A reflection on Hong Kong’s yellow economic circle

ABSTRACT

Emerged from the anti-extradition law amendment bill movement in 2019, the yellow economic circle (YEC) is the first ever widely adopted political consumerism in post-handover Hong Kong, where people buycott yellow (pro-movement) and boycott blue (anti-movement/ pro-Beijing/ pro-HKSAR-government) businesses. The reflection’s prominence lies in the popular engagement in YEC, and the political consumerism still lingers in the city even after the abrupt end of the 2019 movement. Existing research lacks the exploration of the meanings YEC entailed in relation to the context of Hong Kong and the lessons YEC can impart to the city’s civil society development. By classifying YEC into “sign” and “process,” the article first examines the particular juncture at which YEC emerged to show how Beijing has tried to govern Hong Kong through the market. It subsequently delves into a discourse analysis, scrutinizing how Beijing has constructed a civility for the market, which is later reshaped by YEC. Drawing on Chantal Mouffe’s theorization of “politics” as well as Hardt and Negri’s discussion of “identitarian love,” the article continues by shedding light on the identity politics and oxymoron of liberal democracy inherent in the political consumerism. It also addresses the narrow democratic imagination reflected in different incidents arising from YEC, which may be symptomatic of Hong Kong’s current political struggle. The exploration concludes with suggestions on how the YEC can strengthen Hong Kong’s civil society after Beijing’s crackdown.

KEYWORDS:

• Political consumerism
• yellow economic circle
• protest
• identity politics
• China
• Hong Kong

“Are we dead yet?” “No. This is just the beginning.”

(Jia, quoted in Chu 2018, 181)

Introduction¹

When giving his speech on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to China, Xi Jinping said Hong Kong was moving “from chaos to governance” with the implementation of the national security law (NSL) and electoral changes (Cheng 2022). The claim shows Beijing’s confidence in quelling the city’s political turmoil unveiled by the 2019 anti-extradition law amendment bill (anti-ELAB) movement.² However, just eight days before Xi’s speech, a news article titled “‘They Haven’t Gone Away’: 3 Years on, Hong Kong’s Pro-democracy ‘Yellow Economy’ Has Paled, but Support Remains” was published (Lee 2022b), depicting how the yellow economic circle (YEC) is still lingering in the city. Emerged from the anti-ELAB movement, YEC is the first ever widely adopted political consumerism in Hong Kong’s recent history,³ where protestors buycott yellow (pro-movement) and boycott blue (anti-movement/ pro-Beijing/ pro-HKSAR-government) businesses. As the international financial city has always placed the economy binarily against politics (Hui 2018), the popular and persistent engagement in YEC to contest politics through and in the market realm is somehow a surprising phenomenon. In addition, the fact that the political consumerism is still practiced in the city makes it worth studying. However, existing theorization of YEC is limited, and none has intended to reflect on the prominence of YEC in relation to Hong Kong, such as what meanings the emergence of YEC entails when analyzed vis-à-vis the context of Hong Kong or how can YEC benefit the civil society in the post-NSL era. The existing literature lacks what Lawrence Grossberg (2010, 8) defines as the main concerns of Cultural Studies: “the organizations of power” and “the possibilities of survival, struggle, resistance, and change.” Inspired by Grossberg’s words, this article argues that Hong Kong people have attempted to establish a new political subjectivity in the market realm through participating in YEC. The exploration also proposes the potential of YEC in strengthening Hong Kong’s civil society in the post-NSL period and examines different incidents arising from the political consumerism to shed light on the problems of political struggles in Hong Kong.

Political consumerism gained international attention in the twentieth century, during which boycotting was practiced as a tactic to resist British colonialism in India and the anti-Apartheid movements in South Africa (de Jager 2019; Sreekumar and Varman 2019). There are mainly four types of engagements in political consumerism, including boycotting (refusal to purchase), buycotting (purchase, sometimes acts as an alternative for boycotted products), discursive political consumerism (communicative actions that confront and illustrate the wrongdoings of the boycotted), and lifestyle political consumerism (profound lifestyle change such as veganism) (Boström, Micheletti, and Oosterveer 2019). The political activity has attracted attention from researchers across different disciplines. Social sciences research tends to focus on the variables that mediate participants’ engagement (e.g. D. Chan 2023; Copeland and Boulianne 2022; Kam and Deichert 2020) or the effectiveness of political consumerism in achieving political goals or renewing democracy as a non-conventional political engagement when compared to voting (e.g. Micheletti 2003; Stolle and Micheletti 2013; Zorell 2019). Economic scholars have shifted their attention to examining how consumers’ choices are affected by the activism or related factors such as branding or corporate social responsibility (e.g. Berger 2019; De Pelsmacker, Driesen, and Rayp 2005; Townsend and Shu 2010). Works from humanities usually trace the history of political consumerism and its entanglement with capitalism or neoliberalism (e.g. de Jager 2019; Micheletti and Stolle 2008; Olsen 2019). While this article also focuses on the origin and the possible political impacts of YEC, it also looks into the often overlooked “lived experience” of the people in political consumerism (Lekakis 2013, 11). I thus define YEC as people’s attempt to use the “market as an arena for politics” (Micheletti and Stolle 2008, 750), in which people act out political performances to demonstrate their opinions, wills, and judgments. By classifying YEC as both a “sign” and “process” (L. Pang 2020), the article first discusses the particular juncture at which YEC emerged and how Beijing has governed Hong Kong through the market. The article then sees YEC as a process and contends that citizens have been trying to defy the long-standing role of “market players” that only emphasize economic pursuit and self-interest. Drawing on Chantal Mouffe’s theorization of “politics” as well as Hardt and Negri’s discussion of “identitarian love,” the article continues by shedding light on the identity politics and oxymoron of liberal democracy inherent in different incidents arising from the political consumerism. It also addresses the narrow democratic imagination reflected in YEC that may be symptomatic of Hong Kong’s current political struggle. The exploration ends with suggestions on how YEC can strengthen Hong Kong’s civil society after Beijing’s crackdown. Related news and my personal visits to yellow businesses form the major sources for the reflection.

Yellow economic circle in a nutshell

Most yellow businesses are run by small and medium-sized enterprises (Chan and Pun 2020). In contrast, most blue shops are conglomerates that have developed intimate political and business ties with the mainland, implying that having a pro-movement stance is detrimental to their revenue. Other criteria defining yellow shops include: 1) having shop owners who publicly encouraged citizens to engage in the movement or directly participated in the movement by going on strike;⁴ 2) displaying pro-movement decorations such as Lennon walls or slogans;⁵ 3) making donations to movement-related funds and; 4) publicly show their pro-movement stance (Ma 2020, 286–287). In the protesters’ eyes, blue businesses usually share the opposite characteristics, although the criteria also extend to the selection of spokesperson and funding of the business. Businesses that hire pro-Beijing celebrities as their spokesperson or are run by the national capital (i.e. Beijing’s state-owned enterprises) are boycotted (287). Physical shops, including restaurants and supermarkets, media outlets, public figures such as singers and YouTubers, and even public transport, such as the Mass Transit Railway (MTR), have been subjected to buycotting and boycotting.⁶ Some blue businesses were even vandalized, although only a minority of protesters practiced this act (Yuen 2020).

The rationale of YEC can be found when the anti-ELAB movement just broke out in June 2019. By then, protesters realized that it was contradictory to buy goods from pro-Beijing tycoons and sought to support small shops facing financial precariousness due to the protests (Chan and Pun 2020). Furthermore, protesters’ “unprecedented solidarity” encouraged them to support their fellows’ businesses (Lee et al. 2019). Another aspect of YEC stems from the perceived disproportionate influence of local business elites in Hong Kong politics because of their close relationships with the government. Protestors believed that disrupting the conventional economic order could compel business elites to persuade the government to make political concessions, particularly the “five demands” (Chan and Pun 2020).⁷ The act of buycotting can also be seen as an emotional and ethical practice, where protestors try to support conscientious businesses that do not succumb to Beijing’s economic appeal but support protestors’ political pursuits (Chan 2022). These reasons eventually converged, and a campaign that encouraged people to patronize yellow businesses was initiated on October 10, 2019 (Wong, Kwong, and Chan 2021). Lists of blue and yellow businesses have circulated widely since then, with political consumerism viewed as another tactic of the movement.⁸ In November 2019, some businesses proposed the idea of a “yellow supply chain,” collaborating exclusively with fellow yellow service providers ranging from logistics and manufacturing to sales (Lau 2020). YEC has also evolved into an inter-Asian and international phenomenon. Yellow businesses could be found in other regions, such as Taiwan and Canada (Szeto 2019), where most of the businesses are run by diasporic immigrants from Hong Kong. YEC also plays a crucial role in the Milk Tea Alliance, an online pro-democracy movement spanning Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, and Myanmar.⁹ Among them, protesters in Hong Kong and Myanmar crowdsourced a manual that shared the experience of YEC in Hong Kong (D. Chan 2023). Some Burmese people even claimed that they were inspired by YEC and thus proposed political consumerism as a way to resist the coup that took power in 2021 by boycotting junta-affiliated businesses (D. Chan 2023).

Most academic works have theorized YEC as a goal-oriented political movement, as in an attempt to gain political independence and pressurize the government to offer political concessions (e.g. Chan and Pun 2020; Lai and Sing 2020; Ma 2020). Based on this definition, YEC is ineffective in the eyes of many social scientists. Lai and Sing (2020, 54) shed light on the low capacity of YEC to exert pressure on the government or gain economic independence since the “yellow economy is mainly concentrated in restaurants and that restaurants plus the wholesale and retail industries accounted for only approximately 4.2 percent of local GDP in 2018.” Li and Whitworth (2023) examine the challenges posed to the sustainability of YEC, arguing that the YEC might be hindered by class-based purchasing power since made-in-China products tend to be more economically friendly. However, the sustainability of YEC tends to have less to do with its practical impact or constraints but with identity and ideological orientation. Through interviews, Debby Chan (2022, 70) contends that YEC is sustained through a “shared collective identity among pro-democracy citizens,” where the more discrete political consumerism allows citizens to express their political opinions amid mounting political risks. By conducting both qualitative and quantitative analysis, Wong, Kwong, and Chan (2021, 69) echo Chan’s argument and claim that “political consumerism will continue to be a main form of participation even as the anti-ELAB Movement seems to have come to an abrupt end.”¹⁰ The authors put forward that despite some shared origins between the anti-ELAB movement and the political consumerism, such as opposition against further Mainland-Hong Kong integration, the anti-ELAB movement only partially mediates one’s support and involvement in YEC. In fact, personal backgrounds and beliefs, such as political affiliation, pose a direct effect.

The other dimensions of YEC have also been analyzed. Poon and Tse (2022) use YEC as a case study to understand how digital platforms and social media contribute to deliberation, crowdsourcing, materialization, and habituation of political movements. In another article by Li and Whitworth (2022), the two take a “spatial turn” to understand the “neighborhood-making” at work during YEC, such as how yellow shops have become political stations. Some authors situate YEC vis-à-vis the existing literature of political consumerism to enrich current scholarships. For example, Li and Whitworth (2023) reveal how “consumer nationalism” in Hong Kong is driven by ideology instead of the conventional goal of bringing practical changes in real life. Debby Chan (2022, 73) examines YEC in light of the under-studied “consumer activism for domestic political resistance, especially in non-democracies in Asia.”

Despite being rich in details and illuminating, certain aspects of YEC remain inadequately addressed, such as its eventful nature that has the “potential to significantly disrupt structure” by a change in people’s way of seeing and performing in the market (Sewell, quoted Lee 2019, 2). In particular, I am more concerned about the meanings YEC entailed in relation to the context of Hong Kong and what lessons does YEC offer that can help benefit the civil society development in Hong Kong in the post-NSL era? In addition to these research gaps, I find some accounts on YEC lacking or untenable. For example, political theorist Ma Ngok (2020, 266) defines YEC as a form of “non-cooperation movement” that “makes the society cannot operate normally,”¹¹ which makes me ponder whether there has been a “cooperating way of consumption” in Hong Kong and, more importantly, whether there should be one. Li and Whitworth’s (2022) article also misses the more fluid, ephemeral, and theatrical activities practiced by the protesters that also appropriated the space. These voids shall also be addressed in the following sections.

YEC-as-sign: governing (through) the market

Wong, Kwong, and Chan (2021) argue that YEC is to counter Beijing’s supported economic integration that made Hong Kong depend on China, where business figures needed to be highly subservient to Beijing by professing patriotism to keep the business ties. Their theorization is perceptively right, but to show how YEC is a reaction against Beijing’s “governing through the market,” I shall further enrich their argument with Lee Ching-kwan’s (2022) framework on how China exerts political control on Hong Kong through three strategies: patron-clientelist system, symbolic domination, and economic statecraft. I also examine how Beijing “governs the market” by discursively defining the civility of the Hong Kong market and its players, which I consider the discourses as simply “false universality and objectivity of traditional epistemologies” (Hardt and Negri 2009, 120). The discourse analysis will lay the ground to show how YEC has eventfully reconfigured the market in Hong Kong.

Beijing has set up a patron-clientelist network in Hong Kong through building close relationships with business elites by aiding the elite’s expansion into Mainland markets, conferring honorary titles, and providing them with different official positions (Lee 2022). To be rewarded, Hong Kong elites have basically to “kowtow” to Beijing by professing their patriotism and becoming the proxy in helping with Beijing’s political project (Wong, Kwong, and Chan 2021). Yoshinoya, a chained Japanese restaurant, is a case in point to understand how the patron-clientelist network has crystalized YEC. In July 2019, a marketing officer of Yoshinoya was fired after publishing a post piggybacking on the police’s act of tearing off protest posters (Cheng 2020). This ignited a storm of condemnation towards the restaurant group, and thus protestors opted to boycott the restaurant. The anger among protestors was further aggravated when they found out that the CEO of the restaurant’s parent company was a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and had consistently shown support towards the Hong Kong government.

Symbolic domination refers to “the production and reproduction of power through symbolic forms (e.g. media, language, art, religion) with their ability to construct, name, and classify realities, to make certain things thinkable, even natural” (Lee 2022, 32). The project intends to “win the hearts and minds” of the people by portraying the positive image of Beijing while stigmatizing the pro-movement crowd in Hong Kong (35). For instance, TVB news, the most-watched news channel in Hong Kong, was boycotted by protesters since the channel was deemed biased towards the movement, attributable to the channel’s pro-Beijing managerial staff (He 2019). In contrast with TVB, Apple Daily, the once-only pan-democracy printed newspaper in the city that remained highly critical of the Beijing and Hong Kong governments, was greatly buycotted.¹² Moreover, blue businesses exert censorship not only through controlling the frame adopted in information dissemination but also people’s accessibility towards getting anti-Beijing views. For instance, Vango, a convenience store run by the state-owned enterprise China Resource, stopped selling Apple Daily in 2020 (J. Lam 2020).

Economic statecraft involves “the use of economic relations and policy tools” to employ “economic diplomacy” by creating more intimate socio-economic relationships to gain greater influence (Lee 2022, 25). For instance, Hong Kong has hosted most Chinese companies’ initial public offerings (IPOs) overseas and held an asymmetrical trade relationship with China, which dominated the water and food supply of the city. Eventually, Hong Kong has to depend on China socially and economically, allowing China to have greater bargaining power when discussing the political outlook of the city. As mentioned, one goal of YEC is to create a self-sufficient yellow economic chain that liberates Hong Kong people from depending on Beijing. Thus, the political consumerism can be viewed as a tactic to generate autonomy from Beijing and make room for political defiance. In fact, the economic statecraft also allows Beijing to construct a discourse that shows how much the mother country has contributed to the city. In tandem with the economic statecraft is Beijing’s grand narrative, saying that Hong Kong people should “acknowledge that the ‘motherland’ had always been ‘supportive’ and contributed to the prosperity and stability that Hong Kong people enjoyed” (Law 2017, 14). However, this statement can only fully win Hong Kong people’s minds if people are apolitical enough to embrace Beijing for material gains, knowing that there are a lot of political concerns to put aside to support the country. It is only through turning all Hong Kong people into economic animals that the people can kneel to Beijing’s “contribution,” which the economic card has been a very crucial strategy to facilitate the “return of Hong Kong people’s heart” (Yuen 2014, 72).

After the handover, the hegemonic narrative of Beijing remains that Hong Kong would “[be] marginalized if it wasted too much time in messing with politics” (Lo and Laikwan 2007, 351). Hui Po-keung (2018) offers a similar observation, saying that with the essentialized primordiality of Hong Kong as the international financial center, the demand to develop the economy by being indifferent towards politics ultimately puts politics and economy in a binary structure. Such civility manifested itself at best in 1991, when the British government, for the first time in colonial history, introduced a partially direct election to the legislature (Liu et al. 2022).¹³ At that time, the pro-Beijing Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions “launched a countercampaign under the slogan: ‘Yes to rice coupons! No to ballots!’” (vii), because the pro-Beijing group believed that the politicization and democratization of the city would “scare away the capitalist in Hong Kong” (Ho 2010, 83). Janet Ng (2009, 2) points out perceptively that capitalist attributes, namely stability and prosperity, “works effectively as a psychological leash, reining Hong Kong people’s political aspiration in the name of social peace.” The slogan and Ng’s words converge on the myth of incompatibility between politics and economy; of course, the latter is always prioritized over the former.

To de-legitimize YEC, the state has to “teach” civility that asks Hong Kong people to separate politics from economics in the market and that economic self-interest should always take precedence over political ideals. Hardt and Negri (2009, 68) assert that a suppressive power relation depends not only on “an ideology but also a system of material, institutional practices.” In other words, suppression can be enforced by establishing “proper” practices within different institutions. From Beijing’s perspective, the convergence of politics with the economy in YEC indicates that the Hong Kong market and citizens have “gone astray.” As Stuart Hall’s (2021, 330, emphasis in original) reminder goes, all practice has a discursive dimension, and discourse is “[n]ot a question of what is true but what is made to be true” that eventually influences how people make sense of things. Foucault (1980, 131) further argues that the paramount task of discourse analysis is to identity the “types of discourse which it [each society] accepts and makes function as true.” The production of truth runs parallel with the process of “normation,” which consists of “positing a model, an optimal model that is constructed in terms of a certain result, and the operation of disciplinary normalization consists in trying to get people, movements, and actions to conform to this model, the normal being precisely that which can conform to this norm, and the abnormal that which is incapable of conforming to the norm” (Foucault 2009, 131). In what follows, focusing on the discourse related to YEC, I examine how pro-Beijing elites define the truth of Hong Kong’s market.

The Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (2019) explicitly states how YEC has deviated the market from the “optimal market model” by describing YEC as “abducting economy with politics.” Their assertion underscores the belief that the realms of economy and politics should be separated, even though they do not provide a rationale to justify their claim. A similar critique can also be observed from another discourse produced by the People’s Daily Commentary, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party. Their condemnation relies on the rhetoric that defines YEC as a scorched-earth (naam-chau) tactic, meaning “a move, a process, or a terminal strike” that protesters register to seek mutual destruction between them and Beijing by “shattering everything in a crash” (Chan 2020, 99). The mouthpiece “poetically” goes:

It’s also like Ding Chunqiu in Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, who led a bunch of mobs,¹⁴ shouting everywhere to “unify the jianghu.” Some people even tried to create theories for this approach. Abandoning the basic laws of market operation and economic development and turning to the primitive tribal society to learn from it, it is no wonder that some citizens directly denounced YEC as foolish, non-realistic, and dumb.

But YEC is toxic. It took away consumers’ freedom of choice, harmed citizens’ freedom to do commerce, ignited a storm of “black horror,” and we had to condemn it. The anti-China rioter just wanted to “scorch earth.” It is the defeat of Hong Kong’s economy, the collapse of social civilization, and the rule of law spirit. (Ming Pao 2021b)

The argument that YEC has harmed basic laws of market operation can be easily refuted on technical grounds. For example, concerning the consumers’ freedom of choice, economist Yuen Wing-han (2020) states that YEC is just a process of consumers finding their happiness by patronizing the businesses that align with their pro-movement stance. According to Yuen, consumers have the right to decide how to spend their money, making it “none of others’ business” when they choose to boycott or buycott specific businesses. Concerning the rhetoric of “scorched-earth tactic,” as I have described in the article, achieving “mutual destruction” is by no means a goal of YEC or a factor that has sustained YEC. That said, the rhetoric is nothing but a strategy to drum up citizens’ fear of YEC’s effect on the economy, implying that converging politics with the economy would lead to disastrous impacts. But what is wrong to “abduct economy with politics”? And what exactly are the impacts?

When describing how YEC as “not economical at all,” Shih Wing-ching (2019), a tycoon and the chairperson of Centaline Property Agency, goes,

How did a group of pro-democracy people decide which restaurant to have dinner at? They first decided to do the one next to them, but they realized the restaurant was not yellow. They only managed to find a yellow shop that was farther. So they decided to visit that restaurant, even if the commute took a 30-minute drive.

I do not know whether the food provided by the yellow shop is tasty or not. But the 30-minute commuting time (not even counting the return journey) is a cost; some have less time to rest, some have less time to be with family members, and some cannot even make it to finish the assignment due tomorrow … If we only think economically, choosing from blue and yellow shops would bring burdens without extra benefits.

Here Shih reminds us of the cost of political consumerism; it wastes time on something unimportant since political engagement and morality are less important than personal interest. Furthermore, the market should be run with the logic that is based on self-interest and cost-effectiveness. Echoing Shih is Yau Tang-wah (News.gov.hk 2019), the then Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development, who goes:

I do not believe it [blue or yellow economic circle] is the system Hong Kong believes. If we believe in economic liberalism, we should provide the best service, brand, or quality to attract customers. This is the system Hong Kong believes in, no matter its heyday or adversity.

Yau’s argument reinforces Shih’s claim that “best service, brand or quality” shall be prioritized over politics. In fact, whether it is Yau’s claim that “YEC is not the system Hong Kong believes,” Shih’s underlying assumption that the market is not for public commitment but for self-interest, or People’s Daily’s critique on how YEC has abandoned “basic laws of market operation and economic development,” these discourses all target on how YEC defy the norm of market, which is claimed to be separated from politics. However, it is interesting that even the dominating narrative from the blue camp emphasizes that politics should not be intertwined with economy, many pro-Beijing figures have practiced boycotts against yellow businesses and buycotts for blue businesses. One notable example is Pricilla Leung Mei-fun, who criticized YEC as “beyond stupid” in a commentary published in April 2020 but, in the same month, filmed a Facebook video expressing her support for a blue shop run by a patriotic TV star, Mat Yeung (T. Lam 2020; Leung 2020). This seemingly contradictory stance might steer people away from taking the discourses from the pro-Beijing camp seriously. However, their strategic choice of mobilizing the dichotomy between politics and economy actually shows their belief in the efficacy of the narrative in resonating with Hong Kong people and thereby de-legitimizing YEC. Nevertheless, YEC demonstrates that many in Hong Kong do not accept what is being portrayed as “true,” and the market has been reconfigured into a political arena where market players can also become “demos,” or political actors.

YEC-as-process: the demos in the market

As shown in the discourse analysis, Hong Kong’s consumers are urged to prioritize economic benefits over public concerns. In one of the accounts that depicts a consumer supporting a yellow shop whose boss has the “bravery to speak out in nowadays Hong Kong,” the patron got several T-shirts and went, “I do not know how much they are, but anyway, I buy them first.”¹⁵ This claim perhaps reiterates Li and Whitworth’s (2023) discussion of how class-based purchasing power becomes a hindrance in sustaining YEC, but the patron’s claim is also a slap in the face of the definition of the self-interest-dominated market, opening up another “truth” of the market that ethics is a consideration encouraging consumption and support. In the story, not only was the patron practicing “ethics,” but also the business owner was also deemed “ethical,” which shows how citizens are now endorsing the politicization of different market players. The reconfiguration becomes clearer in Lester Sham’s quote, a now-imprisoned pro-democracy politician, which goes, “previously people tend not to accept using politics to earn money, but now ethical business is a virtue” (W. Lee 2020). Another instance showcasing the reconfiguration of the market involves a yellow business patron in 2022, who stated, “I can only do my best to support those who still hold on to their beliefs.”¹⁶ Motivated by the eagerness to support like-minded fellows, the market sphere has been transformed into an arena where demos, in the role of consumers, instill their moral values and display commitments to public interests that transcend private and egoistic economic concerns. To the patrons, consuming yellow shops is righteous, and “their consumption behaviour was embedded in their political beliefs, including democracy, human rights and freedom” (Chan 2022, 79).

The rupture of the old market logic can also be observed through the lens of space, which is an important element when analyzing Hong Kong’s protests (e.g. L. Pang 2020; Yee 2022). According to Lefebvre (1991), governing elites can “crush” the lived experience and creativity of citizens by fixating on the function of a particular space with a top-down definition, such as how shops should be only for bartering. However, precisely because space is socially constructed, ordinary citizens can also take back the sovereignty of the space by (re-)defining the space from the bottom up. Li and Whitworth (2022, 1378) show how some yellow stores have been turned into political stations for “functional services,” eventually forming “ideological neighbourhoods” in which people “came to socialize and engage in cultural activities together” based on the ideology manifested in the space (i.e. the “yellow” shops). For example, in 2019, some yellow shops opened doors for protesters as resting or first-aid stops during demonstrations (Li and Whitworth 2022, 1381). At the height of the movement, where tear gases were used heavy-handedly by the police, many yellow businesses had also welcomed surrounding protesters to find refuge in their stores. Moreover, since the anti-ELAB movement commenced, it has been prevalent for yellow businesses to hang up protest-related posters, set up Lennon Wall, and even put up a donation box where consumers can donate to movement-related organizations. I generally agree with Li and Whitworth’s discussion. Still, I think their urge to conclude that yellow shops are space for “functional services” and “ideological neighbourhood” might blind them from seeing other political engagements in the space of yellow shops and the political possibilities enshrined in the space appropriation.

In “Hongkongers’ 5.1 Golden Week,” a campaign in May 2020 where protesters are encouraged to support yellow businesses in response to the absence of tourists amid the pandemic, many pro-movement citizens participated and eventually contributed to the ephemeral queuing landscape (Yau and Zhang 2020; J. Pang 2020). The queuing landscape also takes place whenever yellow shops, and thus protesters’ fellows, are suppressed. For instance, after Hong Kong police cordoned off and raided Chickeeduck’s shop,¹⁷ which some citizens deemed as a form of political suppression, many people queued up and “bought crazily” to show support (Chau 2021; Inmedia 2021 see Figure 1). The significant number of people showing up to support yellow shops demonstrates what Agnes Ku (2008, 46) calls “size is power,” allowing citizens to perform their solidarity towards pro-movement fellows in the sense of dramaturgy. The performance is also what Hannah Arendt (2018 [1968], 200) defines as the “appearance of demos,” where “power springs up between them when men act together” in a publicized arena, in which demos professed their discontent and support. As an observer, the shops suddenly turned into a theater of grief, anger, empathy, and love. The scenes were random yet moving, inchoate yet sanguine, desperate yet hopeful, symbolic yet functional, entailing political implications that will be elaborated later in the article.

Figure 1. Citizens queue and “buy crazily” after the government cordoned off and raided the yellow shop.

In fact, the “functional service” taking place at yellow shops goes beyond the anti-ELAB movement, and the shops have become sites where political deliberation, resistance, and social activities took place, although one cannot deny the impact of the 2019 movement and subsequent political contestation in Hong Kong. Yellow shops’ role is particularly significant against the backdrop of “disease prevention,” where the government wields substantial power to control citizens’ lifestyles. In November 2020, the government launched LeaveHomeSafe, a mobile application designed to track citizens through QR codes scanned at visited locations. With the government’s devastated credibility after the anti-ELAB movement (Wan et al. 2020), concerns about privacy infringement led many people to refuse to use the app. Research conducted by the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies shows that around 48 percent of the interviewees believed that the government would use the collected information for non-COVID-19-related purposes (Guo, Tze-wai, and Zheng 2021). While all yellow shops were legally obliged to post the QR code, many businesses resisted the measure one way or another. For example, a yellow cafe posted another leaflet depicting how the app could compromise users’ privacy right next to the QR code, telling the customers, “QR code is here. We cannot choose, but you have freedom [to not scan it]” (see Figure 2).¹⁸ Here, the cafe has creatively taken up its role to demonstrate untrust and resistance to the government’s measures.

Figure 2. A yellow cafe resists the government’s measure by sticking another poster discouraging customers from using LeaveHomeSafe.

There are other examples of how yellow shops have repurposed their space. For instance, some yellow shops served as the voting stations of the unofficial primary legislative election held in July 2020 (Ming Pao 2021a).¹⁹ Additionally, at the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak, certain yellow shops transformed into distribution points for anti-epidemic supplies such as facial masks (Lo 2020). These practices highlight how yellow shops have been utilizing their reconfigured space for diverse political and social ends, illustrating that the market’s reconfiguration through YEC can lead to engagements that aim beyond the original demands of the anti-ELAB movement.

Love and its corruption in YEC

While YEC seems as beautiful as it can be, its darker side cannot be ignored, namely the identity politics and the oxymoron of liberal democracy at work in some problematic practices in the political consumerism. These practices also show the narrow democratic imagination inherent in YEC, which may be symptomatic of Hong Kong’s current political struggle. In this section, I bridge Hardt and Negri’s discussion of the role “love” plays in political engagement and Mouffe’s theorization of what politics means to reflect on the different incidents arising in YEC. For Hardt and Negri (2009, 181), “[l]ove is an ontological event in that it marks a rupture with what exists and the creation of the new,” signifying that love has the power to provoke and lead to the rupture that marks new political communities and opportunities. YEC is indeed a product of love, either to fellow protesters or to Hong Kong. One slogan that is widely used in the anti-ELAB movement is “We really fucking love Hong Kong,” and this slogan was widely featured in the decorations and artwork at various yellow shops. For example, a yellow shop distributed cards with the slogan for free (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. A yellow shop is offering the card with slogans. The shop intentionally omits the swearing word.

However, as Hardt and Negri (2009, 182) argue, love corrupts when it turns into identitarian love, or “love of sameness.” To Chantal Mouffe (2000, 20), identity is important in politics, which she defines as the construction of collective identities (i.e. “we”) that “would articulate the demands found in the different struggles against subordination.” What really matters in the political realm is not antagonism but agonism, meaning not a race with enemies, who can only be eradicated, but a race with adversaries who are to be competed with. The jeopardization of liberal democracy occurs when “a struggle among adversaries” changes to “a war between enemies” (31). Based on these theoretical insights, my reflection on YEC unfolds in two aspects. First, I examine how YEC is entrenched in the blue/yellow identity divide that focuses on opposing the government and might risk overlooking the pursuit of other democratic goals. Second, I analyze the oxymoron of liberal democracy exemplified in different cases in YEC.

In February 2023, Lam King-nam, the founder of AbouThai, a once-renowned yellow shop that mainly sold goods from Thailand, cut ties with YEC and described the economic circle as “wrong.” The rationale for Lam’s withdrawal can be traced from his decision to testify for the prosecution in the national security case concerning the unofficial primary legislative election, which could lead to a remission of sentence. While some showed empathy towards Lam, knowing that he has a family of two daughters, such a change of stance ignited a storm among many pro-movement citizens (Chan 2023). On the day the news was released, five people stormed into one of the branch stores of Abouthai, harassing other customers and shouting, “Show up Lam King-nam! Where are you? Fuck your mother snitching dog!” (Ling 2023).²⁰ The line is perhaps the dialectic of “we really fucking love Hong Kong,” showing the slippery divide between love and hate and how the two emotions have crystalized YEC. In fact, one can hardly imagine that a few months ago, AbouThai also received the support of being “bought crazily” after being raided by the customs, similar to the support Chickeeduck received (Chan 2023). The twist and turns are undoubtedly a case in point for a moral debate on “man in dark times,” but the incident is also symptomatic of how YEC is still operating on the yellow/blue identity divide that is determined by whether one supports the Hong Kong or Beijing governments or not. Writing for the 2019 “Kayseri Dumpling Festival” that protests against the Turkish government’s ban on a conference on the history of Anatolia,²¹ Fethiye Çetin, a Turkish lawyer, writer, and human rights activist, goes:

Oppressive regimes not only violate our rights but also take away our capacity to imagine new and creative forms of resistance. Many of us are focused on standing our ground, at whatever cost, rather than strengthening solidarity and challenging the oppression by producing and acting together. While it is important to stand firm, I think it is even more important to develop ways to overcome a crisis in order to move forward.²²

Çetin’s line serves as a pertinent reminder for the oppressed to refrain from indulging in repeated affirmation of values instead of imagining the future. If YEC berths on the yellow/blue divide, it is time to reflect and expand on the scope of what defines “yellow.”

Another reflection I am eager to draw from YEC is how the consumerism can be an oxymoron of liberal democracy provoked by the “love of sameness.” A pro-movement citizen published an article on YEC,²³ in which the person describes blue businesses as “the enemies that we are dealing with are not simply political opponents. They are a bunch of scum who lost all moralities and values who support the violence of the police.” The demarcation between the two groups upon the citizen’s very own defined “humanity” prompted readers to think about how the blue camp has been an enemy to the overall humanity. The quote reflects what Mouffe perceives as the danger of identity politics, which aims at eradication. On another occasion, such eagerness to remove the enemies took a very “bio-political” turn. In February 2022, a citizen tested positive for COVID-19. What he did after was “go[ing] on a blue shop day tour to spread the virus” (Lo 2022). This action may seem stupid at first glance, but it is symptomatic of how YEC can put the society into two incompatible groups of “enemies,” which perhaps also explains the vandalism some blue businesses went through.

EpiPrologue

At the time of writing, discussions and engagement in YEC were not as fervent as they were during the onset of the political consumerism. However, as mentioned, people are to continue engaging in boycotts and buycotts even after the anti-ELAB movement has halted. In light of this, I intend to shed light on two possible ways YEC can positively impact Hong Kong based on the above theorization. Nonetheless, since participation in YEC is mainly identity-driven, the feasibility of the following suggestions hinges upon whether YEC would refrain from being mere resistance against the governments but pursue other democratic ideals, as lamented by Chantal Mouffe.

As a remedy for the currently fragmented left-wing groups, Mouffe (2018, 7) has proposed the idea of left-wing populism that anchors on a “chain of equivalences” including “the defense of the environment, struggles against sexism, racism and other forms of domination.” In fact, concerns for social justice have not and will not cease in Hong Kong, despite the abrupt end of the anti-ELAB movement or the implementation of NSL. For instance, in 2022, delivery riders have consistently protested against corporates’ unfair treatment, such as wage cuts, lack of compensation, etc. (Lee 2022a). Political consumerism across the globe has demonstrated that the practice can enhance solidarity (de Jager 2019; Micheletti 2003) and draw awareness to different social issues by dramatizing the problems (Katz 2019; Monticelli and Porta 2019; Stolle and Micheletti 2013). YEC has actualized a “reconfigured market” with the new subjectivity of politicized market players. If YEC can be bridged with Mouffe’s left-wing populism, it will allow the market to be a realm for political actions in Hong Kong.

My second suggestion is more inward-looking, focusing on preventing atomization and fostering solidarity. Through reading Arendt’s “Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship,” Peter Baher (2021) has suggested two dimensions of responsibility in today’s Hong Kong. They are “do no harm to others, and a responsibility to be honest with oneself” and “provide solace to those in close proximity who are embattled and humiliated by the regime.” YEC is effective in facilitating the engagement of the second responsibility. As argued, the act of buycotting can be seen as a gesture to support fellow pro-movement fellows, as in the comfort and support demonstrated in the queuing landscape of Chickeeduck. In fact, the solace offered through consumption can perhaps reach other democratic fighters in Hong Kong, such as those who are working on labor, gender, or environmental rights, as mentioned in the first suggestion.

I am not sure how YEC will unfold in the future. But to Arendt (2018 [1968]), central to politics is unpredictability, where political activities are boundless with effects that are hard to predict. The surprising emergence of YEC, and the anti-ELAB movement, are precisely the products of demos trying to initiate something new. The market in Hong Kong has shown its potential to become a political arena; it is now up to the demos to mobilize. My article argues how the market has been reconfigured in Hong Kong and focuses on YEC’s current problems to shed light on the identity politics and oxymoron of liberal democracy in the political landscape of the city while showing the potential of YEC in the post-NSL era. Nevertheless, this article is by no means a comprehensive analysis of YEC but an attempt to understand the happenings in the political consumerism. In Arendtian terms, this is what “Amor Mundi” or “love of the world” means: to stop, to think, and to, in her words, “face and come to terms with what really happened” (Hill 2021, 144). Let this article be the prologue of the splendor radiated by the demos during different political performances amid hardships, by which this reflection is crystallized.

Acknowledgments

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the “2023 Cultural Studies Association Annual Conference.” I am grateful to the participants for their comments and suggestions and to Inmedia for granting permission to use their copyrighted pictures. I would also like to thank the two reviewers for their valuable comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Since yellow businesses have constantly been the target of political suppression in Hong Kong, most of the examples I have used in the article were businesses that are already closed. In fact, I have intentionally omitted some references due to political sensitivity and the omissions have all been stated explicitly.

2 The movement crystalized in 2019 with the Hong Kong government’s introduction of the Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matter Bill, which allows criminal extradition between Hong Kong and China. Protesters were particularly concerned that political dissidents would be subjected to China’s judicial system. The Bill was withdrawn in September 2019.

3 YEC is not the first political consumerism in Hong Kong. For instance, boycotts in Hong Kong can be dated back to 1905, when Hong Kong people joined other Chinese mainlanders in boycotting American products in retaliation for discrimination against Chinese in the United States (Tsang 2004, 91). Subsequent large-scale boycotts include those against Japanese products after the “Tatsu Maru incident” in 1908 (Tsang 2004, 92; Wong 1993), the tram boycott in 1912–1913 (Carroll 2007), boycotts on British products in 1925–1926 (Tsang 2004), and leftists boycotting food markets operated by the British colonial government during the 1967 riot (Chiu and Hung 1999). Political consumerism persists in post-handover Hong Kong. By researching the keyword “boycott” on the Wisenews research engine that archives Chinese newspapers, political consumerism (mostly boycott) was initiated to resist unethical news media (2002, 2006), support China amid disputes with Japan (2005, 2012), and revenge on businesses that were claimed to favor mainland Chinese (2012, 2014). However, these engagements remained sporadic, both in terms of participants and duration, unlike the widely supported YEC. According to a site survey conducted in one of the anti-ELAB demonstrations in January 2020, 71.1% of the interviewees frequently or consistently buycotted yellow shops, while 86.8% engaged in boycotting blue shops (F. Lee 2020). Among the interviewees, political consumerism is more prevalent among youngsters under 26 years old.

4 Strikes have been practiced several times during the anti-ELAB movement to push the government to respond to protesters’ demands (Ma 2020).

5 A Lennon wall is where “people communicate pro-democracy (and sometimes opposing) messages in simple post-it sticky notes while passers-by would stop, read, write or take pictures” (Ismangil and Lee 2021, 18).

6 MTR has been deemed blue after refusing to disclose closed-circuit television footages, which protestors believed the footages captured police using excessive violence in the stations (C. Lam 2019).

7 The five demands are full withdrawal of the extradition bill, a commission of inquiry into police brutality, retracting the classification of protesters as “rioters,” amnesty for arrested protesters, and the dual universal suffrages for legislators and the chief executive.

8 The anti-ELAB movement was famous for its flexible characteristics. Protestors adopted different forms of protests apart from conventional marches (Ting 2020).

9 The Milk Tea Alliance emerged in 2020 to call for international solidarity against political repression in Hong Kong, Thailand, and Myanmar. One characteristic of the movement is that netizens will use the hashtag “#MilkTeaAlliance” when sharing related posts on social media platforms, including Twitter and Instagram.

10 The anti-ELAB movement came to a halt due to the COVID-19 crisis in early February 2020 and later lost further momentum after Beijing's promulgation of NSL in July 2020 (Chung 2020).

11 To clarify, in the non-cooperation movement proposed by Gandhi that fought for self-rule in India in the 1920s, boycotting British and foreign goods was practiced (Dar, Khan, and Zahoor 2021). However, Ma’s “non-cooperation movement” is not contextualized with Gandhi’s movement but is simply a general term referring to disrupting society’s normal operation.

12 Apple Daily was a widely circulated tabloid in Hong Kong, known for sensationalist reports and a staunch anti-Beijing stance. For instance, during the 2014 Umbrella Movement that fought for universal suffrage in Hong Kong, the newspaper portrayed the protesters as brave, rational, and orderly, counteracting the discourses from pro-China media organizations (Kwong 2015). During the anti-ELAB movement, it published dozens of articles asking for sanctions against the Beijing and Hong Kong governments, one of the reasons that led to the arrest of its founder, Jimmy Lai, in 2020 and five other executives in 2021. The newspaper ceased operation in June 2021. For more, see Kwong (2015) and Tan (2021).

13 According to Kwok (2008), there were 54 seats in total. All voters directly elected 24 members, and the remaining were elected by small-circle functional constituencies representing the economic and professional sectors. Only a small number of eligible electors can vote for the functional constituencies.

14 Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils (天龍八部) is a wuxia novel by Jin Yong.

15 Citation omitted intentionally.

16 Citation omitted intentionally.

17 The shop owner, Herbert Chow, is a high-profile supporter of the anti-ELAB movement. The shop is famous for setting up movement-related decorations, such as the Lady Liberty Hong Kong. Chow has consistently been the target of attacks by pro-Beijing groups, and he has left Hong Kong since 2022.

18 Back then, consumers could choose not to use the app but leave their personal and contact information. However, starting 18 February 2021, all citizens must use the app for dine-in. The requirement was lifted in December 2022.

19 The prosecutor claimed that the election was aimed at paralyzing the administration of the government and thus offended the NSL. All 47 pro-democracy activists who joined the election have been charged. For a comprehensive account, see J. Lam (2021).

20 Snitching (篤灰) is a term that emerged from the slogan “no snitching, no severing of ties” (不篤灰、不割席). It means protesters will not disclose information about fellow protesters’ acts to others, especially the government.

21 The festival emerged when the “international conferences on Anatolia in the 19th and 20th centuries” were banned by the Turkish government in 2019 (Manti Postasi n.d.). In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Armenian, Kurdish, Assyrian, and Pontic Greek communities in Eastern Anatolia, the peninsula that constitutes most landmass of Turkey today, suffered genocide by the Ottoman Empire (Levene 1998). In light of the ban, the conference coordinators came up with the idea to host a dumpling festival as a playful alternative for the conference. According to the coordinator’s website, people are “not just to make dumplings, eat, and listen to speeches, but to show solidarity with us and to take a stance against the restrictions imposed on civil society” (Manti Postasi n.d.)

22 See Çetin, Fethiye’s opinion on the Dumpling Festival: https://www.mantipostasi.com/en/content/thoughts-on-the-dumpling-festival

23 Citation omitted intentionally.