Liminality, Chinese Nationalism, Place Identity: Cultural Revolution Discourse in Hong Kong’s Ming Pao

Abstract

<p>Studies on Hong Kong’s history consider the 1967 riots a watershed in Hong Kong’s subsequent identity formation, which included its colonial policies and defined the Cultural Revolution (CR) as “the Other.” This prevailing view overlooks the complexity of Chinese nationalism and the role of CR in forming a local consciousness. The aim of this investigation of Ming Pao’s CR discourse is to explore how its intellectual tropes: “stability and prosperity,” “three-in-one” combination – namely, the combination of socialist equality, capitalist economy’s freedom, and Confucian benevolence, and “the concepts of everyday and labor” consolidated a place identity for local Chinese during identity crises. With its national/localist identity discourse, MP’s neutrality emphasized a position of liminality between five orientations—factional leftism, Communist nationalism, Trotskyism, cultural nationalism, and pro-KMT ultra-rightism—which was achieved, geographically, through MP’s negotiation with local Maoist’s revolutionary liberation and capitalist-colonial enslavement in the appropriation of lived space. MP’s liminal nationalism demonstrates an alternative way to understand the formation of the popular identity discourse of Hong Kong that transcended the Cold War dichotomy and the pro-colonial identity discourse.</p>