Here you can find the call for papers for the journal issues we are currently working on. The initial pitches should be no longer than 300 words and explain the key argument of your piece, what kind of sources you plan to use in it, and how you will be enriching current discussions. 

If your pitch is successful and we ask you to submit the whole article, please follow the guidelines at this link.

In 1997, the United Kingdom transferred the sovereignty of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Before and during the sovereignty transfer, the PRC promised not only to keep the city’s ways of life unchanged for 50 years but also to democratise the city’s governance. In the ensuing years, we have instead witnessed what Ching Kwan Lee has recently called ‘double coloniality’, as Hong Kong’s residents have continued to find themselves subject to external powers economically, politically, and culturally. This framework has enabled Lee to interpret the history of Hong Kong’s political movements, including the well-known 2014 Umbrella Movement and 2019 Anti-Extradition Bill Movement, as a history of decolonial movements in which Hong Kongers fought to assert subjecthood and agency against a colonial power structure.

Interpretive frameworks and historical discourse on Hong Kong take on new urgency as this city approaches the thirtieth anniversary of the sovereignty transfer. On the one hand, the Chinese and Hong Kong governments have tightened their censorship regimes and accelerated the pace of producing pro-regime narratives and propaganda, especially since the enactment of the 2020 National Security Law (NSL). On the other hand, Hong Kongers, both at home and in the diaspora, have been searching for alternative means to retain and exercise their agency in the post-NSL era. There is an urgency, then, to recover nuanced memories from different positionalities and generate diverse narratives of Hong Kong’s history of repression and resistance, as a way of responding to the official narrative-building and broader autocratisation project underway in the city.

To do so, we need to unravel at least four key puzzles: 1) What historical memories, and whose memories, are at risk of being erased or obscured under dominant historical and political accounts? 2) With what frameworks, and from whose perspectives, could we make sense of Hong Kong’s history of repression and resistance? 3) What are the political stakes in adopting one perspective over another? 4) What lessons could we draw from these histories and memories for our political present, both in Hong Kong and beyond?

For this special issue of Made in China Journal, we invite contributions that approach Hong Kong’s past 30 years of repression and resistance from different angles and approaches. We welcome both scholarly work and practitioners’ recollections that revisit overlooked experiences, question established interpretations, or reflect on what lessons may be drawn from this history for understanding Hong Kong and the world today. We are especially interested in issues, actors, events, and perspectives that have been marginalised in existing narratives. We welcome practitioners, professionals, and academics to contribute in diverse formats (research articles, interviews, forums, book reviews, photo essays, etc.) in English or Chinese. 

Submission Details: Pitches of up to 300 words in English or 450 words in Chinese should be submitted by 30 September 2026. Full manuscripts, upon acceptance, will be due by 31 January 2027. Please send your abstracts and inquiries to editors[at]madeinchinajournal[dot]com. For specific inquiries about this call for papers, please contact our guest editors:

Yan-ho Lai, Georgetown Center for Asian Law, yl1445[at]georgetown[dot]edu

Kai Yui Samuel Chan, Occidental College, kyschan[at]oxy[dot]edu

In 1976, Mao Zedong went to meet Karl Marx, capping a calamitous year in China that saw the deaths of multiple Chinese leaders and hundreds of thousands of victims in the Tangshan Earthquake. The end of Mao’s rule is widely regarded as a watershed moment in contemporary Chinese history, when China’s historical trajectory turned to new directions.

Fifty years later, the Mao era feels like it belonged to a different world, even as its memory continues to haunt the present. But how is it remembered, and whose memories are given authority? What of the Mao era remains alive beyond the sanitised official history and structure of trauma narratives that have come to define it? What other experiences, possibilities, and politics were made possible, and perhaps on the verge of being lost, in the long arc of Chinese revolution and beyond? 

For this special issue of Made in China Journal, we invite contributions that approach the Mao era as a living history rather than a closed chapter. We welcome work that revisits overlooked experiences, questions established interpretations, or reflects on what lessons may be drawn from Maoist China for understanding the world today. The aim is not to produce definitive judgments, but to explore how the legacy of Maoism continues to shape political imagination and historical consciousness, both within China and beyond.

Submission Details: Pitches of up to 300 words should be submitted by 3 April 2026. Full manuscripts, upon acceptance, will be due by 5 July 2026. Please send your abstracts and inquiries to editors[at]madeinchinajournal[dot]com .