Depoliticization, citizenship, and the politics of community in Hong Kong

Abstract

This article critically examines the government discourses on citizenship and community in Hong Kong from the 1960s to the present. By making special reference to the government's discourses on three public events - the 1966 Star Ferry riots, the 1981 riots, and scuffles such as those that took place at the Cultural Center, Tsimshatsui, on Christmas and New Year's Eve of 2002 - it reconstructs the meaning of good citizenship as promoted by the Hong Kong colonial and Special Administrative Region (SAR) governments, respectively. These three public events are selected as cases highly indicative of what the government expects an ideal citizen to be because all of them aroused substantial public attention which subsequently invoked considerable government discourses and action. Citizenship is built upon a shared sense of community. Considered in this context, this article also traces the understanding of community of the governments, as it is intertwined with the notion of citizenship, through the development of government policies on youth and citizen education in the city from the 1960s onward. It is obvious that citizenship is constituted from both above (by the government) and below (by the civil society). By reconstructing the government discourses in this regard, this paper will shed light on part of the process of citizenship making in Hong Kong. © 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd.