The re-making of developmental citizenship in post-handover Hong Kong

In the existing literature of citizenship studies, Hong Kong citizens are described as enterprising, depoliticized individuals. Such formulation, however, falls short in explaining the emergence and resilience of civil society activism from the mid-2000s, particularly the anti-extradition protests in 2019. This article re-examines Hong Kong's citizenship in the post-handover era from the perspective of developmental politics. We argue that Hong Kong's citizenship is the product of dynamic struggles between state and society over the city's development. After 2003, the state was driving Hong Kong towards national integration with Mainland China, and the civil society was responding to such integration with resistance and antagonism. As a result, Hong Kong's citizenship was politicized into highly contested forms of developmental citizenship. It remains uncertain as to whether and how Hong Kong's citizenship can be transformed to reconcile the state-society tensions over the city's future development.