Hong Kong under Chinese rule has witnessed two decades of protests, culminating in a mass uprising in 2019. Most analyses understand this history as a social movement for democratization and freedom against Communist authoritarian rule of the People’s Republic of China. Prof. Lee argues that popular resistance in Hong Kong is a decolonial struggle against “double coloniality” at the interface of the world’s two major political economic systems. Delayed and denied for 155 years, decolonizing Hong Kong from below has far-reaching global implications.
Ching Kwan Lee is Professor of Sociology at UCLA. She has published three monographs on contemporary China, forming a trilogy of Chinese capitalism through the lens of labor and working class experiences. Her most recent book is Hong Kong: Global China’s Restive Frontier (Cambridge, 2022). She is currently working on a monograph Forever Hong Kong: A Global City’s Struggle for Decolonization.
This lecture is organized by the UCSB East Asia Center with generous support from the China Understanding and Peace Fund.
