The historical significance of the 2019 Hong Kong revolt

Soundings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 79 (79) ◽  
pp. 37-50
Author(s):  
Au Loong-Yu
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Young Generation ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Democratic Movement ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Universal Suffrage ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Balance Of Forces

This essay discusses why the Hong Kong 2019 revolt means so much for future democratic movements despite its tragic defeat and its weaknesses. This was a massive democratic movement, with entirely legitimate demands: the dropping of an extradition bill which could legalise Beijing's attempts to prosecute Hong Kong citizens under the Mainland legal system; and the honouring of its commitment of granting universal suffrage to the Hong Kong people. This massive movement naturally brought with it multiple tendencies and contradictions. Taking advantage of the absence of a left labour movement, and a young generation who were newcomers to politics, right-wing and anti-Chinese voices became more vocal than their organisational strength might have indicated - though not strong enough to alter the fundamental character of this revolt as a democratic movement. In the last analysis, however, the balance of forces means that Hong Kong has little chance of preserving its liberty unless the Mainland situation begins to change. Success will ultimately depend on a united front between democratic forces in the Mainland and Hong Kong, an issue which the 2019 r evolt has not thought sufficiently about. However, the 2019 revolt, which helped to consolidate democratic consciousness among millions in Hong Kong, itself constitutes a new starting point for the future of democratic struggle, both in the Mainland and in Hong Kong.

scholarly journals Hong Kong’s Stand-off: Indigenous Dynamics and International Perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-150
Author(s):  
A. I. Salitskii ◽  
A. V. Vinogradov
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Social Situation ◽  
International Perspective ◽  
Young Generation ◽  
Youth Movements ◽  
Universal Suffrage ◽  
Election System ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
Sociological Studies

In February 2019, Administration of Hong Kong initiated Extradition Bill, which sparked mass protests in June. The scale of the protests was unprecedented in the history of the SAR and resulted in violent clashes between police force and young radicals organized by ‘localist’ groups. The authors present a short history of interaction between pro-Beijing and pan-democratic camps in the territory concentrated on the reform of the election system of the SAR. They conclude that exacerbation of the political stand-off in Hong Kong started in 2007 when the authorities promised a possible transit to universal suffrage in 2017. The demands for this transit were not satisfied in 2014 leading to ‘Umbrella revolution’ – the first manifestation of radical youth movements. Detecting the causes of the conflict the authors look into the concept of ‘Hong Kong identity’ as opposed to ‘Chinese identity’ popular in sociological studies of the public opinion in the SAR. They try to investigate other reasons for the growing distress and protests of young generation of Hongkongers, both indigenous and exogenous. The latter correlate strongly with a general trend towards deterioration in Sino-American relations. A wide picture showing interference of the US in Hong Kong’s political life and instigation of protests in 2019-2020 is presented. In the stormy 2020, however, political situation in Hong Kong became more stable following adoption of the Law on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong by the China’s parliament in late June. Closing some loopholes in the SAR legislation the Law facilitates the fight with radical groups. Still, a major healing in interaction of pan-democrats and loyalists is ahead to address gloomy economic and social situation in the territory.

Drag resistance: Necropolitics, queer survival and a Balkan counterpublics

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Anna
Keyword(s):  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Cultural Events ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Political Choices ◽  
Financial Crisis Of 2008 ◽  
Political Scene ◽  
Drag Queens

Taking the murder of Greek HIV+ and queer activist Zak Kostopoulos as its starting point – an exercise of necropolitical power in broad daylight – this article explores the work of drag queens in Greece and their aesthetic/political choices. It interprets their performances as tactics of survival and resistance and as creative responses to queer trauma. The role of queerfeminist spaces, cultural events and collectives also is examined as a response to the increasing right-wing turn in the country’s political scene – itself the result of the financial crisis of 2008. It imports José Esteban Muñoz’s disidentifications and counterpublics, Elizabeth Freeman’s erotohistoriography and Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics into the Greek/Balkan context and analyses the particular configurations and intersections of sexualities, genders, statehood, race, class and religion in Greece. It then examines disidentifications and counterpublics as empowering practices of community forming, offering glimpses of a queer Balkan counterpublics and the tools employed towards its making (humour, parody, reclaiming, disidentification, mourning and embodied pleasures).

Stages of Hong Kong’s democratic movement

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 352-380
Author(s):  
Benny Yiu-ting Tai
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Significant Shift ◽  
Democratic Movement ◽  
Democratic System

Bill Moyer observed that there are eight stages in a social movement: seeming normal, exposing injustice, ripening conditions, taking off, losing heart, winning the majority, reaping success and consolidating achievement. For more than 30 years, Hong Kong people have been striving for democracy. Applying Moyer’s model, Hong Kong should be now at a stage close to reaching its ultimate goal of establishing a genuine democratic system in the territory after years of work, especially the triggering event in September 2014 and the occupation during the Umbrella Movement. However, Moyer’s model cannot be mechanically applied to the case of Hong Kong in light of the unique situation faced by Hong Kong people. Hong Kong’s authoritarian sovereign holds the final key to Hong Kong’s door to democracy. Unless there is a significant shift in the balance of powers in the Chinese polity, Hong Kong’s democracy may be so near and yet so far.

scholarly journals Developing an Index of the Rule of Law: Sharing the Experience of Hong Kong

2007 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benny Y.T. Tai
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Downward Trend ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Major Aspect ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative

AbstractThe Rule of Law is considered a major aspect of modern governance. For every legal system, it is important whether the Rule of Law is attained and how far it has been attained. Though there are various indicators and indexes of the Rule of Law they all have their limitations. This paper reported a study conducted in Hong Kong in 2005, combining qualitative and quantitative methodologies, to assess the level of attainment of the Rule of Law in Hong Kong. It is found that the level of attainment is high but a downward trend is also discovered. A main objective of developing this new methodology in assessing Rule of Law, is that it could be used for tracking the development of the Rule of Law in a particular legal system and facilitating comparison between legal systems.

scholarly journals Motivate or Demotivate? Factors Influencing Choice of Media as a Career

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 239
Author(s):  
Kavitha Iyer ◽  
Anupam Siddhartha
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Deep Understanding ◽  
Female Students ◽  
First Year ◽  
Young Generation ◽  
Undergraduate Level ◽  
Career Option ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Undergraduate Programme

The choice of media as a career has conventionally not been a top priority amongst undergraduate students in India. Despite the surging need for responsible media professionals in a developing country like India, this career is not widely accepted or chosen. This research aimed at determining specific motivations among the first-year undergraduate students choosing a career in media. The same were determined through expert interactions followed by an online survey to include over 400 students pursuing an undergraduate programme at various colleges across India. The analysis showed that undergraduate media students are passionate with a deep interest in the concerned field and have an enhanced need to be different from others. They are creative, highly communicative, would like to pursue their interest and passion as well as distinguish themselves from conventional career seekers. Choice of media as a career at the undergraduate level is preferred more by female students compared to their male counterparts. Most interestingly and importantly, media as a career is mostly against the wishes of parents; the influence of parents being negative. This study contributes to a deep understanding of motivational factors and their criticalities in influencing the young generation in India. The factors can aid the educational policymakers, academicians, industry experts, and researchers to develop strategies to encourage students to choose a career in media. This research also serves as a starting point to generate discussions to change the belief and attitudes of parents towards media as a career option for their wards.

scholarly journals Historical and legal discourse in the context of classical and postclassical legal understanding

2021 ◽  
pp. 106-111
Author(s):  
Tetiana Bondaruk
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Legal Environment ◽  
Stage Of Development ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Legal Space ◽  
New Research ◽  
Legal Understanding ◽  
Research Tools

Іntroduction. Historical and legal science, as well as the science of law in general, is acutely faced with challenges related to the new stage of development of humanities knowledge and the corresponding change of research paradigm that occurs during the struggle between classical and nonclassical (postclassical) types of legal understanding Тhe aim of the article. Тhese processes need to be understood and "adapted" in particular in the historical and legal discourse. In particular, it is proposed to analyze the phenomenon of deformation of the phenomenon of law, and the resulting differentiation of the subject, in particular in historical and legal research, and the coherence of research tools offered within the classical and nonclassical types of legal understanding Results. Modern methodological research is a natural reaction of the domestic legal process to the dominance of the monistic materialist approach to the study of legal phenomena, which actualizes anthropological and axiological approaches. Both anthropologization and axiologization of law cause the deformalization of the phenomenon of law, creating a conceptual In the light of the above, it seems important to consider in relation to the relationship such concepts as legal reality (historical and legal reality), legal life, legal system as central, and legal space, legal field, legal environment as peripheral. At the same time, attention is drawn to the normative nature of the legal system, the ontological nature of legal reality, the inconsistency of legal life as a starting point in the choice of methodological tools. Introduction to the historical and legal discourse of «ontological metaphors»: legal communication, legal event, legal life, legal space, legal field, legal environment, etc., will activate the intersubjective model of knowledge of law as a sociocultural phenomenon, draw attention to the dynamics of law, using an arsenal of non-classical methodology. Conclusions. An overview of some trends that lead to a change in the object and subject of jurisprudence shows a radical change in its methodology, which should form research tools to answer new research questions. This process is part of the process of modern «cultivation» of integrated thinking as opposed to or in addition to analytical and systemic, which is characterized by consideration of reality in mechanistic categories, and, being irreversible, requires appropriate historical and legal reflections

Cultural Activism during the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hio Tong Wong ◽  
Shih-Diing Liu
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
Political Space ◽  
Cultural Activism ◽  
Protest Movement ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Universal Suffrage ◽  
Aesthetic Forms

Situated in Hong Kong’s post-colonial context of political crisis, this article attempts to investigate the unfolding of cultural activism during the Umbrella Movement occurred in 2014. This 79-day occupy protest, triggered by the government’s restriction on universal suffrage, has released protesters’ creative potentials in performing their struggles through a variety of aesthetic forms and practices. Questioning the traditional way of conceiving protest movement in terms of violent confrontations with government or instrumentalism, this article addresses the performative role of cultural activism which has been largely ignored in the study of Hong Kong protest movement. Rather, we argue that the creative practices enacted during the Umbrella Movement constitute in themselves the message that contains its own politics and grammars. These practices have constructed the meaning of the movement through naming, and have created the collective joy and identity among participants in the formation of movement solidarity. This article suggests that cultural activism is the spirit and soul of the Umbrella Movement, which has opened up a temporary yet crucial political space for democratic struggle.

„Wir Nichtgnostiker“: Die Hitler-Engelhardt-Parallele in Christian Krachts Imperium

2021 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-203
Author(s):  
Stephan Feldhaus
Keyword(s):  
Right Wing ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Academic Interest ◽  
Starting Point

Abstract In 2012 Georg Diez provoked a literary scandal with his review of Christian Kracht’s novel Imperium. Since then, almost ninety informed studies which show an ongoing academic interest in the book have been published. Many of these studies attempted to explain the apparently failing analogy between Hitler and Engelhardt that the novel claimed in an irritating manner. Nevertheless, none of them took an esoteric approach which Kracht himself suggested in an interview with Denis Scheck as a starting point for their analyses, although esoteric references seem to be an ignored constant in Kracht’s oeuvre since Tristesse Royale. Hence, by tracing this esoteric intertextuality in the whole of Kracht’s oeuvre and linking it to the references which Kracht makes to right-wing ideologies since Faserland, it will be shown that there actually does exist an analogy between Hitler and Engelhardt in Imperium which aims to deconstruct Hitler mythemes by ridiculizing Engelhardt. Furthermore, it will be demonstrated that the interrelations between Kracht’s texts create a rhizomatic network of intertextuality that dissolves the boarders between external references and self-references.

The impact of experience and perceptions of social mobility on the life satisfaction of young people in Taiwan and Hong Kong

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 319-336
Author(s):  
Hsin-Huang Michael Hsiao ◽  
Kevin Wong ◽  
Po-san Wan ◽  
Victor Zheng
Keyword(s):  
Life Satisfaction ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Young People ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Telephone Survey ◽  
Young Generation ◽  
Positive Perception ◽  
Youth Population ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

This article, which is based on a comparative telephone survey conducted in 2016, examines the relationship between social mobility experience and the life satisfaction of people aged 18 to 35 in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Using both objective and subjective measures of social mobility, we found that young people’s perceptions of their own social mobility and that of the entire youth population correlated positively with life satisfaction. However, the objective upward experiences of intragenerational and intergenerational mobility did not have a significant effect on life satisfaction. In addition, the objective upward experiences of individuals were found to be uncorrelated with the perceptions of their own social mobility and that of the entire youth population. These findings suggest that young people will not become more satisfied even if they themselves have actually experienced upward mobility, because their positive perception of social mobility depends on whether they can move upward to their desired status. It is the expected social mobility and the competence to achieve rather than the actual past mobility experience that could affect the life satisfaction of the young generation in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

scholarly journals Location on the evolutionary tree of influenza H3 haemagglutinin genes of Japanese strains isolated during 1985–6 season

1988 ◽  
Vol 100 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Nakajima ◽  
Y. Takeuchi ◽  
K. Nakajima
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
North America ◽  
Influenza A ◽  
Stop Codon ◽  
Nucleotide Sequences ◽  
Evolutionary Tree ◽  
Common Ancestry ◽  
Nucleotide Deletion ◽  
Starting Point

SUMMARYThe nucleotide sequences of the haemagglutinin (HA) genes of influenza A (H3N2) isolates from the 1985–6 season in Japan along with those of several viruses isolated between 1982–5 from other countries were analyzed to determine the origin of the 1985–6 Japanese strains. The HA genes of these viruses consisted of 1762 nucleotides and had a three-nucleotide deletion downstream from the stop codon when compared to the sequences of earlier Hong Kong H3N2 viruses. An evolutionary tree of the HA genes of these viruses was drawn using the A/Bangkok/1/79 sequence as the starting point. Eight strains isolated from Asian and Pacific regions including Japan in the 1985–6 season (one in May) had the HA genes located closely on the evolutionary tree but away from those of the isolates in North America and Europe during the 1984–5 season, and a common ancestry for these viruses was suggested.

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