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This brief report discusses the Hong Kong protests of 2019–2020 in terms of cultural and national identity. It examines how Hongkongers have had no concept of what it means to belong to a nation throughout their history; but because of the ham-handed efforts by the Hong Kong government to enforce Chinese national identity, many young Hongkongers have reacted by embracing a different “nation”: Hong Kong. It also examines how many young Hongkongers have embraced a civic rather than an ethnic concept of who can be a Hongkonger, one that may lead, paradoxically, to a rejection of mainland Chinese as Hongkongers and to an acceptance of those who are not mainland Chinese.
Gordon Mathews (Wed,) studied this question.