Table Of Contenti
Civil Unrest and Governance
in Hong Kong
This book examines important social movements in Hong Kong from the per-
spectives of historical and cultural studies. Conventionally regarded as one of the
most politically stable cities in Asia, Hong Kong has yet witnessed many demon-
strations and struggles against the colonial and post- colonial governments during
the past one hundred years. Many of these movements were brought about in
the name of justice and unfolded against the context of global unrest. Focusing
on the local developments yet mindful of the international backdrop, this volume
explores the imaginaries of law and order that these movements engendered,
revealing a complex interplay among evolving notions of justice, governance,
law and order and cultural creations throughout the under-e xplored history of
instability in Hong Kong. Underscoring the apparently contrasting discourses on
the relationship among the rule of law, law and order and social movements in
Hong Kong, the contributors emphasise the need to re-e xamine the conventional
juxtaposition of the law and civil unrest. Readers who have an interest in Asian
studies, socio-p olitical studies, legal studies, cultural studies and history would
welcome this volume of unique interdisciplinarity.
Michael H.K. Ng is Assistant Professor and Director of the Centre for Chinese
Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Hong Kong.
John D. Wong is Assistant Professor of Hong Kong Studies at the Faculty of Arts
of the University of Hong Kong.
ii
Routledge Studies in Asian Law
Asian Law in Disasters
Toward a Human- Centered Recovery
Edited by Yuka KANEKO, Katsumi MATSUOKA and Toshihisa TOYODA
Judicial Review of Elections in Asia
Edited by Po Jen Yap
Rethinking South China Sea Disputes
The Untold Dimensions and Great Expectations
Katherine Hui- Yi Tseng
Civil Unrest and Governance in Hong Kong
Law and Order from Historical and Cultural Perspectives
Edited by Michael H.K. Ng and John D. Wong
iii
Civil Unrest and Governance
in Hong Kong
Law and Order from Historical and
Cultural Perspectives
Edited by Michael H.K. Ng
and John D. Wong
iv
First published 2017
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2017 selection and editorial matter, Michael H.K. Ng and John D. Wong;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Michael H.K. Ng and John D. Wong to be identifi ed as the
authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
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to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ng, Michael H.K., editor. | Wong, John D. (Historian), editor.
Title: Civil unrest and governance in Hong Kong: law and order from
historical and cultural perspectives / edited by Michael H.K. Ng
and John D. Wong. Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York,
NY: Routledge, 2017. | Series: Routledge studies in Asian law |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 2016055254 | ISBN 9781138689978 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781315537252 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Social movements–
China– Hong Kong– History. | Hong Kong (China)–Politics and
government. | Public law–China– Hong Kong– History.
Classifi cation: LCC HN752.C58 2017 | DDC 303.48/ 4095125– dc23
LC record available at https:// lccn.loc.gov/2 016055254
ISBN: 978- 1- 138- 68997- 8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978- 1- 315- 53725- 2 (ebk)
Typeset in Galliard
by Out of House Publishing
v
Contents
Notes on contributors vii
Acknowledgements x
Introduction: negotiating the legitimacy of governance 1
JOHN D. WONG AND MICHAEL H.K. NG
PART I
The past matters: governance, coloniality of power and law 9
1 Rule of law in Hong Kong history demythologised:
student umbrella movement of 1919 11
MICHAEL H.K. NG
2 ‘Our best trump card’: a brief history of deportation in
Hong Kong, 1857– 1955 26
CHRISTOPHER MUNN
3 Exclusion as oppression: a quest for extra- legal
status for Chinese medicine in colonial Hong Kong 46
YU XIU- LING
4 How the 1967 riots changed Hong Kong’s political
landscape, with the repercussions still felt today 63
GARY KA- WAI CHEUNG
5 ‘Flying MPs’ and political changes in a colonial setting:
political reform under MacLehose’s governorship of
Hong Kong 76
LUI TAI- LOK
vi
vi Contents
6 Between two episodes of social unrest below
Lion Rock: from the 1967 riots to the 2014
Umbrella Movement 97
JOHN D. WONG
PART II
The art of argument: justifications and expressions
of civil unrest 115
7 Social movements and the law: the case of Hong Kong 117
ALBERT H.Y. CHEN
8 Civil disobedience and the rule of law 141
BENNY YIU- TING TAI
9 From civil disobedience to institutional politics: conflict
over the Public Order Ordinance in 2000 163
AGNES SHUK- MEI KU
10 The artwork of Hong Kong’s Occupy Central Movement 179
MARCO WAN
11 Who speaks for Lion Rock? Pro- Cantonese campaign
(or lack thereof ) in Hong Kong 196
CHU YIU- WAI
Index 213
vii
Contributors
Albert H.Y. Chen received his legal education at the University of Hong
Kong and Harvard University. He began his academic career in 1984 at the
University of Hong Kong, and is currently the Cheng Chan Lan Yue Professor
of Constitutional Law there. His publications include over 190 articles and
book chapters and several books, including An Introduction to the Legal System
of the People’s Republic of China, The World of Legal Philosophy (in Chinese),
and The World of Constitutional Law (in Chinese). He is also the editor or
co- editor of the following books: Human Rights in Asia; Administrative Law
and Governance in Asia; Legal Reforms in China and Vietnam; Public Law in
East Asia; and Constitutionalism in Asia in the Early Twenty- First Century.
Gary Ka- wai Cheung has been a journalist for more than two decades. He worked
as a reporter at Sing Tao Daily, Yazhou Zhoukan and the South China Morning
Post. He is currently Assistant Editor-in-Chief of Ming Pao. He has been
studying the 1967 riots since the middle of the 1990s and is author of several
books on the topic, including《 六七暴動內情》, Hong Kong’s Watershed: The
1967 Riots (Hong Kong University Press, 2009) and its Chinese edition
《 六七暴動 : 香港戰後歷史的分水嶺》(Hong Kong University Press, 2012).
In 2013, the Chinese edition of Hong Kong’s Watershed: The 1967 Riots won
the Hong Kong Book Prize co- organised by RTHK and the Hong Kong
Publishing Federation.
Chu Yiu- wai is Professor and Director of Hong Kong Studies Programme,
School of Modern Languages and Cultures, The University of Hong Kong. His
research interests focus on Hong Kong culture, globalization and post-c olonial
discourse. He has published academic essays in, among others, Social Analysis,
boundary 2, Inter- Asia Cultural Studies, Visual Anthropology, Popular Music,
Journal of Chinese Cinemas and International Journal of Cultural Studies. His
most recent monographs are Lost in Transition: Hong Kong Culture in the Age
of China (SUNY Press, 2013) and Hong Kong Cantopop: A Concise History
(Hong Kong University Press, 2017).
Agnes Shuk- mei Ku is Associate Professor of Social Science at the Hong Kong
University of Science and Technology, as well as Faculty Associate in the
viii
viii Contributors
Center for Cultural Sociology of Yale University. Her research interests are
cultural sociology, civil society, Hong Kong culture and politics, gender issues,
and urban space in Chinese cities. Her recent publications include Hong Kong
Mobile: Making a Global Population (Hong Kong University Press, 2008), and
Remaking Citizenship in Hong Kong: Community, Nation, and the Global City
(Routledge, 2004).
Lui Tai- lok is the Chair Professor of Hong Kong Studies with the Department of
Asian and Policy Studies (APS) of the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
(FLASS) and concurrently Vice President (Research and Development),
Director of the Academy of Hong Kong Studies and Director of the Centre for
Greater China Studies at the Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK).
Before joining the university, he was Professor (2009–2 014) and Head of
Department of Sociology (2011– 2014) and Associate Dean of Social Sciences
(2010– 2011) at the University of Hong Kong. He has researched widely and
published on topics including class analysis, economic sociology, urban sociol-
ogy and Hong Kong society.
Christopher Munn is the author of Anglo- China: Chinese People and British
Rule in Hong Kong, 1841–1 880 (Curzon, 2001) and a co-e ditor of the
Dictionary of Hong Kong Biography (Hong Kong University Press, 2012). He
served as an administrative officer in the Hong Kong Government 1980–1 992
and in various positions in the Hong Kong Monetary Authority 1998–2 010.
He received his PhD from the University of Toronto in 1998. He is now an
Honorary Institute Fellow of the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities
and Social Sciences and an Honorary Associate Professor of the History
Department, the University of Hong Kong.
Michael H.K. Ng is a legal historian at the Faculty of Law of the University of
Hong Kong. Author of Legal Transplantation in Early 20th Century China:
Practicing Law in Republican Beijing (1910s–1 930s) (Routledge, 2014), he
specialises in legal history of nineteenth- and twentieth-c entury China and
Hong Kong. His works have appeared in leading international r efereed jour-
nals such as Law and History Review, Law and Literature, International
Journal of Asian Studies, Business History and Journal of Comparative Law,
among others.
Benny Yiu- ting Tai is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Hong
Kong. He was one of the initiators of the Occupy Central with Love and Peace
campaign (2013–2 014), a civil disobedience movement to exert pressure on
Chinese government officials to permit equal and universal suffrage in Hong
Kong. He specialises in public law and interdisciplinary study of law. His main
research areas include law and religion, law and politics, rule of law and legal
culture.
Marco Wan is Associate Professor of Law and Honorary Associate Professor
of English at the University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on the
ix
Contributors ix
intersection of law and the humanities, with a particular focus on law and
literature and law and film. He is the Managing Editor of Law and Literature.
John D. Wong is a business historian teaching in the Hong Kong Studies
Programme in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Hong Kong. His
research focuses on the transnational flow of people, goods, capital and ideas,
with Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta as a major nexus. His book, Global
Trade in the Nineteenth Century: The House of Houqua and the Canton System
(Cambridge University Press, 2016), demonstrates how China trade partners
sustained their economic exchange on a global scale long before Western
imperialism ushered in the era of globalisation in a Eurocentric modern world.
Yu Xiu- ling is a civil servant carrying out researches on Hong Kong’s legal and
political affairs. Her personal academic interests however mainly rest upon
Hong Kong’s legal history. She obtained her LLM from LSE and PhD from
SOAS, University of London. Her new book Transplanting British Public
Health Law to Colonial Hong Hong: Control, Resistance and Co- operation,
1840– 1940 is forthcoming. Based upon abundant archives, this book argues
that during the so-c alled modernization process of Hong Kong’s public health
system, the transplanted Western style laws had played an important role in
oppressing and marginalising Chinese sanitary and medical traditions.
