Illiberal China and Global Convergence: Thinking through Wukan and Hong Kong

Abstract

This article examines the applicability of convergence thinking via two protests in southern China: the Wukan ‘uprising’ and the ‘Umbrella Revolution’. These failed to usher in ‘democracy’ in an unnamed, ‘Western’ procedural sense. Yet the global media events expose the limits of convergence thinking, both official/PRC and Western/liberal. In so far as convergence is also about hegemony and rivalry, the events also show the fading of the latter, liberal one and the rise of the Chinese state as something which must be reckoned with analytically. It is not that the Chinese version is truer but that its relative legitimacy and actuality must be used to further citizens’ ends. The challenge is to re-politicise the state and bureaucracy, and in this the villagers have a lesson for Hong Kong.