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

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Edmund W. Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Social Activism ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Hybrid Identity ◽  
Post War ◽  
City State ◽  
The City ◽  
And Diffusion

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.

scholarly journals Imported cases, community action, policy and institutional systems drive Hong Kong’s COVID-19 experience

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Joy P. Cruz ◽  
Rachel Ganly ◽  
Zilin Li ◽  
Stuart Gietel-Basten
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Age Structure ◽  
Age Distribution ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Health Department ◽  
Community Action ◽  
Younger Age ◽  
Imported Cases ◽  
City State ◽  
The City

This paper investigates the profile of COVID-19 cases in Hong Kong, highlighting the unique age structure of confirmed cases compared to other states. Whilst the majority of cases in most states around the world have fitted an older age profile, our analysis shows that positive cases in Hong Kong have been concentrated amongst younger age groups, with the largest incidence of cases reported in the 15-24 age group. This is despite the population’s rapidly ageing structure and extremely high levels of population density. Using detailed case data from Hong Kong’s Centre for Health Department and Immigration Department, we analyze the sex and age distribution of the confirmed cases along with their recent travel histories and immigration flows for the period January to April, 2020. Our analysis highlights Hong Kong’s high proportion of imported cases and large overseas student population in developing COVID-19 hotspot areas such as the United Kingdom. Combined with targeted and aggressive early policy measures taken to contain the virus, these factors may have contributed to the uniquely younger age structure of COVID-19 cases in the city. Consequently, this young profile of confirmed cases may have prevented fatalities in the city-state.

Deliberation about the 2014 Umbrella Movement in a Hong Kong elite newspaper: A quantitative study of the Hong Kong Economic Journal

2020 ◽  
pp. 205789111989852
Author(s):  
Waikeung Tam
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Quality Index ◽  
Public Issues ◽  
Economic Journal ◽  
The City ◽  
Public Concerns ◽  
Significant Question ◽  
Discourse Quality

Deliberative democratic theorists have argued that effective deliberation is central to democracy. Does Hong Kong possess a viable public sphere for deliberating important public issues, as the city has been striving for a full democracy since the 1980s? This article addresses this significant question by examining the quality of deliberation on the 2014 Umbrella Movement by the editorials and commentaries in an elite print Chinese newspaper – the Hong Kong Economic Journal – based on the “Discourse Quality Index” and other criteria used by major works on mediated deliberation. This article argues that the Journal has served as a viable public sphere for deliberating important public concerns in Hong Kong. The Journal’s editorials and commentaries performed well in terms of offering reasoned arguments and engaging in dialogue with opposing viewpoints. Regarding respect for the actors which were involved in the Umbrella Movement, the Journal as a whole had maintained a civilized tone. However, there was an indication that commentary authors had less tolerance toward actors from the opposite camps.

Hong Kong as an International Tourism Space

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chi-Kwan Mark
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Mass Tourism ◽  
The Us ◽  
Leisure Travelers ◽  
The One ◽  
North Vietnam ◽  
The City

After 1945 globalization and mass tourism were mutually reinforcing developments. A traditionally free travel space, Hong Kong was part and parcel of the globalization of tourism. Major international and regional airlines operated in and through Hong Kong; new hotels sprang up whilst the older ones expanded in size; and the city became the ’shopping paradise’ of the world. For Americans, whether businessmen, leisure travelers, or military personnel on rest and recreation, Hong Kong was one of the most desirable destinations in Asia, second only to Japan. Yet the globalization of American tourism was a highly politicized process. Due to its strategic location, Hong Kong became embroiled in the geopolitics of the Vietnam War and the political spillover of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. In the mid-1960s, Beijing repeatedly protested against what it claimed was the US Navy’s use of Hong Kong as a “base of aggression” against North Vietnam. Meanwhile, in 1967 left-wing elements in Hong Kong carried out their own Cultural Revolution-style struggle against the authorities. Sandwiched between American demands for ’R & R’ facilities on the one hand, and the Chinese protests and local Maoist challenges on the other, the Hong Kong government had to deliberate on the future of American tourism.

Political Palimpsests

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camilo D. Trumper
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Art ◽  
Street Art ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Political Citizenship ◽  
Visual Style ◽  
City Walls ◽  
Post War ◽  
The City

Chapter 4 turns to ephemeral forms of public art, including posters, murals, and graffiti. This chapter occupies is at the very heart of the book. Connecting urban and visual studies with political and oral history, it suggests that ephemeral forms of street art allowed santiaguinos to open new spaces for political debate in the city center, factories, and shantytowns alike. Ephemeral forms of public art helped urban residents fashion both an innovative language of political debate and an alternative, inclusive geography of political participation. They transformed city walls into arenas of dialogue and brought their viewers into a space of wider political analysis. In fact, the political significance that posters, murals, and graffiti held was rooted in their very ephemerality. Meant to last for an hour or a day, they were often ripped or painted over, and new attempts were layered over older pieces, transforming city walls into palimpsests of political debate. They generated a visual style that allowed a host of actors to enter into public political debate and articulate an intricate, ever-changing political discourse. They ultimately remade the city into a political arena and rewrote the terms and limits of political citizenship in the post-war period. Street art, in short, simultaneously constituted and commented on a public sphere of political debate that was rooted in urban practices of occupation and appropriation.

Singapore's frictions with China could worsen

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Diplomatic Relations ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Military Exercises ◽  
Economic Partnership ◽  
Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership ◽  
City State ◽  
The City

Subject Singapore diplomacy outlook. Significance Singapore's defence ministry announced on January 30 that nine Terrex infantry carrier vehicles seized by Hong Kong customs on November 23 had been returned. The vehicles were detained in Hong Kong en route back from military exercises in Taiwan. Despite the resolution of this incident, Singapore's diplomatic relations will be tested further in 2017 as the city state is facing a regionally ascendant China and a new Asian foreign policy vacuum in Washington, following US President Donald Trump's inauguration. Impacts Despite the Terrex episode, Singapore's ties with Taiwan are unlikely to weaken. Singapore will likely pursue alternatives to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, such as a non-US arrangement, in the short term. The city state will also embrace the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, currently being negotiated.

Turkish Muslims in a German city: Entrepreneurial and residential self-determination

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Sarah Hackett
Keyword(s):  
Residential Patterns ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
Self Employment ◽  
German City ◽  
Post War ◽  
Oral History Interviews ◽  
The City ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Term Objective

Drawing upon a collection of oral history interviews, this paper offers an insight into entrepreneurial and residential patterns and behaviour amongst Turkish Muslims in the German city of Bremen. The academic literature has traditionally argued that Turkish migrants in Germany have been pushed into self-employment, low-quality housing and segregated neighbourhoods as a result of discrimination, and poor employment and housing opportunities. Yet the interviews reveal the extent to which Bremen’s Turkish Muslims’ performances and experiences have overwhelmingly been the consequences of personal choices and ambitions. For many of the city’s Turkish Muslim entrepreneurs, self-employment had been a long-term objective, and they have succeeded in establishing and running their businesses in the manner they choose with regards to location and clientele, for example. Similarly, interviewees stressed the way in which they were able to shape their housing experiences by opting which districts of the city to live in and by purchasing property. On the whole, they perceive their entrepreneurial and residential practices as both consequences and mediums of success, integration and a loyalty to the city of Bremen. The findings are contextualised within the wider debate regarding the long-term legacy of Germany’s post-war guest-worker system and its position as a “country of immigration”.

Verdichten mit «Greening», oder was wir von Singapur lernen können (Essay)

2015 ◽  
Vol 166 (4) ◽  
pp. 219-222
Author(s):  
Urs Gantner
Keyword(s):  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Renewable Resource ◽  
Popular Participation ◽  
Botanical Gardens ◽  
Living Space ◽  
Urban Neighbourhoods ◽  
Mixed Use ◽  
City State ◽  
Vertical Greening ◽  
The City

Densification by greening, or what we can learn from Singapore (essay) Singapore, a city-state with a high population density, wants to give its population, its tourists and its economy a living and livable city and has developed the concept of the Garden City. Parks, nature reserves, forest, green corridors, trees, botanical gardens, horizontal and vertical greening of buildings, as well as popular participation, are all important for this vision of the city. Singapore is counting on dense construction alongside “greening” and biodiversity. Let us be prepared to learn from Singapore's example! Our land is also a non-renewable resource. To protect our ever more limited agricultural land, we should renounce any extension of building land, and free ourselves from the expanding carpets of suburban development. Let us build multiple urban neighbourhoods with mixed use and more biodiversity. Let us develop new types of communal gardens. Urban gardens in the widest sense – from private gardens to garden cooperatives, to parks and botanical gardens – are a part of our living space. The city should be our garden.

The City-State of Boston

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARK PETERSON
Keyword(s):  
City State ◽  
The City

Comedy and the Athenian Ideal

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Konstan
Keyword(s):  
American Democracy ◽  
Intended Audience ◽  
The World ◽  
Hollywood Movies ◽  
Hellenistic World ◽  
City State ◽  
The City ◽  
New Comedy ◽  
A Performance

New Comedy was a Panhellenic phenomenon. It may be that a performance in Athens was still the acme of a comic playwright’s career, but Athens was no longer the exclusive venue of the genre. Yet Athens, or an idealized version of Athens, remained the setting or backdrop for New Comedy, whatever its provenance or intended audience. New Comedy was thus an important vehicle for the dissemination of the Athenian polis model throughout the Hellenistic world, and it was a factor in what has been termed ‘the great convergence’. The role of New Comedy in projecting an idealized image of the city-state may be compared to that of Hollywood movies in conveying a similarly romanticized, but not altogether false, conception of American democracy to populations around the world.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aled Davies
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Development ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Financial Centre ◽  
Conservative Government ◽  
The Social ◽  
Post War ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

This book is a study of the political economy of Britain’s chief financial centre, the City of London, in the two decades prior to the election of Margaret Thatcher’s first Conservative government in 1979. The primary purpose of the book is to evaluate the relationship between the financial sector based in the City, and the economic strategy of social democracy in post-war Britain. In particular, it focuses on how the financial system related to the social democratic pursuit of national industrial development and modernization, and on how the norms of social democratic economic policy were challenged by a variety of fundamental changes to the City that took place during the period....

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document