Introduction
Rey Chow writes:
What I retain from these memories is not a history of personal or collective victimization but the sense of immediacy of a particular diasporic reality—of Hong Kong caught, as it always has been since the end of the Second World War, between two dominant cultures, British colonial and Chinese Communist, neither of which takes the welfare of Hong Kong people into account even though both would turn to Hong Kong for financial and other forms of assistance when they needed it. This marginalized position, which is not one chosen by those from Hong Kong but one constructed by history, brings with it a certain privilege of observation and an unwillingness to idealize oppression.Footnote 1
In Writing Diaspora (1993), Rey Chow talks about the marginalized position and diasporic reality of Hong Kong since the 1940s. She believes that these disadvantageous circumstances provide the people of Hong Kong with a vantage point from which they can critically consider colonialism and Chinese communism.
In the 1940s and 1950s, a sizeable number of Han Chinese migrants who escaped from the war with Japan and later from persecution by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) chose to settle in Hong Kong. They considered it a place where they could avoid being enmeshed in the politics of mainland China. Though the nation of China signified chaos and deprivation to these early immigrants and their children, most imagined that their stay in Hong Kong was temporary; they aspired to return to China or move elsewhere.
Although mainland China was in political turmoil in the form of the Cultural Revolution and other upheavals from when the CCP came to power, people in Hong Kong lived relatively undisturbed lives under the British colonial government. With the development of local popular culture, these immigrants in Hong Kong gradually came to have a sense of belonging and pride in their city. It was not until the 1980s, when the Sino-British Joint Declaration sealed the fate of Hong Kong, that these Hong Kong residents had to face the reality that Hong Kong could no longer serve as a permanent political refuge, and that they had to re-establish their bonds with their nation/‘fatherland’ (zuguo).
Since that time, many foreign reports about Hong Kong have described fears of political restrictions after 1997, emphasizing the PRC's poor human rights record, and reminding readers of the miserable fate of the political dissidents of the notorious Tiananmen incident of 1989. These stories have portrayed the handover of Hong Kong to China as renewed subordination of the local people to another, perhaps more evil, empire.
This paper examines Hong Kong's positionality 16 years after handover. Do the people in Hong Kong still have the privilege of critical thinking that Rey Chow described? Whilst this paper agrees with her that residents of Hong Kong—now a Special Administrative Region under the PRC—might still show an ‘unwillingness to idealize oppression’, this does not mean that any form of liberation is in sight. To the contrary, Hong Kong's marginal position, as unique as it is, does not portend an alternative political future to that provided by the reigning teleological narrative: that Hong Kong will be absorbed by the greater entity of China.
Although government officials try to manipulate the public to acquiesce to integration, counter-movements in Hong Kong have called for more local political autonomy. In the past few years, there has been a great deal of discourse on Hong Kong's ‘collective memories’ and ‘Hong Kong values’. Local activist groups have tried to raise the consciousness of Hong Kongers about the destruction of local communities, lands, and various historical and recreational sites to pave the way for high-speed railways, highways, high-rise upper-middle-class housing as well as other modern infrastructure. The term ‘post-80s’ (bashi hou) came into use in Hong Kong after 2007 and refers to the generation born during the 1980s or later who came to the forefront of the struggle for a local collective Hong Kong identity. However, even though movements for local political autonomy and identity have prompted important discussions on memories, identity, materialism, sustainable development, the costs of modernization and the moral values of Hong Kongers, these discussions are not sufficient to overturn the existing hegemonic order of the PRC and change the marginal position of Hong Kong. In its current condition, Hong Kong cannot transcend either the British colonial past or Chinese nationalism. Its current status allows no possibility that Hong Kong can have any significant history other than some fragmented memories that have no political ramifications. Because the available historical narratives of both the counter-movements at best only articulate Hong Kong as a unique city, they reinforce the city's marginality and offer no alternative to a bleak political future.
This paper examines two ‘narratives’: the grand narrative of Chinese history presented in secondary school textbooks in Hong Kong; and the development of a new regional framework for the Pearl River Delta. Both narratives have been used by the PRC government in an effort to reintegrate Hong Kong into a Greater China. But they have triggered ambivalent and antagonistic responses from Hong Kongers, especially the generations born after 1980. Whilst the concept of a Greater China had already been stressed in government rhetoric and the education curriculum, the recent plan to reform and develop the Pearl River Delta region is a new way to inculcate nationalism and to erase local memories through futuristic imagination.
The first part of this paper focuses on what has been highlighted and dismissed in the narratives of Chinese history in secondary school textbooks in Hong Kong. It then examines whether such narratives have influenced the sense of belonging to China and Hong Kong of younger-generation Hong Kongers. Even though the PRC and the postcolonial Hong Kong governments have been trying to inculcate loyalty to the PRC since the 1990s, many young people are still ignorant or sceptical about the PRC. Thus there is a gap between local understanding and the idealized model of one China. The second part of this paper explores the PRC's ‘strategy’ of constructing a greater China through the modernization of the Pearl River Delta region. The last section discusses the inadequacy of the counter-discourse of ‘collective memories’ used by the post-80s and other activists in Hong Kong against the PRC's Greater China narrative.
Historical narratives in Hong Kong history textbooks
When the decision to return Hong Kong to China was made in the early 1980s, the task of reconstructing a history of China that glorified the ‘reunification’ of Greater China and the achievements of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) became an urgent concern for the postcolonial Hong Kong government.Footnote 2 Since the late 1980s and early 1990s, there have been gradual changes in the content of Chinese history textbooks and the education curriculum which incorporate more details of the PRC. There has also been discussion about introducing civic education to Hong Kong since the early 1990s. Most recently, in 2012, the Hong Kong government announced its plan to adopt Chinese ‘national’ civic education (guomin jiaoyu), similar to the ‘patriotic’ education in mainland China, in Hong Kong's public school curriculum. The National Education Services Centre distributed a booklet to schools, entitled ‘The China Model’, which should form a basis for the national education curriculum in primary schools and secondary schools in the future.Footnote 3
If this move towards a more ‘patriotic’ education has been effective, Hong Kongers born after 1980 should by now have become more loyal to the PRC than prior generations. However, ironically, ‘post-80s’ has become a term for activists who are concerned with Hong Kong's autonomy and who are critical of the PRC's increasing interference in Hong Kong politics. Although the post-80s activists may not be representative of the youth of that generation, their awareness raises questions about the effectiveness of the state's agenda to create more loyal, young Hong Kong citizens. One also has to ask whether the critical attitude of the post-80s has any relation to Hong Kong's postcolonial condition as a semi-autonomous region.
Since the introduction of ‘national’ civic education (guomin jiaoyu) has been shelved in October 2012 after public outcry, this section mainly focuses on the history textbooks used in secondary schools for the past three decades. It will also examine how these textbooks have been used to influence Hong Kongers’ sense of belonging and the construction of local and national historical narratives that are important to the state.
A more ‘patriotic’ history education
Before the retrocession of Hong Kong to China in 1997, nearly 90 per cent of the secondary schools in Hong Kong were Anglo-Chinese and all subjects in these schools were taught in English except for ‘Chinese Language’ and ‘Chinese History’. Chinese History was separated from the general subject of history (which focused on world history) because it was believed that instruction in Chinese would make the subject more accessible to Chinese students.Footnote 4 Chinese History was introduced in the 1950s, when the colonial government felt that bringing the subject into the official curriculum could offer an alternative to the anti-British and Communist sentiments that featured prominently in mainland textbooks.Footnote 5 As Kan, Vickers and Morris have argued, the colonial situation of Hong Kong is peculiar in that the British colonizers did not try to instil a sense of British superiority among the colonized population, because they were not ready to build a politicized sense of British belonging. This attitude was especially prevalent during and after World War II, when many of the British colonies regained their sovereignty; furthermore, the British were careful not to anger the Chinese government.Footnote 6 Bernard Luk, who has done research on the post-war curriculum of Chinese Studies in Hong Kong, discusses the Committee on Chinese Studies appointed in the 1950s by the Education Department of the Hong Kong government. Its task was to review the pedagogic approaches to the teaching of Chinese language, literature, culture, and history. The committee strongly ‘identified moral education as one of the major needs’ of education in Hong Kong.Footnote 7 The goal of Chinese History in Hong Kong in the early post World War II years was to inculcate traditional Chinese moral values in youth.
Qian Mu, a scholar of history who migrated to Hong Kong from China and served as the principal of the New Asia College (which later became a college of the Chinese University of Hong Kong), wrote Guoshi Dagang (Outline History of the Nation) in the 1940s, which became the classic history textbook about China. It provided the basis for the values and contents of textbooks later published in Hong Kong. According to the historian Lin Xiaoqing, Qian ‘used history to build a greater identification between his personal experience and historical moral experiences’.Footnote 8 One of the most popular secondary textbooks in 1980s Hong Kong was Xinbian Zhongguo Lishi (1984), written by Qian's student, Sun Guodong, who later became a renowned historian himself. Qian's belief in the discipline of history as a basis of moral training for individuals is reflected in Sun's textbook. The preface of Xinbian Zhongguo Lishi states, ‘The objective of Chinese history education is to point out the flaws and merits of politicians so that students can learn to cultivate themselves’.Footnote 9 In Xinbian, the author further argues that in Chinese history one can find ‘successes, failures, gains and losses’ in events, ‘wisdom, stupidity, honesty and debauchery’ in people, and ‘stability, chaos, prosperity and degeneration’ in regimes. The role of the history teacher is to analyse and point out these changes, so that ‘learners can broaden their knowledge’ (zhang jianshi) and ‘improve their spiritual being’ (zheng xiuyang). To Sun as well as to the publishers of Xinbian, the biggest function of teaching Chinese history was to help individuals become better moral beings through learning about the past. The political concepts of nation (guojia) or citizenship (guomin/gongmin) were seldom mentioned.
In the early 1990s, when the return of Hong Kong to China was imminent, some framers of the teaching of Chinese history felt that Hong Kongers’ love for the nation should not be restricted to ‘culture’. They proposed that the study of Chinese history be politicized. Ever since, identifying one's Chineseness as a cultural or ethnic heritage has been insufficient for China's larger political agenda. The controversy about ‘national’ civic education (guomin jiaoyu) witnessed today can be traced back to this concern over the history education curriculum in the 1990s. In secondary school Chinese history textbooks published after the handover of Hong Kong to China, there is a change in content, with heavier emphasis on a learners’ sense of belonging to the PRC and with more details about the achievements of leaders in the Communist Party. For example, the objectives in Tanjiu Zhongguo Lishi (2004) adhere closely to the Greater China principle. The preface states:
History education functions not only to guide students to learn about the nation's history and culture, so that they can develop a sense of identification [rentong gan] and belonging [guishu gan], it should also [help students] to cultivate the skills of thinking and learning independently, so that they can become lifetime active learners and national citizens [guomin], equipped with analytical skills. After the handover of Hong Kong to China, Chinese History has important meanings in cultivating young people's recognition of their national citizen's identity [rentong guomin shenfen].Footnote 10
In contrast to Xinbian, which associated the study of Chinese history with the development of the individual's sense of moral judgment, in Tanjiu the objective of history education is to train the student to be a ‘responsible national citizen’ (guomin) of the PRC.
Another textbook, Tansuo Zhongguoshi (2006), echoes this theme. The authors quote from Guoshi Dagang, a prominent history textbook written by Qian Mu:
A national citizen [guomin] who claims to be more educated than average people should have some knowledge of his/her country's history, and should maintain a kind of humanistic feeling [wenqing] and respect.
Qian Mu writes:
This new curriculum also emphasizes that students should increase their understanding of the nation's circumstances [guoqing], through which they can also develop national/ethnic feelings [minzu qinghuai] and cultural belonging, as well as become responsible citizens [gongmin].Footnote 11
This kind of mission statement, placed in the opening pages of one of the more recent textbooks, conforms to the comment of Edward Vickers that nationalist history education is ‘pressed into service by politicians and scholars to bolster or, sometimes, to invent a national identity for the inhabitants of their states, and to foster among their population a sense of patriotic loyalty’.Footnote 12 In textbooks of both generations, the nation (guojia) and belonging (rentong) are consistently emphasized. Both these and previous generations of textbooks represent China as a continuous homogenous civilization. During the 1980s history education was regarded as a form of moral training for the individual, whereas in the 2000s the emphasis shifted to ‘responsibility’ and ‘citizenship’.Footnote 13 The change coincided with the amendments made by the Curriculum Development Committee in the 1997 curriculum guide for Chinese History courses, which states that the aim of history is to ‘build a sense of belonging to China and the Chinese race’.Footnote 14 The amendments exemplify the concerns of the Hong Kong government after 1997 that the Chinese history curriculum should promote patriotic feelings.
Patriotism is also inculcated in textbooks published after the handover through the crafting of the Hong Kong historical narrative. Attempts to reintegrate Hong Kong's past into the grand narrative of China are prevalent. In the narrative of textbooks used today, the beginning of Western aggression towards China witnessed the takeover of Hong Kong territories by the British after the Opium War. The return of Hong Kong to China is a watershed that put an end to a history of humiliation. In the earlier textbooks, however, Hong Kong as a separate entity does not exist; Xinbian, amongst others, makes no reference at all to Hong Kong.
It was not until 1997 that Hong Kong history was integrated into Chinese history textbooks. The retrocession of Hong Kong and increasing interest in local identity and history amongst the general population there may have pushed the Curriculum Development Committee to consider the inclusion of Hong Kong history in the Chinese history curriculum. Nevertheless, as Flora Kan points out, Hong Kong history is usually ‘treated as peripheral to Chinese History, and merely serves to enhance students’ interest and give them a sense of the relevance of Chinese History’.Footnote 15
In other words, what the textbooks have to say about Hong Kong is still negligible. Hong Kong is intertwined with narratives of wars and politics, and students are encouraged to imagine themselves as citizens of mainland China. The only substantive inclusions about Hong Kong are typically in the last part of the textbooks, which discuss the signing of the Sino-British declaration and the retrocession of Hong Kong. Similar treatment is given to the retrocession of Macau.Footnote 16 The ‘return’ of Hong Kong and Macau symbolizes the grand finale of twentieth-century Chinese history. By excluding all other parts of Hong Kong's history, and through their silence about internal tensions and local histories, the authors of these textbooks help to construct a monolithic discourse of China. As newly incorporated subjects of the PRC, Hong Kong students are required to remember the significance of Hong Kong in the framework of a Greater China and forget about any parochial associations that are irrelevant to the grand narrative of the homeland (zuguo).
Yet, even though these textbooks in Hong Kong increasingly conform to the standards set by the PRC, there are still significant differences between them and their mainland counterparts. Whilst the textbooks used in mainland China rationalize why a market economy works in a Communist country and try to reconcile the earlier ideology of Communism and capitalist reform, the textbooks in Hong Kong do not have to bear this burden because they have no history of praising Communism and Mao. A third-year (ninth-grade) history text published in Shanghai discusses the change in mindset that led to Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms:
[The original mindset was that] Soviet-style planned economics came to be one of the symbols of Communism, while market economics was equally a symbol of Western capitalism. It took ten years of reform for China to finally break free from this way of thinking. In 1992 Deng Xiaoping said: ‘Planned economies and market economies are simply two different methods [to obtain the same goal].’ In November of that year, the Fourteenth Congress established a ‘socialist market economy’ as the goal of China's economic reform.
The drawbacks of a planned economy made leaders consider the advantages of a market economy in regulating production and consumption early on, but as a matter of principle they had to continue advocating the advantages of a controlled economy. The practical way in which Deng Xiaoping presented the issue, as basically a task of choosing the most effective method to regulate China's economy, liberated leaders from the previous way of thinking. After twenty years of reform, the implementation of ‘socialistic market economics’ has clearly proven its effectiveness as an economic regulator.Footnote 17
This narrative in Chinese textbooks stresses the ‘wisdom’ of Deng Xiaoping in synthesizing Communism and Western capitalism and the success of the economic reforms. It discusses Deng's tactic of liberating people from an old mindset that did not allow a market economy in a socialist state, but does not adequately explain how a market economy can be reconciled with the spirit of a socialist society. In contrast, Hong Kong textbooks generally omit this type of justification altogether when they elaborate on the problems of economic reform. One textbook, for example, acknowledges the rapid economic growth but quickly turns to a discussion of problems resulting from economic reform in China, such as economic overheating, macroeconomic adjustments by the PRC government, corruption, underdevelopment of rural areas, and the large income gap between the rich and the poor.Footnote 18
Post-80s’ perceptions of ‘Chinese history’
How much do the post-80s activists identify with these two different historical narratives? And did the changes in the curriculum in Hong Kong reflect the attitudes of the young generation who grew up after the retrocession? To understand the viewpoints of the post-80s generation about Hong Kong and the PRC, over 300 young people, ranging from 14 to 19 years of age, were included in a survey held between September 2006 and September 2007. The majority were enrolled in a secondary school in Fanling, New Territories. The survey was bilingual with all questions translated into both English and Chinese. It focused on three main themes: experiences in history classes in secondary school; knowledge and attitudes about modern Chinese historical events; and feelings about China and Hong Kong. For comparison, about 30 people born in the 1970s, all of whom received either all or part of their secondary education in Hong Kong were also interviewed. Most of these respondents came from middle or upper-class backgrounds and attended Anglo-Chinese secondary schools.
Most of the 1970s-generation interviewees who received their secondary education during the late 1980s or early 1990s associated Chinese history with dynastic history and not with twentieth-century history. This is because at that time the curriculum of Chinese history in many of the junior levels ended either at the May Fourth Movement or with World War II. In contrast, the post-80s respondents who took a course in Chinese history tended to have better knowledge of post-1949 historical events. However, according to an interviewed Anglo-Chinese history teacher, today's secondary school students still share a strong aversion to Communism. She said that ‘although most of them cannot explain what Communism means, they tend to see Communism as outdated’. Thus, even though these students know more about the PRC than do earlier generations, they hold the same negative image of the Chinese Communist Party. Since many of them grew up in the post–Cold War era, they do not think that Communism as an ideology has much relevance to their lives. The post-80s respondents were also asked about their attitudes about ‘patriotism’ and their ‘perceptions of the mainland’. Students who expressed an opinion of mainland residents invariably cited the ‘backwardness’ (luohou), ‘poor upbringing’ (meiyou jiaoyang), or ‘insufficient self-cultivation’ (xiuyang) of the mainland Chinese people, painting an image of a poorly educated and underdeveloped populace. As one student wrote, ‘The level of wisdom and knowledge among Chinese people is low,’ whilst another noted, ‘There are too many people, and their upbringing is poor.’ Others claimed that PRC residents ‘have no hygiene’ and ‘no manners and no culture, are still very backward’. They view PRC residents as a distinct ‘other’, plagued by poverty, substandard education, and bad etiquette. They thus maintain a sense of socioeconomic and cultural superiority over ‘mainlanders’ (dalu ren). That these young Hong Kongers hold mostly negative perceptions of PRC residents suggests an unwillingness to imagine themselves as actual members of the mainland Chinese community.
When asked how they see China in the twenty-first century, for the most part the respondents said they were very dissatisfied with corruption and bureaucratic red tape. Others pointed out that there is a lack of democracy in China and an unequal distribution of wealth. Nevertheless, most respondents see Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms as a very positive and dramatic event.
Most Hong Kongers could also identify examples of China's modernization. Many of them were impressed by the infrastructures built for the 2008 Olympics, and all believed that China had come a long way. The post-80s respondents acknowledged that China's rapid economic growth was as a result of Deng's reform policy (gaige kaifang), and they adopted the language of modernization and progress to describe China's ascent in the geopolitical sphere. One secondary school student said, ‘Before, [I] would have felt that China was very backward, shabby, and poor; now I feel that it is quickly becoming a big nation, even a strong nation’. Most secondary school students believe that China began to modernize only after the 1980s. Before Deng, as they understand it, there was no modernization and China suffered a long period of backwardness and stagnation. However, when asked in what ways China was backward and inferior to Hong Kong, most vaguely referred to culture, morality, hygiene and manners.
To some extent, Hong Kongers’ sense of belonging as Chinese (Zhongguoren) has increased since the 1990s, perhaps partly due to the propaganda efforts by the Hong Kong government. Nevertheless, the earlier experience of colonialism as well as Hong Kong's prolonged separation from mainland China have provided impetus for the local population to maintain a distance from the traumatic events in China during the 1950s and 1960s, to experience modernity differently, and to express alternative images of ‘citizenship,’ which include the ‘othering’ of their nation/homeland because of its lag in progress compared with the city. The way they see the mainland, including their critical attitudes towards it, presents a challenge to the integrity of the concept of ‘China’. One way they show their concern for China is through helping China's seemingly less-developed communities and joining study tours organized by their schools to visit cities in China. Here Chineseness is signified as membership of an ethnic group (minzu) or as culture, not as citizenship in a nation. In a way, this attitude echoes the idea of China represented in Chinese history textbooks published before the 1990s, when the concept of the nation-state was not yet introduced and history was taught to cultivate students’ moral well-being.
In the 1990s, Hong Kongers began to cope with the gap between their identity as Hong Kongers and as citizens of the PRC. Rather than seeing Hong Kong identity as contradictory to the larger Chinese identity, they came to believe that there was a way of merging these two identities, as Hong Kong scholar Lau Siu-kai argues:
It is also likely that, despite all sorts of conflicts, the Hong Kong identity and the larger Chinese identity will become increasingly complementary inasmuch as claiming the Hong Kong identity not only does not involve denying one's Chinese identity, but also acts to reinforce it.Footnote 19
However, this identification is contingent upon satisfaction with the Hong Kong and PRC governments. For example, a semi-annual survey conducted in July 2012, amidst the Anti-Chinese ‘national’ civic education movement, by Dr Robert Chung Ting-yiu, Director of the Public Opinion Programme at the University of Hong Kong, revealed that as few as 16.6 per cent of Hong Kong citizens identify themselves as Chinese—the lowest figure in a 12 years. This represents strong resistance against the top-down imposition of the concept of a Greater China and the inculcation of loyalty to the state.
Another Hong Kong scholar, Renita Wong, shows that many Hong Kongers in their teens and twenties came to see themselves as modern Chinese who were constructed as ‘free subjects’ under the British colonial discourse of liberalism. Such discourse, in turn, inspired many of them to engage in Chinese developmental projects after 1997, so that they can ‘open’ China from the outside.Footnote 20 Wong argues that China development is a space in which individual Hong Kongers’ ambivalent desires to go ‘back’ or stay ‘out’ were accommodated. Nevertheless, they mix local pride with a love for China, whilst ‘othering’ the homeland as backward and in need of help.
Overall, the Hong Kong government has made consistent efforts to make young people loyal subjects of the PRC, as indicated by the prominent display of pro-PRC propaganda posters in public spaces (see Figure 1).
A poster in Hong Kong which reads, Love the [People's Liberation] Army [in Hong Kong].
It could be argued that Hong Kongers’ concern for China as a cultural entity has increased in the past two decades. An ‘imagined community’ of a greater China has been redefined for Hong Kongers through the narrative in Chinese history textbooks along with state-initiated public commemorations of certain historical events. Yet the views of young people about the Chinese nation differ greatly from what the government or curriculum developers expect. Partly as a result of the lack of relevance of PRC history to Hong Kong, young people's unfamiliarity with PRC history before Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms, and the strong bias young Hong Kongers have towards the mainland, Hong Kong's position in Chinese history remains marginal in their eyes, and their attachment to their ‘fatherland’ (zuguo) is still remote. This was strikingly evident when tens of thousands of Hong Kongers took to the streets on 29 July 2012 to protest about the introduction of Chinese ‘national’ civic education in Hong Kong. About a dozen students, teachers and activists launched a hunger strike a few days before the new school year on 1 September 2012 outside government headquarters. Thousands of their supporters flocked to show support, occupying the plaza for eight days and demanding that the government rescind its plan to introduce the subject. Most of the protestors believed that this new curriculum would amount to ‘brainwashing’ young minds with pro-mainland propaganda. One of the most vocal groups in this campaign against ‘national’ civic education was Scholarism (Xuemin Sichao), an organization founded by a group of secondary school students who were born during the 1990s and who had no political affiliations. Although the Hong Kong government did not completely junk its plan,Footnote 21 the strong public support for such activism shows that the state's agenda to create loyal subjects, whether through education or political discourse, is facing even more setbacks amongst the ‘post-90s’ generation than amongst the ‘post-80s.’
Constructing a futuristic narrative for the Pearl River Delta region
In the 1980s and 1990s, the PRC established near the border with Hong Kong a cluster of Special Economic Zones, including Shenzhen and Zhuhai. In these zones it pursued flexible economic policies and other governmental measures conducive to foreign investment, thus increasing traffic across the border.Footnote 22 Since the experiment with the Zones has been successful, local governments and the central state have been considering a more integrative economic development model that would include Shenzhen and Zhuhai Zones, together with Hong Kong and Macau, as well as neighbouring areas.
Such development is part of the PRC government's strategy of urbanization. It plans to move a great number of its population into the cities, creating some cities and city clusters with populations ranging from 10 million to 100 million. The PRC state expects that this metropolis, which encompasses most of the Zones in the South as well as in Hong Kong and Macau, will become one of the most important clusters in China and will lead the nation's economy forward. In the north, the area around Beijing and Tianjin (two of China's most important cities) will form another metropolis known as the Bohai Economic Rim; it will be linked by high-speed rail. Another megacity under development is in the Yangzi Delta, with Shanghai as its centre. The southern megacity in Guangdong is intended to regain competitiveness with the growing urban areas around Beijing and Shanghai so that Hong Kong and Shenzhen will not be completely displaced by the other urban clusters.
The plan to establish a Hong Kong–Shenzhen metropolis was first broached in June 2004, when the two governments signed a memorandum along with other cooperation agreements. The discussions continued until May 2007, when the two governments signed an umbrella agreement known as the Shenzhen–Hong Kong Innovation Circle, under which they would pursue comprehensive technological collaboration. The following August, the Hong Kong think tank Bauhinia Foundation Research Centre revealed a plan to turn the metropolis of Shenzhen-Hong Kong into an economic powerhouse bigger than London, Paris, Chicago or Los Angeles by 2020. That December a major bilateral cooperation agreement was signed. In addition, the two governments agreed to create a multiple-entry electronic smart-card system allowing Shenzhen permanent residents to enter Hong Kong, and to build a railway line between the two cities’ airports; they also initiated a joint programme to nurture talent. These plans are intended to make travel across the border between China and Hong Kong easier. Proposals have also been discussed to let 4.1 million of Shenzhen's residents visit Hong Kong using multiple-entry permits.Footnote 23
Since 2008, government officials in Hong Kong and Guangdong have been sending signals to local residents that in the coming decades Hong Kong should also merge with the urbanized part of Guangdong Province. A draft titled ‘Plan for the Reform and Development of the Pearl River Delta (2008–2020)’ was promulgated by the PRC State Council. Besides fostering cooperation between Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao, the plan includes ambitious development of the land surrounding the bay area of the Pearl River Estuary. On 19 February 2009, the governments of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao agreed to jointly undertake a ‘Study on the Action Plan for the Bay Area of the Pearl River Estuary’. This bay area is ‘defined as comprising all 17 districts abutting the Pearl River Estuary under the administration of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Dongguan and Zhongshan, and the whole territory of Hong Kong and Macau Special Administrative Regions’. The plan is portrayed as a ‘general request of the residents of the region’, even though there was no consultation with the Hong Kong public before January 2011. The plan states:
With an objective to promote liveability, emphasis on cooperation, innovation and services and aiming at formulating actions, the three sides are working together towards developing the Bay Area into the best ‘Quality Living Area’ of the [Greater Pearl River Delta] and an important medium of innovation, with a view to guiding the transformation of development mode of the region.Footnote 24
The plan covers areas such as financial services, high-tech and high-end research and development, transport, environmental matters and ecology. It aims to foster close communications between Guangdong and Hong Kong in other areas as well, including people and cargo flows, food safety, innovation and technology, information, intellectual-property rights, culture, sports, infectious diseases, social welfare, exchange of talent, and emergency management. It strives for joint promotion of cooperation in the Pearl River Delta region.
Aside from the Pearl River Estuary project, the governments of Hong Kong, Macau and Guangdong are gearing up to begin construction of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, expected to be completed in 2015–2016. This plan, proposed on 10 October 2007 by Donald Tsang, former Hong Kong Chief Executive, was officially endorsed by the Shenzhen government on 21 November 2007.
A different version of this project appeared in English-language newspapers in January 2011, featuring a futuristic ‘megacity’ larger than other international metropolises such as those of Los Angeles and Tokyo. On 24 January 2011, the Hong Kong Telegraph reported that city planners in South China had laid out a plan ‘to merge together the nine cities that lie around the Pearl River Delta’, covering ‘a large part of China's manufacturing heartland, stretching from Guangzhou to Shenzhen and including Foshan, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Zhuhai, Jiangmen, Huizhou and Zhaoqing. Together, they account for nearly one-tenth of the Chinese economy. . . . An express rail line will also connect the hub with nearby Hong Kong’.Footnote 25 The core idea is a megacity spreading across all the urbanizing areas in the Pearl River Delta region and including older cities such as Guangzhou and Foshan. However, the article did not state that Hong Kong and Macau were part of this plan, probably because of their political status as Special Administrative Regions. Since the Pearl River Delta Estuary Plan triggered many protests and much criticism in Hong Kong during its public consultation period in January 2011, it is possible that whoever came up with this megacity plan deliberately excluded the ex-colonies to avoid further controversy. Nevertheless, the article did mention that Hong Kong will be closely connected to the Chinese cities by high-speed trains. The article quoted Ma Xiangming, chief planner at the Guangdong Rural and Urban Planning Institute and a senior consultant for the project, on the purpose of the plan: ‘The idea is that when the cities are integrated, the residents can travel around freely and use the health care and other facilities in the different areas’.Footnote 26 Ma also stated that 29 rail lines will be added, cutting rail journeys around the urban area to a maximum of one hour between different city centres; residents would be able to use universal rail cards that would allow them to commute around the megacity. The plan intended to lower telephone bills by 85 per cent and improve the network of public facilities.
Despite the ambiguous geographical boundaries of the project and the denial by the Guangdong authorities that there is any such plan to turn the region into a megacity,Footnote 27 it is apparent that aggressive regional planning is under way, with the objective of integrating and urbanizing the Pearl River Delta region. Other related plans include opening up the border areas in the New Territories of Hong Kong near Shenzhen for mainland Chinese tourists and developing new towns in north western New Territories to serve as new business and upper-class residential districts for mainland investors.Footnote 28 Many Hong Kong capitalists are in favour of these plans because greater integration and networking between South China and Hong Kong would enhance their investments and business possibilities. Real estate developers are especially strong advocates of integration because they can make huge profits from such development projects. The common goal is to remake the region into a modernized, commercial hub that would surpass the current statuses of member cities. This integration and development together with other megacities inside the PRC, and transportation networks like the high-speed railway, will compress the size of the country and the citizens, it is envisioned, will feel proud to be members of a modernized nation.
Megacity and sustainability
One critic, Chris Devonshire-Ellis, argues that it is unlikely that the Pearl River Delta region can turn into a real megacity. He describes what a megacity should look like:
‘Mega-city’ conjures up images of gleaming spires, steel cathedrals, teeming masses of people, all hurrying to and fro, avenues of shopping malls, horrendous traffic jams and air so thick one could stir it. Mexico City, Mumbai, and Chongqing mixed in with a dash of L.A. perhaps. But Jiangmen, Zhaoqing and Foshan?
He records that the surrounding areas near the major cities like Guangzhou and Shenzhen are far from urban and will remain backwaters even after the construction of the high-speed railway. He further writes:
Guangdong's new high speed rail line interconnecting nine second tier provincial cities surrounded by tea plantations and undulating countryside is rather different than the mental imagery created by the phrase ‘mega city of 42 million’.Footnote 29
Devonshire-Ellis's point is valid, but his idea of a megacity is perhaps inadequate. ‘Megacity’ does not mean a very big city with all its districts urbanized equally; rather, it often refers to an ever-growing city that is spreading to its closely associated suburbs and nearby ‘greater’ areas that are not yet modernized or urban. The term ‘urban sprawl’, coined by William Gibson in his seminal science-fiction novel, Neuromancer, precisely describes the phenomenon that occurs when urban growth reaches a point at which a city begins to spread outwards to lower-density and less-developed areas on the outskirts. In other words, there is bound to be unequal development between the core city and its urban sprawl. Given the existing geography, it is most likely that the Pearl River Delta Region megacity would turn out to be the kind that invests most of its budget on highways and other transportation to solidify the connections among the primary cities, whilst letting the rest waste away or play a subordinate role of hosting those who are unwanted in the most developed areas.
In the Pearl River Delta Region, it is likely that the agricultural and natural resources of some of the non-urban neighbouring areas would be drained to sustain the centres of the megacity. In fact, the interdependence between urban Hong Kong and the agricultural parts of China has always been encouraged by the PRC state. Hong Kong has always been reliant on the Pearl River Delta Region, for meat, agricultural products and energy resources. Today, 90 per cent of the total food supply in Hong Kong is imported. The mainland is its most important food source, especially for fresh food.Footnote 30 As for water, according to the Water Supplies Department—the Hong Kong government department that provides potable water and seawater (for flushing) in the city—one of the two main sources of water has been Dongjiang water from Guangdong Province, which has been supplying water to Hong Kong since 1965. Today, about 70–80 per cent of the city's water comes from Dongjiang.Footnote 31
The politics of resource allocation shape the geo-political order and notions of territoriality. Although Chinese provincial authorities and the market also control the supply and demand of such resources, the PRC government has the ultimate power to decide whether water, electricity, and other resources go from the mainland to Hong Kong. Currently, together with the project to urbanize the Pearl River Delta Region, the control of food and energy is part of the PRC's strategy to make Hong Kong more acquiescent of its plan of integration. In the future, depriving Hong Kong of the necessary resources could be used as a threat in the case of political emergency. Even today, the PRC sometimes reminds Hong Kong people that it will always ensure that Hong Kong tongbao (compatriots) have sufficient food and water. Such announcements show that the survival of Hong Kong's residents will ultimately be dependent upon the PRC.Footnote 32
Hijacking memories
Science fiction and the social sciences have been increasingly interested in the idea of megacity. Besides expressing fascination with the technological development that comes with the growth of urbanization, these writings have raised many pertinent critiques about what may happen if the phenomenon of megacities continues. The problems include inadequate facilities and resources for the poor; decentralization, segregation and gentrification; stripping of the surrounding farmland; prevalence of artificial, pre-processed foods; long-distance travel and the loss of local characteristics and connections; pollution; and unpreparedness for large-scale disasters.
Regardless of the applicability of the concept of megacity to the Pearl River Delta Region, the critiques of megacities are useful when contemplating what the region will become as a result of the current direction of regional planning. One theme in the study of megacity may stand out for historians when thinking about Hong Kong's positionality in China: the theme of ‘collective memory’ and local identity. Although the plan for developing and integrating the region is not a conspiracy between the PRC state and capitalists in China and Hong Kong, the merging of the ex-colonies of Hong Kong and Macau with the Pearl River Delta Region would serve the state's political interest in diluting the local identity of Hong Kongers by turning them into mega-urbanites of China instead. The megacity integrative model is another strategy to construct a new sense of identification through manipulating personal memories and narratives. With the megacity project, Hong Kong residents will likely become well connected with the rest of China by speed, travel, freeways, trains and commerce. New trains can change the places where people live and will alter their association with places. Eventually, the identity of a Hong Konger will be replaced by one of a regional mega-urbanite of the Pearl River Delta Region within China.
Peoples’ memories are always subject to manipulation, revision and reconstruction. The way places are remapped entails processes of ‘hijacking memories’ and ‘implanting new memories’; through these processes, our association with the places is also transformed. Locations and landmarks serve as evidence of history. When we demolish them, we are also sabotaging our memories of events that we have experienced in those places. Eventually, people's attachment to the city will be severed because the city they were once familiar with will become remote and unidentifiable.
Dani Cavallaro's discussion of memory and history in Cyberpunk and Cyberculture is relevant to our critique here:
The idea of history as a synthetic construct with an ultimately unverifiable authenticity suggests that the past may be fantasized about in myriad ways but never retrieved. Relatedly, both individual and collective memories are objects of endless speculation that preclude the possibility of ever ascertaining to what extent the images we recall encapsulate lived experiences and to what extent they embody unfulfilled longings or repressed fears.Footnote 33
In constructing a futuristic landscape, we are expressing our desires and longings whilst erasing the ‘undesirable’ parts of the landscape that should not belong to the future. If more old landmarks and areas vanish, the old city-scape of Hong Kong will slowly be replaced by a new one consolidated under the title of the Pearl River Delta megacity. The memory of Hong Kong as a separate colonized city will then become less and less relevant to younger generations and perhaps one day will disappear all together.
High-speed trains and post-80s activism
One of the most important current controversies in Hong Kong is the construction of a high-speed railway that will connect Guangzhou with Hong Kong. According to China's railway development plan, the national high-speed rail will connect the main cities in China and link up with this branch extending to Hong Kong. The total length of the national railway will be 4,000 kilometres, making it the longest and fastest railway system in the world. The planned Hong Kong–Guangzhou link is only one part of this nationwide railroad system. In Guangdong Province, the high-speed railway is expected to be completed by 2020 and will link the cities of Zhaoqing, Foshan, Jiangmen, Guangzhou, Zhongshan and Zhuhai on the western side of the Pearl River to the eastern Pearl River Delta cities of Dongguan, Shenzhen and Huizhou.
Post-80s activists, legislators, and the general public in Hong Kong have been wary of the construction of the railway. One of their main concerns is the gradual loss of Hong Kong's identity. As one critic put it,
After 1997, Hong Kong has quickly fallen into the orbit of mainland China. We have maintained our laws and political freedom, but as we are being economically assimilated into the mainland, so we are also being culturally assimilated, and Hong Kong's identity is in imminent danger. As a symbol, nothing could be a stronger statement than this high rail connecting Hong Kong to Guangzhou and Shenzhen that we are ‘just another Chinese city’.Footnote 34
One newspaper editorial published in Wenhui Bao (a mainland-affiliated newspaper) in February 2010 argued for the military value of the high-speed rail for China:
During peacetime, the high-speed rail can be used as a transportation tool for civilians, but during war, it can be used as a military tool. The creation of the high-speed rail system represents military technological advancement in China. It will help China further develop its military technologies and thus reduce the number of soldiers on active duty.
The author of the editorial described ways in which the establishment of the high-speed rail system could help allocate and transport military troops from Beijing and Jinan during war.Footnote 35
Since the Hong Kong–Guangzhou section of the high-speed railway was proposed by the Hong Kong government in Autumn 2009, there have been protests by different segments of Hong Kong society. Through petitions, marches, hunger strikes and rallies, activists have showed their discontent with the government's insistence on pushing through the project. The ‘anti-high-speed-rail movement’ reached its height in January 2010. While pan-democracy legislators questioned the project's rationale within the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, protesters—many of whom were post-80s activists—held a vigil and demonstrated outside the Council during the debate. They cited cost, noise pollution, environmental damage, customs and border-control complications, and existing rail links as the principal reasons for their opposition. The most provocative arguments they have made stem from their uneasiness about the principle behind this type of development—putting capitalist development above all else and ignoring the cultural and emotional costs to the local people and environment. These costs include the eradication of ‘collective memories’ of the city's residents.
The anti-high-speed-rail movement had close links with the protests against the demolition of Queen's Pier and Star Ferry Pier a few years earlier.Footnote 36 In recent years, such heritage conservation movements have emerged in Hong Kong to prevent the Hong Kong government and real-estate developers from demolishing historical buildings and districts, such as Kwun Tong, Wanchai, Shum Shui Po. The movements emerged from efforts to forge a sense of group identity, cohesion, and community. Through participating in such movements to preserve their ‘collective memory’, activists reinforce their identities as Hong Kongers by writing their own local historical narratives. Most of these popular histories try to evoke a sense of nostalgia amongst local residents by focusing on the descriptive details of the districts and the oral histories of old-timers. They tend to shy away from the grand narratives of the PRC or colonialism that appear in the history textbooks.
The limits of colonial nostalgia and collective memories
Although local community activists are rescuing Hong Kong's disappearing history by preserving and mending fragmented memories, these movements will not liberate Hong Kong or even create new possibilities for substantial change. The critique of development they make does not question the nature of capitalist modernity brought about by British colonialism, and even deploys ‘colonial nostalgia’ as a counter-discourse to the regional framework imposed by the state. What is more, this critique reinforces Hong Kong's marginality by underscoring the ‘uniqueness’ of the city and restricts its historical narrative to a narrow framework.
Most of the writings and art works produced by these activists mirror the colonial nostalgia that many Hong Kongers feel: they much prefer British colonial rule to the present administration under the PRC. Colonialism does not evoke many bad memories; most people never saw themselves as colonized subjects, but rather as free individuals who could travel and enjoy cultural and economic access to a bigger world. The recent plans to reintegrate Hong Kong into a Greater China has disenchanted Hong Kongers; many of whom feel that the freedom they enjoyed during colonialism is being infringed upon. Their protests show their yearning for an expansion of liveable space, though the decline of such space is inevitable. They lament the loss of personal autonomy with the intrusion of the state and its bureaucracy into their everyday lives and the spaces in which they live. They associate the colonial period with meritocracy, accumulation of wealth, the rule of law, a well-managed state, and a graciously maintained city. All the sites and districts the heritage conservation movements want to preserve were developed after the 1950s, when the British colonial government adopted an unprecedented, aggressive policy of development.
Though unrestrained capitalism prompted a reappraisal of government-endorsed development plans and a critique of modernity, activists in the heritage conservation movements have not produced a thorough critique of colonial modernity and capitalism. It is not sufficient to say that colonialism is part of local history; what is most urgent is to study how the ‘coloniality of power’ was at work through culture and everyday life during the colonial period and remains present. It is also important to acknowledge that the capitalist network and infrastructure developed under British colonialism have been beneficial to China's build-up as a global economic power and to regional integration.
The heritage conservation movements also generally lack a thorough understanding of the interdependent relations between Hong Kong proper and the countryside in the Pearl River Delta Region. The historical development of Hong Kong's food and energy policies since the 1940s reveals that although the British colonial government did try to preserve the agricultural sector in the New Territories of Hong Kong, self-sustainability was never part of its vision or that of the later Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government. And Hong Kong's inability to sustain itself has become an impediment in its current path to autonomy.
The articulation of a local identity is an insufficient counter-discourse to the PRC's narrative of one China. Thus far, the movements have successfully evoked Hong Kongers’ attachment to their city, but this will only further its marginalization because there is no place for such a local narrative in a larger international framework. Hong Kong has, and will continue to have, no significance in regional or global politics. And it is almost impossible to mobilize international support for the efforts to preserve the identity of Hong Kong because it is not relevant to any non-Hong Kongers.
Furthermore, the state can just as easily take up the argument of ‘collective memory’. On 28 January 2007, Donald Tsang, former Chief Executive of Hong Kong, gave the following response to the heritage conservation movements:
Perhaps it has arisen as people reflect on their cultural identity and what it means to be a citizen of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The result is a growing sense of history, rooted in locality and focused on a sense of place. . . .
Recent heated public debates, such as the Star Ferry pier episode, suggest it is more than nostalgia for old buildings. Collective memory can also define events great and small, common to everyone and yet specific to individuals, associated with specific places. These memories can be as varied as scenes of celebration and conflict—or as individual as the recollection of a shared family outing, or the daily ferry ride to work. We all treasure these personal photograph albums in our hearts and minds. They are unique to every one of us, highlighting the difficulty of finding an answer to the heritage conservation question that satisfies everyone.
The community recognised then that Hong Kong's construction and urban development were essential, being major economic driving forces that created a better investment environment. Our continued economic prosperity depends on new buildings being built and old ones replaced. . . . The meteoric rise of many competing cities within the region, and especially those on the Mainland, means we must keep a firm grip on our competitive advantage. This is a government responsibility. The community must understand that investment in infrastructure is vital if Hong Kong is to remain a dynamic and thriving world city. . . . Then there is the cost of preserving heritage in dollar terms. Here's the Catch 22—we cannot afford heritage preservation if we do not preserve our economic sustainability. The two go hand in hand.Footnote 37
Donald Tsang thus acknowledges the concerns of heritage conservation groups, but argues that preserving heritage is conditional and should give way to creating ‘a better investment environment’. In its rhetoric, the government downplays the aspect of demolition in development by calling development projects ‘revitalization initiatives’. Both the government and the majority of the population agree that Hong Kong needs to prioritize its economy if it is to maintain its edge over the rest of China. Thus, even though the popular movements have drawn much public sympathy in the media and been successful in forging a local identity, the current discourse of history and development only reinforces Hong Kong's marginality and fails to provide an alternative to the model of capitalistic integration. The battle over Hong Kong's future will no doubt continue, but it will remain local and of no significance to the rest of the world, not even to mainland China or Taiwan. The popular movements will at best slow down the speed of development, but they will not alter its direction. Hong Kongers might profit from finding allies amongst people who are in similar marginal positions elsewhere and thereby strengthen their ability to resist the PRC state.
Whilst Hong Kong has the potential to be a centre for dissenting and oppositional movements within the Pearl River Delta region, the ‘privilege’ of critical observation that Rey Chow described is inadequate to resist its eventual absorption by mainland China. A thorough re-evaluation of the history of British colonialism and Chinese Communism, as well as new historical narratives of Hong Kong and China that go beyond colonial humiliation or nostalgia, are needed to enable Hong Kongers to critically assess colonial capitalism and Chinese state nationalism.
