempt to cover over its own deep insecurities amid the inexorable historical trend of China's rise"

- warn can be no compromise with such trend
- earlier compromises by central authorities n 2003 / 2012 gave unruly natives of the south the wrong impression of central state's determination

Origin of HK independence: a pathological response to China's unstoppable rise

- overturned hierarchy, HK people grown increasingly determined to repress these realities: "Mentally and psychologically, many HK residents are stuck in the middle 1980s, and they have not been prepared for all the changes that happened after 1997"

Zhu & Zhang, Critique of Hong Kong Nativism (2019):
3 stages of HK history:
- 1) 1842-1949 period of blurred borders and mutual exchange;
- 2) 1949-late 1970s period of closed borders and growing distinction;
- 3) 1980s-present period of inverted hierarchy and emergent pathology

HK people see themselves in (2) as not only distinct from China but also distinctly better than China: "Hong Kong chauvinism"