In 2007, Hong Kong’s Urban Renewal Authority declared the 150-year-old Graham Street Market ‘a slum’ and announced ‘redevelopment’ plans that would replace it with four luxury high-rise office buildings and hotels. This essay analyses the market’s historical function and the actions of concerned civil society organisations vis-a-vis government authorities and urban developers in the battle […]

Looking closely at the changing faces and materials of some pedestrian surfaces, this essay shows the transformation of neighbourhood space and culture in Hong Kong during and after the 2019 protests. By showing the movements and sensual encounters of residents walking through their neighbourhoods, the article reveals the affective everyday encounters or an emergent politics of affect in which the ‘intensities of feeling’—sounds, senses, and other non-verbal dynamics—prevail, so deepening an understanding of authoritarian politics as embodied in everyday life.

Before the enactment of the National Security Law, recordings of and artistic productions about the 2019 prodemocracy movement were thriving on Hong Kong’s streets, university campuses, in social media, the press, and the cultural sphere at large. Now that protests have almost disappeared from public space, and symbols and slogans are criminalised, what happens to the profuse and popular visual culture generated by the protests? This essay revisits the rapidly changing landscape of the visual culture of Hong Kong protests and examines how some of its components have been affected by political developments, leading to a shift in its regime of visibility.

The optimism triggered by the growth of a more powerful independent labour movement in Hong Kong in 2019 has now been replaced with pessimism about the very survival of such a movement. If one chapter has arguably been closed, what will the next chapter look like for Hong Kong’s labour movement? This essay looks at […]

This essay offers a first-hand account of the current crackdown on civil society in Hong Kong. Under the new national security regime, the securitisation of civil society has posed new structural challenges to the organisational sustainability of all types of civil society groups. Facing the risk of criminal liability, organisations had to adapt their strategies and behaviours to a precarious environment and continue to pursue their missions; many have chosen to disband or self-censor. Understanding this terrain is of the utmost importance for navigating through uncharted territory

At the thirtieth Politburo Central Committee Collective Study Session on 31 May 2021, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary and paramount leader of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Xi Jinping, delivered a speech to Party officials. In the face of international condemnation of the Party’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang and its suppression of […]

When thinking about China’s integration with the global economy, the usual landmarks referred to are the ‘Going Global’ (走出去) strategy launched in the late 1990s and China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. China’s overseas economic activities before these events tend to be overlooked, as though they did not exist. But as […]

Giving the instructions carefully over and over again,
Teaching hand-in-hand.

Old Qiao took up a pile of mud
And molded it into a few machine parts as examples.

— ‘Snapshots of Workplace Lessons’, 
友谊的彩虹 [The Rainbow of Friendship], Renmin Wenxue Chubanshe, Shanghai (1976) In the summer of 2010, I stayed for several weeks in the Tanzanian town of Mang’ula, […]

In mainland Southeast Asia, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) builds on plans and routes that the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) program laid down over the last few decades. While the BRI is likely to continue alongside various other national and regional development plans, schemes, and programs in the GMS for years to come, this essay argues that the establishment of the BRI marks the transition between the era of liberal economics and that of geoeconomics.