Introduction

This chapter outlines the social and political backgrounds against which the new problems with regard to Hong Kong identity emerged. Identities, in general, are no longer stably anchored in the institutional world. While the varied identity claims intensify across the world, the desire for “the local” in Hong Kong increasingly features in political self-determination and self-realization under the Chinese rule. On the one hand, the city has deeply embedded in China’s authoritarian rule, its capitalist growth machine, and its dominant vision of “national rejuvenation,” but on the other hand, there has gradually emerged an impulse to discourse on Hong Kong political community, embodying a time consciousness and spatial fantasy separating itself from the Chinese nation. Methodologically this book calls for a theoretical shift from concern with meaning structures to exploration of new possibilities in practices. By doing so, this book identifies the key power mechanisms and discursive dynamics by which Hong Kong people engage in identity politics in the new era.