Identity politics and Hong Kong's return to chinese sovereignty: analysing the discourse of Hong Kong's first chief executive

This paper critically examines the discourse of the first Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China, Tung Chee-hwa, during his first five-year period of office, following the return of Hong Kong from British to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. Based on a large corpus of primarily speeches, but also interviews, press conferences and other pronouncements, and a parallel corpus of media reports and commentary, the analysis demonstrates that, in the interests of a smooth handover and the policy of "one country, two systems", Tung's discourse, in its basic configuration, mirrors that of the last British colonial Governor, Chris Patten. However, there are certain notable variations; in particular, there is a new emphasis on the need for a knowledge-based economy, the importance of Chinese values and identification with China, and a downplaying of democratic development. As did a previous article on Patten [Discourse Soc. 8 (4) (1997a) 493], the present paper focuses on four discursive strategies: the transformation of old political genres and the creation of new ones, presupposition, the use of indexicals, and lexical structuring and reiteration. The paper is presented as a case study of an attempt by a political leader to develop a communal/political identity. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.