ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the Hong Kong identity and discusses the modifying effect of the retrocession. In July 1997 Hong Kong and its citizens returned to the mainland. The conclusion of the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong left the territory with only 1 million inhabitants. The Chinese civil war and subsequent Communist victory saw successive waves of Chinese refugees enter Hong Kong. From the development of a manufacturing sector in the 1950s, Hong Kong's commercial sector began to move into more advanced industrial enterprises. The socio-economic changes that the territory was undergoing in this period brought new elements and new understandings into the Hong Kong variant of Cantonese. The 1956 riots were the first of a series of modern crises that would be faced by the developing Hong Kong nation-state. The effect of the 1956 riots was to create social and political tensions amongst the members of Hong Kong's population.