Opinion | Hong Kong’s identity crisis is one of its own making

As an overseas scholar, I take pride in telling people I am from Hong Kong. Responses typically fall into two kinds: some profess envy of Hong Kong’s cosmopolitan vibrancy, while others express their concern about all they’ve heard of the city’s fraught relationship with its motherland since its return to Chinese sovereignty 22 years ago.

So what is Hong Kong? A recent article on the issue in Emerson College’s student newspaper, The Berkeley Beacon, ignited a controversy: a Hong Kong student made an emphatic case that the special administrative region should be considered a territory politically independent from China, which sparked a backlash from her fellow Chinese students.

Navigating Hong Kong’s relationship with China, or establishing what it means to be a Hongkonger, is no simple task. I grew up in Hong Kong in a middle-class Chinese family and was educated in an international-school setting. As a child, I was more comfortable speaking English than Mandarin; watching Cantonese soap operas rather than mainland Chinese movies.

Yet I – perhaps unlike some of my contemporaries – also take pride in my Chinese identity, rooted in a rich philosophical and historical heritage of over five millennia. This Chinese identity may well be hijacked and co-opted by political actors, but it remains a powerful idea shared by 1.4 billion Chinese nationals and members of the overseas Chinese diaspora. This cannot and must not be reduced to a convenient political tool used to divide and stir conflict.

Hongkongers who perceive an identity crisis inevitably view our Chinese and Hong Kong identities as being antagonistically opposed to each other.