8

Hong Kong

Andrew Simpson

8.1 Introduction

Modern-day Hong Kong is a territory of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) which
has undergone a quite extraordinary development in its recent history, from being a
small Wshing port in the early nineteenth century to becoming one of the most high
proWle, cosmopolitan, and economically successful cities in Asia during the last forty
years. Having functioned as a British colony from 1842 until 1997, Hong Kong is now
(once again) an integral part of ‘mainland China’, where it currently enjoys the status
of ‘Special Administrative Region’ (SAR) and the opportunity to continue with its pre-
hand-over economic and social systems for a Wfty-year period following 1997, the
Chinese government in Beijing having pledged not to interfere in the internal aVairs of
the territory during this time. Because Hong Kong is therefore now a component part
of the PRC, an examination of language and national identity issues in Hong Kong
could have been included as a section within this volume’s chapter 7 on mainland
China. However, due to the special complexity of Hong Kong’s past and present
circumstances, there are good reasons for deciding to devote an independent chapter
to the study of Hong Kong here. First of all, what is commonly characterized as the
basic identity of Hong Kong and its inhabitants was formed during a period when
Hong Kong was largely isolated from mainland China due to twentieth-century
political developments in China and Hong Kong’s status as a British colony. Secondly,
Hong Kong currently functions with a socio-economic system which is signiWcantly
diVerent from that of the rest of China, as part of the Chinese government’s promise
of ‘One Country, Two Systems’; constraints on life in Hong Kong are therefore
markedly diVerent from those further north in the rest of the PRC. Thirdly, the
level of post-industrial economic development present in Hong Kong is greater than
that in most areas of mainland China, as is the degree with which Hong Kong
maintains regular international connections with other countries in the rest of Asia
and the West. All of these factors, and the existence of a long-lasting colonial presence
in Hong Kong have had important eVects on the formation of identity in the territory
and have presented challenges and inXuences which are diVerent from those

experienced by people who have grown up elsewhere in the PRC, justifying their
independent consideration.

The result of such forces, prior to 1997, was the creation of a semi-isolated, strong,

Cantonese-dominant identity interacting with a British Other in the form of the ruling
colonial government. Now this Western-inXuenced, modern, south Chinese identity
is faced with the need to adapt to incorporation in a much larger and comparatively
less modernized Chinese state with its power centre located in the distant north of
the country, and dominated by Mandarin Chinese. How Hong Kong and its popula-
tion have reacted to these changing pressures and developed an identity which
is by necessity non-political yet at the same time highly distinctive and particular to
the territory is considerably interesting and demonstrates an internal language and
identity dynamic that is not repeated in parallel form elsewhere in the region. The
current chapter’s examination of Hong Kong begins by charting the initial develop-
ment of the Hong Kong identity in the 1970s as a by-product of economic progress
and a stabilizing immigrant population. It then reXects on how this identity evolved
further in the 1980s and 1990s in the shadow of the scheduled return of Hong Kong to
China in 1997, and Wnally turns to consider what has actually occurred since the
important reincorporation of Hong Kong into China proper and the change of
external ruling force from Britain to the PRC government in Beijing.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong

169

8.2 The Formation of Identity in Prospering Hong Kong

Prior to the arrival of the British in Hong Kong, the island and its surrounding area
had a relatively small population of under 10,000 local Chinese engaged in Wshing,
agriculture, and maritime trading. The important natural resource provided by Hong
Kong which attracted the interest of the British was a high quality, sheltered, deep-
water harbour, and in 1842 following victory in the First Opium War, the Treaty of
Nanking granted full ownership of Hong Kong to Britain ‘in perpetuity’, with the
Kowloon peninsula area being ceded in a similar way in 1860 after the Second Opium
War. Following this, in 1898 the larger mainland area to the north of Kowloon known
as the New Territories was added to Hong Kong and Kowloon via a lease which was
set to run for a 99-year period, with this hinterland area (though not Hong Kong or
Kowloon) oYcially due to be returned to China in 1997. Once established as a British
colony, the population of the territory began to expand at a considerable speed.
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with the development of
entrepot trade in the new colony, immigrant workers were attracted to Hong Kong in
large numbers from various parts of China and particularly from the neighbouring
province of Canton. Throughout the Wrst half of the twentieth century the population
of Hong Kong also grew sizeably from the arrival of political and economic refugees
trying to escape escalating internal chaos in China and the hardships caused by serious
natural disasters in the country. In particular, in the 1930s and 1940s, the Japanese
invasion of China and the civil war which engulfed the mainland caused many to Xee
to Hong Kong, including a large number of wealthy merchants from Shanghai, and
large-scale famine in the 1960s drove further masses of immigrants to Hong Kong.
Still later on, in the 1970s, many mainland Chinese Xed to the British colony to avoid
political persecution during the period of the Cultural Revolution. The population of
Hong Kong was therefore built up during the twentieth century by waves of immi-
grants arriving in Hong Kong for simple reasons of economic advancement or to
avoid extreme diYculties of life experienced on the mainland.

In the 1950s and 1960s, this burgeoning population, which had already grown to

over two million, enabled the signiWcant development of industry in Hong Kong,
providing a cheap, hard-working labour force for the production of textiles and other
export goods. The result was that the Hong Kong economy boomed during the 1970s
and was accompanied by an important rise in the standard of living for much of the
population. In the 1980s, when access to trading with mainland China was revived by
the country’s new ‘Open Door’ policy, Hong Kong took further strong advantage of
its position as a natural gateway city to China and was able to prosper hugely from
trading which it facilitated between China and the rest of the world, at the same time
also becoming a highly successful international banking centre.

Against this background of economic development, a distinct Hong Kong culture

and identity began to form and consolidate itself, being initially discernible during the

170

A. Simpson

1960s and then becoming particularly vibrant and strong in the 1970s. The emergence
of a clear, local Hong Kong identity is commonly attributed to two major socio-
economic factors. The Wrst of these is the increased prosperity experienced by a
sizeable part of the population due to the dramatic growth in the Hong Kong
economy in the 1960s and 1970s. The second is the signiWcant stabilization of the
population during the same period. Prior to the 1950s, there was continual Xuctuation
in the composition of Hong Kong’s population, and much of the labour force was
made up of immigrant workers who stayed only temporarily in Hong Kong, and who
considered their real homes to be their towns of birth/origin in mainland China. With
the constant arrival and departure of workers from many diVerent parts of China,
there was consequently no permanence and cohesion to the population, and no
natural opportunity for the innovation of a shared, local Hong Kong identity. In
1949, political change within China led to this situation being altered in a major way,
and a barrier was set up by mainland China disallowing the free, regular movement of
people between Hong Kong and the mainland. As a result of this, it was no longer
possible for workers in Hong Kong to regularly return to their ancestral homes in
China, and contact between the inhabitants of Hong Kong and their relatives in China
became much more diYcult. Consequently, while there continued to be inXows of
immigrants into Hong Kong escaping (illicitly) from China due to political and
economic hardship experienced there, from the 1960s onwards, there were increas-
ingly few from Hong Kong who decided to try to return to their home towns in
China, and Hong Kong came to have a much more settled core population of
residents who identiWed Hong Kong as their long-term, new home (Lau 1997).
Over time, the percentage of the adult population which was actually born in Hong
Kong rather than in mainland China also signiWcantly increased, and many of the
generation who came to maturity in the 1970s had no memories of life within China
and little sense of belonging to any ancestral home in the mainland ( Johnson 2000).

The speciWc Hong Kong culture and identity which did emerge once the popula-

tion was more settled and economically advantaged was strongly inXuenced by a
number of contingent forces constraining and leading the development of identity in
Hong Kong in a very particular direction. First of all, the colonial polity of Hong Kong
was largely a new society made up of immigrants from diVerent parts of China with
no long shared history to provide a natural foundation for a common Hong Kong
identity. Secondly, the inhabitants of Hong Kong were aware of the fact that there
were no real prospects of political independence for the territory, neither in the
immediate present nor in the long-term future, and Hong Kong was destined to be
continually dependent on some other power, either Great Britain or (incorporated
into) mainland China. Aspirations of achieving independent nationhood were there-
fore not present among the population of Hong Kong (at any time), and so did not
facilitate the creation of a common, binding identity in the way that is often
experienced in newly emerging nation-communities. In addition to this, and largely
because there was no serious anticipation of independence, there were no political

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171

leaders in Hong Kong deliberately attempting to mold or invent an identity for the
territory, and the identity which did arise in Hong Kong emerged more spontaneously
than in other polities where there has been conscious, directed identity construction
‘from above’ by aspiring nationalist politicians and community leaders.

A fourth important force in the development of a speciWc Hong Kong identity was

Hong Kong’s considerable isolation from mainland China following 1949, through
until the mid-1980s. The discontinuation of contact with China not only had an eVect
on individuals’ personal links with their home towns and relatives in the mainland, on
a more abstract level it also cut the population of Hong Kong oV from the continual
reinforcement of traditional Chinese thought and culture which came with regular
contact with China. Such a weakening of the hold of traditional Chinese culture on
the Chinese population of Hong Kong then allowed for rather diVerent modes of
thinking to inWltrate and play a role in daily life within the territory. Added to this
separation of Hong Kong from the dominance of Chinese tradition and China of the
past came strongly negative attitudes towards modern revolutionary China and life in
China during the 1960s and 1970s. Not only did the chaos of the Cultural Revolution
alienate any identiWcation with China during this time, the striking diVerences in
standard of living in Hong Kong and China also engendered attitudes of superiority
and disdain for mainland China among many of the new generation in Hong Kong
(Lau 1997). Rather than looking to China for inspiration and inXuence during the
early period of identity formation in Hong Kong, much attention was instead given to
the West and aspects of Western culture, with this naturally aided by the growing
international connections Hong Kong was establishing as it integrated itself into the
widening global economy.

What emerged from the interaction of all of these factors was a new culture and

identity which were strongly divergent from those present in mainland China, manifest-
ing four highly salient characteristics. The new Hong Kong identity was Wrst of all one
which laid central emphasis on the value of economic success eVected within the
capitalist system of Hong Kong, and Wnancial advancement and the enjoyment of
wealth became widely acceptable primary goals of life, functioning as substitutes, in
many observers’ eyes, for the lack of access to any real political power under British
colonial rule. Though this new (and often public) indulgence in materialism might have
suVered criticism in a more traditional, Confucian Chinese environment, with success
being judged more in terms of cultural and scholarly achievements, the increasing
distance from Chinese tradition felt in post-1949 Hong Kong allowed for the new
consumerist way of life to Xourish in a largely unbridled way.

The distinctive culture which emerged in the 1970s in Hong Kong was secondly

very modern in nature, and manifested itself most visibly in forms of entertainment
such as pop music, cinema, and television, as well as fashion. Hong Kong successfully
produced and sold Wlms and popular music to a range of other Asian countries, and
within Hong Kong itself there was a strong preference for local entertainment
products even over international imports. This development of modern pop(ular)

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A. Simpson

culture took advantage of recent advances in technology and had a high degree of
appeal to the rising, youthful generation in Hong Kong, projecting an image of Hong
Kong as an exciting place to live, with a vibrant expanding new culture. To some
extent it also represented a rejection of traditional Chinese culture, and marked a
radical departure from developments relating to social identity in mainland China
during this time, where the Cultural Revolution had come to dominate life.

Thirdly, culture and the identity which it supported in prospering Hong Kong

during the 1970s was signiWcant in the way that it incorporated Western inXuences
and produced a new hybrid mix of modern Chinese and Western culture. Hong Kong
and its people consequently came to be associated with an innovative Asian identity
which was more cosmopolitan and global in nature than that of other countries in
the region.

Finally, it can be noted that Hong Kong housed an increasingly industrial and urban

society and this also had consequences for the way that identity developed in the
territory, resulting in a disdain of the rural as backward and unsophisticated. As the
majority of mainland China continued to retain a traditional, rural lifestyle, this
increased the growing feeling in Hong Kong that it was more advanced and develop-
mentally superior to the rest of China.

In summary then, a Hong Kong culture and identity quite distinct from that of

mainland China was established during the 1960s and 1970s with the following prop-
erties. It was modern, Western-inXuenced, materialist, and predominantly urban, and
emerged spontaneously among a newly-stabilized, immigrant population experiencing
increased prosperity, a lack of access to political power, and an erosion of tradition
following isolation from China. Although not all of the inhabitants of Hong Kong
participated equally in this developing identity, and more recent immigrants and those
who were older in age or living in rural parts of the territory tended to hold onto more
traditional views (Hung 1998), the new identity was increasingly characteristic of a
majority of the population, and particularly strong among those who were younger,
born in Hong Kong, in better paid employment and with greater education. From this
time on, therefore, there was a clear sense of being ‘Hongkongese’ for large numbers of
those living in Hong Kong, and a majority of people actively identiWed themselves as
Hongkongese rather than Chinese in investigations into identity carried out from this
time (Lau and Kuan 1995).

8.2.1 Language and Identity in Developing Hong Kong

Importantly, the new Hong Kong identity was also very much dominated and in great
measure signalled by Cantonese. Cantonese occurred heavily in all of the major forms
of expression of the Hong Kong identity such as Wlm, pop music, and television, and
was the form of speech which came to dominate everyday, colloquial interactions
among the stabilized population of Hong Kong. Originally, when the population of
Hong Kong began to grow signiWcantly in the twentieth century, immigrants arrived

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173

in the territory from various parts of China, including speakers of a variety of diVerent
types of Chinese, such as Hakka, Shanghainese, Hokkien, and Chaozhou. Although
such forms of speech are in fact mutually unintelligible, their grammatical systems
and basic vocabularies are closely related, and there is a strong belief in the existence
of a single, all-inclusive Chinese ‘language’, with (sub-) varieties such as Hokkien and
Cantonese being regional variants (see, for example, P. Chen 1999). Because of Hong
Kong’s geographical location on the periphery of the province of Canton, large
numbers of those settling in Hong Kong from the mainland came from Canton
province and were speakers of Cantonese. Cantonese therefore rather naturally
developed as a lingua franca amongst speakers of diVerent regional Chinese dialects
living in Hong Kong, and proWciency in Cantonese became widespread among the
Chinese population, which accounted for as much as 98 per cent of the total
population of Hong Kong during most of the twentieth century. In the area of public
education, Cantonese was also adopted as the language of instruction in almost all
primary schools, and whatever other regional dialects of Chinese children may have
spoken at home with their parents, they were obliged to acquire their basic (public)
schooling through Cantonese. As Cantonese accordingly became more and more
known and furthermore associated with positive values due to its use in the inter-
nationally successful popular music and Wlms produced in Hong Kong, this resulted in
increasing assimilation of speakers of other varieties of Chinese, and although other
dialects continued to be spoken at home and in dialect-support groups to some extent
(Kuah and Wong 2001), they never posed a challenge to the rapid spread of Canton-
ese, and were not associated with the growing sense of Hong Kong identity in the way
that Cantonese signiWcantly was. It can also be noted that although Cantonese was
spoken widely in neighbouring Canton province, the promotion of a fully national
socialist culture by the government of China during the 1960s and 1970s resulted in a
stiXing of Chinese regional cultures and identities and therefore blocked the develop-
ment of a strong Cantonese culture centred in the mainland ( Johnson 2000). This
consequently allowed Hong Kong to take the lead in creating its own form of
Cantonese-based culture largely free of inXuences from the mainland, and to pioneer
a new Cantonese-led culture which was highly innovative and distinct.

Besides Cantonese, the other major language in the broader Hong Kong picture

during this period of identity formation was English. When the British took posses-
sion of Hong Kong in the nineteenth century, English was declared to be the single
oYcial language of the territory, and was used primarily in government administra-
tion, law, and international relations in Hong Kong throughout the twentieth century.
In the 1950s, with the introduction of mass, public education, there was much
increased access to the learning of English and growing numbers of the younger
generation began to receive their secondary education schooling in English as a
medium of instruction. Due to Hong Kong’s expanding role as an internationally
important Wnancial and trading centre with links to the global economy, there was
a growing demand for white collar workers able to speak English as well as Chinese,

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A. Simpson

and the use of English spread further into commerce and the services industry. During
much of its twentieth-century period of high growth, Cantonese and English there-
fore existed side by side in a diglossic-like relation (Pennington and Yue 1994), with
Cantonese fulWlling the primary L-domain functions of aVective communication
amongst a vast majority of the population, and English being used by an expanding
elite in H-level functions and increasingly being acquired in schools.

Though the knowledge and use of English consequently grew in prospering Hong

Kong, this increase in familiarity with the language signiWcantly did not give rise to
any sense of obvious identiWcation with the British, and English was learned almost
exclusively for utilitarian reasons, providing better access to high-paid employment.
Investigations of the linguistic habits and preferences of Hong Kong Chinese during
this period testify to feelings of unease and embarrassment being experienced when-
ever English was used in informal situations with other speakers of Chinese, and it
was considered ‘un-Chinese’ and pretentious to attempt to use English where Can-
tonese could be successfully used for communicating with others. Towards the end of
the 1970s, the occurrence of Cantonese in more formal domains originally reserved
for English also started to occur, and some government oYcials began to use
Cantonese in their interactions with the public in Hong Kong. This was primarily
due to an increase in the technical status of Cantonese eVected in 1974, when the
lobbying of local Chinese language activists resulted in the British colonial govern-
ment declaring ‘Chinese’ to be an oYcial language of Hong Kong, with a status equal
to English. Although the government did little in practice to promote this new
recognition of Chinese, individuals in administrative posts often found it useful to
employ Cantonese in situations where English was impractical or diYcult to make use
of. Cantonese thus started to make some initial headway into more formal-level
territory, paving the way for further expansion in such domains towards the end of
the century. This growth in more formal linguistic situations was, however, also
hampered by a major inherent diYculty facing Cantonese, which continued to hold
back its progress in subsequent decades: Cantonese has never been standardized and
so there is no agreement on what should be the ‘correct’ forms of usage, and no well-
respected written form of the language. Though there are various ways of represent-
ing Cantonese in written form, these are widely regarded in a very negative way and
standard Modern Written Chinese is instead used as the common written form for
Chinese in Hong Kong, as indeed elsewhere in the Chinese world (Modern Written
Chinese being closer to the speech of northern varieties of Chinese and being
accepted by most speakers of other regional varieties of Chinese as the only educated
way that Chinese should be represented in written form). The obvious diYculties
anticipated in promoting a predominantly spoken language such as Cantonese as an
oYcial, territorial language were clearly reXected in the government’s wording of its
new ruling on oYcial languages in 1974 which ambiguously identiWed ‘Chinese’ as the
co-oYcial language of Hong Kong rather than Cantonese. This ambiguity usefully
allowed for the interpretation of ‘Chinese’ as Cantonese in spoken form and Modern

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175

Written Chinese in written form, and so shied away from encouraging the provocative
use of non-prestigious written Cantonese in H-level domains.

The language situation in 1960s/1970s prospering Hong Kong can therefore be

summarized as follows. Cantonese maintained a highly dominant position among the
population as a spoken form of language, uniting the Chinese community and driving
the development of the new Hong Kong culture and identity. Other varieties of
Chinese were still present in Hong Kong, but were rapidly losing out to Cantonese
in public domains, with wide-scale adoption of Cantonese especially amongst the
younger generation. English, originally imported by the British colonial management,
continued to hold a prestigious position in H-level domains and began to spread from
use just within government administration and the law into the areas of education and
international business. Cantonese was also coming on to the scene in some H-domain
functions but was not being promoted or extensively adopted as a regular oYcial
language due to a lack of standardization and accepted written form. Finally, Manda-
rin Chinese, which was to have a greater potential importance in later years, was
relatively insigniWcant in Hong Kong during the 1960s and 1970s. All of this important
period was instead predominantly characterized by the rise of Cantonese as a unifying
force building up a conWdent, successful population with its own new identity,
international recognition, and a booming economy producing signiWcant, rising
standards of living.

8.3 The 1980s and 1990s: Worries about the Future
of Hong Kong

The optimistic mood of success which was present throughout most of the 1960s and
1970s gave way to feelings of worry and uncertainty about Hong Kong’s future in the
following two decades, as 1997 and the scheduled return of the New Territories to
China drew ominously closer. Although the island of Hong Kong and the area of
Kowloon were technically not due to be returned to the mainland, having been ceded
to Britain in perpetuity, there was a serious question as to whether the PRC would
tolerate Hong Kong and Kowloon continuing to remain in British colonial hands, and
also whether the latter could eVectively exist on their own without the addition of the
New Territories. Such worries resulted in the beginning of a pattern of emigration of
Hong Kong people to other countries, fearful of what would happen in 1997. In 1984,
negotiations between the British government and the PRC resulted in the signing of
the Sino-British Joint Declaration and a clariWcation of what was to be Hong Kong’s
future. While the government of the PRC predictably insisted that Hong Kong island,
Kowloon, and the New Territories all be returned to China, it declared that the
former colony would become a ‘Special Administrative Region’ in which the capitalist
way of life previously pursued by the people of Hong Kong would be allowed to
continue undisturbed for a further Wfty years following 1997. For its part, the PRC

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A. Simpson

would control foreign and defence aVairs, but promised not to intervene in the social,
economic, and legal systems developed in Hong Kong prior to 1997. Such pledges, as
part of the Basic Law for Hong Kong agreed to by Britain and the PRC and captured
by the slogan ‘One Country, Two Systems’ did much to relieve concern about post-
1997 life in Hong Kong and reduced the growing exodus of emigrants out of the
territory. However, Wve years later the crushing of the pro-democracy movement in
China in the Tiananmen Square incident with the deaths of large numbers of
demonstrators sent shock waves throughout Hong Kong and rekindled the worst of
worries about the territory’s future, causing serious doubts among many as to
whether the PRC would really abide by the negotiated ‘One Country, Two Systems’
agreement come 1997. Once again the emigration of tens of thousands of Hong Kong
residents to Canada, Australia, and the United States was triggered, taking wealth and
vital personnel away from the troubled territory on an annual basis.

The Tiananmen Square incident also marked a high point in the formation of a

common Hong Kong identity, triggering a massive protest of over a million of the
population worried about their joint future. This bonding together in the face of a
perceived external threat solidiWed links among the population and highlighted for all
the fact that though Hong Kong had been under foreign colonial rule, it had
nevertheless developed its own semi-autonomous identity and life style, in part due
to the laissez-faire governing style adopted by the British, and this, it now seemed, was
in danger of being lost on return to an unpredictable and powerful China. The
imminence of Hong Kong’s return to the PRC and the Tiananmen Square incident
therefore focused people’s minds on what had been achieved in common during the
time of British rule, and heightened an awareness of belonging to an established state
of aVairs and identity which was generally enjoyed in a positive and familiar way, and
which the new mainland Chinese Other from the north would soon be in a position to
threaten and dismantle.

ReXections on the identity of the population of Hong Kong in the period running

up to 1997 have also revealed two further ‘complications’ in the way it is formed and
understood. The Wrst twist to considerations of identity in Hong Kong is that people
in Hong Kong regularly conceive of their relation to mainland China in two rather
diVerent ways, with diVering results. An overwhelming majority of the Chinese
inhabitants of Hong Kong identiWes itself as being proud of the cultural history and
achievements of China in previous centuries, and so there is a positive link with
inhabitants of the mainland who also share in this Chinese cultural identity based on
achievements of the past. This contrasts, however, with a feeling of non-identiWcation
with the China of the twentieth century, and signiWcant numbers of Hongkongese
who are proud of their (distant) past cultural heritage and who therefore may identify
themselves as Chinese in this sense, rejecting a modern Chinese identiWcation deWned
in terms of the present socio-political system and recent history of mainland China.
Although diVerences between past cultural and present political identities surface
within many communities and nations in the world, in Hong Kong the eVects of this

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177

are particularly pronounced and interesting, simultaneously connecting its population
to that of another state and future overlord and also distancing the former from
the latter.

A second, somewhat unusual observation made about identity patterns in Hong

Kong is that the strong Hongkongese identity professed by many in the 1980s and
1990s may be more an attachment to the lifestyle made possible by Hong Kong rather
than a sense of belonging and allegiance to the territory itself and its people (Lau
1997). If this is correct, it might suggest an important diVerence between the feelings
of national identity and loyalty experienced by inhabitants of other more ‘patriotic’
communities and the relation felt by Hong Kong people to Hong Kong, which would
be more of a self-centred and ‘instrumental’ attachment, viewing Hong Kong simply
as a convenient location for the pursuit of a particular way of life. However, it is also
possible that some of the mixed feelings displayed by people towards Hong Kong in
studies carried out in the 1980s and 1990s (which led to the suggestion that there may
be a lack of deep attachment to Hong Kong as a place) may simply be examples of the
typical ambivalent reactions which many city-dwellers have to the urban environ-
ments in which they live, with both positive and negative aspects of life in cities being
very obvious to their inhabitants. Feelings of Hong Kong dwellers towards Hong
Kong can therefore in this respect be usefully compared with the kind of love-hate
identity relation which inhabitants of other large, complex, international cities such as
New York and London have to their respective ‘home towns’.

8.3.1 Linguistic Developments in the 1980s and 1990s

If one now considers linguistic developments accompanying the change of mood in
Hong Kong in the 1980s and 1990s prior to the hand-over of Hong Kong to the PRC,
there are Wve basic trends and innovations which can be observed. The Wrst of these is
a clear change in the perception of and attitude towards English. Earlier, before there
was much serious thought of Hong Kong’s potential reincorporation into China, the
British government had functioned as the local ruling Other, and growing assertions
of a common Chinese identity in Hong Kong were constructed partly in opposition to
the identity of the colonial power-holders. Use of English, as a linguistic symbol of the
dominating foreign power, was therefore often consciously avoided (wherever pos-
sible) and considered a sign of disloyalty to the Hong Kong identity, which was
represented by Cantonese. As 1997 and the scheduled departure of the British grew
nearer, however, English became perceived less and less as the alien property of an
enduring British colonial domination, and more and more simply as an economically
useful, neutral, international language. The Cantonese identity of Hong Kong had
also established itself Wrmly by the 1980s and was strong enough not to be seriously
threatened by the continued temporary presence of the British, who would Wnally be
departing in 1997. There was consequently a marked reduction in the stigma associ-
ated with the use of English, and an increase in positive attitudes towards the

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A. Simpson

language, English from the 1990s onwards being predominantly taken to reXect
modernity, cosmopolitanism, and connections with the global economy (Pennington
and Yue 1994).

A second linguistic innovation which occurred in Hong Kong during this period

was the signiWcant rise of a mixed code of Cantonese and English. This began within
the school system, with ‘English-medium’ schools coming to use more and more
Cantonese in the classroom to aid the further explanation of subjects oYcially taught
through English. In certain classes, such as those of the social sciences and humanities,
new topics would Wrst be introduced in English and then expanded on at length in
Cantonese, in order to make sure that students fully understood the content of the
subject matter being taught. In other more heavily theoretical and challenging classes,
such as mathematics and science, the majority of teaching was often carried out using
a full Cantonese language base mixed with technical terms and other specialized
vocabulary inserted from English. Such a mixed code of Cantonese (grammar and
basic vocabulary) plus English (supplementary specialized vocabulary) has proved to
be a highly eVective teaching aid and has been increasingly used where students’
English is not proWcient enough to cope with input given solely in English. From this
initial use in education, the mixed code has however now spread further as a
fashionable new style of speech among the educated younger generations in
Hong Kong and is often used for purely aVective reasons in the home, with friends,
and in the work place, even when pure Cantonese could be employed without a risk
to understanding. Such a use of mixed code is said to result in speakers sounding
‘educated’, ‘modern’, ‘western’, and ‘knowledgeable’ (Pennington 1998) and may be
deliberately employed when speakers do not want to sound too traditionally
Chinese, yet also wish to avoid the perceived artiWciality of speaking to Chinese
friends in English alone (Li 1996). As a new form of speech initiated by the educated
young, mixed code Cantonese-English is distinctively Hongkongese and serves
as a new marker of identity which is rapidly spreading in a number of domains,
encoding a further linguistic development of the West-meets-East modern identity of
Hong Kong.

At the same time that mixed code Cantonese-English was rising in popularity

among younger people in Hong Kong, the dominant position of Cantonese in
unmixed form established during the 1960s and 1970s continued strongly through
the 1980s and 1990s, and expanded further in three particular domains. First of all, the
use of spoken Cantonese in government debates and public address became increas-
ingly more common and eventually overtook the use of English in these arenas.
Secondly, Cantonese entered the domain of law, and in the mid-1990s became the
language most commonly used in court (P. Chen 2001b). Thirdly, there was a sig-
niWcant increase in the production and consumption of written Cantonese during the
1980s and 1990s (Snow 1993). This occurred in the form of popular Wction written in
colloquial Cantonese, as well as newspapers, magazines, and advertising, and con-
tained much vernacular usage particular to Hong Kong, thus representing (and

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supporting) a clearly local Cantonese identity. Though written Cantonese certainly
still has a long way to go before being widely accepted, and is not yet used outside
certain very colloquial forms of writing (for example, not occurring at all in non-

W

ction books or more conservative periodicals), the collective advance of Cantonese

into politics, the law, and vernacular writing indicates a visible increase in the prestige
of the language, adding ‘overt’ prestige in the former two cases, and ‘covert’ prestige in
the instance of colloquial writing.

A fourth clear trend in the 1980s and 1990s was a continued preoccupation with

English-medium secondary education amongst the general public, indicating how a
knowledge of English was still perceived to be the vital key to future career advance-
ment in Hong Kong. This perception became particularly noticeable in the 1990s
when a government report suggested that bilingual education was failing and that
only 30 per cent of students receiving English-medium instruction in secondary
schools were actually beneWting from this and reaching satisfactory levels of academic
achievement. The government subsequently proposed to drastically scale down the
availability of English-medium education and promote mother tongue teaching (i.e.
instruction through Cantonese) for the majority of students as a more eVective means
of learning. However, implementation of the proposed changes met with widespread
opposition from parents and students, who argued that access to higher education and
the upper levels of both private sector and government employment required proW-
ciency in English, and so those who would no longer be taught via English would be
unfairly disadvantaged. The issue of how to balance Hong Kong’s emphasis on a
desired ability in English in the professional world and the diYculties of achieving
eVective bilingual education has therefore come to the fore for the government as an
important new dilemma, with no easy solution in sight (Chao 2002).

The Wfth general linguistic issue arising in the pre-1997 decades was an increasing

awareness of the potential importance of Mandarin Chinese (‘putonghua’) for the
future life of Hong Kong, Mandarin being the unoYcial state language of the PRC
(see Chen, this volume, chapter 7) and promoted as a lingua franca throughout the
country. In the period preceding hand-over, the Hong Kong government made
ambitious plans to create wide-scale proWciency in Mandarin in the territory in a
policy known as ‘yi-man-saam-yuh’, literally ‘two written languages, three spoken
languages’, which identiWed the aim of having people become literate in both English
and Modern Written Chinese, and be able to speak English, Cantonese, and Manda-
rin. Previously, Mandarin had only been available as an optional subject in certain
schools, but the new language policy indicated that it would become a regular part of
the curriculum for all students. What has however added an early complication to the
learning of Mandarin in pre-1997 Hong Kong is the existence of diVerent attitudes
towards the language. On the one hand, Mandarin is associated with the political
power of the PRC, and so has a considerably positive status in this respect. On the
other hand, Mandarin is strongly associated with the north of China and a negative
lack of the modernizing economic development which has characterized Hong Kong

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and other areas of the southeast of China. Perhaps more serious for the success of the
government’s ‘biliterate trilingualism’ policy than any negative feelings possibly
associated with Mandarin is however the question of how students will be able to
cope with the intellectual burden of acquiring yet another language when the existing
system of bilingual education is already not working very well. Compounded with a
lack of trained Mandarin teachers, and the rigours of an overcrowded curriculum, the

W

rst steps towards adding an advanced level of proWciency in Mandarin into students’

repertory have been slow, and it remains to be seen how such an ambitious policy can
be successful in the long run.

ReXecting generally on the development of language in Hong Kong during the

period preceding the return of Hong Kong to China, a number of broad points can be
made. First of all, despite considerable worry about the future and absorption of
Hong Kong into mainland China, the buoyancy and vitality of Cantonese did not
show any signs of weakening in the 1980s and 1990s and continued to function as a
strongly dominant symbol of Hong Kong’s identity, spreading further into domains it
had not been widely used in before. Secondly, a new Cantonese-English mixed code
developed in the territory, showing further signs of an independent innovative identity
in Hong Kong with its roots in Cantonese. Thirdly, English remained the prestige
language of international business, but no longer dominated government and legal
proceedings as exclusively as in the past, with Cantonese becoming more important
here. Finally, Mandarin began to occur oYcially on the scene, with government plans
that the language would be learned widely within schools, and ideally to a high level.
Without the help of formal education, however, and due to increased commercial
interactions with Mandarin speakers from China, Singapore, and Taiwan, a signiWcant
number of the population had in fact already acquired a working ability in Mandarin,
and as many as 25 per cent claimed to be able to speak at least passable Mandarin in
1996 (compared to an overall 89 per cent proWciency in Cantonese, and a 35 per cent
self-reported knowledge of English: Chao 2002). Though not yet nurtured properly
within the educational system, Mandarin had actually crept quite naturally into Hong
Kong via the route of business relations and established a footing for further potential
growth following 1997. In the Wnal section of the chapter we now consider what
developments have occurred since the fateful year of 1997 and the transfer of Hong
Kong’s sovereignty from Britain back to mainland China.

8.4 The Return to China

Much of the 1980s and 1990s was Wlled with nervousness and apprehension among
Hong Kong’s population about what would really happen in 1997 when the territory
reverted to China and came to be under distant rule from Beijing. Despite China’s
promises that Hong Kong would be able to continue with its pre-1997 lifestyle for Wfty
more years, there were worries that the PRC government was not fully predictable

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and there might be shocks awaiting Hong Kong once the territory was formally
handed over to the PRC. In the event, when 1997 arrived, people were quite surprised
to Wnd that very little actually did appear to change with the switch to mainland
Chinese rule, and daily life in Hong Kong continued largely unimpeded much as
before. The PRC’s promised non-intervention in the internal aVairs of Hong Kong has
furthermore generally been maintained since 1997 and the government in Beijing
is commonly credited with having shown much self-restraint in dealing with various
delicate aspects of life such as annual Hong Kong demonstrations marking the
Tiananmen Square incident.

Serious challenges to Hong Kong’s established patterns of life came from quite

unexpected other sources, however. Immediately following hand-over in 1997 Hong
Kong was badly aVected by the pan-Asian Wnancial crisis, tumbling real estate prices,
and spiralling unemployment. Other crises included a serious epidemic of Asian viral
chicken Xu, and a disastrous opening of the new showpiece Chek Lap Kok airport. All
of these situations were seen to be badly handled by the new government of Hong
Kong and led to a general crisis of conWdence and identity. Although on hand-over the
new head of government, Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, had outlined visions of
Hong Kong as a further-expanding, global city on a par with New York, Paris, and
London, leading China into the twenty-Wrst century, very quickly it seemed that the
new administration was incompetent and unable to cope with a range of problems
immediately aZicting Hong Kong. Importantly, as Hong Kong’s identity was also in
signiWcant measure built on its economic success, the downturn in the economy and
obvious vulnerability to external threats experienced in the period following hand-
over posed a direct challenge to the foundations on which the Hong Kong identity
had been established and was maintained. All of a sudden, after decades of tremen-
dous growth and success, Hong Kong was shocked by the prospect of failing in the
area which had most accrued it international recognition and admiration, its ability to
maintain one of the highest levels of economic development in Asia.

Though the Asian Wnancial crisis and the chicken Xu epidemic were survived by

Hong Kong, there are other, new fears now lurking in the background in Hong Kong.
In recent years, Hong Kong has developed an increasing amount of trade and
commercial interaction with mainland China as a substitute for decreased trade
with other international partners, and this has resulted in closer social and cultural
contacts with the rest of the PRC (Chan Ming 2002). Due to this heightened
dependence on the mainland, there is a worry amongst many in Hong Kong that it
may over time come to lose its cherished international character and identity, and
become considered to be just another large conurbation within the PRC. On top of
this, there is considerable concern about increasing competition from Shanghai,
which is rapidly developing as mainland China’s most important economic centre,
with the potential to eclipse Hong Kong in international commercial importance, if
Hong Kong proves unable to maintain its cutting edge.

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A. Simpson

To some extent, Hong Kong may now seem to be at a crossroads in its develop-

ment where important decisions about the future orientation and identity of the
territory have to be made. Either Hong Kong can continue with further integration
into the PRC in terms of increased trade and investment with the mainland, as has
been happening in recent years, or it can strike out in a diVerent direction and attempt
to win back more of its earlier international character and trading connections, and
distinguish itself more clearly from other cities in China by closer links to the West
and other countries in Asia. Whichever route comes to be the primary focus of Hong
Kong’s development in the next few decades, there will be consequences for its social
orientation and identity. A continued, increased dependence on trade with the rest of
China is likely to result in greater emphasis on the general Chinese roots of people’s
identity in Hong Kong, whereas a reconsolidation of links with the West has the
potential to nurture and further develop the more modern, cosmopolitan, Cantonese-
based identity of Hong Kong established in the 1960s and 1970s.

In terms of language, it is probable that the economic focus of Hong Kong’s

development, either more towards the rest of China or more towards international
trading and Wnance, will determine the relative status of English and Mandarin with
regard to each other, as rival languages of wider, economic communication. English
has been a useful language to acquire for career advancement in twentieth-century
Hong Kong and will continue to have importance and prestige as a global language in
the twenty-Wrst century. However, Mandarin is also set to become a language with far-
reaching use and increased prestige, due to the growing visibility of the PRC in world
aVairs and its vastly expanding economy. Whichever of these two languages ultim-
ately comes to be more prominent for utilitarian reasons, facilitating interaction with
the outside world, neither expresses (nor can be anticipated to express) the distinct,
vibrant identity of people in Hong Kong, and this still remains very much the
stronghold of Cantonese. Since the transfer of sovereignty in 1997, there has been
no attempt by the Chinese government in Beijing either to restrict the use of
Cantonese or to impose the use of Mandarin in any domain, and Cantonese continues
to be heavily dominant in everyday life in Hong Kong. If Beijing continues with such a
hands-oV policy with regard to language in Hong Kong, as far as can be guessed and
surmised from opinion polls, this will naturally allow for what people in Hong Kong
seem to want both for their present and for the future: Cantonese as the primary
oYcial language permitted for use in government, (parts of ) education, and most of
everyday life, and English and Mandarin as additional languages available for ancillary,
optional use in certain H-level interactive domains and commerce carried out at all
levels. Finally, it can be noted that the earlier dominance of English in H-level domains
allowed Cantonese to thrive very freely in areas where the identity of local people was
developing, because the population of Hong Kong was never tempted to adopt British
culture as part of its identity. Supposing, however, that Mandarin were to dislodge the
position of English as primary non-local H-level language and bring with it more
manifestations of modern Mandarin Chinese culture (Wlms, popular music) as an

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183

accompanying by-product, it will be interesting to see whether the Cantonese identity
of Hong Kong will be as impervious to such a cultural ‘threat’, or whether the less
foreign nature of a Mandarin-based culture might depress and dampen the strength of
the highly buoyant Cantonese identity. However the future actually unfolds and
economic factors interact with Cantonese, English, and Mandarin in Hong Kong,
the unique complexity of the situation present in Hong Kong is certain to continue to
fascinate and throw up interesting questions about language and its relation to
identity. In closing this chapter, we now revisit and summarize some of the main
factors which conspire to make this comparatively small piece of Chinese territory of
such considerable interest from the point of view of linguistic and socio-political
identity.

Hong Kong Wrst of all has undergone the experience of Western colonial rule.

However, the laissez-faire character of British colonial management did not impede
the development of a distinct and strong Hong Kong identity, when the right socio-
economic conditions favoured such a development. Secondly, although the popula-
tion of Hong Kong relates to a much larger, adjacent Chinese population with a
shared cultural tradition, political events within mainland China during the second
half of the twentieth century resulted in Hong Kong’s emerging identity being largely
formed in isolation from China, and having many innovative properties, being a very
modern, hybrid East–West identity based on Cantonese and the pursuit of economic
success. Though it may be technically incorrect to label this a national identity, as
Hong Kong has never sought or enjoyed national independence, it nevertheless has
many of the common trappings of national identity, characterizing a distinct popula-
tion living in a bounded location with passport-regulated borders, and sharing a
speciWc, distinctive culture and economic system. Thirdly, though Hong Kong has
now witnessed the departure of its colonial rulers, this has not resulted in a new
independence for the territory, as normally occurs when there is a termination of
foreign colonial rule. Instead, Hong Kong is now reintegrated into a vast Chinese
nation which has mostly been a stranger for the past Wfty years, and has to cope with
the challenge of accommodating its identity in some way with that of mainland China
as the nation it now belongs to, despite signiWcant diVerences in culture and lifestyle
which have arisen in recent decades. Last of all, because of the ‘One Country, Two
Systems’ promise made to Hong Kong, the territory has actually not been incorpor-
ated into China in a fully regular way and will continue to exist in an odd, half-way-
house-like condition until 2047 as a semi-autonomous, privileged part of the country
with a visibly diVerent lifestyle and economic system. This has the eVect of fostering
feelings of being distinct from the mainland, though politically under the control of
Beijing, and works against attempts at a potentially fuller identiWcation with the rest
of the nation. All of the above, and the way that conXicting socio-political forces have
speciWcally interacted with language in the form of Cantonese, English, and Mandarin
to construct and direct the development of identity in Hong Kong, make the study of
this dynamic and complicated territory a paradigm case of modern identity formation

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under the continual and changing political dominance of an external ruling Other.
How Hong Kong and the status of its current Cantonese-based identity adapt to the
imposing, growing power of mainland China in the decades to come, and the
predicted spread of China’s economic and cultural inXuence in the PaciWc region
will be interesting to follow and is clearly expected on the programme as the next
major phase in Hong Kong’s further, innovative development.

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185