ABSTRACT
Over the past two centuries, even though Hong Kong was turned into a British colony and completely cut off from communist China after 1949, the people of Hong Kong always identified themselves as Chinese and embraced Chinese nationalism from an ethno-cultural angle. Therefore, when Leung Chun-ying, the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, in his 2015 policy address accused Undergrad (the University of Hong Kong Student Union official magazine) of “putting forward fallacies” and “advocating independence” in a book it published entitled Xianggang mínzu zhuyì (Hong Kong Nationalism), he unwittingly sparked a rise in sales, and the book sold out in many bookstores around the city that day (Cheung and So, 2015). Unlike Taiwan, Hong Kong has never held public discussions concerning Hong Kong nationalism, and the city had never experienced any independence movement. After the 2015 policy address, however, the term “Hong Kong nationalism” suddenly received widespread attention in the mass media.
