ABSTRACT
After 160 years as a British colony, Hong Kong returned to China in 1997 under a mini-constitution, the Basic Law, that guarantees a number of civil rights and democratic values and pledged eventual universal suffrage for both the executive and the legislature. Since the handover, Hong Kong people have increasingly demanded the fulfillment of those pledges, especially a younger generation that has adopted a distinctive Hong Kong identity. Similarly, Taiwan was a Japanese colony for 50 years until the Chinese Nationalists occupied the island, established one-party rule, and tried to impose a Chinese identity. After martial law was lifted in 1987, an intense debate over Taiwan’s national identity became an integral part of Taiwan’s struggle for democracy. The desire for democracy and a distinctive way of life differentiated both places from the Communist government and the Chinese people on the mainland. Today, young Hong Kongers and Taiwanese have developed distinctive social, economic, and political identities that differ from those advocated by Beijing, and they are running for office and leading civic organizations in order to consolidate and defend them. A conceptual framework in this article seeks to explain how these two societies, although primarily ethnically Chinese, have created these separate civic and cultural identities around democratic values and institutions despite increasing pressure from China to stop them.
