Ming Sing - Böcker

This book raises interesting questions about the process of democratization in Hong Kong. It asks why democracy has been so long delayed when Hong Kong's level of socio-economic development has become so high. It relates democratization in Hong Kong to wider studies of the democratization process elsewhere, and it supplements the received wisdom - that democracy was delayed because of colonial rule and by the opposition of China - with new thinking, for example, that its quasi-bureaucratic authoritarian political structure vested power in bureaucrats who refused to have top-down democratization; a politically weak civil society and a non-participant political culture that crippled bottom-up democratization; plus the division between pro-democratic civil society and political society.

This book examines the government of Hong Kong since its handover to mainland China in 1997, focusing in particular on the anti-government mass protests and mobilisations in the years since 2003. It argues that Hong Kong has been poorly governed since transferring to Chinese rule, and that public frustration with governmental performance, including anti-subversion laws and slow democratisation, has resulted in the regular and massive protests, which have been rare in Hong Kong's past political development. The book then assesses different explanations for Hong Kong's government problems, including lack of social cohesion, incomplete economic restructuring, structural budgetary deficit, severe social inequality, intensifying cronyism and deficiencies within the political system itself. It goes on to discuss the implications of poor governance for legislative elections, civil society and constitutional development, and considers the prospects for the future. It argues that although in the short-term the Hong Kong government has managed to maintain its popular support ratings, in the longer run it is unlikely to be able to maintain its legitimacy in dealing with the fundamental challenges of government unless the current system is replaced by popular election of the government with appropriate institutional capacity and political powers.

This book examines the government of Hong Kong since its handover to mainland China in 1997, focusing in particular on the anti-government mass protests and mobilisations in the years since 2003. It argues that Hong Kong has been poorly governed since transferring to Chinese rule, and that public frustration with governmental performance, including anti-subversion laws and slow democratisation, has resulted in the regular and massive protests, which have been rare in Hong Kong's past political development. The book then assesses different explanations for Hong Kong's government problems, including lack of social cohesion, incomplete economic restructuring, structural budgetary deficit, severe social inequality, intensifying cronyism and deficiencies within the political system itself. It goes on to discuss the implications of poor governance for legislative elections, civil society and constitutional development, and considers the prospects for the future. It argues that although in the short-term the Hong Kong government has managed to maintain its popular support ratings, in the longer run it is unlikely to be able to maintain its legitimacy in dealing with the fundamental challenges of government unless the current system is replaced by popular election of the government with appropriate institutional capacity and political powers.

This book raises interesting questions about the process of democratization in Hong Kong. It asks why democracy has been so long delayed when Hong Kong's level of socio-economic development has become so high. It relates democratization in Hong Kong to wider studies of the democratization process elsewhere, and it supplements the received wisdom - that democracy was delayed because of colonial rule and by the opposition of China - with new thinking, for example, that its quasi-bureaucratic authoritarian political structure vested power in bureaucrats who refused to have top-down democratization; a politically weak civil society and a non-participant political culture that crippled bottom-up democratization; plus the division between pro-democratic civil society and political society.

In a comprehensive and theoretically novel analysis, Take Back Our Future unveils the causes, processes, and implications of the 2014 seventy-nine-day occupation movement in Hong Kong known as the Umbrella Movement. The essays presented here by a team of experts with deep local knowledge ask: how and why had a world financial center known for its free-wheeling capitalism transformed into a hotbed of mass defiance and civic disobedience?Take Back Our Future argues that the Umbrella Movement was a response to China's internal colonization strategies—political disenfranchisement, economic subsumption, and identity reengineering—in post-handover Hong Kong. The contributors outline how this historic and transformative movement formulated new cultural categories and narratives, fueled the formation and expansion of civil society organizations and networks both for and against the regime, and spurred the regime's turn to repression and structural closure of dissent. Although the Umbrella Movement was fraught with internal tensions, Take Back Our Future demonstrates that the movement politicized a whole generation of people who had no prior experience in politics, fashioned new subjects and identities, and awakened popular consciousness.