Sources of Public Support for the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement in Hong Kong: Localism or Others?

ABSTRACT

Localism has been conventionally regarded as a major determinant of public support for Hong Kong’s Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement in 2019. The empirical evidence of the article did not provide support for such a reading. It found that localist orientation was positively correlated with supportive attitude towards the movement, but not correlated with supportive action for the movement, implying that localism had only limited power to motivate Hong Kong citizens to participate in the movement activities. On the other hand, negative attitudes towards Mainland China were found to have contributed to both supportive attitude towards and action for the movement. Localism and anti-Mainland China sentiments are not equivalent. It gives rise to confusion to label the movement a localist social movement based solely on its anti-Mainland elements.

KEYWORDS:

• Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement
• support for social movement
• localism
• Hong Kong politics
• centre-periphery relation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2023.2187692.

Notes

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²⁴ Kevin Tze-wai Wong, Victor Zheng and Po-san Wan, ‘The Impact of Cross-border Integration with Mainland China on Hong Kong’s Local Politics: The Individual Visit Scheme as a Double-edged Sword for Political Trust in Hong Kong’, The China Quarterly 228, (2016), pp. 1081–1104.

²⁵ Legislative Council Secretariat, ‘Global competition for talent’ (Research Brief Issue No. 2, 2020) https://www.legco.gov.hk/research-publications/english/1920rb02-global-competition-for-talent-20200601-e.pdf, accessed 11 February 2022.

²⁶ Stephen Robert Nagy, ‘Social Inequality and the Rise of Localism in Hong Kong’, Asian International Studies Review 16(2), (2015), pp. 25–47.

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²⁸ Kevin Tze-wai Wong, Victor Zheng and Po-san Wan ‘Local Versus National Identity in Hong Kong, 1998–2017’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 51(5), (2021), pp. 803–827; Samson Yuen and Sanho Chung, ‘Explaining Localism in Post-handover Hong Kong: An Eventful Approach’, China Perspectives 2018(3), (2018), pp. 19–29.

²⁹ Veg, ‘The Rise of “Localism” and Civic Identity’.

³⁰ Hsin-chi Kuan and Siu-kai Lau, ‘The Partial Vision of Democracy in Hong Kong: A Survey of Popular Opinion’, The China Journal 34, (1995), pp. 239–264.

³¹ Malte Philipp Kaeding, ‘The Rise of “Localism” in Hong Kong’, Journal of Democracy 28(1), (2017), pp. 157–171.

³² Ngok Ma, ‘Party Underdevelopment in Hong Kong: Hybrid Constraints and Value Changes’, Asian Survey 58(3), (2018), pp. 416–438.

³³ Chen and Szeto labeled left-wing localism as progressive localism. Chen and Szeto, ‘The Forgotten Road of Progressive Localism’; Kaeding, ‘The Rise of “Localism” in Hong Kong’; Veg, ‘The Rise of “Localism” and Civic Identity’.

³⁴ Veg, ‘The Rise of “Localism” and Civic Identity’.

³⁵ Steinhardt, Li and Jiang, ‘The Identity Shift in Hong Kong since 1997’.

³⁶ In July, this was changed to the setting up of an Independent Commission of Inquiry into the handling of the protests by the police.

³⁷ In July, this was changed to the implementation of universal suffrage for the Legislative Council elections and for the election of the Chief Executive.

³⁸ In the evening of 21 July, an armed gang dressed in white and brandishing steel rods and rattan canes indiscriminately attacked civilians on streets and passengers in the Yuen Long (元朗) railway station. This gang was believed to have targeted those who were on their way home from a protest earlier that day. The police were accused of arriving at the scene after the attackers had already fled. The gang was alleged to be working in collusion with the police, although the government dismissed that claim.

³⁹ A survey in August found that 54.2% of the respondents claimed that those protests had brought inconvenience to their daily life, while 44.7% did not think so; and 67.7% of those who had been inconvenienced said that the inconvenience the protests brought was acceptable or understandable. Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, ‘Survey Findings on Views on Social Conflict in Hong Kong’, 6 September 2019, http://www.hkiaps.cuhk.edu.hk/wd/ni/20190906–164854_1.pdf, accessed 11 February 2022.

⁴⁰ The public support for ‘The Yellow Economic Circle’ was quite strong. A survey in January 2020 found that 38.5% of respondents said that they would be concerned about the political stance of a shop’s owners when shopping there, although 49.5% said that they would not. Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies. ‘Survey Findings on Public Opinion of Local Consumption’, 4 February 2020, http://www.hkiaps.cuhk.edu.hk/wd/ni/20200204–113044_1.pdf, accessed 11 February 2022.

⁴¹ Ngok Ma, ‘The Rise of “Anti-China” Sentiments in Hong Kong and the 2012 Legislative Council Elections’, The China Review 15(1), (2015), pp. 39–66.

⁴² Wong, Zheng and Wan, ‘The Impact of Cross-border Integration with Mainland China’.

⁴³ Mathew Y. H. Wong, Ying-ho Kwong, and Edward K. F. Chan, ‘Political Consumerism in Hong Kong: China’s Economic Intervention, Identity Politics, or Political Participation?’, China Perspectives 3, (2021), pp. 61–71.

⁴⁴ Isabel Ortiz, Sara Burke, Mohamed Berrada, and Hernán Cortés, ‘World Protests 2006–2013’, Initiative for Policy Dialogue and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung New York Working Paper No. 2013, September 2013, https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2374098, accessed 3 November 2022.

⁴⁵ Michael Chan, ‘Psychological Antecedents and Motivational Models of Collective Action: Examining the Role of Perceived Effectiveness in Political Protest Participation’, Social Movement Studies 15(3), (2016), pp. 305–321.

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⁴⁷ Ronald Inglehart, Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society. Princeton (NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018), pp. 369.

⁴⁸ Ibid., p.310–311.

⁴⁹ Ibid., p.310–311; Russell J. Dalton. Citizen Politics: Public Opinion and Political Parties in Advanced Industrial Democracies (Chatham, N.J: Chatham House Publishers, 1996), pp.105–106.

⁵⁰ Wong and Wan, ‘New Evidence of the Postmaterialist Shift’, p. 501; Kevin Tze-wai Wong, Stephen Wing-kai Chiu, Po-san Wan, and Victor Zheng. ‘Social Mobility, Political Legitimacy and Social Movements: A Survey of Youth Participation in the 2014 Social Movements in Hong Kong and Macao’, China: An International Journal 20(2), (2022), pp. 28–49.

⁵¹ Ng and Kennedy, ‘Localist Groups and Populist Radical Regionalism in Hong Kong’.

⁵² Margaret Canovan, ‘Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy’, Political Studies 47(1), (1999), pp. 2–16; Hanspeter Kriesi, ‘The Populist Challenge’, West European Politics 37(2), (2014), pp. 361–378.

⁵³ Bram Spruyt, Gil Keppens and Filip Van Droogenbroeck, ‘Who Supports Populism and What Attracts People to It?’, Political Research Quarterly 69(2), (2016), pp. 335–346/Maria T. Grasso, Barbara Yoxon, Sotirios Karampampas and Luke Temple, ‘Relative Deprivation and Inequalities in Social and Political Activism’, Acta Politica 54, (2019), pp. 398–429.

⁵⁴ Daniel Stockemer, ‘What Drives Unconventional Political Participation? A Two Level Study’, The Social Science Journal 51(2), (2014), pp. 201–211.

⁵⁵ Ming Sing, ‘Explaining Public Participation in Anti-authoritarian Protests in Hong Kong’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 53(4), (2020), pp. 2–21.

⁵⁶ Edward J. Walsh, ‘Resource Mobilization and Citizen Protest in Communities around Three Mile Island’, Social Problems 29(1), (1981), pp. 1–21.

⁵⁷ Paul C. Stern, Thomas Dietz, Troy D. Abel, Greg Guagnano and Linda Kalof, ‘A Value-belief-norm Theory of Support for Social Movements: The Case of Environmentalism’, Human Ecology Review 6(2), (1999), pp. 81–97.

⁵⁸ Ibid.

⁵⁹ Haller and Roudometof, ‘The Cosmopolitan-local Continuum’.

⁶⁰ The measurement was based on the first two choices that the respondents made out of four goals, namely ‘maintaining order’, ‘fighting rising prices’, ‘giving people more say in policy formulation’, and ‘protecting freedom of speech’. The first two are material values, while the others are post-material values. A respondent would be post-materialist if his/her first two choices were post-material items, and would be materialist if his/her first two choices were material items. Otherwise, the respondent would be identified as having ‘mixed values’. See Ronald Inglehart and Paul R. Abramson. ‘Measuring Postmaterialism’, The American Political Science Review 93(3), (1999), p. 665–677.

⁶¹ Mark Elchardus and Bram Spruyt, ‘Populism, Persistent Republicanism and Declinism: An Empirical Analysis of Populism as a Thin Ideology’, Government and Opposition 51(1), (2016), pp. 111–133.

⁶² The statements were: ‘The opinion of ordinary people is worth more than that of experts and politicians’ and ‘People who have studied for a long time and have many diplomas do not really know what makes the world go round’ for people centrism and divisions between ordinary people and the elite respectively.

⁶³ Thomas B. Pepinsky, ‘A Note on Listwise Deletion Versus Multiple Imputation’, Political Analysis, 26(4), (2018), pp. 480–488.

⁶⁴ For robustness, regression analysis was replicated with multiply imputed dataset in which ten imputations were conducted to estimate the missing data of all variables used in the regressions. It produced the similar results with the regressions using likewise deletion. Sense of alienation from Mainland China and satisfaction with the OCTS passed the level of statistical significance in the regressions on all indicators of public support. Localist orientation passed the level of statistical significance in the regressions on supportive attitudes but failed in the regression on frequency of participating in movement activities. The results of regressions from a multiply imputed dataset were shown in Appendix A.

⁶⁵ Regression analysis was replicated with using place-oriented localist orientation and citizen-oriented localist orientation indexes instead of a single index. Citizen-oriented localist orientation failed to pass the level of significance in the regressions on all indicators of public support for the movement. It means citizen-oriented localist orientation was uncorrelated with both supportive attitude towards and action for the movement. Place-oriented localist orientation is statistically significant in the regressions on general support, acceptance of the strategies, and toleration of the activities. It suggests that place-oriented localist orientation was a significant explanatory factor of supportive attitude towards the Anti-Extradition Movement, consistent with the findings of Table 2. Although place-oriented localist orientation was significant in regression on frequency of participating in movement activities, it was insignificant in regression on participation in political consumerism. The results showed that place-orientated localist orientation had limited explanatory power to supportive action for the movement. The regression results were shown in Appendix B.

⁶⁶ To explore possible effect of localist orientation on public support for the movement, we added interaction terms of localist orientation with sense of belonging to China and threat to the local lifestyle from the Mainland separately in regression analysis. The findings did not provide strong evidence for interaction effect of localist orientation and sense of alienation from Mainland China on public support. The interaction terms were found statistically insignificant in the regressions on four indicators of public support for the movement, including general support, acceptance of the strategies, participation in political consumerism, and frequency of participating in movement activities. The interaction terms of localist orientation and indicators of sense of alienation from Mainland China passed the level of statistical significance in the regressions on toleration of the activities only. The effects of sense of localist orientation on toleration of the activities would increase if the level of belonging to China is higher or that of threat to the local lifestyle from the Mainland is lower. The regression results were shown in Appendix C.

⁶⁷ Billiet, Eisinga and Scheepers, ‘Ethnocentrism in the Low Countries’.

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⁶⁹ Steinhardt, Li and Jiang, ‘The Identity Shift in Hong Kong since 1997’.