Narratives of the Hong Kong Sovereignty Transfer

Lutgard Lams is Professor of Media Discourse Analysis and Intercultural Communication at KU Leuven Campus Brussels (Belgium), where she heads the Brussels Center for Journalism Studies and the Chinese Discourse Studies workgroup. Using insights from Critical Discourse Analysis and Language Pragmatics, she explores linguistic aspects of meaning generation in spoken and written journalistic discourse. She has published extensively on media discourses in and about the Chinese region, strategic narratives in political communication, and media framing.

“A deep dive into English media’s divergent narratives of the reversion of Hong Kong to Chinese rule. Lams’ meticulous research contrasts China’s monolithic view of the villain/victim framework of Sino-British relations over the entire 156 years of the colonial period with the differences and convergences within Taiwan’s pluralistic media, pointing out that constructed myths of national and cultural identity can be demystified only by keeping an open but critical attitude toward alternate versions of reality. She addresses the question of the meaning of meaning as perceived by different audiences.”Dr. June Teufel Dreyer金德芳, Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Miami“The geopolitical dynamics having hit up between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan, attention must be paid to not only what leaders on both sides of the Strait say but also the tone, nuances and subtle underpinnings of these discourses. No expert is better-placed than Lutgard Lams in revealing the inner workings and rhetorical quirks of political utterances coming from the propaganda-prone administration of the Chinese leadership, as echoed in the Chinese state media accounts. In this volume, the author returns to the late 1990s to explore the variations in perspectives about the Hong Kong handover, not only between Chinese and Taiwanese newspapers, but more importantly, between the Taiwanese media outlets. The linguistic analysis of the Taiwanese newspapers reveals the growth of a pluralist society with various positions toward issues of cultural and national identity. By revisiting the Chinese discourses of those days, Lams connects present-day realities of Hong Kong to the opaque Chinese discourses uttered in the 1990s about Hong Kong’s future. Rich in scope, offering discourse-analytical guidelines besides insights into Hong Kong and Taiwan history, including media ecologies, this book is a must read for anyone interested in Chinese linguistics, discourse and media analysis, PRC-Taiwan relations and Chinese and Asian studies.” Dr Willy Lam, Senior China Fellow at Jamestown Foundation, a foreign-policy think-tank in Washington D.C., professor of Chinese politics, history and foreign affairs at the Chinese University of Hong Kong from 2007 to 2022, and professor of China studies at Akita International University in Japan from 2004 to 2007.

• INTRODUCTION: Discourse Power and Struggle over MeaningsPART I: Theory and Contextualization of the NarrativesCh1: Theoretical FoundationsCh 2: Historical Contextualization of the NarrativesCh 3: Media Ecologies in Taiwan and China in the 1990sCh 4: Discourses on Hong Kong and the HandoverCh 5: The Constructed Media RealityPART II: Empirical Analysis: Decoding the Kaleidoscope of MeaningsCh 6: Research DesignCh 7: Findings: Scanning the Spectrum of NarrativesCh 8: Building a Theoretical Framework for Studying Chinese Discourses on Identity, Sovereignty, and Nation-BuildingEPILOGUE: Understanding the Present through the Prism of the PastAPPENDIX: Chronology of Events Prior to the Hong Kong Sovereignty Transfer (1955–1997)ReferencesIndex