Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

 When people ask me where I came from.  I would say Detroit.  Then they give me a puzzle look, obviously not satisfied with the answer.  Then I would say Hong Kong.  Then they usually say one of two things.  The first is that they will say that I am Chinese since I am from Hong Kong.  The second is that they feel sorry for the people of Hong Kong because they are being abused by the Chinese.  So that gets me thinking.  Are people of Hong Kong Chinese?

Ethnically 95% of the Hong Kong people are Chinese.  But there is a big division among the people of Hong Kong of whether they are Chinese or not.  Age of a person will likely shape his view but even within an age group, the views are not homogenous.  

Take people who are older than me, in their seventies and over.  Many had escaped from China when the country was doing badly and they may have been persecuted by the CPC.  Most of these people are wary of the communists.  They maybe less likely to identify as Chinese so as not been associated with Communist China.

The people who are in the forties to sixties and were born in Hong Kong during British rule would be more likely to realize that Hong Kong was not a paradise under British rule.  These folks may have heard about the failure of Mao and the CPC during the fifties and sixties but they did not live in China during that time.  But they have seen the rise of China and how that has helped Hong Kong becoming an economic powerhouse as well.  During their adult years, their standard of living had risen many folds and became greater than that of the UK.  So while they may not want to move to China, they are more likely to think of themselves as Chinese.

Then we have the young people who were born after the return of Hong Kong to China.  They never lived under colonialism.  They believe that Hong Kong always had democracy.  I think they believe that they are superior to the mainlanders.  At the same time, the economy of Hong Kong has not grown like before so that the young people's standard of living is worse than those of their parents.  The big problem is land prices are so high that it is virtually impossible for a college grad to buy a flat now a days.  As a result, it is easy to believe that they are more British than Chinese and that it is worse under Chinese rule.

There are exceptions to every group that I mentioned, of course.  Ultimately, it may not matter if individuals in Hong Kong believe they are Chinese.  Hong Kong will be part of China and Hong Kong's future depends on China and not the UK or Western countries.  Hong Kong is still a big asset for China and China will try to keep it happy.  Despite tough talks from the U.S. and the UK, Hong Kong's survival depends on China.