When the Hong Kong Dream Meets the Anti-Mainlandisation Discourse: Mainland Chinese Students in Hong Kong

Abstract

This article looks at identity constructions of mainland Chinese undergraduate students in a Hong Kong university. These students shared a “Hong Kong Dream” characterised by a desire for change in individual outlooks, a yearning for international exposure, and rich imaginations about Hong Kong and beyond. However, when their Hong Kong Dream met Hong Kong’s “anti-mainlandisation discourse,” as was partially, yet acutely, reflected in the recent Occupy Central movement, most students constructed the simultaneous identities of a “free” self that was spatially mobile and ideologically unconfined and an “elite” self that was among the winners of global competition. This article argues that the identity constructions of these mainland Chinese students shed light on global student mobilisation and provide a unique, insider’s perspective into the integration process between Hong Kong and the rest of the People’s Republic of China.