Hong Kong's History by Tak-Wing Ngo

Author:Tak-Wing Ngo [Ngo, Tak-Wing]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780415208680
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 1999-08-12T00:00:00+00:00

6: SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND PUBLIC DISCOURSE ON POLITICS

Tai-lok Lui and Stephen W.K.Chiu

Many researchers in the field of Hong Kong politics, regardless of the differences in their approach to the study of political development, have made the observation that:

The persistence of the colonial constitutional order has been accompanied by remarkable political stability. Hong Kong has never experienced any large-scale revolt or revolution. On the contrary, it is reputed for its lack of serious disputes.1

King sees this as a question of political integration in a colonial city under rapid urbanization and suggests that the ‘administrative absorption of polities’ is ‘the way Hong Kong’s political system has coped with the problem of stability’.2 In his seminal work on society and politics in Hong Kong, Lau calls ‘the existence of political stability under highly destabilising conditions’ in Hong Kong a ‘miracle’ of the twentieth century.3 In a recent review of the study of social conflict and collective actions in Hong Kong, Leung notes that

Although a rapidly modernizing society under colonial rule, Hong Kong has been exceptional in having been spared the frequent turmoil and instability that have plagued other countries of a similar socio-economic and political status. Since they have not been a particular salient feature of the society, social conflict and social movements have rarely been the subject of inquiry in studies of Hong Kong.4

Of course, few observers of Hong Kong politics would deny the existence of social conflict and social movements in contemporary Hong Kong. Rather, they argue that ‘conflicts will be confined in scale because, under normal conditions, it is extremely difficult to mobilize the Chinese people in Hong Kong to embark upon a sustained, high-cost political movement’.5 Given that most local collective actions have not been able to present a forceful challenge to the colonial state and thus do not constitute a serious threat to the stability of the existing political order, social conflict and social movements are relegated to a position of secondary importance, if not of total insignificance, in the analysis of Hong Kong politics.

However, this so-called politically quiescent society has, since the 1970s, witnessed wave after wave of collective actions—from student activism, urban protests, to organized actions of civil service unions—indicating a change in the parameters of the political arena under colonial rule. While these collective actions have not shaken the social basis of political stability in Hong Kong, their significance, as pointed out by a number of authors,6 has gone far beyond the issues and domains of social life which gave rise to them and they have had repercussions for Hong Kong politics as a whole.

This Chapter explores the development of social movements in contemporary Hong Kong in the context of historical changes in Hong Kong society. In particular, we highlight the effects of the changing political opportunity structure, statesociety relations, how changes in the framing of collective action have shaped social movements in Hong Kong and how the latter, in turn, have restructured the institutional environment of Hong Kong politics.7 We argue that popular mobilization and collective action constitute important components of social life in Hong Kong.

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