Read the Cultural Other Forms of Otherness in the Discourses of Hong Kong’s Decolonization

Read the Cultural Other

≥

Language, Power andSocial Process 14

Editors

Monica HellerRichard J. Watts

Mouton de GruyterBerlin · New York

Read the Cultural OtherForms of Otherness in the Discoursesof Hong Kong’s Decolonization

Edited by

Shi-xuManfred KienpointnerJan Servaes

Mouton de GruyterBerlin · New York

Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague)is a Division of Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Read the cultural other : forms of otherness in the discourses ofHong Kong’s decolonization / edited by Shi-xu, Manfred Kien-pointner, Jan Servaes.

p. cm. � (Language, power, and social process ; 14)Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 3-11-018267-X (hardcover : alk. paper) � ISBN 3-11-018268-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)1. Hong Kong (China) � Languages. 2. Sociolinguistics �

China � Hong Kong. 3. Sociolinguistics � China. I. Shi-xu.II. Kienpointner, Manfred. III. Servaes, Jan, 1952� IV. Series.

P40.45.H66R43 2005306.441095125�dc22

2005013474

�� Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelinesof the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

ISBN 3-11-018267-X hbISBN 3-11-018268-8 pb

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Bibliothek

Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the DeutscheNationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in theInternet at �http://dnb.ddb.de�.

� Copyright 2005 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin.All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this bookmay be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photo-copy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writingfrom the publisher.Cover design: Christopher Schneider.Printed in Germany.

This work is dedicated to those cultural communitieswhose discourses are marginalized, repressed or excluded

Contents

Acknowledgements ix

Part 1. Paradigmatic reorientation

Chapter 1The study of non-Western discourse 3Shi-xu

Chapter 2Communication theory and the Western bias 21Denis McQuail

Chapter 3Towards multiculturalism in discourse studies 33Shi-xu and Robert Maier

Chapter 4Beyond differences in cultural values and modes of communication 49Jan Servaes

Part 2. The discursive dominance of the West

Chapter 5Reporting the Hong Kong transition: A comparative analysis of news coverage in Europe and Asia 73Jan Servaes and Sankaran Ramanathan

Chapter 6The contest over Hong Kong:Revealing the power practices of the Western media 89Shi-xu and Manfred Kienpointner

Chapter 7Hong Kong’s press freedom:A comparative sociology of Western and Hong Kong’s views 103Junhao Hong

Part 3. Complexity, diversity and Otherness of non-Western discourse

Chapter 8Unfamiliar voices from the Other:Exploring forms of Otherness in the media discourses of China and Hong Kong 119Shi-xu

Chapter 9Media and metaphor: Exploring the rhetoric in China’s and Hong Kong’s public discourseson Hong Kong and China 139Lee Cher-Leng

Chapter 10Voices of missing identity: 165A study of contemporary Hong Kong literary writings Kwok-kan Tam

Chapter 11Identity and interactive hypermedia: A discourse analysis of web diaries 177Hong Cheng and Guofang Wan

Chapter 12Narrating Hong Kong history:A critical study of mainland China’s historical discourse from a Hong Kong perspective 197Lawrence Wang-chi Wong

Chapter 13A nascent paradigm for non-Western discourse studies: An epilogue 211Narcisa Paredes-Canilao

Contributors 239

Index 243

viii Contents

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our sincere thanks to the series editor, Monica Heller, for her continued interest in and invaluable suggestions for the book. We also want to thank Lut Lams for her enthusiastic help and support in the initial stage of the project. Shi-xu and Manfred Kienpointner are grateful to the editor of Pragmatics for allowing them to reproduce part of their paper (2001, 11 [3]) in Chapter 6. Finally, all of us wish to thank Wendy Zhao as well as Xiao Yang and Hu Rong for their meticulous work in the last stage of editing.

Part 1. Paradigmatic reorientation

Chapter 1The study of non-Western discourse

Shi-xu

The present volume offers studies of non-Western discourse. It has two interrelat-ed aims. First, it will argue that non-Western discourse cannot be contained in a “universal”, “general” or “integrated” theory of linguistic communication or dis-course but must be understood in a culturally pluralist perspective. To that end, the book will critically examine the dominant universalist discourse in the pro-fession in terms of its theoretical inadequacy and political consequences. Further, it will explore the thoroughly cultural nature of discourse, scientifi c language in-cluded, as it outlines a culturally pluralist vision. In addition, it will present em-pirical research to show the incommensurable difference and contrast between the Western and non-Western discourses on the “same” and different issues. In this way, the book makes for a case of non-Western, non-White and Third-World discourse as a legitimate, necessary and normal part of discourse research.

To take the proposed pluralist view of discourse seriously, secondly, the present book will also study the case of China and Hong Kong’s public and mediated dis-courses on the latter’s historic transition from colonialism. In particular, as a way of reclaiming non-Western discourse, it will attempt to highlight the complexity, diversity and forms of otherness of those discourses. To achieve these purposes, it will focus on the discourses which have been marginalized in their Western counterparts and seek to identify and document the Chinese and Hong Kong’s specifi c ways of speaking – their concepts, concerns, aspirations, resistance, ver-bal strategies, etc. – with reference to similar or different issues. In the process, it will draw upon culturally different methods and local specifi c context.

Let me make explicit the problems that have motivated the present book; this will make clear the relevance and urgency of our endeavor here. On the one hand, there seems to be a dominant universalistic ideology operating in the mainstream discourse scholarship. That is, here linguistic communication or discourse is of-ten assumed to be an independently given and neutral means of representation and, furthermore, to have universal properties and therefore function universal-ly. So, (inter-/multidisciplinary) models of language, discourse and communica-tion are frequently presented as more or less comprehensive and valid across all cultures, implicitly or explicitly. Think of the familiar grand narratives of “hu-man language”, “interpersonal/intercultural/mass communication”, “discourse”,

4 Shi-xu

etc. Issues, questions and data in empirical research, too, are routinely proffered as universally interesting and replicable. Think of English data as the “normal”, questions of “self ” and “identity” as the “central”, or the issue of “politeness” as the “natural”. On closer inspection, however, theoretical notions more often than not turn out to derive from Western traditions, Western Weltanschauung and West-ern realities; in many cases they can be traced to the Western projects of Structur-alism and the Enlightenment (Carey 1992; McQuail this volume; Shi-xu 2000). Empirical questions, too, often embody Western phenomena, experiences, inter-ests and concerns. When Western theoretical discourse totalizes, non-Western, non-White and Third-Word metadiscourses are effectively excluded or margin-alized. Further, when Western phenomena are privileged as the “central”, “gen-eral” or “standard” object of enquiry, discourses from Non-Western, non-White and Third-World cultures, including the constituent outlooks, perspectives, con-cerns and aspirations, etc., are relegated to a “local”, “particular” or “other” po-sition in (or, one might even argue, outside) the international scholarship. To re-claim non-Western discourse, at both theoretical and empirical levels, then is ur-gently called for.

On the other hand, as we enter the new millennium, the division and alien-ation among the world’s populations are being deepened (Bauman 1998; Hunting-ton 1998). The erstwhile Cold War is now replaced by the new world (dis)order: neocolonial repression and anti-imperialist resistance occur simultaneously be-tween groups, nation states, regions, blocs and so on. Indeed, the global animos-ity, coupled with world capitalism and neo-colonial expansion, has made cultural coexistence and common progress more diffi cult than ever before. The irony of this international antagonism and fragmentation is that the global village is be-coming increasingly interconnected and interdependent at the same time, in fi -nance and trade, the environment and health, and regional and international af-fairs, through accelerated advancement in communication technologies, human migration and international travel. Time and again, we have seen that what we say or do “here” can impact upon, change, even eliminate, lives “there”; prob-lems “there” can quickly become problems “here”. To pay more attention to non-Western discourses, then, is also badly needed for the survival of the human cul-tural world.

The situation is almost desperate, but not hopeless. In fact, we believe that a cultural-political approach to discourse research can intervene and make a dif-ference. In particular, we want to advocate as a most timely and effective strate-gy a radical cultural turn to non-Western discourse, hence the titular imperative, Read the Cultural Other.

In drawing critical attention to the domination over and marginalization of non-Western discourses in the discourse scholarship, we have no intention of course to deny or overshadow the work already existing in the fi eld (e.g. Dissanayake

5The study of non-Western discourse

1988; Gumperz and Levinson 1996; Ngŭgĭ 1986; Shen 1999; Silverstein and Ur-ban 1996; Young 1994). But endeavors such as these are few and far between and rather weak under the West-dominated, universalizing aura. Given the cur-rent international cultural imbalance and disorder in the social sciences and hu-manities, the struggle against cultural imperialism in general and universalism in particular will be a long and arduous process. To resist the rampant universal-ist discourse and to combat the continued marginalization of non-Western, non-White and Third-World concerns, materials, methods, theories and worldviews, more groups and institutions must get involved and more systematic and wider-ranging research conducted.

1. Theorizing non-Western discourse

What constitutes “non-Western discourse”? We shall try to answer this question by way of outlining the framework of the present studies (this will be detailed in the rest of Part I). At the outset, we would like to note that the concept of non-Western discourse could not be easily and clearly defi ned. For one thing, non-Western discourse, or in that connection, “China’s discourse” or “Hong Kong’s discourse”, is not a homogeneous and monolithic entity. It is diversifi ed and dy-namic. Within “Hong Kong’s discourse”, there are people who favor reunion with China but also people who oppose it. And people’s opinion changes through time and across situations. For another, the defi nition depends on, to say the least, one’s goals, interests and perspectives; it cannot be neutral. The notion of “non-West-ern discourse” may, for example, presuppose what “Western discourse” is like, which is subject to further variable conceptualizations. A reader who has “exot-ic” tastes may not have the same notion of non-Western discourse as a political-ly committed researcher who looks for alternative or oppositional forms of dis-course from the non-Western world.

“Non-Western discourse” does not have a well-defi ned boundary; surely it is a contested category and concept. In the present project, our understanding is motivated by a cultural politics that aspires to resist the domination of Western discourse and to reclaim cultural freedom and cultural identity of non-Western discourse. Thus, fi rst of all, non-Western discourse may be conceived of as dis-course produced by a cultural community different from that of the West. That is, it involves a different community of speakers (Wuthnow 1989) with a differ-ent historical and cultural background from that of the West (Bhabha 1994). One only needs to be reminded of the large non-White Third World population under a continued, basically American/Western hegemonic, order, who has a very dif-ferent experience than the White, European and American population (Bauman 1998; Huntington 1998). Second, such discourse may be thought of as on some

6 Shi-xu

topic, shared or otherwise, that is of some particular interest to the West(ern read-ership), say the environment, poverty or in the present case, Hong Kong’s historic transition as part of the world’s postcolonial history. That means that non-Western discourse would be a selected entity, rather than a totality. Third, such discourse speaks of the “same” subject matter in different ways or patterns from Western discourse (Bhabha 1994; Césaire 1972; Lee 1994; Ngŭgĭ 1986; Said 1978, 1993). Different cultural symbolic forms construct different worlds and convey differ-ent meanings. From Wittgenstein’s (1968) perspective, these can be said to be different “language games” which share a family of resemblances but nothing in common for all. For example, Asian communication is supposed to maintain harmonious relationships (e.g. Dissanayake 1988; Heisey 2000) whereas Ameri-can-Western communication often strives to express individuality (Bellah et al. 1985). Finally, non-Western discourse must be understood from the global his-torical perspective of colonialism, postcolonialism and neocolonialism. For, non-Western discourse is not, and has never been, in an equal relationship with West-ern discourse but remains marginalized (Pennycook 1998; Spivak 1988b); at the same time, however, it also possesses the agency to reinvent culturally liberating experience and reality.

The last point deserves some elaboration, as this will have particularly signif-icant implications for our project. In the fi eld of (mediated) linguistic commu-nication, national cultures and ideologies are often assumed to be the dominant infl uence (e.g. Knight and Nakano 1999; Lee et al. 2002). Accordingly, com-municative practice is frequently accounted for in terms of the characteristics of the individual nations or the nation’s ideological systems. Consequently, not only does research result in relativism but the relations and practices of cultur-al power between the national discourses are smoothed over as well. For exam-ple, studies in the international reporting on the Hong Kong transition have usu-ally explained the media discourses as relative to the respective national – say, British, American, Chinese or Hong Kong – political economies and ideologies. But, as much work in postcolonial studies (e.g. Ashcroft et al. 1989; Hutcheon 1989) and, more generally, cultural studies (e.g. Bhabha 1994; Hall 1996; Said 1978, 1993; Spivak 1988a, 1988b) has shown, linguistic communication, includ-ing print, broadcasting and digital media, cannot be adequately understood with-out taking into account the world’s cultural history – the long and continued his-tory of cultural imperialism. For the present project, then, the discourses of Chi-na, Hong Kong and diaspora and the counterpart discourses of the West cannot be understood from the respective “national” perspectives. Crucially and funda-mentally, these culturally differentiated discourses must be viewed as steeped in the world’s cultural-historical context of continued and continuing imperial, he-gemonic order – through fi rst colonialism, then post-colonialism to more recent forms of neocolonialism.


Western and non-Western worlds, including their discourses, are not consid-ered here as essentialized, homogeneous and monolithic entities. Cultural dis-courses, Eastern and Western, are internally diversifi ed and externally indistinct and constantly shifting. The same complexity may be said of “Chinese discourse” and “Hong Kong’s discourse”. In the present project on non-Western discourse, what we want to point to is broad Chinese and Hong Kong patterns of discourse vis-à-vis the relevant Western discourse. Furthermore, it should be noted that categories of such discourses, just like those of any other reality, are always con-tentious. For, cultures or cultural discourses interact with one another and with speaking individuals, on the one hand and on the other hand speakers categorize discourses with vested interest. This would suggest that we should speak of non-Western discourses in the plural. But as a research starting point and cultural-political process, “non-Western discourse” may be used as a form of “strategic essentialism” (Bucholtz 2001) to valorize and to empower the non-Western, non-White world vis-à-vis the dominant white Western discourse.

A number of implications for discourse research follow from the above ac-count. To start with, if Western and non-Western discourses are not a matter of center and periphery, but different ways of constructing and acting upon the world – or different “language games” offering different worlds of experience, then Western discourse must not be taken as the sole object worth studying. Non-Western discourse, which has hitherto been marginalized and subordinated, must also be treated seriously. Local and culturally pluralist theoretical perspectives should then be adopted to make sense of the culturally relevant issues and data. More importantly, if the relation between these language games – e.g. Eastern and Western discourses – is not symmetrical but saturated with power, then dis-course research and the study of non-Western discourse in particular must help make explicit, highlight and undermine the cultural power relations and practices; it must help reclaim, valorize and empower the repressed non-Western discourse. In addition, if non-Western discourse is not autochthonous and monolithic, but hybridized, diversifi ed and possessed of creative agency, then discourse studies must explore the complexity, new identities and the possibility of cultural rela-tion building and transformation.

2. Methodological considerations

The empirical focus of the present project is China and Hong Kong’s discourses. The methodological account here will therefore center around this focus. To start with, it may be observed that we study discourses in various genres (e.g. jour-nalistic, literary, political and historiographic) and modes (e.g. print and digital media) and do so with a diversity of specifi c tasks in mind. The methodological

8 Shi-xu

procedures and techniques to be employed then will vary from case to case. How-ever, given the shared purpose of the present endeavor, we observe two overarch-ing principles of source and data selection.

To understand these principles, it may be useful to make clear a more basic consideration underlying them. That is, the aim of this project is not to describe what the discourses of China, Hong Kong and their diaspora are like or do, as such. Such discourses, or any other, are neither pre-given nor unifi ed, and the boundaries are in fl ux rather than clearly marked; therefore, a purely descriptive account cannot be given. So, in making material selections and analytical claims, we generally do not try to achieve “representativeness”. Rather, the present proj-ect is meant to introduce, interpret and highlight some aspects of China, Hong Kong and their diasporic discourses, for a largely Western readership. So the cri-teria for choice of data and source will have less to do with what is “typical” of the Chinese and Hong Kong’s media discourses than with what we believe the Western audience ought to know.

We judge what the Western discourse community should know by what they already know. To help us determine this background knowledge, we draw chiefl y on two broad bodies of reference material as alluded to earlier. On the one hand, we refer to existing literature on the dominance of the relevant Western media discourse on the Hong Kong transition (e.g. Cao 2000; Flowerdew and Scollon 1997; Knight and Nakano 1999; Lee et al. 2002). On the other hand, we rely on fi rst-hand information such as furnished in Part 2 of the book (i.e. Chapters 5, 6 and 7). From those sources of information, we observe that, around the time of Hong Kong’s historic transition, the Western discourse community is saturated with a set of interrelated (sub)discourses. On the one hand, Great Britain is por-trayed as the cause of Hong Kong’s success and as “handing over” Hong Kong ac-cording to an “international agreement”. On the other hand, China is being doubt-ed, discredited and threatened with sanctions from the West if it fails Western expectations. At the same time, Hong Kong is stereotyped as unique and having no real relation with China. Effectively, this string of dominant discourses un-dermines, dismisses or excludes any possible discourses from China and Hong Kong and their diaspora.

Considering this Western discourse background, we decide on two major prin-ciples in identifying (sources and) data and presenting the resultant discourses. One principle is that a discourse must refl ect some form of marginality. That is, the discourse must be either absent from, or meagerly engaged with or discredited by the corresponding Western media. So for example, a discourse about why the return of Hong Kong to China is possible at the time when it occurs qualifi es as such marginalized as it is ideologically repressed in the Western media discourse. Chinese and Hong Kong’s expressions of their interrelations, which are frequently constituted out of metaphors of bodily and familial connections, form an impor-


tant focus in part because these are rarely taken up in the Western understanding and defi nition of the interrelation except perhaps as objects of irony.

Alternatively, the other principle is that a discourse must refl ect difference.That is, the discourse to be studied and highlighted must embody a version of events, or a form of action, that is different from that in the relevant Western dis-course. For instance, the accounts for Hong Kong’s success by the Chinese and Hong Kong’s media constitute signifi cant exemplars of non-Western discourse, unfamiliar yet interesting to Western readership, because they provide a great variety of explanations, whereas the Western media attribute the success virtu-ally exclusively to British colonial rule. Similarly, the rich variety of metaphors in the Chinese and Hong Kong’s media constructing the interconnections and interdependence of China and Hong Kong is taken up as a topic of interest here because the Western discourse has insisted on the uniqueness and independent character of Hong Kong.

In order to deal with the complexity of marginality and difference and the broader imperial order, we have tried to include a variety of genres, ranging from journalistic publications, political speeches, magazine articles, web diaries, lit-erature and historical accounts. But there are still other discursive phenomena in the Chinese and Hong Kong media that are not presented here, revealing and in-structive as they may be. As I indicated above, it is not the intention of this book to present a comprehensive and even-handed survey. For the same reason, we have not been exhaustive in the selection of sources and data. In that connection, it may be mentioned that the materials in the Hong Kong media which express points of view contrary to those in the Chinese media but are close to those in the Western discourse are not given prominence. This is because they would al-ready be familiar to the Western audience.

In the analysis of media texts, we have pursued a qualitative, discourse ana-lytic approach in most cases (except Chapter 5). This is because, as we indicat-ed above, cultural discourses are neither internally homogeneous nor external-ly discrete, but diversifi ed and contested and, furthermore, our research objec-tive is precisely to explore discursive subtleties and complexities. In particular, it may be mentioned that the analytical tools of contemporary theories of met-aphor, argumentation, etc., can be useful because they provide insights into the strategic use of certain metaphorical images (e.g. Chapter 9) and certain argu-ment schemes (e.g. Chapter 6) by the different political agents and social groups involved in the historic transition.

However, there will surely arise tensions between the “standard” methods on the one hand and the local issues and ideas on the other. Existing dominant meth-ods of analysis are often Anglo-American-Western in origin and orientation. Chi-na and Hong Kong’s discourse materials and questions will require new concepts and approaches. For instance, identity is not a universal concern; local, particular

10 Shi-xu

issues, such as that of harmony or relation (re)building, may be real and pressing. Inter-/cross-/multidisciplinarity is thus not suffi cient for global social science; it must be coupled with cultural diversity, in worldview, theory, methodology, top-ics, data and concerns. Thus, under the general principle of ethnographic appro-priateness, we draw on methods eclectically and adapt them to non-Western ma-terials and issues as closely as possible.

It may be mentioned, too, that most of the authors here live in between the East and the West and have direct experience with intercultural difference and tension. The hybridized, diasporic and living-in-between-East/West cultures’ po-sition is an advantage and a source of strength, because it not only constitutes a moral-rational basis for building cultural co-existence, but also provides the best vantage point and resources to help achieve it.

3. Hong Kong in international communication and world history

That China, Hong Kong and diasporic discourses on the Hong Kong transition constitute interesting exemplars of non-Western discourse can be seen from not only the broader, hegemonic pattern of international communication on the top-ic, but also the colonial-historical background behind it. Crucially, unless one recognizes the larger network of cultural struggle between the imperialist and anti-imperialist discourses, and unless one sees the Western colonial past (and neocolonial ventures), one can easily frame, or dismiss, the discourses of Chi-na, Hong Kong and diaspora as “nationalistic”, “ideological” or “imperialistic”. In fact, much of the West-dominated research has reached precisely such con-clusions. One of these might be termed the discourse of “liberal-nationalism”. That is, all the international communication on Hong Kong is driven by the ide-ologies of particular nation-states, East and West alike (see, e.g., Knight and Na-kano 1999; Lee et al. 2002). Another might be called the “tu-quoque” discourse. That is, after the British colonists’ departure, China is recolonizing Hong Kong (see, e.g., Chow 1992).

In the international communication order, China, Hong Kong and diaspor-ic discourses on Hong Kong’s historic transition belong to the non-Western, not merely for their different languages, topics and concerns, but also for the subal-tern position they occupy. It may be observed that the Chinese diaspora is, gener-ally, rarely written, read about or spoken to by the Western discourse community. On the whole, there had been little journalistic coverage of China, Hong Kong or Asia in the Western media (see Chapter 5). As an exception, however, the ex-traordinary international media attention on Hong Kong and China in 1997 only refl ected Western media logic and ideological interests (Flowerdew and Scollon


1997; Knight and Nakano 1999; Lee 2000). Namely, the dominant Western me-dia projected the transition to be a dramatic event, or as Lee et al. (2002) call it “global media spectacle”, merely in order to attract audience. At the same time, Western media discourse predominantly doubted the Chinese handling of the re-turn of Hong Kong precisely to satisfy its continued imperialist desire (see Chap-ters 6 and 7). As soon as Hong Kong’s return failed to produce the turbulences that the West had expected, Western media attention quickly waned.

In addition to this subjugated discursive position of China and Hong Kong, we must understand the broader colonial history. Hong-Kong-China’s modern histo-ry is a history of Western (British, French and Japanese) imperialist domination – a history that has largely been repressed or conveniently forgotten in Western (media) discourse. Let us give a brief description. This serves as a general his-torical framework for the book, but individual chapters will supply further de-tailed information relevant to their particular data.

Geographically, Hong Kong is composed of three parts, Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and the New Territories. Historically, they were part of China’s Guan-dong province. In the middle of 19th century, however, the British waged two Opium Wars against China and forced the Qing government to sign the Treaty of Nanking (1842), whereby Hong Kong Island was ceded to Britain, and later theTreaty of Peking (1860), whereby Kowloon was ceded. In 1898, the British ob-tained from the Qing government the lease of the New Territories (91% of today’s Hong Kong area) for a term of 99 years; it expired on 30 June 1997.

The aforementioned treaties are not recognized by any of the subsequent Chi-nese governments. After many failed attempts by the subsequent Chinese govern-ments, in 1984 China succeeded in the negotiations with the British government and signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration. This, as may be noted, occurs in the context of tremendous economic success at home and enhanced political po-sition abroad. The declaration provides for British withdrawal from Hong Kong on 30 June 1997, and the restoration of Chinese sovereignty on 1 July 1997. Ac-cording to the agreement, Hong Kong becomes a Special Administrative Region of China, to be administered by the people of Hong Kong, with its existing sys-tem to remain unchanged for 50 years. When Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997, 156 years of British colonial control came to an end.

However, there is little mention in the Western media discourse of the econom-ic pressure or considerations of international politics as at least part of the causes of Hong Kong’s decolonization. Further, China has even been called “imperialist” or the “neocolonizer” of Hong Kong. The details and implications of such cultur-al memory loss and negligence will be revealed in the rest of the book.

12 Shi-xu

4. The organization of the book

Finally, let us briefl y describe the contents of the rest of the book. Chapters 2, 3 and 4, in conjunction with the present introduction, form Part 1; this provides the rationale and a general framework for the proposed cultural-political project on discourse and communication. In Chapter 2, Denis McQuail examines the bias of Western theory of mediated linguistic communication and suggests culturally more inclusive and more refl ective ways of theorizing and researching. He fi rst traces contemporary communication and media theory to the dominant body of social science of Western Europe and the United States during the latter part of 19th and the early part of 20th centuries. He then points out that such historical origins and cultural characteristics have manifested themselves in the values that are assumed and expressed in the principles and methods of communication re-search and in the way that language, media and society are problematized. For instance, the spread of mass communication around the world and the related the-ory and research have everything to do with Western self-styled superiority: it is the latter that motivated the mass production of communication and that makes Western forms of communication the center of attention. Therefore, what theo-rists should do now is to rewrite about linguistic communication and media by taking into account other cultural, especially non-Western, contexts and perspec-tives; further, researchers should openly challenge ethnocentric forms of investi-gation and adapt to the changing cultural realities. In particular, scholars should take up the experience, concerns and issues of non-Western worlds so that new hypotheses, new concepts and new theory can become possible.

In Chapter 3, Shi-xu and Maier develop a culturally pluralist perspective on linguistic communication allied with cultural studies. They start off by critiqu-ing the aculturalist or universalist discourse in mainstream language scholarship. Here they show how it smoothes over its ethnocentricism and consequently mar-ginalizes non-Western, non-White intellectual traditions. Then drawing on criti-cal insights from cultural studies, they propose that an in-between-cultural strat-egy be adopted in a theoretical reorientation. Accordingly, they outline a cultur-al-political framework, whereby discourse is seen in oppositional relationship: namely, as a set of divergent and competing “language games” that construct and act upon reality. A number of consequences follow. For one, totalizing truth claims is rendered questionable. For another, interaction, negotiation and solidar-ity amongst different and contested discourses and corresponding communities become desirable. Above all perhaps, taking a cultural turn to the hitherto mar-ginalized non-Western discourses in the general language scholarship becomes an urgent, necessary and essential task.

In Chapter 4, Jan Servaes turns to the issue of interaction between the diverse human communication systems and argues that a genuinely dialogical, ethically


negotiated form of communication must be worked out and practiced for the sur-vival of the human cultural community. He begins by examining the differences in thinking, value system and modes of communication between the East/Asia and West/Europe, with reference to two cases: human rights and Thai culture. From here arises the question of what human communities have to do with cul-tural differences in ways of speaking, especially in the current conditions of hu-man suffering, environmental disasters and global risks. In opposition to cultur-al and national relativism, Servaes suggests that intercultural criticism is neces-sary, as is the imagination of a shared global community. To achieve these ends, negotiation and consensus on the ethical principles of communication between the world’s cultures (e.g. motivation to understand, respect and critique) are re-quired as a prerequisite. The multiculturalist stance taken here further warrants non-Western discourse as a legitimate topic and the basic ethics for intercultural communication suggested here provides a moral starting point for the study of non-Western discourse.

Part2 examines Western media discourse on Hong Kong and China during the historical transition; this will serve as both the methodological background for selecting non-Western, Chinese and Hong Kong’s discourses and an important motivation for studying discourses from non-Western cultures. Thus, in Chap-ter 5, Jan Servaes and Sankaran Ramanathan, through qualitative and quantita-tive investigations, reveal huge and alarming imbalances between the European and Asian presses in cross-cultural representation. Through studying 15 newspa-pers and magazines in Asia and Europe each, published between 27 June and 6 July 1997, they show how many and what kind of European events were reported in the Asian media, and, conversely, in the European media. One major fi nding is that, despite intense international travel, digital media and the so-called glo-balization, reporting of Asian events by the European media is signifi cantly less than that of European events by the Asian counterpart. Of the total of 3725 news items studied, 1563 European events and 1413 stories about Hong Kong, respec-tively, are found in the Asian media, whereas only 749 Asian events are covered in the European counterpart – of which almost half actually relate to the “me-dia spectacle” of the Hong Kong event. Another major fi nding is that the cover-age of Europe by the Asian press is far more extensive and elaborate than that of Asia by the European counterpart. In that connection, while Asian publications tend to be more balanced in their reporting of European events, Asian stories in the European publications are represented more often than not in a negative light and frequently from a nationalistic and ethnocentric perspective.

In Chapter 6, Shi-xu and Manfred Kienpointner offer a critical analysis of the Western media discourse on Hong Kong’s transition. Based on multinational and multilingual media sources, they identify and highlight two major, recurrent sorts of discourses of cultural repression. One is that of ad baculum in which China is

14 Shi-xu

warned, or its role in Hong Kong’s future development threatened, with possible sanctions by the West. For instance, it predicts or describes the negative conse-quences that will follow from the West on China if and when the latter fails to act in the way the West expects. The other is a discourse in which the West (media) defi nes the identities for Hong Kong and China, instead of letting them have an opportunity to do it themselves and, further, in which it uses these identity defi -nitions to prescribe what Hong Kong and China must and must not do. For exam-ple, they characterize Hong Kong as an “international city” and then use it as a reason to caution against China’s attempt to change it. In conclusion, the authors place these discourses in the broader historical and cultural context to reveal the underlying, continued Western pattern of colonialist desires.

In Chapter7, Junhao Hong critically examines the Western view of press free-dom in Hong Kong with a view to showing the need to understand the latter’s press from its own cultural perspective. Here he proceeds from the standpoint that freedom of the press is not universal but culturally defi ned and provides a contrastive analysis of the Western discourse on freedom of the press and the lo-cal people’s own. He shows that in the Western media the Western perspective and criteria are used in evaluating freedom of press issues in Hong Kong, where-by the views of the people of Hong Kong, a population of seven million, are ig-nored. And yet, not only does the Western view of Hong Kong’s freedom of the press not necessarily refl ect the experience of the Hong Kong people, but also their strong criticism of Hong Kong’s press freedom has refl ected the Western hegemonic tendency to use Western models for other countries as the “univer-sal” standards. In addition, he explores the reasons for these differences in per-spectives and their implications.

Part 3 presents empirical studies of Hong Kong and China’s discourses and highlights a range of discursive, historical and political issues for the Western as well as non-Western discourse communities. In Chapter 8, Shi-xu examines Chinese and Hong Kong print media discourses and tries to characterize certain forms of difference or “Otherness” compared with the sorts of dominant, Western discourses considered in Part2. Based on contrastively selected data and through general and specifi c accounts of their textual and contextual properties, he high-lights a range of discourses unfamiliar yet signifi cant to the Western audience. One such discourse is a series of statements formulating a variety of kinds of symbolic signifi cance of Hong Kong’s return to China, a topic at best minimally treated by any Western media. Another is a discourse which gives prominence to the reasons why the return of Hong Kong has become possible at all, which are left almost completely implicit in the Western discourse. Still another important kind of Hong Kong and China’s discourses is a construction of the relations and interconnections between Hong Kong and China – against the backdrop of the Western insistent discourse of Hong Kong’s unique identity. Equally meaningful


is the discourse that accounts for Hong Kong’s success in ways that oppose West-ern attributions to British colonial administration. These discourses effectively reclaim the new identity and relationship, the agency, and hence the “Otherness”, of the Hong Kong and Chinese people. At the same time, these discourses are culturally rhetorical in the sense that they serve to argue against the dominant Western discourses of Hong Kong (e.g. the implicit discourse that Hong Kong is being “handed over” according to an international agreement).

In Chapter 9, Lee Cher Leng scrutinizes media political discourses in Hong Kong and China and documents the cultural, linguistic and rhetorical ways that they represent Hong Kong’s history and future. It is thus an attempt to detail “lo-cal”, non-Western discourses in terms of their form, meaning and complexity. Here she focuses on the metaphors that politicians as well as other media actors use in the formulation of Chinese identity, Hong Kong’s identity and their inter-relationships. Thus she observes such metaphors as “homecoming”, “becoming one’s own master”, “a bridge between China and rest of the world”, “being pro-tected by a shield”, “fl esh and blood”, “root and shoot” and “lips and teeth”. This string of metaphors from both sides reproduce and maintain strong links and re-lationships between China and Hong Kong, despite or as opposed to the West-ern discourse of Hong Kong’s uniqueness and autonomy. Within this metaphori-cal discourse, further, she also fi nds differences of use between China and Hong Kong’s metaphorical language. For instance, the Chinese media tend to favor some kinds of metaphors (e.g. “return to the fatherland”) whereas the Hong Kong me-dia favors others (e.g. “reunion of the big family”); they sometimes also use the same metaphors in different ways. Lee shows how these metaphorical uses re-fl ect particular political interests and specifi c cultural circumstances. For exam-ple, the metaphor of “Hong Kong as its true master” realizes China’s commit-ment to Hong Kong’s freedom as well as its declaration of the ending of colonial rule. Hong Kong media’s metaphor of “China and Hong Kong as a big family” serves to stress the equality between China and Hong Kong.

In Chapter 10, Kwok-kan Tam studies Hong Kong’s identity from the per-spective of Hong Kong’s recent literature. Here Tam offers a complex account of identity construction in the fi ctional, dramatic and poetic genres from the 1950s through the 1990s. Here he shows a variety of forms of identity discourse that are caught up in a web of local historical, cultural, socio-economical and politi-cal contexts. Further, he shows how such discourses appear, disappear and reap-pear. In particular, he points out that these discourses of identity are not stable and not restricted by any particular temporal and spatial boundaries as concep-tualized in Western theory of post-coloniality. They do not build cultural iden-tity by accumulation or upon tradition. Rather, Hong Kong’s “literary” identities form a discursive space where everything fl oats and nothing settles. The fact that Hong Kong’s recent literature has continually engaged with the issue of identity

16 Shi-xu

and transformed its shape and meaning is a refl ection of Hong Kong’s persistent search for new identities that may adapt the people of Hong Kong to the new re-alities facing Hong Kong. In this sense, the important question is not what iden-tities the Hong Kong people “have”, but rather how they quest for them.

In Hong Cheng and Guofang Wan’s contribution, Chapter11, we see an explo-ration in the Hong Kong diaspora’s attempt to construct identity through the new media. McQuail, Servaes, Shi-xu and Maier earlier argued for the need for theo-ries of communication and culture to take account of new experiences, new con-texts, and new modes of communication. Here, Cheng and Wan focus on some dozens of diaries contributed by twenty individuals from the Hong Kong diaspo-ra to the Public Broadcasting Service’s Web site < http://www.pbs.com >, during a six-month period before and after the transition ceremony. They not only offer a discursive perspective on the construction of identity by the local people them-selves amidst global media attention, but also explore the intricate and dynamic in-terconnections between identity development and Internet mediation. They show that the Hong Kong diaspora’s identifi cation with China is not uniform but varied with different – social or cultural – aspects of China. Further, the discourse of identity is not constant but changes in the digital mode through time. This study raises new questions about the relationship between identity and hypermedia: it has to do with crosslinguistic translation, with the audience, with other informa-tion sites, with the interactivity of the web page, and further afi eld.

Finally, in Chapter12, Lawrence Wang-chi Wong presents penetrating and re-fl ective analyses of historical discourses of Hong Kong by Mainland China and Hong Kong historians. Through historical and rhetorical analysis, Wong identi-fi es a number of specifi c narrative strategies which modern Mainland China and Hong Kong historians use to suit specifi c historical, political circumstances. Fur-ther, he suggests that these narrative strategies also refl ect the broader colonial history and, consequently, forms of cultural struggle and resistance in it. For in-stance, he shows that due to the British colonial authority, Hong Kong scholars took care not to write about Hong Kong’s history after the arrival of the Brit-ish. Modern Chinese historians, on the other hand, in order to reduce British in-fl uence and reclaim the historical links with Hong Kong as the decolonization was approaching, almost without exception begin with a preferred – ancient – point in history, when Hong Kong was undeniably part of China. In addition, he shows that, before the Opium War, Chinese historians had showed little interest in Hong Kong.

We have saved the most important for the last and here we want to highlight a number of benefi ts that may be derived from the present undertaking. First of all, by promoting, practicing and publishing a study of non-Western discourse within the mainstream language scholarship, we contribute to rendering mar-ginalized and differentiated cultural discourses as a normal, legitimate and nec-


essary object of enquiry. In doing so, we also realize one important form of in-tellectual cultural politics, which I outlined at the beginning of this chapter. If we take this exercise to be part of the broader, ordinary world, cultural politics, then it may be said that we are giving a turn to the non-Western Other to let them speak. Such a cultural and ethnographic turn, badly needed in our times of dom-ination and confl ict, provides for more informed and deeper intercultural dia-logue and understanding and, consequently, increases chances of cultural cohe-sion. At the same time, it may be observed that listening to local cultural voic-es enables us to see instructive aspects of the cultural Other(’s discourse). The Chinese view of discourse as maintenance of harmony, for example, beyond the Western notion of discourse as expression of individual identity, makes it possi-ble to reveal interesting ways of relation building in the Chinese and Hong Kong discourses, a research topic much needed for the contemporary antagonistic in-ternational community.

Second, when we take a culturally contrastive approach to studying non-West-ern discourse, a new, refreshing and complex picture emerges, not just of the un-familiar non-Western “Other”, but the Western Self as well. New topics, narra-tives, explanations and arguments are revealed, which the Western media has de-nied its community. For instance, where the Western media remain reticent, the Chinese discourse frequently brings up the topic of why the decolonization oc-curs at the time it does and maintains that the British colonizer would not have given up (the whole of) Hong Kong at the time it did, had it not been for the great economic, political and international position that China had gained. Fur-ther, alternative or even contrary accounts, other than those which the Western community had been led to believe, are made available. For example, different from the recurring Western attribution of Hong Kong’s success to British colo-nial rule, the Chinese discourse offers a comprehensive account, linking up his-torical, cultural, social, geographical and economic factors. Research fi ndings such as these may compel readers to become more refl exive upon familiar and taken-for-granted regimes of truth, assumptions and versions implicit or explicit in the Western Self discourse.

Thirdly, our cultural perspective on discourse has revealed the plurality, com-plexity and forms of opposition of non-Western discourses, beyond nationalistic notions of human discourses. The variety of studies above shows that Hong Kong’s discourse of identity is not static but shifts and changes with local historical cir-cumstances, not homogeneous but multivoiced through different genres and me-dia. More importantly, the Chinese and Hong Kong discourses identifi ed are not merely “new” or “different”, but embody cultural power struggle with opposing Western discourses. Specifi cally, whereas the Western discourse on Hong Kong and China appears culturally repressive and hegemonic with its ideological as-sumptions, exclusive defi nitions of the Other, incredulity, warnings and threats,

18 Shi-xu

China and Hong Kong’s discourses put up cultural resistance by providing oth-erwise missing accounts, reclaiming identities and rebuilding relationships. Re-sults and insights such as these highlight the marginal and marginalized nature of non-Western discourse on the international scale and hence the need, interest and urgency to read it in terms of cultural power relation and practice.

From this limited study, it will become clear that cross-cultural reading and research should be a continuous and expanding process. In particular, similar and parallel studies of other cultural discourses, from the Arab world, Africa, Latin America and so on should all be taken more seriously in the mainstream schol-arship. When the study of non-Western, non-White and Third-World discourses is accepted as normal, legitimate and routine in language, discourse and com-munication research, the cultural Self may hope to become so open and free as to include the cultural Other.

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Chapter 2Communication theory and the Western bias

Denis McQuail

1. Origins

Much of contemporary communication and media theory has its origins in the general body of the Western social sciences, including history, anthropology, eco-nomics, psychology and sociology that originated mainly in Western Europe in the latter 19th and early 20th century. These disciplines were then further devel-oped and amplifi ed in the United States. Despite their aim of universality as sci-ences of human behavior and their claim to generality, there is little doubt that they were indelibly marked by their own cultural context and circumstances of time and place. This showed itself in the values that were assumed or expressed in the principles and methods of the disciplines and also in the way social life was problematized.

The Western social sciences were themselves children of the Enlightenment and were underpinned by a more or less axiomatic belief in progress, with reason both as method and as ideal. They were dedicated to the advancement of mate-rial welfare and the conquest of problems of society. They followed the model of science and engineering that was applied to the control of the environment, im-provement of health and increase in productivity. There was little or no room for doubt in the new sciences of society about the desirability of progress nor about its main manifestations. Even so, the tensions of change were recognized, not least that between the individualism and community.

The good society envisaged as an outcome of scientifi c progress would re-quire cooperation and lawfulness, but with individuals equally free in principle to pursue their own welfare, with benefi ts accruing to the whole society or com-munity. The governance of such a society would be carried out by consent and in a civilized and rational manner. The culture of the more economically advanced (in practice the most commercialized or industrialized) societies was favorable to innovation and change. The past was often viewed as steeped in ignorance, superstition and primitive ways. In religion the bias of the times was towards the Protestant form of Christianity, that was associated with capitalism and moder-nity. In this context, modernity meant rationality, objectivity, science, the oper-

22 Denis McQuail

ation of the free market, individualism, hard work and an ethical emphasis on good deeds rather than ritual.

Attitudes towards other forms of culture, society and religion had their com-plexities, but the predominant attitude seems to have been one of superiority, jus-tifi ed by the wonders of industrialism, the power of capitalism, benefi ts of bu-reaucracy and the rule of law. Without this sense of superiority, it is hard to ex-plain how the Western world’s projects of global colonization could be regarded as legitimate. The best known work of the master sociologist, Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 1904/1985) accounted for the rise of capitalism in the West and not the East, primarily in terms of its more “appro-priate” Western philosophical orientation to the material world or greater world-liness. Similarly, it occurred earlier in Northern rather than Southern Europe be-cause of the easier cultural accommodation of Protestantism than Catholicism to the spirit and practice of capitalist enterprise.

2. The rise of mass communication and early communication theory

From this brief sketch it might seem that the story of Western bias has been writ-ten long ago and quite a lot of the early history of media theory and research fi ts the pattern that had been established before the “media” in their modern forms were instituted. As the media developed in the fi rst half of the 20th century, mass communication was treated by many theorists either as an instrument of social engineering and control or as a potential threat to cultural and social values (see McQuail 2000). It could be harnessed for propaganda and persuasion (for public or private purposes), for mass education and universal information. Mass com-munication made mass politics possible and promoted mass consumption through advertising and images of the desirable life. Mass media encouraged ambition and the mobility of labor and population needed for industrial development, and they helped to hold society together with a common stock of information, beliefs and opinions, during an era of radical social change.The perceived contributions of early mass media to social progress in Western industrial societies were matched by potential dangers. The mass media could also detach individuals too much from their society adding to alienation and ano-mie, causing social dislocation and dysfunctional degrees of confl ict and compe-tition. They could undermine the orderliness of society, especially amongst the young and the working classes, by promoting personal gratifi cation, idleness and stimulation to sexual or other misconduct. The power of mass media could also be harnessed by powerful economic and political elites to impose a more or less consensual social order characterized by conformity, obedience and loss of in-

23Communication theory and the Western bias

dividual will and creativity (Mills 1955). Dystopian visions of modern society, such as that of Orwell’s 1984, reversed the role of the media into the all-seeing eye of Big Brother, with no place to hide for the deviant.

What these remarks underline is that the mass media were almost exclusively viewed by early theorists in the light of current preoccupations of actual societ-ies, most of them geographically or culturally “Western”. Much the same could be said of the large exception represented by the long experiment of communism. Mass media were equally or even more strongly identifi ed with economic and material progress and treated as instruments of social and cultural change and of control in the new order. Soviet theory integrated the work of media into the larger project of transforming society, with little attention to the “dysfunctional” elements, as perceived in capitalist society.

3. The media and ‘development’ tradition

The bias of media theory is often and most directly exemplifi ed by reference to theories of development (or “modernization”) that preoccupied some, especially American, researchers in the immediate post World War II era. In the tradition initiated by Schramm, Lerner and others in the 1950s (e.g. Lerner et al. 1958), the mass media were seen as the vehicle for bringing the message of “moderni-ty” to less enlightened and advanced corners of the world, especially the part la-beled as “undeveloped” or “traditional”.

The earlier period had exhibited a quite specifi c bias that implied the neces-sity for would-be benefi ciaries of material progress to adopt “Western” attitudes (and life styles) especially by becoming ambitious, opinionated, secular, compet-itive and consumption oriented. They also needed to learn to think and behave as individuals. The perceived need was for mass communication originating in the “West” to overcome the obstacles of “traditional” society. This stood in as a term to summarize a mixture of conditions, including lack of democracy, localism, fa-milism, fatalism and “Eastern” religious beliefs that covered the spectrum from Islam to Confucianism. This represents some updating and revision of the Webe-rian thesis and a shift of emphasis from collective religious beliefs to individual psychology, but not an escape from its ethnocentrism (see McQuail 2000).

The main escape route on offer in a new branch of development theory (e.g. Rogers and Shoemaker 1973) was a more neutral and less ethnocentric approach under the heading of “diffusion of innovations”. This concentrated on technocrat-ic solutions to a wide range of specifi c material problems relating to agriculture, health, economics, population, planning and so on. It was and remains hard to argue that many of the technologies that are the collective outcome of human en-deavor in many cultures are specifi cally “Western”, especially following the spec-

24 Denis McQuail

tacular rise of Asian economies from the 1970s onwards. Nevertheless, the mass media vehicles for carrying the revised message of modernity were not divested of certain characteristically “Western” features in their institutional forms and professional ideologies, nor was the general direction of fl ow of infl uence “from West to East” fundamentally changed. The “instructional kits” for material de-velopment were still packaged in various forms of social implementation that re-fl ected the originating cultural and social context (McQuail 2000).

4. Critical dependency

From the 1970s onwards, attention shifted to a new critical paradigm for ana-lyzing the mediation of East-West relationships. This was variously identifi ed as the “cultural-” or “media-” imperialism thesis, or as one of “imbalanced fl ow” of global communication, understood as a result of structured and exported underde-velopment and dependency (McQuail 2002). The components would be very fa-miliar to people from earlier generations, although perhaps absent or fading from younger memories as they are replaced with more recent debates about globaliza-tion and the information society. The empirical contents of the then new critical paradigm were actually not very new, but, of its very nature, the new paradigm was dedicated to exposing the Western bias of global information and cultural fl ow. What is less clear is whether or not the theory itself could be considered, by virtue of its critical orientation, as thereby being free from Western bias. Prob-ably not, since many strong advocates of the theory were certainly Western by origin (even if the Latin American infl uence was strong) and in their manner of thinking and in varying degrees drew on elements of Marxism and other West-ern theories of capitalism.

Moreover, the imbalanced-fl ow critics tended to assume that the contents of global media, especially international news, fi ction and entertainment, with their strong American imprint, would have powerful ideological and cultural effects on their audiences. This assumption implicitly overvalues the appeal, potency and persuasiveness of the message of Western media. It also underestimates the vi-tality and fl exibility of the receiving cultures and ignores the cultural and intel-lectual poverty, superfi ciality and ephemerality of much of the new global me-dia culture.

In this breathless sprint through some decades, we have now arrived in the 1980s, with McBride et al. (1980) behind us and new geopolitical scenarios on the way, as well as potentially revolutionary technological developments. Dur-ing the period just described, it was possible and convenient to use approxima-tions such as “modern versus traditionalist”, “East versus West”, “North versus South”, “capitalist versus communist” without attending very closely to the re-


alities referred to in particular situations. The world was really more complicat-ed and it has become more so in the post-Soviet era. The point to underline for present purposes is that for most of the time period that has been discussed, there was some consistency about what was general understood by the term “Western”. This coincided essentially with the communications media of the United States and Western Europe, especially of the ex-colonial powers.

But there was no clear fi x on what might be meant by the “non-Western”, a term that is in fact hard to fi nd in any theory. Such a concept, where it lurked, could cover communist regimes and their distinctive media cultures, the Islam-ic world, the underdeveloped world (mainly much of Africa and various parts of Asia). Latin America fi gured prominently in the applications of dependency the-ory, but was in no way “Eastern”. The term “South” was also in use to designate the general state of lower development of the Southern Hemisphere, despite the disparate causes of underdevelopment. In addition, the category of “non-West-ern” covered a large part of the world’s population in China, Japan and South East Asia that was certainly “Eastern” in Western eyes, but not at all homogeneous in cultural, social, economic or political terms, or in the eyes of those referred to. In itself, this lack of specifi city about “the other” constitutes a bias and it also re-fl ects an unacceptable lack of interest and often of ignorance, as if it were really not necessary to know about the real cultural attributes of those at the receiving end of Western globalizing infl uences. It is not just a question of bias in media theory, but also of fundamental defi ciencies in the epistemological and method-ological stance that still persist (McQuail 2000, 2002).

5. Beyond confession

In order to make some progress beyond simply exposing or confessing to the eth-nocentrism that has quite evidently characterized media theory from the begin-ning, we need to break the issue down into a number of subquestions. Firstly, it is useful to inquire a bit more deeply into the sources of “Western bias”. Secondly, we should look at different forms and levels of its expression (not just at what is meant by the idea, but at what points it is manifested). Thirdly, we need to con-sider some possible solutions to what has been recognized as a problem for any serious claim to media theorizing.

On the question of origins, a fi rst cause has already been identifi ed in a gener-al way in the Western social scientifi c tradition that emerged as part of the trans-formation to modern industrial forms of society. Secondly, it is hard to ignore the fact that most media theorizing has been done by “Western” scholars, living in and observing the media of their own countries, and inevitably infl uenced by their own familiar social cultural context and its typical values. It does not matter

26 Denis McQuail

much if the scholars in question openly espouse the values of their own society (as some have done in advocating such goals as libertarianism, “modernization” or repression of moral deviance), or take a stand against them (as critical theo-rists have done). A condition of value neutrality is not to be attained. But these things are at least out in the open, and some allowance made for them by “non-Western” scholars, as a result, alternative paths can be consciously chosen.

More diffi cult to expose and deal with is the problem posed by the object of theorizing itself – the mass media. It is arguable that the mass media institution in its main features is a distinctive product of the original Western industrial so-ciety and the process of mass communication along with it. This proposition is complex and has itself to be examined by reference to one or more of the follow-ing: the technology; the production process; institutional forms taken by media; and the various applications and uses, on the part of audiences and other agen-cies. The same degree and kind of “Westernness” is unlikely to reside in or de-rive equally from each of these elements.

The ghost of media technological determinism, fi rst theorized by Innis (1951), McLuhan (1964) and others, has never been exorcised. Early versions of “medi-um theory” presupposed that technologies of reproduction and transmission of meaning would in themselves be “culture-free”. However, the same technology might be applied differently in different cultural contexts, and the original tech-nological invention and its application are bound to be conditioned by the cultural context. The consequences of use of particular forms of media (e.g. printing) then interact with the culture to have long-term consequences in use that become inti-mately associated with the medium in question. Media develop certain require-ments for effective application and become defi ned as appropriate for particular purposes. To this extent, they acquire specifi c cultural meanings and associated values that are not easy to disregard or avoid.

It is arguable that the “mass media”, as they developed in their 20th century “northern” industrial society contexts and were applied to characteristic purpos-es of public entertainment, information and propaganda, carried with them an indelible stamp of “modern”, therefore “Western”, society. These uses (and the institutionalized means for achieving them) are, in turn, characterized by cer-tain values and appropriate attitudes. These include hedonism, moral relativ-ism, secularism, materialism and individualism in various manifestations, on the part of both media communicators and audiences. The public and universal features associated with broadcasting in particular make it even more diffi cult, for instance, to compartmentalize their contents or their audiences than was the case with printing.

The mass media, so characterized, are, arguably, most appropriate for open and fl uid societies without strong or unitary religious belief systems or communal and patriarchal family systems. The values and attitudes embedded in much con-


temporary mass media production still tend to be those mentioned above. While it is true that quite different cultures have succeeded in developing somewhat different versions of mass media, and in governing the experience of audiences, this has not been achieved without some struggle, without restrictions on free-dom or with any certainty of continuance. The theory of globalization (e.g. Bau-man 1998; Ferguson 1992) stresses the continuing pressure towards “synchroni-zation” of systems and lifestyles. It seems as if media underdevelopment is some defense in the short term, but in the long term, the logic of the media branch of the information revolution receives little effective resistance.

A familiar example of the imperialism of “Western” values comes from re-search into the “one-sidedness” of international news fl ow and into the “nature of news” in general. It was established that what we call news is largely select-ed and presented according to certain “news values” which refl ect the conditions and cultural outlook of “Western” news audiences, as perceived at least by West-ern news media. In Galtung and Ruge’s (1965) famous analysis of bias in foreign news, factors of a sociocultural kind were identifi ed as shaping news selection, especially “negativism” and personalization. In short “bad news” about (espe-cially famous) individuals is likely to get privileged treatment in the news fl ow process. Abstract ideas, slow developments and benefi cial (or just normal) pro-cesses in distant places are not news. Other theories about the powerful infl uence of a particular “media logic” were later developed to explain selection. The de-mand in Western media for “news” to fi t its values is bound to have an infl uence on journalism in other parts of the world.

In any case, in dealing with the issue of the moment, it is hard to resist the proposition that “media” as we know them carry many “Western” attributes and that any theory about media will have to recognize and deal with this fact even if it does not have to do so in the same way as in “the West” itself. This opens the way to the possibility of a critical theory of media that does not take as its guiding values the same principles that have characterized Western critical the-ory in the past.

6. From critical to media cultural theory

As already suggested, the self-critical tradition of Western theory that certainly exposed the bias of media in the context of global communication relations did little to offer any alternative “less Western” approach. Critical theory was and re-mains essentially an alternative Western project that emphasized values of equal-ity, diversity, freedom, material progress. It promoted liberal and emancipatory causes that did not necessarily fi t very well with social and cultural realities and preferences of more “traditional”, less secular, societies. They were not intended

28 Denis McQuail

to do so. This is not an argument for preferring relativism on matters of human rights, but it is at least an argument for greater awareness, information and em-pathy in dealing with other cultures.

Apart from mainstream (Western) critical theory, some of the self-acknowl-edged bias of early communication theory, especially its behaviorism and sci-entism, was addressed by new, more humanistic and qualitative approaches that eventually shaded over into cultural studies. There are many different degrees and varieties of media cultural theory. Many contributions were and remain enriching as to insight, methods and interpretation of the varied phenomena of media com-munication. They have provided tools for interpreting the received or perceived meaning of media “texts” and for understanding the process of media reception and use. In their open-ended and creative approach, they have allowed many va-rieties of cultural experience to be better appreciated. In principle the cultural-ist approach should be more suited to the study of non-Western and of media in non-Western contexts. It should also provide some protection or antidote against the cruder forms of Western bias.

In practice, however, media and cultural studies do not seem to have really pro-vided a solution. This may be in part because, as they have developed in a post-modern direction, they have followed the leading edge of Western cultural change and become even more alienated philosophically from “non-Western” reality. The question arises here, as with the older “dominant paradigm” of media research, as to whether method can be separated from underlying premise or spirit.

7. Distinguishing between types of theory

This leads directly to another point on where the “Western bias” in theory may be located. There are several different varieties of media theory (McQuail 2000). One has been mentioned in the shape of “medium theory” that hypothesizes about consequences of particular technologies. Another focuses on the text, language or discourse and opens a number of different doors, with different implications for analyzing bias and prejudice. Several different kinds of textual analysis, in-cluding semiology and the analysis of visual codes, seem intrinsically capable of freeing themselves from “Western” origins, or other contextual limitations at least when treated primarily as methodologies. Nevertheless, interpretative proposi-tions about texts, their meanings and effects are often culturally limited in their range of application. It is not clear that semiology has traveled far enough from its Western theoretical roots. The idea of “media logic”, similarly, arises mainly from particular usages in certain established genres, often typically “Western”, although a variety of logics can be envisaged.

Going further, we can distinguish between theories of media and society on


the one hand, and empirical propositions about the communication process on the other (for instance, about the effects of media in behavioral terms). In the for-mer instance, the particular society to be considered in some theoretical proposi-tion can be replaced by another (e.g. non-Western) society. In respect of the latter, quite a lot of middle-range propositions about processes of media use or certain kinds of effects are based on general features of human behavior and are open to testing in a variety of cultural contexts. However, very few of the more famil-iar general propositions of media effects can be claimed to be “culture free”, and they generally involve some built-in assumptions about typical uses of media and patterns of social behavior that are familiar in “Western society”. This applies for instance to “theories” of personal infl uence, agenda-setting, the spiral of si-lence, framing, etc. We may also take the view, however, that this is less a case of “Western” bias, but one of intercultural differences in communication and so-cial life. Quite a lot of variation can also be expected within supposed “Western” societies themselves. It is also possible for non-Western theorists to take certain elements from such theory in order to construct different and more appropriate hypotheses about basic processes of communication that are more or less com-mon to a wide spectrum of human societies.

The branch of media theory usually labeled as “normative” (McQuail 1992) is in some ways easier to deal with, because the origin and nature of bias is quite transparent in the values that are adduced to guide, advocate or assess the per-formance of media in respect of many possible responsibilities and expectations. A good deal of extant normative theory, especially in relation to the supposed “social functions” of media does depend on Western social theory about soci-ety as well as media. Much is based on sometimes implicit assumptions about the nature of democracy that are built into the political procedures of liberal de-veloped societies (competing political parties, elections, etc.). Although we may have shaken off our mantle of subordination to the famous “four theories of the press” (Siebert et al. 1956), we are still struggling to diversify the basis of nor-mative thinking about media. Professional journalism globally, for instance, still adheres to very much the same codes of ethics and practice that were fi rst advo-cated in the 1920s, which, to a large extent, still privilege certain forms of “ob-jectivity” that are defi ned in the legal-rational tradition. On the other hand, there has been a signifi cant growth in awareness of aspects of media performance that have implications for human rights, especially on the international arena and in relation to challenges posed by new media. However, there is not much recogni-tion of the restricted and ritualistic character of the Western electoral process.

The point to underline is that there is considerable scope for rewriting norma-tive media theory to take more account of non-Western value priorities, or even to write it quite differently and to openly challenge the ethnocentric versions that we have today. In practice, such theory, whether Western or not, has to be contin-

30 Denis McQuail

ually adapted to changing social norms and interpretations of human rights. The collection of writings on communication ethics edited by Christians and Traber (1997) records, for instance, a wide range of ideas about culture society and com-munication, drawing on non-Western traditions. The moral and ethical values of Islam, the communalism of Africa, the philosophic traditions of India, the com-munication values of China and Japan, with their stress on harmony, solidarity and empathy, are reminders of alternative prescriptions for judging media per-formance and guiding media practice. Insofar as normative theory has a critical and prescriptive rather than just descriptive role, there is much potential for in-novation and much to be done.

It is worth pointing out that not all existing theory is equally limited by its bi-ases, leaving aside the varying personal capacities and awareness of theorists. For instance, much of the theory about small scale, participatory, local, community or alternative media that has not fi gured much in my account (perhaps because of another unfortunate bias towards “big” media) has much to offer and can ap-ply in diverse social and cultural contexts (McQuail 2002). Work of this kind is expanding and has a more universal range perhaps than theory of dominant mass media. Western theorists can learn as much from non-Western models of small-scale communication principle and practice as from cases close to home, and the same applies in reverse to non-Western theorists. Such forms of communication have a promising future in the “real world”. The arrival of new media such as the Internet opens up new opportunities for small-scale interactive communication and for investigating their communicative potential in a range of different set-tings. Although again, and inevitably, economic and technological forces mean that development of these media will move faster in some parts of the world than others, it will not inevitably be the West that leads the way.

The availability of alternative normative perspectives is also a reminder that there are different routes towards formulating an agenda of research issues than that which has dominated communication research until now. In the nature of scientifi c disciplines, there is a strong conservative tendency, since new research is usually contextualized within existing literature. The wish to publish in exist-ing international journals (thus mainly Western in this case) reinforces this trend. This privileges earlier and dominant paradigms and makes it diffi cult to launch research in new directions. It is easier to escape from the confi nes of old prob-lem defi nitions than it is to escape from existing methodologies, and this free-dom could be more widely used. With problems chosen from non-Western con-texts, the way is open for new hypotheses, new concepts and, ultimately, the pos-sibility of new theory.


8. What is to be done?

The picture of communication and media theory and research may not be as gloomy as I have rendered here. Firstly, the story of media, of theory and of hu-man society does not stand still, and we are now confronted with new issues of communication media, technology and information, many of which pose the same challenges for societies across the globe. Secondly, the body of available theory may not be as inadequate as my discussion has suggested and, as I have indicat-ed, a number of alternative paths have been opened up that have simply not been adequately explored. Thirdly, there is an ever-widening range of input, in cultur-al terms, into the enterprise of media theory, including that of many ‘non-West-ern’ scholars, and there is a wider range of actual media experience to draw upon than was the case in what might be called the formative stages.

However, that is not to underestimate the task. The task for the future is not to achieve a body of “unbiased” theory, since this is not humanly possible or even desirable. But we need to construct theory that is not vitiated by its (inevitable) cultural and value bias and not simply a branch of ideology. More importantly, we need to embrace a diversity of (better) theories to cope with the increasingly complex interactions between the seeming imperatives of communication tech-nology and the many different cultural situations and value systems. Most im-portantly of all, proceeding from the assumption of the cultural diversity of com-munication theory and practice, we must begin to learn from and interact with media and communication practice from other cultures, which is just what this book sets out to do.

References

Bauman, Z. 1998 Globalization: The Human Consequences. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Christians, C. and M. Traber (eds.) 1997 Communication Ethics and Universal Values. Thousand Oaks CA: Sage Pub-

lications.

Ferguson, M. 1992 The mythology of globalization. European Journal of Communication 7, 69–

93.

Galtung, J. and M. Ruge 1965 The structure of foreign news. Journal of Peace Research 1, 64–90.

Innis, H. 1951 The Bias of Communication. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

32 Denis McQuail

Lerner, D. et al. 1958 The Passing of Traditional Society. New York: Free Press.

McBride, S. et al. 1980 Many Voices, One World: Report by the International Commission for the

Study of Communication Problems. Paris: UNESCO; London: Kogan Page.

McLuhan, M. 1964 Understanding Media. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

McQuail, D. 1992 Media Performance: Mass Communication and the Public Interest. London

and Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. 2000 Mass Communication Theory. 4th edition. London: Sage Publications.

McQuail, D. (ed.) 2002 Reader in Mass Communication Theory. London: Sage Publications.

Mills, C. W. 1955 The Power Elite. New York: Oxford University Press.

Rogers, E. M. and P. Shoemaker 1973 Communication of Innovations. New York: Free Press.

Siebert, F., T. Peterson, and W. Schramm 1956 Four Theories of the Press. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Weber, M. 1904/1985 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. [Trans. P. A. Talcotta].

London: Unwin.

Chapter 3Towards multiculturalism in discourse studies

Shi-xu and Robert Maier

The issue of culture, including that of ethnocentrism, has been raised for quite some time in social science. A range of disciplines has sought to refl ect critically on their cultural origins, ethnocentric tendencies as well as universalizing con-structions of “acts” and “truths” of their disciplines (e.g. Bloor 1976; Clifford 1986; Gilbert and Mulkay 1984; Mulkay 1979; Knorr-Cetina 1981; Shweder and LeVine 1984; Woolgar 1988). As a result, new cultural initiatives (sometimes called “a cultural turn”) have been taken to redress intellectual Eurocentrism, racism and cultural imperialism more generally (e.g. Eagleton 1983, 1991; Ger-gen 1999; Giroux 1992; Hall 1996a, 1996b; Simons and Billig 1994).

In the scholarship of discourse or linguistic communication, this refl exive con-sciousness has seemed rather slow in awakening. The fi eld of language studies is still largely shrouded in what Taylor (1999) has called ‘aculturalism’. By this no-tion, we refer especially to the views held of both the subject matter and the pro-fessional practice itself. Thus, on the one hand, language and communication, or discourse, are supposed to function universally and to be objectively describable. Let us call it the universalist view. Consistent with this concept of discourse itself, on the other hand, the academic metadiscourse about it – i.e. its notions, method-ologies, research practices and so on – is thought to proceed from universal rea-son and evidence, at least potentially so, and to describe or explain its object ac-curately, at least possibly so. We shall call this the representationalist view.

In this chapter, we want to argue that discourse, including scientifi c, metadis-course, is thoroughly cultural. That is, culture is not external but central to indi-vidual and social life. Because a prevailing part of individual, social and hence cultural life is discourse, the latter may be said to be culture par excellence. Cul-ture penetrates and saturates discourse, popular and professional alike. So dis-course should be seen as a form of cultural production and constituent part, or embodiment, of culture. We shall discuss and defi ne what we mean by “culture” and “cultural” in the next section.

Proceeding from the cultural perspective, we shall suggest that discourse is neither universally organized nor objectively given. Rather, it should be seen as a set of divergent, competing and dynamic patterns of constructing and acting upon reality through linguistic and contextual means. In this sense, language and

34 Shi-xu and Robert Maier

communication can be called cultural discourses. Cultural discourses are in a way parallel to the “games” of the later Wittgenstein (1968). In this light, for ex-ample, discourses from non-Western, non-White and Third-World countries and communities are different from Western discourses, in terms of, for example, po-sitions of power, historical and cultural context, issues and concerns, intellectual traditions on discourse research, and so on.

Following this cultural perspective, scientifi c, academic, professional discourse is subject to the same kind of power relationship as ordinary, everyday discourse. It is a culturally infi ltrated process and product, too. Consequently, the discourse of science, knowledge and truth is not neutral, disinterested and transparent. Giv-en the cultural nature of scholarly discourse, we shall propose in this chapter, in addition, that discourse research become culturally-politically engaged and re-sponsive to changes and requirements of the broad cultural context. In this re-gard, we shall outline an explicit form of cultural politics or cultural-political strategies: namely, research objectives on the one hand and corresponding meth-odological tactics on the other.

Taking a cultural turn in language, communication and discourse studies like this does not of course imply that all current projects must be abandoned or re-placed. What we wish to highlight here is that the cultural nature of discourse, including professional discourse, is still largely obscured and that consequent-ly especially non-Western voices, data, perspectives and methods are treated as the “different”, “Other” and therefore negligible phenomena. So what we want to emphasize through our deliberations here is that there is an urgent need to ex-plore cultural forms of language, communication and discourse studies and fur-ther to develop multicultural approaches to local and global discourses of cul-tural struggle.

In the following, we shall fi rst critically examine the aculturalist discourse in the discipline. Then, we shall articulate a cultural account of discourse. Finally, we shall suggest some cultural political strategies for discourse research.

1. The universalization of language research

It may be argued that many of the current frameworks of language, communica-tion and discourse and corresponding methods of analysis tend to present them-selves, implicitly or explicitly, as the “objective”, “correct” and so “universal” ways of understanding and researching. Thus, basic concepts, categories and as-sumptions are often offered as natural, methods as ubiquitously applicable, data as objective and fi ndings as replicable between researchers. At least, such qual-ities are possible ideals. Further, consistence with such practices, empirical re-search proceeds from one or the other preferred mode of analysis as a matter of

35Towards multiculturalism in discourse studies

course, as the expected norm or the “standard” starting point. In addition, many forms of language and communication analysis have remained largely preoccu-pied with their conventional, perennial aims and concerns – underlying or ab-stract rules, structures and processes – and continue to make ever more “valid” and more “reliable” descriptions and explanations.

Underlying such practices, as may be pointed out, is a deeply rooted and wide-spread discourse that leaves the constitution of knowledge and critical self-under-standing out of the question. Here, on the one hand, the object of enquiry – be it language, discourse or communication (mediated or otherwise) – is assumed to be given and, moreover, reducible to abstract, stable, universal categories, struc-tures, processes, rules, etc. These theoretical perspectives are of course not meant as refl ecting merely the structures, categories, levels and rules of the English lan-guage or of some Western ways of speaking, but rather true of all human lin-guistic, discursive or communicative phenomena. For instance, in the theory of Universal Grammar, human language is isolated as a minimum set of universal categories and rules. In Functional Grammar, much the same way, language is as-sumed to consist in an unconscious code or system of structures and functions. In cross-cultural semantics, although cultural linguistic differences are recognized, the meanings of languages are usually accounted for in terms of universal con-cepts. And yet these “universal” concepts are themselves constructed through a particular language, usually English (Shi-xu 2000b). In Speech Act Theory, too, language is conceived of as types of action realized by appropriate types of sen-tence under idealized sets of conditions of speech (e.g. promise, threat, question). In Discourse Analysis, too, text or talk is often analyzed into levels, structures and processes (e.g. “particle”, “cohesion”, “argument structure”, “narrative struc-ture”, “macro speech act”). The list can go on.

On the other hand, consistent with this objectivist discourse is a more covert discourse about scientifi c knowledge making itself. In this discourse, scientifi c ac-tivity is portrayed as somehow mirroring reality. It proceeds from universal reason and natural evidence; its discursive description is a transparent, neutral vehicle in which knowledge and facts are contained. Professional, academic, scholarly or scientifi c thought and talk can and are supposed to be dispassionate, objective and independent of history and culture. They are therefore themselves unproblematic for, perhaps even irrelevant to, language and communication inquiry.

If we pause and refl ect where the practitioners’ concepts and theories come from, how their methods are derived, or whose data they are analyzing – and how they are marketed globally – then, we shall realize, however, that the universal-ist discourse is misleading at best. It has been shown that the current dominant theories of language and communication can be traced to a set of distinct West-ern-European values and desires, ideas and discourses (McQuail this volume). The notion of “human language” in modern Western linguistics is infi ltrated by


preferred metaphors (Shi-xu 2000a). The idea of language as neutral representa-tion is constructed by the powerful elite to serve particular ideological purposes (Shi-xu and Wilson 2001). Western theoretical and applied linguistics has been trying to isolate “language” from historical and cultural context, with a view to achieving a universal science, but their technological innovations of succession and duration, spatial structure of tree diagrams and so on, refl ect only Westernperspectives (Barron, Bruce and Nunan 2002).

Attempts such as these are rather marginalized and there remain many aspects unexplored, however. There has been little systematic investigation into the re-lationship between cultures on the one hand, and the ideas and activities in lin-guistics, discourse analysis or media communication studies on the other. In this chapter, therefore, we shall try to show that one of the central, possible causes or conditions for the universalizing discourse is a peculiar notion of “culture”.

Historically, the notion of culture is associated with the times of European im-perialist expansion and colonization; then it was used to refer to the exotic, alien and barbarian. Since then, it has evolved through numerous lines of thoughts and discourses, including those of Anglo-Saxon anthropology, literary criticism and cross-cultural psychology (Williams 1976: 87–93; see also Bauman 1973; Sarangi 1995). But generally speaking, culture has been categorized in Western language studies according to language, place and time (e.g. Blum-Kulka et al. 1989; Hofstede 1980). In this view, “Irish culture”, “Dutch culture” or “ancient Chinese culture”, for example, would be determined and defi ned according to the language that is spoken, the geographic location and the time frame that the cul-ture in question can be associated with.

There are a number of interrelated properties assumed here that need to be made explicit. Firstly, it is objective in that it is a given, such that it can be objec-tively defi ned and described. It is recognizable in, for example, human percep-tions, patterns of behavior, symbols, values and artistic expressions (and even sci-entifi c facts as in a post-positivist perspective). Given this essentialistic notion, it would be possible to compare (and contrast for that matter) “Irish culture”, for example, with other such cultures. By the same token, culture could be transmit-ted and unlearned through upbringing and education (e.g. “high culture”). Sec-ondly, consistent with the essentialist assumption, culture is also thought to be originary in that it has a pure, primordial form and content originating in some space and some time. According to this version, there would be some such thing as “pure” Irish culture that is distinct and “uncontaminated” by other cultures. Because of this unique quality, culture is externally distinct and so can be easily distinguished from other cultures. Thirdly, culture is considered as homogeneous in that it is a property shared by all its members. As such it shapes the behavior of the individual but is not affected by it. In this sense, culture is extra-psycho-logical or secondary to psychology: it is outside the individual and, therefore, be-


yond individual control. In this view, all “Irish” people for example would be the same kind of beings and expected to do the same kinds of things. Last but by no means least, culture is treated as negatively opposed to rationality, evidence and science and, therefore, as something to be overcome or transcended through the latter. Thus culture is seen as derived from local conditions, historical traditions and, for some at least, specifi c human languages. They are a drawback or error: they prevent individuals and societies from seeing the inevitable “true” and the “natural”, hindering communication and understanding, and worse still, retard-ing modernity and globalization (a special but different case here, however, is the notion of culture as a higher form of aesthetic creation). However, such dif-fi culties can and will be eliminated, or at least reduced, when, with the inevita-ble, ultimate enlightenment of scientifi c progress, cultural idiosyncrasies are de-tected and defeated (Taylor 1999; see Shweder and LeVine 1984 for a contrast of the Enlightenment and Romantic views of culture). It is not surprising, then, that Western professional, academic, scholarly, scientifi c thoughts and texts are often presented as, implicitly or explicitly, dispassionate, neutral, objective and there-fore universal, at least more or less so (think of Universal Grammar, Cross-cul-tural Linguistics, Communication Theory, Discourse Analysis, etc.). They are capable of transcending cultures. The two perspectives in modern Western lin-guistics, which Montgomery (1995: 224–225) calls “universalist” and “relativ-ist” positions, are, too, manifestations of this acultural discourse. The universal-ist view holds that mankind has the same basic mental concepts which determine that their particular languages will represent the world in basically the same way. The relativist position, in contrast, holds that individual languages that constrain worldviews represent the world more or less the same or slightly differently. Ei-ther variant presupposes that culture can be isolated and excluded.

It is a paradox that, while certain quarters in society and social movements outside the academia recognize cultural diversity as worth promoting, profes-sional, academic and scholarly circles in language and communication continue to make rigorous attempts to exclude cultural elements.

2. Discourse as culturally saturated

It seems to us that critical insights from cultural studies can provide a useful start-ing point for building a culturally relevant and politically engaged approach to language, communication and discourse. Here culture is understood as particular ways, habits, patterns, or traditions of thinking and feeling, speaking and acting, understanding and evaluating – ways of constructing life – which are associat-ed with particular groups of people and in particular historical time (Hall 1996; Williams 1976). In this sense, culture penetrates and permeates all individuals


and social life. Individuals and groups interact with cultural patterns (e.g. norms and values) of ideas and practices in their everyday affairs and also reproduce them (e.g. recurring ideas and practices).

We must add here that cultural patterns of individual, communal and insti-tutional life have a subjective, personal dimension in that they are perceived, (re)produced and drawn upon by individuals and groups, adults and children (e.g. I think of and describe Irish people’s attitudes towards people of a different reli-gious background). Thus, culture and the person are interconnected (Sapir 1949). Following from this, further, culture as patterns of constructing life is itself a con-struction; there can be any number of constructions. Cultures, as different and diversifi ed ways of seeing, understanding, evaluating and acting upon the world are not objectively given. And there can be any number of constructions.

Cultural patterns are not merely “different” from each other. Viewed from a left-wing, Marxist tradition, culture is characterized by social division and asym-metry of power (see also Barker 1999; Johnson 1996). Culture is a site of strug-gle par excellence. In other words, the different ways of cultural life are not in harmony but tension, both within and without. Where cultural differences are perceived, they are not understood in the cultural-other’s perspective (and can-not be!), but often from one’s own and often as deviations, defi ciencies, and so, sources of trouble. More specifi cally, cultures are sites of power struggle and to study culture is to study cultural domination, exploitation and exclusion as well as resistance.

Culture is not passive or fi xed but has the self-critical consciousness to change and change for the “better” at that. That is, on the one hand, human cultures have a profound historical sense to seek continuously to change the status quo by aban-doning the old ways of thinking and doing things and creating new ones. This sensibility of historical destination I call the rational motivation (see also Gid-dens 1984; cf. Habermas 1984). On the other hand, more importantly, the crite-rion for new creations or changes lies in the cultures’ capacity to identify the new values with respect to their own traditions (Taylor 1999). In other words, they are able to make, and do make, distinctions between “good” and “bad”, “right” and “wrong”, “true” and “false” and such like, based on their own history. Thus, for example, “common freedom” might be chosen as such a candidate from within the Western tradition; indeed, it might be said that that has been at the heart of Western forms of feminism, anti-racism and anti-capitalism. This does not mean that there will be no setbacks in cultural development, but at least it is a hopeful view of human cultures.

Finally, and very importantly, culture is embodied in concrete social semiot-ic – especially discursive – practices. For, cultural patterns of constructing and acting upon reality are accomplished and constituted primarily through situat-ed linguistic texts. Linguistic communication or discourse is the most pervasive


and quintessential part of such practice. Other symbolic activities, such as art, music and sport, are also important part of the life of society, but their meaning, value and emotional charge would be overshadowed if no discourse were mobi-lized to describe, explain, sustain, promote, sensationalize and coordinate them. Similarly, it would be hard to imagine how science, religion, education or other such symbolic activities can proceed and succeed without discourses to embody, maintain and execute them. Conventional and new media, too, which now liter-ally inundate people’s lives, would lose their functionality without discourses to partake of them. Indeed, people spend most of their daily, and hourly, life, read-ing, writing, speaking or listening to each other. As McQuail (2000: 93) puts it, “Perhaps the most general and essential attribute of culture is communication, since cultures could not develop, survive, extend and generally succeed without communication.” Similarly, Duranti and Goodwin (1992: 2–3) have expressed the centrality of discourse in the organization of culture vociferously when they say, “[I]t would be blatantly absurd to propose that one could provide a compre-hensive analysis of human social organization without paying close attention to the details of how human beings employ language to build the social and cultur-al worlds that they inhabit.” Culture can then be seen as inhabiting especially a discursive space. From another perspective, discourse is the pervasive mode, and medium, in and through which human cultures are maintained and developed. To study culture, then, is to study discourse.

Despite its “linguistic turn” or the (re)discovery of textuality, cultural studies has, however, been less than explicit in its analysis of discourse, even less about creating and promoting new forms of discourses. In particular, there has been little systematic and explicit study of how culture may be discursively constitut-ed (Barker and Galasinski 2001: 1, 21, 62). Although a lot of attempts have been made from various intellectual traditions contemplating the discursive constitu-tive nature of culture (e.g. Bakhtin 1981; Blommaert and Verschueren 1998; Cas-sirer 1944; Duranti 1997; Geertz 1973; Gumperz 1982; Kluver 2000; Lutz 1988; Vološinov 1986; Wittgenstein 1968), a more specifi c and explicit formulation in terms of discourse remains to be made.

3. Cultural-political strategies for discourse research

3.1. The cultural nature of scientifi c discourse

Now that we have a new account of culture and a cultural account of discourse, we want to reconsider the nature of discourse research with special reference to its aims and methods. We shall do this by fi rst re-examining the ways that cul-


ture and scientifi c discourse are related and then suggesting new ways of dis-course research.

Scientifi c discourse is not free from individual, social and, hence, cultural life. On the one hand, scientifi c constructions are intermeshed with cultural history, assumptions, interests as well as personal preferences. They are therefore particu-lar ways of seeing, describing, explaining and acting upon the world (Berger and Luckmann 1966; Pearce 1995; Stewart 1995). As such they are not in symmetri-cal relation of power with one another, but, rather, contested from both within and without. Indeed, it can be argued and shown that current paradigms in language, discourse and communication research are largely Western in origin and/or in orientation. On the other hand, culturally oriented discourses of science, knowl-edge and truth have cultural consequences as well. When the Western scientifi c discourse – its worldviews, theories, methods, questions, data and conclusions – dominate the international academic world, non-Western intellectual discours-es – their concerns and their voices – become excluded, silenced or discredited. Theorists and practitioners of language, communication and discourse studies do have a cultural responsibility then and should take it up.

In the remainder of the chapter, we shall accordingly suggest a form of cul-tural politics for discourse research. On the one hand, we propose that discourse research pursue two interrelated aims. First, it should facilitate cultural co-exis-tence. This aim can involve enhancing harmony or solidarity between cultures. Second, it should help with mutual benefi t between different cultures. That means that discourse research should not benefi t one culture at the expense of anoth-er, but should seek to assist in common cultural progress. To accomplish these goals, on the other hand, we suggest two broad types of research tactics: 1) the deconstructive method: undermining the discourses that researchers perceive to be detrimental to those cultural groups that are already underprivileged, mar-ginalized, excluded or otherwise subjugated, especially on basis of race, gender and class, and 2) the transformative method: helping promote new discourses in the interests of those groups just mentioned.

3.2. Cultural-political strategies for discourse research

While we believe that research strategies, whether or not directed at cultural pol-itics, are not fi xed but should continue to expand, we would like to suggest three broad types below. The fi rst one would be to identify those past or existing dis-courses that, from the point of view of the researcher and ideally also of the cul-tural groups of people involved, are instrumental to cultural coexistence, harmo-ny and prosperity. Not all discourses are culturally domineering and repressive. Even from within imperialist cultures there are politically active individuals and


groups and, hence, their discourses that oppose the very order of cultural domi-nation, repression and exclusion. Such discourses do not just emerge and existed in history as well. Therefore, an important strategy is to rediscover and describe them, so that they can be emulated, expanded or even reconstructed in order to reach the intended cultural political objectives.

The second broad type of strategies we propose here is to undermine or decon-struct discourses of cultural discrimination and prejudice. To some it may seem that any discourse can be “interesting” and worth studying, but in our view, dis-course researchers can usefully focus on discourses that reproduce sociocultural problems. One may think of discourses surrounding such pressing issues as race, ethnicity, gender, and ultimately issues of cultural power. In this respect, to those of us who see the division and confl ict between (especially American) West and the Rest, between the majority and minorities, between the rich and poor, be-tween different genders, it would be crucially important to study the ways that powerful groups construct – if at all – less powerful ones. Such discourses of the “cultural Other” so to speak can be found in various discursive forms, as in the media, fi ction, politics and everyday conversations. In examining the discourse of the powerful, further, we may pay attention to how the powerful negate, dis-credit, deny, marginalize, exclude or simply silence the powerless. In relation to that, one may also try to identify what discourses or voices are absent, repressed or discriminated against. In this case, it would be equally important to highlight which groups’ discourses or perspectives are being excluded or ignored. In so doing, researchers prioritize their tasks and concentrate themselves on the more urgent issues of contemporary culture.

A related procedure of cultural discourse research here may be to uncover the verbal (textual and contextual) structures and processes whereby cultural domina-tion, exploitation or exclusion are realized. Discourses of cultural power are not merely “meanings” that may be expressed by just any form; nor are they always direct, obvious and indisputable. Moreover, such discourses are often rendered “natural”, “to be taken-for-granted” or as if there were not there. An effective tac-tic in uncovering culturally harmful meanings is to shed light on the strategies through which those meanings become possible. Such meanings often result from subtle management of contextual knowledge, assumptions, inferences, and the like, on the one hand, and verbal or rhetorical ploys on the other. One can, for in-stance, look into the ways that in the media groups of people are dominated, ex-cluded, marginalized, etc. and the ways that the thus oppressed people are then further problematized. One special area where this method can be particularly useful is the problem of monopoly of truths in academic as well as everyday life. What is important in this case then is to illuminate how the authority of objectiv-ity/truth is established; how “objectivity” is achieved, who is monopolizing the truth, for what purposes and with what consequences. All in all, it is vitally im-


portant for researchers to identify, characterize and highlight the concrete forms and the specifi c circumstances whereby those discourses take shape, even if this may mean they have to do so in a tentative and suggestive manner.

Still another related strategy of cultural discourse research that we want to advocate is to directly confront and challenge those discourses of cultural domi-nation, discrimination and exclusion by interrogating and subverting them. The interrogation and subversion here may take the form of disclosing the realities that the discourses of cultural domination fail to describe or smooth over, high-lighting their purposes and consequences, drawing attention to alternative forms of description and action. A most effective way of interrogation and subversion perhaps is to make explicit the self-contradictory, other-contradictory or incon-sistent ways of formulating reality and experience. The latter, as may be pointed out, can occur either between one’s own versions, or between socially and cul-turally differential versions, for example, those between the underprivileged and the powerful. They can also occur between different levels of discourse, for ex-ample, between explicit statements and underlying assumptions.

To deconstruct discourses of cultural hegemony – to render them invalid and undesirable – is basic to our cultural politics. But it is insuffi cient and incom-plete; cultural freedom and prosperity will not automatically come about from the deconstruction of those discourses. New forms of discourses need to be cre-ated and warranted. Discourse research should become a catalyst in this process. It should help create what Bhabha (1994: 57) suggests as “modes of political and cultural agency that are commensurate with historical conjunctures where popu-lations are culturally diverse, racially and ethnically divided – the objects of so-cial, racial, and sexual discrimination.”

Thus, the third broad type of methodological strategy is cultural reconstruc-tion or transformation. That is, discourse research offers new and more helpful versions of reality and ways of acting upon it. In this sense, our approach has a higher expectation of discourse practitioners. Such creative and argumentative attempts will of course require the power of imagination on the part of research-ers and educationalists. But it can draw on prior studies, either of a deconstruc-tive kind, as sketched above, or of an investigative one in which members’ own experiences are collected. At a more basic level, this step will have to depend on prior studies to a greater or lesser extent, as indicated above. Here it will be use-ful to broaden one’s perspectives as much as possible. To this end, researchers can try to solicit information from different people and from different contexts. This strategy can also be put to another use. Culture can be considered as a form of creative and self-refl exive discourse, as argued earlier. It would then be inter-esting to examine the unnoticed ways that situated texts are interconnected and, for that matter, discontinued in order to understand the conditions of possibility, continuity and ruptures of cultural development and so to reveal or highlight the


agency, and hope, of human cultural progress. Whereas the fi rst method of de-construction has its focus on the existing versions of events or ways of speaking, reconstruction is forward-looking: it explores new ways of speaking and thereby new experience (see also Shi-xu 2001).

An investigative and so preparatory strategy is to look into the views and ex-periences of the cultural Other. Here researchers can use various ethnographic methods in order to gain insights into the lifeworld of those cultural groups and communities whose cause researchers wish to advance. For instance, researchers can fi nd ways to understand the opinions and wishes of non-Western, non-White and Third-World immigrants or sojourners about their intercultural experience.

A more directly interventionalist strategy is to proffer constructions, or types of discourse, of cultural realities and consciousness that are different from ex-isting ones and, therefore, will change the status quo and bring about new ac-tion and relationship, either in the scientifi c community or in sections of soci-ety at large. Such new kinds of discourse may include new concepts, new per-spectives, and new bases or arguments for creating new or alternative versions or concepts or ways of speaking of one’s own cultures and others’. For, chang-ing ways of speaking and writing is to change people’s ways of doing things and hence ways of living.

A variation of this strategy would be to advocate those discourses that favor equal cultural dialogue and genuine intercultural communication as those found by using the fi rst type of strategies. Such promotional discourses may, for ex-ample, spell out the needs and benefi ts of equal communication between differ-ent cultures. As certain discourses are dominant; certain others are absent or re-pressed. And yet human cultures are becoming increasingly inter-linked. From the present political stance, it is imperative for the dominant culture to reach out to listen to its “others”, whose discourses have been discredited, distorted or dis-missed. Even from a practical point of view, the latter’s discourses may contain not merely dissenting or different opinions, but also fresh perspectives that can enrich one’s own culture.

In addition to constructing new concepts, new versions of reality, new ways of speaking, etc., as ways of creating new discourse, there is another area where discourse researchers can contribute toward a new and better society. Namely, they can try to devise ways to enhance human communication between groups of various backgrounds and traditions, or, in the words of Geertz (1973: 14), “the enlargement of the universe of human discourse”. For example, they can create contexts for such contact and communication. In this regard, they can show the fl uidity, diversity and variation of “cultural”, “national”, “ethnic” boundaries and categories.

For instance, we can help with highlighting the needs, creating the conditions and formulating commonly acceptable rules for intercultural communication and


interaction. They can encourage such intercultural contact and relation to take place at not only everyday level but also between scientifi c disciplines. As argued earlier, discourse is culturally organized as different ways of seeing, evaluating and speaking about reality. Further, these different discourses are characterized by domination, repression, prejudice and exclusion. We can then try to identify the reasons for intercultural contact and to facilitate it by locating discursive re-sources and working with cultural members to negotiate common rules of en-gagement and common goals.

The late-modern world is saturated with capitalist, colonial, racist, sexist, sec-tarian and other oppressive kinds of discourse. And yet this does not mean that this cannot be changed; in fact, they are constantly under moral pressures that develop in particular societies, for example in the form of subversive or decon-structive discourse I advocated in the previous section. However, changing the (discourse) status quo can be diffi cult because, for instance, it may be against one’s immediate interests. Here, discourse researchers can play an active role by formulating and advocating a moral motivation or willpower among members of society to construct nonrepressive and shared discourses. This can be carried out, for example, in the context of education and training.

4. Conclusion

In this chapter, we have tried to rationalize and justify a cultural turn in the aca-demic disciplines of language, discourse and media communication and further-more, drawing upon the critical developments from both Cultural Studies and certain quarters of language scholarship, outlined a likely version of a culturalist project in the fi eld. To this end, we fi rst critiqued aculturalism in language, dis-course and communication theory and research by accessing the inadequacies of their notion of culture and the scholarly and social consequences of scientifi c aculturalism. With the help of Cultural Studies’ notion of culture, we argued that scientifi c discourse is cultural through and through. In particular, we pointed out that current theory and research in language, discourse and media communica-tion are still too West-oriented in terms of their assumptions, practices and the marginalization of non-Western data and perspectives.

Accordingly, we proposed that a more self-refl exive, culturalist program in language, discourse and media communication defi ne itself in terms of an ex-plicit political goal: to achieve co-existence and freedom for all human cultures. Furthermore, we suggested relevant research strategies, which are deconstructive and transformative, respectively. These are designed not only to resist tendencies of theoretical imperialism and empirical ethnocentrism within Western scholar-ship on language, discourse and communication and so to transform it for the


new era of a globalized world, but also to directly engage with the contemporary realities of cultural domination, prejudice and exclusion. The criterion for judg-ing these ways of speaking is whether and to what extent they are helpful to the cultural group who discourse researchers feel has already been disadvantaged, and are potentially acceptable to the cultural groups involved.

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Chapter 4Beyond differences in cultural values and modes of communication

Jan Servaes

1. Modernization and cultural diversity

The relationship between culture and communication has often been discussed in terms of convergence. Both the so-called modernization and dependency par-adigms, for obviously quite opposite reasons (see Servaes 1999), start from the assumption that, as societies develop, they will lose their separate identities and cultural differences and tend to converge towards one common type of society. Here industrialization and urbanization are considered as the main causes of the historical movement from diversity towards conformity, towards one global vil-lage. Further, this global village is characterized by a secular culture and decline of religion, considerable geographic and social mobility, the predominance of the nuclear family, and a high division of labor, with growing levels of formal edu-cation, economies based on industry or “knowledge”.

However, in my opinion, the above picture refl ects an abstract and idealized image of a fully modern society. For example, Suntaree Komin (1988) found, in the case of Thailand, that certain so-called “traditional” superstitious behaviors like “fortune-telling” and “lucky numbers” are practiced more among Bangkoki-ans than among farmers. Similarly, when discussing globalization and modern-ization, new approaches in anthropology and cultural studies often come to the conclusion that modernization does not necessarily change cultural values. Mod-ernization and culture can walk parallel, not simply convergent, paths. “Since ev-ery culture is a more or less integrated system of cultural goods, realizing a more or less integrated value system, change in every culture must in the last analy-sis refl ect change in the value system” (Alisjahbana 1974: 223). Consequently there result more, not less, diversities of cultures and hence value systems. In-deed, new research fi ndings, derived from anthropological and cultural studies, suggest that the above “convergence” assumptions and claims are highly ques-tionable (e.g. Friedman 1994; Hall and Du Gay 1996; Hannerz 1987, 1996; Mar-cus and Fischer 1986).

In this contribution, I shall consider the problem of diversity of human culture

50 Jan Servaes

and communication in the new context of globalization. The central proposal I want to make is that diverse cultures must negotiate continuously for a common set of norms or rules of intercultural communication in order for the human cul-tural communities to survive. To that end, I shall fi rst try to make sense of the differences in thinking, value system and modes of communication between the East/Asia and West/Europe, with reference to two particular cases – human rights and Thai culture. From here will emerge the question of how to deal with cultur-al and communicative differences and confl icts, especially in the face of human suffering, environmental disaster and global risks of various kinds. In opposition to cultural relativism, I shall suggest that commonly acceptable ethics and rules for intercultural communication and interaction, as well as the imagination of a future global community, be created through continuous intercultural critique and negotiation. This also means that, as a cultural turn in language and com-munication research, we researchers should not only pay attention to discourses of cultural “others”, but also interact with perspectives, methods and standards of evaluation from these cultures (see Shi-xu, Chapter 1).

2. A dynamic perspective on culture

This implies a dynamic perspective on culture that fi nds a good expression in a historical analysis. Edward Said’s (1985) captivating overview of the way in which Asian societies and philosophies throughout the ages were perceived by the West starts from the thesis: “That the essential aspects of modern Oriental-ist theory and praxis (from which present-day Orientalism derives) can be un-derstood, not as a sudden access of objective knowledge about the Orient, but as a set of structures inherited from the past, secularized, re-disposed, and re-formed by such disciplines as philology, which in turn were naturalized, mod-ernized, and laicized substitutes for (or versions of) Christian supernaturalism. In the form of new texts and ideas, the East was accommodated to these struc-tures” (Said 1985: 122). Therefore, academics and the people they study “con-struct stylized images of the occident and orient in the context of complex so-cial, political, and economic confl icts and relationships. ... these stylized images are not inert products. Rather, they have social, political, and economic uses of their own, for they shape people’s perceptions, justify policies, and so infl uence people’s actions” (Carrier 1995: 11).

In other words, Europeans look at Asian values with Western eyes, while Asians view Western values with Asian eyes. Being an outsider is partly an ad-vantage, partly a disadvantage, when investigating the values of others. As Levi-Strauss (1969) rightly stated, “It is from inside that we can apprehend the rup-tures but from outside that some effects of coherence appear.” While the insider

51Beyond differences in cultural values and communication

has access to the details, the outsider has to rely on limited fi rst-hand experience and secondary sources. However, the horizon can be wider with a more distant view.

3. Value dimensions

Let us look at a general defi nition of values: “the moral principles and beliefs or accepted standards of a person or social group” (Collins English Dictionary1991). This defi nition is very broad, encompassing not only virtues and ideals, but also convictions and models followed individually or collectively. One of the scholars who have been trying to fi nd value patterns in different cultures is Geert Hofstede (1980, 1991, 1995). He surveyed over a hundred thousand workers in multinational organizations in more than fi fty countries, and identifi ed four val-ue dimensions that are infl uenced and modifi ed by culture: (a) individualism-collectivism, (b) uncertainty avoidance, (c) power distance and (d) masculini-ty and femininity. (In earlier work he also added the time orientation and activ-ity orientation.) His theory of cultural variability attempts to assess the range in which countries differ in cultural values on a continuum.

Though his categorization is obviously more detailed and sophisticated than those of others (e.g. Kluckhohn and Kluckhohn 1960; Hall and Hall 1990), his work has also been criticized on methodological and theoretical grounds (see Gu-dykunst 1994; Samovar and Porter 1998; Shadid 1998). Gudykunst (1994: 40), for instance, claims that the individualism-collectivism dimension is more impor-tant than the other dimensions, especially when one wants to understand cross-cultural behavioral differences.

An essential difference between Western and Asian society is the position of the individual, and, consequently, the conception of Self. The Self is composed of both individual and group identifi cations. The individual and group compo-nents are complements in a “whole” Self rather than dialectical opposites. What gets stressed in each culture differs, but this doesn’t suggest an either/or choice. While Western culture is characterized by a strong individualistic self-image, in the Asian context, group consciousness plays a much bigger part. Clifford Geertz (1973), for instance, in his infl uential essay on Bali, describes how Balinese act as if persons were impersonal sets of roles, in which all individuality and emo-tional volatility are systematically repressed.

That notion of Self is quite different from the one described by Sigmund Freud. Freud (1951) demonstrated that one can trace out systematic interrelationships be-tween conscious understandings of social relations, unconscious dynamics, and the ways ambiguous, fl exible symbols are turned into almost deterministic pat-terns of cultural logic. Therefore, Westerners are I-orientated: “Their behavior is

52 Jan Servaes

largely determined by their perception of self, a concept we defi ne as the identity, personality or individualism of a given person as distinct from all other people. For them, the self is a unifying concept. It provides a perspective in thinking, a direction for activity, a source of motivation, a locus in decision-making and a limit to group involvement” (Stewart 1972: 75).

Asians, on the other hand, are We-orientated. They get their identity from the position they hold in the group. According to Geertz’ (1973) study, the Balinese tried to establish smooth and formal interpersonal relationships, in which the pre-sentation of the Self is affectionless and determined by the social group. A typi-cal example is the Asian way of addressing people. A Westerner writes fi rst his Christian name, then his surname, followed by street, town, and country. Asians typically do it the other way around. When one asks a Hindu for his identity, he will give you his caste and his village as well as his name. There is a Sanskrit for-mula which starts with lineage, family, house and ends with one’s personal name. In this presentational formula, the empirical self comes last.

In other words, Asians are submerged, so to speak, in the group and fi nd them-selves lost and powerless as individuals when the link with the group is taken away or does not exist: “The predominant value is congeniality in social interac-tions based on relations among individuals rather than on the individual himself. A network of obligations among members of a group is the point of reference, not the self. In Oriental cultures, people’s behavior is directed fi rst to maintaining af-fi liation in groups and congenial social relations. Goals which could be person-ally rewarding to the individual are only of secondary importance” (Klopt and Park 1982: 30). Only after the Asian knows someone’s status, age, sex and so on (these are often the fi rst questions which are asked of a foreigner and are regard-ed as “indiscreet” by a Westerner), he or she will be capable of communicating, of addressing the conversation partner in the “appropriate” cultural way.

Another questionable conclusion on the basis of Hofstede’s work concerns the assumption that the found differences between societies could also explain the behavior of individual members from these societies. With regard to the West-ern and Asian concept of “Self ”, for instance, Frank Johnson (1985) summarizes the problems inherent in attempting systematic comparisons between “East” and “West”. False antitheses and monolithic comparisons can easily slip into clichéd generalizations and overstatements of the obvious. He therefore cautions: “First, generalizations stressing differences between East and West gloss over the diver-sity within both Eastern and Western traditions themselves – over different eras, among different cultures, and as these traditions are differentially experienced by individuals. Second, such comparisons between East and West necessarily set aside civilizations and nations whose traditions have not been recorded in a man-ner permitting equivalent representation” (Johnson 1985: 91–92).

The most important point, however, concerns the implicit argument in Hof-


stede’s work that one could speak of regional or (sub)continental clusters of cul-tures, such as the Asian or European cultures. If one would go across the Eu-ropean and Asian countries from Hofstede’s survey (1995), one would see that some Western European countries on the one hand and Asian countries on the other hand would differ considerably internally as well as externally on some of the researched value dimensions. Therefore, the most rational conclusion should be that one has to be extremely careful when speaking about Asian or Europe-an cultures. In the patterning of their social existence, people continually make principally unconscious choices that are directed by the applicable intracultur-al values and options. Social reality can then be seen as a reality constituted and cultivated on the basis of particular values, a reality in which the value system and the social system are completely interwoven and imbued with the activity of each other.

4. Ways of thinking

Hajime Nakamura (1985) starts from a similar observation. Though he claims that research into the cultural contributions of various nations as seen from the viewpoint of their interrelationship is necessary, he advocates the hypothesis that “there is no such thing as a single fundamental principle which determines the characteristic ways of thinking of a people. Various factors, related in manifold ways, each exerting its infl uence, enter into the ways of thinking of a people. If we deal with the question of the existential basis which brings about differenc-es of ways of thinking, we see no way left for us to take the standpoint of plural-ism” (Nakamura 1985: 37). Nevertheless, after a comprehensive overview of all the distinct positions, he agrees that “there are some characteristic differences in the ways of thinking of East Asian nations. In the second place, with regard to all people, there is a certain logical and human connection among these charac-teristics” (Nakamura 1985: 38). Together with others (e.g. Cauquelin, Lim and Mayer-König 1998; Weggel 1989), he makes distinctions on the basis of ontolog-ical and epistemological considerations. Therefore, one could contrast the Asian way of thinking with the European way of thinking.

Oskar Weggel (1989: 38) sees holism as the key to understanding Asians. This holistic attitude is expressed both in ways of thinking and behaving and in the structure of society. Everything is seen as interconnected, overlapping, insepa-rable, every part is held together by every other part or aspect. The three basic principles of Buddhism, such as “Anijjang” (everything is perpetually changing), “Dukhkang” (life is full of suffering) and “Anatta” (everything is relative; cer-tainty does not exist), differ greatly from the static, optimistic and “ideal-utopi-an” principles on which the Western way of thinking is built.

54 Jan Servaes

On the other hand, the European way of thinking is typically Cartesian. In the Cartesian approach we take the reality, the object of study, apart, or isolate a part of it, in order to analyze and defi ne it, assuming that it is the whole and the reality. John Walsh (1973: 82) summarizes the differences as follows: “One of the basic differences between Eastern and Western cultures is that the Eastern are dominated by the concept of harmony; the Western by power. In the East, it is said, knowledge is for the sake of living in better and closer harmony with na-ture and man; in the West, knowledge is for the sake of controlling peace and or-der is a prime value; in the West, achieving the things that power makes possible is considered by many as a primary goal.” One of the important implications is an absolutist position (either/or, good or bad) in the West but a more relative po-sition (good and bad, yin and yang) in the East.

The task for a researcher then is to reveal these distinctive structures of mean-ing. In other words, in the study of concrete examples of cultural identity, one must be attentive to the following aspects: (a) the characteristics and dimensions of the cultural reference framework (i.e. the world view, the ethos, and their sym-bolic representation); (b) the interaction and interrelation with the environment of power and interests; and (c) the “ideological apparatuses” by which the cul-tural reference framework is produced and through which it is at the same time disseminated.

Basic questions here include: How do people construe and interpret their own “Weltanschauung”? How do they explain their world in terms of (wo)mankind, (wo)man to (wo)man relationships, (wo)man to nature and (wo)man to the su-pernatural relationships? And what are the formats, contents and institutions in which such worldviews and value systems are symbolically represented?

Cultures derive an “identity” from the fact that a common worldview and ethos are active in the network of institutions or apparatuses of which they consist. This “identity” differs from culture to culture. As the needs and values that various communities develop in divergent situations and environments are not the same, the various cultures also manifest varying “identities”. Far from being a top-down phenomenon only, foreign mass media and cultural infl uences interact with local networks in what can be termed a coerseductive (for coercion/seduction) way. Far from being passive recipients, audiences are actively involved in the construc-tion of meaning around the media messages they consume. Consequently, such messages may have different effects and meanings in different cultural settings. Consequently, honor, power, love and fear are defi ned and enacted through cul-tural forms that may differ widely from one culture to another.

This implies that cultural identity can work both in positive-liberating as well as negative-repressive ways. Cultural identity interpreted in a positive-liberating way may, among other aspects, imply a positive orientation toward historical val-ues, norms and institutions, the resistance to excessive external infl uence, the re-


jection of values, institutions and forms that destroy social cohesion, and the ad-aptation of forms of production so that they favor the specifi city of human and local social development. On the other hand, a negative-dominating interpreta-tion of cultural identity may include the use of so-called traditional values and norms, or arguments emphasizing the cultural “uniqueness” to legitimize mar-ginalization or the existing status quo.

5. Modes of communication

Let me attempt to point out a few characteristics of what can be called a Europe-an versus an Asian mode of communication. Such an attempt, however, cannot be undertaken without an explicit warning: as has been argued above, to bring European and Asian culture face-to-face is not only ambitious, but also can give a very simplistic impression. These risks are particularly high in condensed ver-sions of cross-cultural comparison, such as this text. Therefore, both modes of communication should be perceived as ideal-typical examples of which the ex-tremes are underlined in order to accentuate the typicality of each mode of com-munication.

While outlining the European mode of communication, I have the Anglo-Sax-on culture, to which I belong, in mind as the framework of reference. My appre-ciation of the defi ned Asian mode of communication is based upon experiences in their cultures where Confucian and Buddhist infl uences play a major part. In each culture, I have been trying to search for the archetypes rather than for the formal and often offi cially propagated manifestations of a culture. More than in the West and because of the Western infl uences, one can observe in Asia a pro-nounced difference between the so-called “written” and “unwritten” culture (Hsi-ung 1985; Terwiel 1984).

In many Asian languages there is a distinction made between so-called lev-els of speech according to age, social status and patterns of social interaction. One has to use particular titles and forms of addressing when one approaches a younger or elder, a higher or lower ranked person. This kind of hierarchical lan-guage use has gradually disappeared in the West.

In different cultures the same words or concepts can have different connotative, contextual or fi gurative meanings and evoke idiomatic or metaphoric expressions. The word fat, for instance, has a positive connotation in most Asian societies, as it indexes the person’s well-being and wealth. In the West, however, the word is mainly interpreted in a negative way. O-Young Lee (1967) concludes that Asian languages have developed on the basis of auditive interpretation (listening) and emotion (pathos) and take into account the so-called “aura” of things. Because of this, Asian languages are more colorful and poetic than Indo-European languag-

56 Jan Servaes

es which are based on visual ascertainment (seeing) and rationality (logos): “A culture of the eye is intellectual, rational, theoretical and active, while a culture of the ear is emotional, sensitive, intuitive and passive” (Lee 1967: 43).

In comparing “Eastern and Western” orientations of the use of language, Kim (1985: 405) postulates that the Western mode is largely a “direct, explicit, verbal realm, relying heavily on logical and rational perception, thinking, and articula-tion”. Thunberg et al. (1982: 145) apply this concept to the development of pro-fessional style, whose “manner of expression or style often seems unnecessari-ly complicated and abstract, and particularly bureaucratic prose tends to follow formal codes far removed from daily usage”. This contrasts with the orientation of the East where “the primary source of interpersonal understanding is the un-written and often unspoken norms, values and ritualized mannerisms relevant to a particular interpersonal context” (Kim 1985: 405). To relate this to India as well as alternate views of communication: “According to the Indian view, the re-alization of truth is facilitated neither by language nor by logic and rationality. It is only intuition that will ensure the achievement of this objective. To know is to be; to know is to become aware of the artifi cial categorization imposed on the world by language and logic. It is only through an intuitive process that man [and woman] will be able to lift himself [or herself] out of the illusory world which, indeed, according to the Indian viewpoint, is the aim of communication. There-fore, if the Western models of communication are ratiocination-oriented models, the Indian one is intuition-oriented” (Dissanayake 1988: 30).

Social relation patterns are differently perceived and outwardly shown. So-cial stratifi cation exists, of course, in the East as well as in the West. But where it is not accentuated in the West – moreover, in interpersonal communication one often attempts to construct an (often feigned) horizontal and equal relationship – hierarchic relations still exist and are explicitly emphasized in the East. Ap-pearances such as clothes and etiquette play a major role. The Confucian ethic, for instance, attaches a lot of importance to tradition and etiquette. One individ-ual is not equal to another; one is always of a higher or lower rank or status. This ranking applies to every social form or organization, either family, enterprise or school. In China, this performance of rank is called li and involves the ability to value the position one has to take up in each specifi c relationship pattern and consequentially to be able to follow the right ritual.

Even in more formal relations and modernistic institutions such as politics, commerce or industry, these patterns of communication are still carried on. Asians feel themselves, less than Westerners, drawn by political programs; they follow charismatic leaders with whom they can identify emotionally. In business mat-ters as well, Asians follow a hierarchic, time-consuming and indirect pattern of communication, in which immediate friends or “group members” act as inter-mediaries. Don McCreary and Robert Blanchfi eld (1986) analyzed the patterns


of discourse in negotiations between Japanese and U.S. companies. They ar-rived at the conclusion that the negotiation is complicated and dependent upon several constructs unique to the homogeneous Japanese people and culture and that three constructs are particularly crucial: amae (a social hierarchy of depen-dency relationships), haragei (a culturally based set of paralinguistic cues cou-pled with superfi cially misleading verbal arguments with multiple semantic read-ings) and the pragmatics of formal negotiation which concerns special patterns of discourse in regard to speaking versus writing, colloquial versus formal lan-guage, responsibility in decision making and translation/interpretation diffi cul-ties. They conclude that: “Phatic communication, the communication and build-up of personal trust, must be included from negotiating day one. Conversation, seemingly about nothing of consequence, that is, family backgrounds, likes and dislikes, and employment history, tests the foreign negotiator’s trustworthiness, how much respect and credibility is due him, and how much he is committed to a long-term outlook” (McCreary 1986: 156). Because of this difference, less im-portance is attached to a number of values which in the Western world are con-sidered very important, such as the equality of men and women or democracy. On the other hand, other values and norms, such as respect for one’s elders or loyalty to the group, are given a more important place in the East. Therefore, some ar-gue that the Western concept of parliamentary democracy is incompatible with a Hindu society, while others claim that Marxism is more closely related to Bud-dhism than to Western liberal principles. François Perroux (1983: 121), howev-er, doubts the relevance of this sort of comparison and puts forward a so-called “Weberian” and “anti-Weberian” model: “At most and at best, Weber’s model is a sociological construct of little real benefi t even in the investigation of cultures that differ from our own. What do we gain by labeling an Oriental or African culture as ‘charismatic’ or ‘traditional’ when it stems from a living faith?” And he adds that the new and “another” development movement in the North and the South, “if it is not to lead to the world’s going up in fl ames, must at least adopt a line of research, a guiding principle and, basing itself on the anti-Weber model, a course of slow, patient and cumulative advance” (Perroux 1983: 12). Similar ar-guments are put forward by Roland Robertson (1992) and Bryan Turner (1994), who examine the recent debate about orientalism in relation to postmodernism and the process of globalization.

Further, the Asian mode of communication is indirect and implicit, the West-ern direct and explicit. In Asian communication processes, a lot is supposed and implicitly said. Westerners insist on making very explicit arrangements and have almost no ear for non-verbal forms of expression. Therefore, Westerners use lan-guage in an instrumental way and emphasize herewith the exchange of ideas and thoughts. The more emotionally involved and poetical Asian is less direct. In an instrumental pattern of communication, one defends one’s opinion in an assertive

58 Jan Servaes

way. Westerners attempt to convince their listeners by way of rational, Aristote-lian argumentation (in his Rhetoric, however, Aristotle is open to the idea that not only rational, but also merely plausible and emotional types of argumenta-tion are to be included within the available means of proof). The “end product”, the message is the most important part of the communication process. The com-munication is considered a success if the public has understood the “message”. Whether or not the public agrees to the underlying viewpoint in the message is for a Western communicator of second importance.

While Westerners start a conversation with a defi nite goal (i.e. they want to state or obtain something material or immaterial), for Asians the emotional ex-change, the being together, the pleasure of communicating are equally important. In interpersonal communication, Asians will try to assess the feelings and state of mind of those present. They do not want to bring the harmony of the group into danger and thus will give their opinion in an indirect way. Not the product, or the message, but the process is of importance. Hence, those are also the total-ly different perceptions with regard to work and leisure time. In the West, they are regarded as two separate aspects of life; but not so in the East. So the Asian mode of communication can be labeled rather as defensive and situational. The conversation is often abruptly stopped, or the subject changed without any ob-vious reason, as soon as the speaker feels that his/her listener does not totally agree with his point of view or that his feelings might have been hurt. Asians at-tempt to reach a total or holistic communication. If this is not possible, they pre-fer no communication to the Western compromise of partial or Cartesian com-munication.

Where the Western mode of communication concentrates on the encoding of issues, and is, as such, sender- or communicator-orientated, the Asian mode of communication attaches more attention to the decoding problems of messages and is, as such, receiver- or public-orientated. Whereas the Westerner does ac-tively look for the truth and is convinced that this can be achieved on the basis of a logical argumentation, the Asian accepts that the truth will be revealed when s/he is ready for it, or, in other words, when enough knowledge and insight has been accumulated. The attitude is passive; data collection and argumentation – two essential elements in a Western mode of communication – are often miss-ing. On the other hand, the action orientation of Westerners dictates their atti-tude with regards to nature and technology, they want to command and control these, while Asians try to achieve a harmonious relationship with both. There-fore, in more general terms, the vision on intuition, rationalism, and empiricism is in both modes of communication totally different.


6. Modernization and tradition

Let us move to a specifi c Asian case, Thailand. There, modernization and west-ernization have strengthened the animistic concept of power rather than weak-ened it. Unemployment, economic and political crises have made life for the ma-jority of the Thai even less attractive, so the need for worldly and spiritual protec-tion saints has increased proportionally, just as the struggle for status and prestige under the growing westernized middle classes has increased. Whereas one used to fi ght with traditional power means, the power of money is undermining many traditional relationship patterns. The impersonal and uncontrollable money is ever present and even throws a shadow on certain khun (“goodness”) relation-ship patterns. So it is not surprising that corruption and the misuse of power are on the rise: “The prevalence of bureaucratic corruption stems from the systems of self-remuneration in the traditional bureaucracy. Offi cials were expected to remunerate themselves by taking a cut from revenues they collected and extract-ing fees for services performed. In the transition to a modern form of bureaucra-cy, these practices were never erased. Meanwhile the systems for imposing mor-al and conventional limits on the extent of such self-remuneration have tended to decay ... The rise of corruption as an issue was more a function of increasing competition for political power and corruption revenues between the old power-holders in the military and civilian bureaucracy and the new challengers in ci-vilian politics, particularly those with a business background” (Phongpaichit and Priryarangsan 1994: 173).

In the hierarchically-structured Thai society in which form and performance play a major role, the individual is regularly confronted with situations that cause heavy psycho-social stress. As Thai rationalize these psychosocial problems in an animistic and fatalistic way, as the work of a bad spirit, they therefore do not seem to be able to address these tensions. The only way to solve such a problem is, in their opinion, to get rid of the bad spirit by eliminating it (or its personifi -cation) combined with the propensity to suppress anger, frustrations and so on, until it literally bursts. Whenever this happens, the outcome is usually very ex-treme and this, for instance, is one of the explanations for the fact that Thailand has one of the highest crime rates in the world.

As more people fall by the wayside in this power struggle, the longing for a “safe” life in the inner-group increases. On the political front, this tendency has given rise to the revival of conservative and nationalistic ideas. On the personal level, it leads to the strengthening of Brahminical and spiritual practices. Pub-lic life is organized on the basis of friend circles with an infl uential leader on the top, that is the so-called patronage system (Chaloemtiarana 1983). The Thai do not follow political programs or abstract ideas but follow leaders and charismatic fi gures on the basis of the “right or wrong, my group”-principle. Minister Chal-

60 Jan Servaes

erm Yoobumrung, who was in charge of the Mass Communication Authority of Thailand, used TV stations to fi ght against newspapers which dared to criticize his policies and to promote his political party.

The majority of the military coups and political fractions are explicable through this perspective as well. John Girling (1981, 1984), who applied the Gramscian hegemony principle to Thai society, came to the conclusion that the production basis is integrated in and determined by the culture-ideological superstructure of the civil society: “The result, in Thai terms, is the ‘bureaucratic policy’, or what Gramsci calls ‘transformism’: a ruling class that grows ever more extensive by absorbing elements from other social groups who then operate within the estab-lished framework” (Girling 1984: 445). He decides that in these circumstances there is little chance for social change. From a culturalistic perspective, this view is confi rmed by Amunam Rajadhon (1968: 29): “The social system, habits and customs as seen in modern times are superfi cial modifi cations of the fundamen-tals and in a comparative degree only.”

Generally speaking, the Thai social system is essentially a society where self-centeredness and interpersonal relationships are of utmost importance. Even though the Thai self-image is often described as individualistic, we prefer to term it a weak rather than a strong personality. This is also the opinion of Hans Ten Brummelhuis (1984): “The individual’s preoccupation is not so much with self-realization and autonomy as with the adaptation to the social or cosmologi-cal environment. If a notion of Thai individualism is to have any specifi c mean-ing it is in designating that particular mode of retreat, avoidance and distrust, which colors so many forms of behavior and social relationships” (Brummelhuis 1984: 44–45). Seksan Prasertkul (1989: 64) is more critical: “Our national traits, which I think are very strong, are: fi rstly, Thais do not like serious matters; they like to crack jokes and talk about sensational matters, especially dirty ‘under the belt’-matters. Secondly, they are egotist. [...] If matters are not relevant to their own lives, they will not take them into account.”

Referring to the Thai Value Study (Komin 1988), Komin (1988, 1991) iden-tifi ed nine value clusters according to their signifi cant positions in the Thai val-ue system, namely, (1) ego-orientation (which is the root value underlying vari-ous other key values, such as “face-saving”, “kreng-jai”), (2) grateful relation-ship orientation (“bun-khun”, reciprocity of kindness, “a-ka-tan-yu”), (3) social smoothing relationship orientation (caring, pleasant, polite), (4) fl exibility and adjustment orientation (situation-orientedness), (5) religio-psychical orientation (karma, superstition), (6) education and competence orientation (form is more important than substance), (7) interdependence orientation (peaceful coexistence of ethnic, religious groups), (8) achievement-task orientation (achievement is the least important value among Thai, it connotes social rather than task achieve-ment), and (9) fun-pleasure orientation (fun loving is both a means and an end in


itself). “These are the major value orientations registered in the cognitive world of the Thai, and serve as criteria for guiding behavior, or as the blueprint that helps to make decisions at the behavioral levels” (Komin 1988: 172). She argues that these value orientations have to be taken into consideration in any development program as they often prove to be stumbling blocks to social change.

7. Cultural relativism, cultural diversity and human rights

Those who advocate universality of human rights assert that human rights must be the same everywhere. This is contested by those who believe that human rights are relative to a particular history and culture. In Asia, the debate on the univer-sality of human rights is normally known as the debate on “Asian values”, be-cause governments of several Asian countries have put forward the argument that there exists an “Asian concept of human rights”.

The relativist conception of human rights proposed by the Asian governments is refl ected in the Bangkok Declaration adopted at the Asian regional prepara-tory meeting for the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights in April 1993. The declaration states that, “[w]hile human rights are universal in nature, they must be considered in the context of a dynamic and evolving process of inter-national norm-setting, bearing in mind the signifi cance of national and region-al peculiarities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds” (cited in Ravindran 1998: 51).

However, the Vienna Declaration, adopted by consensus by the World Con-ference, confi rmed the universality of human rights and rejected the notion of cultural relativism. The Declaration, in paragraph 1, reaffi rms the solemn com-mitment of all States to fulfi ll their obligations to promote universal respect for and observance and protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all. It stressed that “the universal nature of these rights and freedoms is be-yond question”. The problem of national and regional peculiarities is referred to in paragraph 5 of the Declaration which provides:

All human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated [...] While the signifi cance of national and regional particularities and various his-torical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, it is the duty of States, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms.

The mention of particularities and various historical, cultural and religious back-grounds is sometimes interpreted as a sort of escape clause, as an argument for not [yet] complying with human rights standards (Bomert and Genugten 1995: 44). This understanding of paragraph 5 does not take into account the last part of the

62 Jan Servaes

formulation which underlines that States are duty-bound, regardless of their po-litical, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights. In line with this formulation, cultural specifi cities should be taken into account in the promotion and protection of human rights, therefore they should rather help to determine the most effective modalities and ways and means to overcome dif-fi culties in the implementation of human rights and fundamental freedoms. This is important not only for the debate concerning the universality of human rights, but also in a more general context for international relations. Rejecting cultural relativism and recognizing at the same time the signifi cance of cultural specifi c-ities, the Vienna Conference intensifi ed the discussion concerning relations be-tween cultural values and human rights. This has been, in particular, articulated in the debate concerning the so-called “Asian values”.

Are Asian values such as respect for tradition and the elderly, strong fami-ly ties and communitarianism, emphasis on duties and responsibilities, compat-ible with human rights? The answer can be only positive. There is no contradic-tion between them. If so, what are then those specifi c elements of Western hu-man rights tradition which, from an Asian point of view, should not be a part of the universal concept of human rights? The West is accused of eccentric individ-ualism, consumerism, drug addiction and violent crimes. However, neither hu-man rights nor democracy may be blamed or are responsible for these ills, re-sulting from excessive liberalism and the erosive forces of the market economy and industrialization.

Based on this relativist theory, some governments have argued that the cultur-al contract between individuals and the state is fundamentally different in Asia. The assumption is that Asian societies stress the interests of the community and Western societies stress the importance of the individual. Ravindran (1998) ob-serves that the argument supporting community rights against individual rights, in practice, is used against communities by denying them their rights. While Asian states stress the importance of community values, they fail to respect the freedom of expression and organization that invigorates community life. “Asian governments incorrectly confl ate state and community. Consequently, they im-pose severe restrictions on the social and political activities of citizen groups on the pretext that these groups pose a threat to the state” (Ravindran 1998: 51). Therefore, Yash Ghai (1995) argues that the debate on universalism would be sterile and repetitious if no effort is made to understand the conditions that gen-erate challenges for universalism. He points at the following paradox: those Asian governments contesting universality are precisely those having strong links with global capitalism. Ghai concludes that these Asian leaders debate universality to undermine the importance of human rights in the eyes of their own people and not the West.

Tommy Koh (1999), the executive director of the Asia-Europe Foundation,


takes another position. He asks himself why the West reacts in such a negative way when Asians profess their belief in Asian values and fi nds three possible rea-sons: (a) the West does not accept Asia as an equal: “Most people in the West, including its intellectuals, still regard Asia and Asians as inferior”. A detailed analysis of fi fteen Western newspapers and weeklies on Asia in general and the Hong Kong take-over in particular confi rm this statement (see Ramanathan and Servaes 1997); (b) a potential challenge to Western hegemony; (c) giving Asian values a bad name: “Some of East Asia’s political leaders have given Asian val-ues a bad name by seeking to justify their abuses of power and the inequities of their societies in the name of Asian values. For example, corruption, collusion and nepotism should be condemned by all Asians. They have nothing to do with Asian values. To put it more accurately, they have everything to do with bad Asian values but nothing with good Asian values. This leads me to my point that it is essential to distinguish between good Asian values and bad Asian values. Not all Asian values are good values, just as not all Western values are good values. There are good Asian values and bad Asian values, just as there are good West-ern values and bad Western values” (Koh 1999: 10). I cannot say it better.

Therefore, the existence of cultural differences should not lead to the rejec-tion of any part of universal human rights. They cannot justify the rejection or non-observance of such fundamental principles like the principle of equality be-tween women and men. Traditional practices which contradict human rights of women and children have to be changed. “Nevertheless, all cultures can contrib-ute to the general discussion concerning the human rights concept. The estab-lishment of a proper balance between rights and responsibilities, between indi-vidual rights and their collective dimension, between individuals and groups, is far from being achieved, not only in the Asian region but also in Western societ-ies. It is not accidental that in recent years, such attention is given to the prepa-ration of various declarations of human duties or responsibilities and the elabo-ration of a global ethics which are seen not as a rejection but as a reinforcement of universal human rights” (Symonides 2000).

8. Cultural respect and cultural dialogue

Let me conclude this contribution by considering how we may go beyond differ-ences and initiate culturally-mutual respect and dialogue. Although this concerns intercultural communication in general, what is said below should apply not less but more to the scientifi c, professional, scholarly, elite community. I want to be-gin with a quote from the Report of the World Commission on Culture and De-velopment, chaired by the former UN Secretary General Javier Pérez de Cuél-lar and sponsored by the UNESCO: “There is evolving in our time a global civ-

64 Jan Servaes

ic culture, a culture which contains further elements to be incorporated in a new global ethics. The idea of human rights, the principle of democratic legitima-cy, public accountability, and the emerging ethos of evidence and proof are the prime candidates for consideration ... Today, the idea of human rights, though still challenged by recalcitrant governments, is a fi rmly entrenched standard of polit-ical conduct and will have to be a corner-stone of any global ethics” (De Cuél-lar 1995: 36–37).

The acceptance of the very idea that persons belonging to one culture should not judge the policies and values of other cultures, that any system of common values cannot and does not exist, indeed undermines the very basis of the inter-national community and the “human family”. They cannot function without the existence of standards allowing them to judge what is right or wrong, what is good or bad. The World Commission on Culture and Development in its report, Our Creative Diversity, points out that the logical and ethical diffi culty about relativ-ism is that it must also endorse absolutism and dogmatism. Cognitive relativism is nonsense, moral relativism is tragic (De Cuéllar 1995: 55). An assertion of ab-solute standards is a condition sine qua non of reasoned discourse concerning a code of conduct or behavior.

Contrary to cultural relativism, cultural diversity and plurality of cultures have to be seen as positive factor leading to intercultural dialogue. In the contempo-rary world, cultures are not isolated. They interact and infl uence each other. The intercultural dynamics is set in motion by the contemporary processes of global-ization which lead, not without tension, to the emergence, consolidation or refor-mulation of specifi c cultural and ethical values common to the various cultural areas. Any culture in relation and comparison with other cultures may fi nd its own idiosyncrasies and peculiarities, its strong and its weak points. The report argues that development divorced from its human or cultural context is growth without a soul. This means that culture cannot ultimately be reduced to a subsid-iary position as a mere advocator of economic growth. It goes on by arguing that “governments cannot determine a people’s culture: indeed, they are partly de-termined by it” (De Cuéllar 1995: 15). The basic principle should be “the foster-ing of respect for all cultures whose values are tolerant of others. Respect goes beyond tolerance and implies a positive attitude to other people and a rejoicing in their culture. Social peace is necessary for human development; in turn it re-quires that differences between cultures be regarded not as something alien and unacceptable or hateful, but as experiments in ways of living together that con-tain valuable lessons and information for all” (De Cuéllar 1995: 25).


8.1. Cultural freedom

More is at stake here than attitudes. It is also a question of power. I wish to stress this especially in view of the recent events in Kosovo, Israel or New York. Poli-cymakers cannot legislate respect, nor can they coerce people to behave respect-fully. But they can enshrine cultural freedom as one of the pillars on which the state is founded.

Cultural freedom is rather special. It differs from other forms of freedom in a number of ways. First, most freedoms refer to the individual. Cultural freedom, in contrast, is a collective freedom. It is the condition for individual freedom to fl ourish. Second, cultural freedom, properly interpreted, is a guarantee of free-dom as a whole. It protects not only the collectivity but also the rights of every individual within it. Thirdly, cultural freedom, by protecting alternative ways of living, encourages creativity, experimentation and diversity, and helps preserve the very essentials of human development. Finally, freedom is central to culture, in particular, the freedom to decide what we have reason to value and what lives we have reason to seek. “One of the most basic needs is to be left free to defi ne our own basic needs” (De Cuéllar 1995: 26).

8.2. Participatory action

Another action-oriented dimension of cultural localization is, for instance, the activities of civil society groups and grassroots social movements concerned with cultural and ethnic issues. It is these activities that try to counterbalance global cultural fl ows and express concern with local cultural identity. Here, the fi rst con-cern is also with localization and not with globalization. When scholars talk about global grassroots social movements, they often only refer to two areas in which these movements have global tendencies: the environment and human rights.

It is in these areas that we face common, global risks and in these cases there are no “others”. But with culture there are others. Moreover, we are not even sure that our anxiety shared with others can produce the experience of, to say it with Tomlinson (1994: 63), a global “we”. The global warming and the rising of the sea level is, for instance, catastrophic for many Pacifi c Islands because they will literally lose their land. But in this case, there is still no global “we”. So, even without the problem of ethnic diversity, fundamental religious differences and cultural variety, we have great diffi culty in creating a global “we”.

66 Jan Servaes

8.3. Global ethics

Therefore, the Pérez de Cuéllar Commission argues that there is an urgent need for a global ethics which starts from a global-cultural perspective. The Commis-sion suggests that the following principal ideas should form the core of a new global ethics: (a) human rights and responsibilities; (b) democracy and the ele-ments of civil society; (c) the protection of minorities; (d) commitment to peace-ful confl ict resolution and fair negotiation; and (e) equity within and between generations. The report observes that many elements of a global ethics are now still absent from global governance. Moreover, Robertson and Merrills (1989: 259) point out that “there is a crucial distinction between legal rights and moral rights”. The principal ideas on which such global ethics need to be built should be carefully examined and discussed.

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Part 2. The discursive dominance of the West

Chapter 5Reporting the Hong Kong transition:A comparative analysis of news coverage in Europe and Asia

Jan Servaes and Sankaran Ramanathan

1. Introduction

The process of communication is sometimes likened to a two-sided mirror, where-in both sides of an issue can be viewed. More often than not, however, communi-cation is mostly one-sided, like the special-effect mirror, which results in images that contain distortions, inaccuracies and stereotyping. These images that audi-ences receive affect their perceptions, attitudes and behavior. In fact, despite the increasing fl ow of intercultural communication, there are still serious misunder-standings and misperceptions among the peoples of the world. Hence, the “glob-al village” seems to suffer from intra-village communication diffi culties and ob-stacles (Kato 1977). What are possible causes of the problems, especially in the case of Western media representations of the non-Western Other?

In this contribution, we present and discuss fi ndings from our research proj-ect entitled Asia Reporting Europe and Europe Reporting Asia: A Study of News Coverage (1997). The study was commissioned by the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF). Through quantitative and qualitative studies of 30 some newspapers and magazines, 15 in Asia and 15 in Europe respectively, published between 27 June and 6 July 1997, we try to determine how many and what kind of Europe-an events were reported in Asia, and, conversely, how many and what kind of Asian events were reported in Europe. It will be seen that, despite the increased international travel, hypermedia, and above all the so-called globalization, there are alarming imbalances in cross-cultural communication and representation be-tween Europe and Asia. The major quantitative fi nding is that reporting of Asian events by the European media is signifi cantly less than that of European events by the Asian counterpart. Of the 3725 news items studied, 1563 are European events reported in the Asian media, 1413 items are stories about the Hong Kong handover reported in the Asian media, whereas only 749 items are Asian events reported in the European counterpart. This latter fi gure is all the more striking when it reveals that almost half of those articles relate to the largely internation-

74 Jan Servaes and Sankaran Ramanathan

al, historic event of the Hong Kong handover. Qualitatively, they fi nd that cover-age of Europe in the Asian press is more extensive than that of Asia in the Euro-pean counterpart. Whereas European publications obtain more than half of their stories from their own sources/correspondents, Asian publications rely heavily on Western news agencies. While Asian publications tend to be more balanced in their reporting of European events, there are more instances of negative reports about Asian events in the European publications, the majority of which emanate from their own correspondents. Moreover, the handover of Hong Kong is cov-ered by European publications from a nationalistic and to some extent ethnocen-tric perspective. In contrast, few or no examples of a comprehensive Asian per-spective are found in the European media.

2. Some theoretical considerations

The basic premise in this study is that the production of news discourse is infl u-enced generally by the political, economic and cultural system as well as by the actual situation in which the production and transmission of information takes place. Firstly, news cannot be considered purely as a series of facts or a window through which we look at the external world: “Rather it is a cultural product and the accounts and description of the world which it gives are produced from within a specifi c interpretative framework” (Glasgow University Media Group 1980: 3). Secondly, news is an organizational product, generated by routine occupational practices in an institutional setting with specifi c performance demands as well as limits of time and resources. These organizational and institutional factors also shape the structure in which news is being produced (Brown, 1995). Third-ly, news is manufactured by journalists who – often unconsciously – select and interpret a number of facts, based on an “unclear vision of society”. Hence Gold-ing and Middleton (1982: 112) state that “we should never forget that news pro-duction, like all other social activities, involves real people doing real jobs about which they are able to refl ect and over whose content they have considerable au-tonomy.” Our task as sociologists or communication researchers is to discover and to explain the limitations of that autonomy.

3. Studies on image-creating

Writing in 1983, Will Teichert et al. found that images of Germany as portrayed by foreign media affected people’s perceptions of that country. Starting from the MacBride Report (1981), statements about the inadequate reporting on the Third World, preferences for negatively-assessed events and dependency of Third World

75Reporting the Hong Kong transition

countries on international news agencies, the authors undertook a one-week study of reporting in Germany about Malaysia, Mexico and Kenya. Finding that such reporting was inadequate and unbalanced, they suggested the need for media to be more responsible when reporting about foreign countries.

Hidetoshi Kato (1977) found that the images held of the United States dif-fered from one country to another, depending on the historical and international context. He discussed reports of the images of America in Japan, Korea, Malay-sia and the Philippines. Despite the rapid growth of technological developments affecting mass communication in the 1970s and 1980s, Kato felt that the global village still suffered from intracultural communication diffi culties. He stressed the need for, and greater role of, institutions devoted to the objective of bridging the gap between different cultures.

Sankaran Ramanathan (1987) found that leading American newspapers and magazines generally portrayed negative images of Malaya/Malaysia over a for-ty-year period (1946–1986). The quantum of reporting was small, it was inad-equate, further there were many examples of bias, distortions, inaccuracies and stereotyping in the reports studied. Discussing policy implications for Malaysia’s foreign press relations, he recommended rejection of the “do nothing” and “nega-tive action” policies in favor of a proactive press relations policy.

Studying the images of Africa in major U.S. news and opinion magazines, Pratt (1980) found that these magazines gave low reportage/coverage of African news and events. Of those events covered, there was a preponderance of confl ict-type news and reports about dissident groups. He concluded that the miniscule cov-erage of the content coupled with the emphasis on violence and negative events, portrayed the continent negatively.

4. Studies of news production

A number of studies postulate that news may be perceived as the result of com-bined action based on institutionally-determined and collectively-made choices under the current economic, political and cultural interest constellations (further elaborated upon in Servaes and Tonnaer 1991).

News production has a lot in common with other social practices that are car-ried out on a routine basis in a formalized institutional context. It is at this point that the concept of professionalization comes into play. On the one hand, journal-ists and media workers in general use a specifi c paradigm of reality to cover re-cent events in the world. On the other hand, professionalism also provides news-makers with a set of “implicit” practices of production routines. In other words, professionalism offers journalists “a legitimate (and legitimating) way of seeing


the world as well as practical frameworks which stipulate how to assemble sto-ries to report on perceived happenings” (Dahlgren 1984: 6).

The news production process is believed to contribute to the societal ideation process. By that, we mean the manner in which not only the rational or cogni-tive, but also the irrational or intuitive elements of knowledge, ideas and infor-mation are passed on. In this case, ideation is not only to be seen as a distribu-tion of specifi c facts or events, but rather as a generalized angle of vision on so-cial reality with strong affective and subjective components.

Thus, Davis and Walton (1983), in their analysis of the “Aldo Moro Story”,found that the visual and verbal content of the news about the death of the mur-dered Italian Christian-democrat more distinctly stated how the media contrib-uted to the preservation of an ideological consensus rather than via a study of the “events” which constitute the news: “There is a universally assumed consen-sus (in Western media) within which, with some cross-cultural variation, com-plex causes and impact of armed opposition and revolutionary violence are re-duced by the inferential frameworks of ‘law and (dis)order’, the ‘violent society’, the threat to democracy, and international terror, to a simple picture of a tempo-rary and unprovoked outbreak of irrational violence in an otherwise ordered and peaceful society” (Davis and Walton 1983: 48). An analysis of the internation-al news coverage about the assassination of Lebanese president-elect Beshir Ge-mayel arrives at the same kind of observations (Van Dijk 1984).

One classic study on the “implicit news structure rules” was published in 1965 by Johann Galtung and Mari Holmboe Ruge of the Peace Research Institute in Oslo. Their study on “The structure of foreign news” (1965) analyzed how the Congo, Cuba and Cyprus crises of the early 1960s had been reported in four news-papers in the Norwegian capital. They found that the vast majority of “spot news” items originated from a very limited number of international news agencies. They also identifi ed a dozen factors that seemed to mark an event as newsworthy:

(1) the time-span needed for an event to unfold itself and acquire meaning;(2) the scale and intensity of an event (both in absolute and in relative terms);(3) the clarity of an event;(4) the meaningfulness (meaning both ‘cultural proximity’ and relevance);(5) the consonance;(6) unexpectedness;(7) continuity;(8) composition (balance) of the available news.

These eight news values were considered to be of a general or “universal” nature. Four additional news values were culture-specifi c: (9) elite nations and (10) elitepersons; (11) personifi cation and (12) negativity in the news.


Galtung and Ruge formulated a number of hypotheses concerning the interre-lationships of these news values. The hypotheses of selection (“the more events satisfy the criteria mentioned, the more likely that they will be registered as news”), of distortion (“Once a news item has been selected what makes it news-worthy according to the factors will be accentuated”), and of replication (“both the process of selection and the process of distortion will take place at all steps in the chain from event to reader”) have been tested by several researchers since (for an elaboration and overview, see Boone and Servaes 1982; McQuail 1994; Mowlana 1997).

Other studies have found that the impact of news may well lie beyond the ra-tionalistic dimension and may well be of a subjective dimension from a rather ideological or mythical nature. According to Roland Barthes (cited in Joseph Campbell 1988: 10), “A myth has a double function: it points out and it notifi es, it makes us understand something and it imposes it on us”. Campbell adds: “A dream is a personal myth; a myth is the public dream of a society”. Myths are generally expressed through the narrative form of storytelling. Myths are human phenomena (creations of the human mind and spirit); at the same time they are cultural phenomena (they effectively organize the way we, as a group, view por-tions of our world).

Some scholars see the invasion of Grenada in February 1982 as a period where-in myths are strongly emphasized (see Servaes and Drijvers 1986; Servaes 1991). The handover of Hong Kong by Britain to China seems to provide another op-portunity for such an approach.

What precedes here seems to justify the thesis that “news is a myth-maker”.Dahlgren (1984) suggests that the mythic domain of (TV-)news performs four basic operations on a regular basis:

1. It establishes and cements the social order as part of our cognition.2. It legitimates and celebrates the basic and dominant structures, functions

and leadership of the social order.3. It serves to explain and interpret that which transpires which is of relevance

for the social order.4. For the viewer or media consumers in general, the mythic domain evokes

identifi cation and loyalty to the social order.

These observations should not lead to the conclusion that the mythic domain de-nies or camoufl ages social tensions. On the contrary, tensions are brought out and are part of the social order’s dynamics. “The point is, however, that they are rendered safe for the social order as a whole: the boundaries and limits of the is-sues, their signifi cance, the stakes involved, the array of perceived and reason-able options, etc. are presented, interpreted and (usually) resolved such that the contours of the social order remains intact” (Dahlgren 1984: 77).


This review of relevant studies testifi es that the area of news selection and production has been investigated by communication scholars in all parts of the world. They constitute much of the theoretical framework upon which this study is based. These and other studies of African and Latin American media point to the universality of the need for media to remember their role in affecting per-ceptions of, and attitudes to, people living in faraway places who practice dif-ferent cultures.

We must also mention the broader issue of whether the media can be guided and told what to report and what not to report. The Western journalistic tradition (as exemplifi ed in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution) holds that the press must be absolutely free. Whereas Asian leaders such as Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad have repeatedly called for the press to be more responsible, not only in reporting about national affairs but also in reporting about foreign countries. Thus, there is a bipolar division with regard to freedom of the press, with one end representing the libertarian philosophy and the other, the authoritarian philosophy.

5. Reporting the handover – quantitative analysis

A four-month study of 30 newspapers/magazines, 15 each in Asia and Europe, was undertaken in 1997 to determine how much (quantity) and what kind (qual-ity) of European events were reported in Asian newspapers/magazines and how much and what kind of Asian events were reported in European newspapers/mag-azines within a specifi ed time period (27 June–6 July 1997).

The Asian news publications selected were: Asahi Shimbun, Asian Wall Street Journal, Asiaweek (Asian Edition), Bangkok Post, People’s Daily (China), Far Eastern Economic Review, Jakarta Post (Indonesia), Dawn (Pakistan), New Straits Times (Malaysia), Newsweek (Asian edition), Philippine Daily Inquirer,South China Morning Post (HK), Straits Times (Singapore), Times of India and Time (Asian Edition).

The European media selected were: International Herald Tribune (Intl. Edi-tion, Paris), The Guardian (London), The Times (London), Le Monde (Paris), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Frankfurt), Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Zurich), El Pais (Madrid), Volkskrant (Amsterdam), De Morgen (Brussels), Time (Eur. Edi-tion), Newsweek (Eur. Edition), The Economist (London), The European (Lon-don), Der Spiegel (Hamburg) and Knack (Brussels).

The main objective of the study was to determine how much reporting of Asian events there was in fi fteen selected European newspapers/magazines, and how much reporting of European events there was in fi fteen selected Asian newspa-pers/magazines. For both European and Asian media, the majority of publica-


tions selected were in English. However, we also included publications in Ger-man, French, Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin and Japanese.

The study was also designed to fi nd out how the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China in July 1997 was reported in the Asian and European media.

The outlining of a new study methodology has to be based upon an interdis-ciplinary approach. A fundamental problem, however, is “how to combine a va-riety of methodologies in the same research design so that these mutually rein-force and complement each other” (White 1985: 23). That is precisely what we accomplished by combining normally separately used research methodologies, namely, the quantitative and qualitative content analysis.

Based on the quantitatively standardized, international inventory and encod-ing agreements which will give us an idea about the “content” and “organiza-tional structure” of Asia/Europe reporting, we had to build on these fi ndings in our own research design.

Hence, a three-stage content analysis technique was utilized. In the fi rst stage, we translated and compiled news reports, inclusive of listing, classifi cation and determination of typology. The typology utilized was the standard typology used for content analysis studies (Schramm and Atwood 1981). Stage2 comprised data entry and statistical analysis, using the Statistical Package for the Social Scienc-es (SPSS) program. In Stage 3, we undertook an in-depth analysis, including a qualitative analysis. At this stage, specifi c news items were selected, and head-lines and content were read again to determine the direction of the stories. Di-rection here is determined with regard to whether a story is positive, negative or neutral, based upon the reading of headlines and text and interpretation of pho-tographs/illustrations (if any). In all cases, there had to be agreement between two researchers vis-à-vis direction of stories.

The study initially set out to select categories and analyze stories about Europe appearing in the selected Asian publications, and stories about Asia appearing in the selected European publications. Since the time period chosen coincided with the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China, we also included all stories about the handover appearing in both sets of publications.Thus, the total number of stories studied was:

Asia reporting Europe – 1565 StoriesEurope reporting Asia – 749 StoriesHong Kong handover stories in Asian publications – 1411 StoriesTotal – 3725 Stories

Therefore, the basic fi nding is that Asian publications have greater coverage of European events, as compared to the coverage of Asian events by European pub-lications.


Looking more closely, it can be observed that the total number of stories for the South China Morning Post was 699 items, this included both coverage of European events as well as a large number of stories on the Hong Kong hando-ver. This was expected, as the newspaper is based in Hong Kong. Newspapers in neighboring countries (Bangkok Post – 410 items, Straits Times – 377 items and Jakarta Post – 307 items) also had considerable coverage of both the handover as well as European events.

The newspapers which had the least coverage were the People’s Daily (44 items) and Asahi Shimbun (116 items). In the case of the People’s Daily, it can be postulated that low coverage of Hong Kong may have been in line with the of-fi cial policy of treating the handover as a low-key event.

The International Herald Tribune led the European-based publications in cov-erage of Asia (85 items). It was followed by The Times, Le Monde (66 items), Neue Zürcher Zeitung (62 items), Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung (54 items) and El Pais (56 items). Discounting the handover stories, it can be said that the coverage by European publications of Asian events was minimal.

These fi gures support one of the common hypotheses of many international comparative studies, namely that one can still speak of a historically rooted news dependency relationship between Europe (the former “center”) and Asia (the for-mer “periphery”) (see, e.g., Golding and Harris 1997).

Asian publications carried a signifi cant amount of sports/recreation stories (609 stories, or 39.0%) about Europe. The primary focus was on the Wimble-don tennis championship, wherein Pete Sampras and Martina Hingis emerged as champions. The second most important category was “Economy/Business/Labor/Finance” (218 stories, or 13.9%), followed by “political stories” (154 sto-ries, or 9.9%) and “international relations” (138, or 8.8%) stories. The least men-tioned categories of news were religion (7 stories) and extraordinary/strange/bi-zarre (8 stories).

With regard to Europe reporting Asia, there were 141 stories (18.8%) in the “Economy/Business/Labor/Finance” category. The most prominent events were effects of the Hong Kong handover, the declining value of the Thai baht and its implications for Asia, Europe and the rest of the world. The second most impor-tant category was “political stories”, and the third was “international relations”.

The majority of Hong Kong handover stories were of the political category (640 stories, or 38.4%). This was to be expected. The next category was “inter-national relations” (301 stories, or 18.1%), and here the emphasis was on the fu-ture of China-Taiwan relations, the future of Portuguese Macaw and the impli-cations of the handover for the rest of Asia.

In other words, our fi ndings show that the Hong Kong handover was covered by each European newspaper from a nationalistic and to some extent also “ethno-centric” perspective. Almost half of the articles give a description of the handover.


A second general conclusion is that the broad political framework in which the newspapers covered the confl ict is a dependency axis. This dependency axis has two major components: fi rstly, stories that assess the changes which may occur on a geo-strategic and political-economic level; secondly, the “domino-effect” of the handover on other neighboring countries and regions (especially Taiwan).

Almost exclusively, the Hong Kong handover stories were assessing the con-sequences of this dependency axis from a Western (including U.S.) or European perspective in general or a nation-specifi c perspective for those countries with historical, political or economic interests in Hong Kong. In most instances, Eu-ropean newspapers which, as shown in the quantitative analysis, have a strong interest in the region, such as the IHT and The Economist, leave the Asian per-spective under-illuminated. Few or no examples of an Asian perspective have been found in stories about the handover.

The British newspapers’ coverage deserves a special mention, for it refl ect-ed the British colonial perspective. The majority of the articles referred (some-what nostalgically) to the British colonial past and covered the events related to the handover from the perspective of the major British players involved (Gover-nor Patten, Prince Charles etc.). The tone of the articles was “pessimistic” as re-gards the future of Hong Kong on the one hand, and “romantic” regarding the colonial past on the other hand.

The United Kingdom was by far the most frequently mentioned in the Asian publications (646 stories, or 41.3%). This was due primarily to the reportage of the Wimbledon tennis tournament, fi nancial/economic stories emanating from London.

The second European country mentioned was France (148 stories, or 9.5%) mostly in connection with motor racing and French reaction to the European Union and NATO talks.

The third European country was Russia (111 stories, or 7.1%), mostly with re-gard to political stories, (e.g. Yeltsin sacks minister, appoints daughter as advis-er) and the crash at the MIR station. The fourth European country was Germany (103 stories, or 6.6%), mostly with regard to fi nancial/economic stories, German reaction to NATO talks and to European Union proposals.

Hong Kong was the state most frequently mentioned in the European publi-cations (188 times, or 25.1%). This was followed by China (119 times, or 15.9%) and Hong Kong related stories emanating from the UK or mentioning the UK (112 times, or 15.0%). The UK felt closest to Hong Kong for historical, politi-cal and economic reasons. Asian countries mentioned were Japan (52 times, or 6.9%), Thailand, India and Cambodia (21 times, or 2.8% each).

London was the city from which the most number of stories (383 stories, or 24.5%) were fi led in the Asian publications. This was followed by Wimbledon (191 stories, or 12.2%), Paris (122 stories, or 7.8%) and Moscow (88 stories, or


5.6%). With regard to Europe reporting Asia, the largest number was datelined Hong Kong (276 stories, or 36.8%), with the second being London (again, these were stories about the handover; 100 stories, or 13.4%) and the third being To-kyo (52 stories, or 6.9%).

Reuters was the main source for Asian publications which reported on Eu-ropean events (604 stories, or 38.6%). The second most important source was Agence France Presse (384 stories, or 24.6%), the third was the Asian publica-tions’ own correspondents stationed in European countries (164 stories, 10.5%) and the fourth was Associated Press (140 stories, 9.0%). The number of stories emanating from Asian news agencies such as Bernama, Jiji Press, Kyodo, Press Trust of India, United News of India and Xinhua was relatively small.

The publications’ own correspondents accounted for nearly two-thirds of all Asian stories (466 stories, or 62.2%). The European publications studied de-ployed their own correspondents stationed in Asia to cover the handover and re-lated events such as U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright’s visit to Vietnam and Prince Charles’ visit to the Philippines.

The physical presence of these correspondents in Asia can be considered as ordinary. We assume that European publications’ coverage of Asian events would be far less if not for the Hong Kong handover and allied stories.

With regard to international news agencies, Reuters again emerged as the main source of news (88 stories, 11.7%), followed by Associated Press (45 sto-ries, 6.0%), New York Times News Service (26 stories, 3.5%) and Agence France Press (22 stories, 2.9%).

This study therefore shows that the dependence of Asian publications on in-ternational news agencies as the prime sources of news, a phenomenon noticed in the 1970s and 1980s, is still prevalent in the 1990s.

European personalities most often mentioned in Asian publications were Rus-sian President Boris Yeltsin (33 times, or 2.1%), tennis players Martina Hingis (32 times, or 2.0%), Boris Becker (31 times, or 2.0%), Pete Sampras (28 times, or 1.8%) and Monica Seles (28 times, or 1.8%). Apart from these, former Alba-nian President Sali Berisha (26 times, or 1.7%) and British Prime Minister Tony Blair (25 times, or 1.6%) were also mentioned in the Asian publications.

With regard to Asian personalities mentioned in European publications, for-mer Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten (38 stories, or 5.1%), Chinese President Jiang Zemin (35 stories, or 4.7%) and Hong Kong’s administrator Tung Chee Hwa (28 stories, or 3.7%) were the most frequently mentioned personalities, al-most exclusively in handover stories. Prince Charles received a signifi cant num-ber of mentions also in connection with the handover and his visit to the Philip-pines (20 stories, or 2.7%).

Besides the coverage given to the handover (which peaked on 30 June and 1 July), there were 18 other Asian stories on the front pages of European publica-


tions. With regard to Asian publications, there were 24 front-page stories about European events. Therefore, it can be stated that in terms of treatment, Asian pub-lications gave more prominence to European events when compared to promi-nence given by European publications to Asian events.

Taking into consideration the scripts of various languages studied, the size of stories was measured in square centimeters, as this would provide a uniform measurement. In analyzing the size of stories, we divided it into four categories as follows: fi llers – 100 sq. cm and less; small stories – between 101 to 500 sq. cm; major stories – between 501 to 1000 sq. cm; and in-depth stories – 1001 sq. cm and more. This study shows that for both Asia and Europe, the largest num-ber was small stories (1238 stories out of 2312, or 54%). However, when we com-pare both categories of stories, it can be seen that stories about Europe published in Asian publications were longer.

To summarize, the main fi nding of the quantitative study was that reporting/coverage of Asian events by European media was less than reporting/coverage of European events by Asian media. Of the 3725 news items studied, 1563 were European events reported in Asian media, 1413 items were stories about the Hong Kong handover reported in Asian media, and only 749 items were Asian events (including stories of the Hong Kong handover) reported in the European media.

Other fi ndings of the study were:

– The United Kingdom was the country most frequently mentioned in Asian publications, followed by France, Russia and Germany. Regions and coun-tries most frequently mentioned in European publications were Hong Kong, China, Japan, Thailand, India and Cambodia.

– While European publications obtained more than half of their stories from their own sources/correspondents, Asian publications still rely heavily on international news agencies, particularly Reuters.

– London was the only city from which the most number of stories were fi led for Asian publications, followed by Wimbledon, Paris and Moscow. For Eu-ropean publications, Hong Kong, London and Tokyo were the cities from which the most number of stories emanated.

– Stories about the Hong Kong handover dominated the front pages of publi-cations studied.

– There were few illustrations/cartoons supporting European stories in Asian publication. Cartoons/illustrations in European publications were mostly political and about the handover.

– While Asian publications generally tended to be neutral in their reporting of European events, there were more instances of negative reports about Asian events in European publications.

– Wimbledon tennis players such as Hingis, Becker and Sampras were the


European personalities mentioned most often in Asian publications. The most frequently mentioned political fi gures were Russian President Boris Yeltsin, former Albanian President Sali Berisha and British Prime Minis-ter Tony Blair. Asian personalities featured most often in European publi-cations were former Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten, Chinese President Jiang Zemin, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Tung Chee Hwa and Prince Charles.

– Asian publications concentrated on sports/recreation stories from Europe. These were followed by economic/business/fi nance stories and internation-al relations. European publications concentrated on economic/business/fi -nance stories followed by political stories and international relations.

The hypothesis that the interest which the press attached to Hong Kong would be dependent on the proximity or involvement regarding the former British colony was found to be correct. Proximity is not only a geographical criterion, but can also be assessed in tandem with political, economic, cultural and social factors.

Our fi ndings show that the handover of Hong Kong was covered by Europe-an publications from a nationalistic and to some extent “ethnocentric” perspec-tive. Almost half of the articles gave a description of the handover. Asian me-dia coverage of Hong Kong was extensive in newspapers operating in countries with close proximity to Hong Kong, especially Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Contrarily, few or no examples of a comprehensive Asian perspective have been found in the European media studied.

6. Qualitative analysis

The qualitative analysis involved selection of specifi c news items, an in-depth reading of headlines and text. The main purpose was to determine their direc-tion – positive, negative or neutral. At this stage, fi llers and short news stories were excluded, as they were basically factual reports. We concentrated on the longer news stories, editorials and in-depth articles.

For this purpose, the researchers zeroed in on the Hong Kong handover stories. As expected, Asian media gave considerable coverage to this event, with the South China Morning Post leading the way, followed by newspapers from neighboring countries such as Bangkok Post, Philippine Daily Inquirer, Jakarta Post, Straits Times and the New Straits Times. This fi nding is consistent with the “proximity value” of news, that is, the closer the scene of a news event is to the place of pub-lication, the greater is its news value. In the case of Hong Kong-UK relations, we must also recognize that there is a cultural/historical proximity.


With regard to European media, while reporting of this event by The Times was neutral/positive, The Guardian concentrated on less positive aspects, in-cluding British offi cials’ unhappiness at the handover, Hong Kong’s sex trade, and negative predictions about the economic future of Hong Kong under Chi-na’s administration. Other European publications highlighted the arrival of PLA troops, bleak future for Hong Kong dissidents and even a call for Gibraltar to be returned to Spain (in El Pais newspaper). Deeper analysis of articles in El Pais revealed that while the slant of the handover stories was positive towards China, there were reservations about maintenance of democracy, future fi nancial status of Hong Kong and the fate of the dissidents.

Negative Asian stories published in European media were the Japanese pay-off scandals, political instability in India, accidents/disaster in Pakistan and the unstable political situation in Cambodia. There were also a signifi cant number of commentaries and opinion pieces about the unstable Indian and Cambodian political situations.

With regard to European stories published in Asian media, the majority was positive or neutral such as sports stories and economic/business stories. Among the stories that can be categorized as negative were the MIR crash and failed NATO talks. Nevertheless, many Asian publications published these as straight news reports that were credited to one or more of the international news agen-cies. These stories were usually carried in the inside pages devoted to world/in-ternational news.

Overall, the study found that there was less reporting of Asia in Europe than of Europe in Asia. While the reporting of Europe by Asia was more positive, prom-inence in the reporting of Asia by Europe was given to “negative” news and hu-man right stories. Also “political” issues dominated the news category.

The handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China was given considerable coverage by both Asian and European newspapers/magazines in general. How-ever, the kind of coverage and the perspective taken differed considerably from newspaper to newspaper, and from country to country.

In summary, therefore, the following statements can be made:

(1) Coverage of Asia reporting Europe was greater and more extensive than Eu-rope reporting Asia.

(2) While European publications obtained more than half their stories from their own sources/correspondents, Asian publications still rely heavily on international news agencies, particularly Reuters.

(3) While Asian publications generally tended to be neutral in their reporting of European events, there were more instances of negative reports about Asian events in European publications.


The study found that reporting of Asian events by European publications was less than reporting of European events by Asian publications. Further, coverage of European events by Asian publications was more extensive and accompanied more often by illustrations as compared with coverage of Asian events by Euro-pean media. As was to be expected, the Hong Kong handover was covered more extensively by Asian publications, especially those from Hong Kong itself and the neighboring countries.

The qualitative analysis revealed that there were instances of negative Asian stories published in European media, the majority of which emanated from their own correspondents. By contrast, in Asian publications, which relied heavily on the international news agencies, stories about Europe were largely neutral.

Earlier in this chapter, we had alluded to differing perceptions about what makes news and what are the news values that editors and reporters look for. As the general dictum states, “No news is good news”. This has been interpreted to mean that news by its very defi nition is negative in nature. Herein lies the justifi -cation propounded by most journalists for doing what they do. We feel that while such perceptions may help journalists to justify what they do (or do not do), jour-nalists still have a duty to present fair and accurate reports of the day’s events in a meaningful context, as recommended by the British Hutchins Commission on the Press more that 50 years ago. Our study shows that the Hong Kong hando-ver was not presented in a fair and meaningful context, particularly by the Eu-ropean media studied.

Another dimension of the discussion is whether news is a commodity to be bought and sold to the highest bidder. As our study substantiates, stories about Wimbledon (including sexy pictures of women players), Prince Charles’ exploits, political instability in India and Cambodia, Hong Kong’s sex trade and its un-certain future, and other such stories seem to be what the media of both regions want. While the Hong Kong handover was adequately reported and highlighted in the media coverage in both Asia and Europe prior to the event itself, the cov-erage tapered off dramatically very soon after 1 July 1997. Four years later, it has become part of contemporary history and may soon be relegated to the realms of ancient history.

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Chapter 6The contest over Hong Kong:Revealing the power practices of the Western media

Shi-xu and Manfred Kienpointner

1. Introduction

To take a radical cultural turn in the West-dominated language and communica-tion studies can assume many different forms, as the rest of the book will demon-strate. In the present chapter, we want to suggest that the discipline of discourse studies can and should take a cultural-critical approach by studying how the West itself represents and acts upon non-Western “others”. For, such an approach may not only highlight and undermine everyday ethnocentric practice and preju-dice of Western discourse as a whole, but also, at both a theoretical and empiri-cal level, draw attention to the Western discourse of the Other, beyond perennial western discourses of self-identity or whatever its other concerns. Further, such work is complimentary to the understanding of non-Western discourse, which is the central concern of this book and the object of enquiry of Part 3. Western and non-Western discourses are dialectically defi ned – primarily through the notion of cultural power (Chapter 1).

As a contribution to this cultural-critical move in discourse studies, we shall take up the Western media discourse on Hong Kong’s transition in 1997. In par-ticular we shall identify some discursive patterns of cultural domination in the respect of cross-cultural representations and relations. For purposes of generality about the Western media discourse, we have based our research on data selected from newspapers and magazines published in the UK, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Australia and America.

A largely qualitative analysis, this study will highlight two main discursive patterns in the media. Firstly, the Western media take Hong Kong’s identity as an object of Western warnings or threats and as such also an object of Western wishes or desires. For instance, when the Western media apparently “ask ques-tions” about Hong Kong’s future, they do not simply give an answer. Instead, they issue warnings or threats, implying what the future of Hong Kong ought to be like. Secondly, the Western media categorize and defi ne the identity for Hong Kong, instead of letting Hong Kong speak, and then use the descriptions as rhe-

90 Shi-xu and Manfred Kienpointner

torical and ideological strategies to constrain the action of Hong Kong and, in that connection, of China. In this sense, it may be said that the Western media determine the nature of Hong Kong in order to suit their own desires and objec-tives. For example, the Western media attribute Hong Kong’s economic success almost exclusively to British colonial rule, in contrast to the competing and un-desirable accounts by Hong Kong and China themselves.

It should be pointed out that our choice and arrangement of data material and research methods are motivated by our cultural-political approach. One of its central methodological strategies is to expose recurring culturally repressive discourses in order to raise awareness for cultural equality (see also Chapter 1). Therefore, our data analysis is designed, not to be representative, but to be reveal-ing. In this way, hopefully more detailed and critical attention will be paid to the sorts of discourse in question and others (see also Chow 1992, 1993; Flowerdew and Scollon 1997; Knight and Nakano 1999).

2. Discourse, argumentation and the media

2.1. Forms of argumentation as acts of power

In the analysis of constructions of and actions upon Hong Kong, we assume that activities of injunction, threat and identity description can be accomplished through the form of argumentation. Therefore, an account of argumentation is in order. In our view, argumentation is that dimension and mode of discourse in which an argument is offered in support of a (potentially) controversial claim (Shi-xu 1997: Chapter 2; Kienpointner 1983, 1996). A claim can be a statement of fact or a call for action; argument can be a set of reasons for that claim. Our defi nition of argumentation above is similar to that of Van Eemeren et al. (1996: 5), though they seem to put more emphasis on the rationality of argumentation, “Argumentation is a verbal and social activity of reasoning aimed at increasing (or decreasing) the acceptability of a controversial standpoint for the listener or reader, by putting forward a constellation of propositions intended to justify (or refute) the standpoint before a rational judge.” Argumentation is rational, but, to us, only within the context of the argumentation in question and critique of it must therefore be based on that specifi c context. This leads to our next point.

Our argumentative analysis is not just aimed at disclosing the discursive com-plexities and dynamics, but motivated by the political concern to come with a possibly helpful critique as an additional tool aimed at the same political ends as well. So the critical, evaluative thrust of argumentation studies might be use-fully employed to accomplish the same methodological orientation alluded to in the forgoing section. For, “[t]he general objective of the study of argumentation”,

91Revealing the power practices of the Western media

as Van Eemeren et al. point out (1996: 22), “is to develop criteria for determin-ing the validity of argumentation in view of its points of departure and presen-tational layout and to implement the application of these criteria in the produc-tion, analysis and evaluation of argumentative discourse.” Thus, we shall specif-ically apply the notion of argumentative scheme to the argumentative discourse in question, drawing on the rich literature on argument schemes (e.g. Perelman-Olbrechts-Tyteca 1971; Schellens 1985; Kienpointner 1992; Walton 1996; Gren-nan 1997). “Argumentative schemes (or structures, norms)” are relationships be-tween claims and arguments that are widely but roughly shared in a cultural-lin-guistic community. As minimal elements of a prototypical argument scheme we distinguish warrant, ground and conclusion (cf. Toulmin 1958), to which some-times further elements are added, for example, premises which deal with poten-tial “rebuttals”.

2.2. Mass media as intercultural communication

It may be observed that media discourse in the form of editorials, comment arti-cles, background stories or political speeches, for example, is not simply descrip-tive or a merely running commentary on what has happened. Rather, it is argu-mentative in nature. That is, it is normally designed to persuade, to undermine alternative, undesirable versions of reality, to change the perceptions of individ-uals, groups or institutions, and to advocate a particular course of action. More-over, such media discourse can have an extraordinary role to play in the construc-tion and transformation of culture (e.g. Bauman and Sherzer 1996; Billig 1995; Carbaugh 1988; Grodin and Lindlof 1996; Thompson 1995: Chapters 4 and 7). For, media discourse is a quintessential site and mode in which collective, cul-tural ways of thinking and feeling, speaking and acting, explaining and evaluat-ing are formed, maintained, changed and, above all, contested.

It appears that media communication theory has not paid suffi cient attention to the contemporary mass media as transnational and cross-cultural (but see McQuail 2000). That is, it has a dimension, and capacity to act as a culture to, or upon, national and cultural Others and this intercultural quality is becoming increasingly salient and dynamic with the expansion of the new media and pro-cesses of globalization. Mediated communication nowadays, for example, Tony Blair’s speech on the Euro or George W. Bush’s talk of “the axis of evil”, is not just intracultural, but intended, and received, transnationally and cross-cultur-ally. Here it may be noted, too, that there are many mechanisms whereby such intercultural communication can be accomplished. Not only can “we” mediate “our” news actors in “our” media, but also “we” can mediate the Other’s actors in “our” media and “our” news actors can be mediated in the Other’s media and


so on. Everyday media discourse such as these instances can be a powerful form of intercultural communication and have signifi cant consequences on human cul-tural development as a whole. In this study, accordingly, the Western journalistic communication will be seen from the perspective of its intercultural framing.

3. The contested cultural space

In the following cultural move to critique Western media practices regarding the non-Western Other, we shall try to characterize two interrelated patterns of ar-gumentation, as indicated earlier. To that end, we provide textual analysis of two groups of examples. In making sense of these, the contexts in which they are em-bedded obviously have an important role to play, which we shall make explicit where necessary. Since, however, the historical context of Hong Kong has been given ample description in previous chapters, we shall no longer dwell on it.

3.1. Threatening the cultural Other

In this section, we want to draw attention to a regular way in which the Western media have spoken of the future of Hong Kong and China’s role in it. Reading through Western media publications prior to and during Hong Kong’s transition, one cannot fail to notice that one of the central questions, and concerns, raised is over the future shape of Hong Kong and over China’s part in it. This is easily un-derstandable. The West, as the rest of the world, has a stake in it. What is strik-ing however is that the “answers” that the Western media furnish are rarely pre-dictive, or explanatory. Rather, they are imperative in nature. That is, frequent-ly, they declare, explicitly or indirectly, what the future of Hong Kong ought to be like and what China must and must not do. Consequently, they turn a cultural Other’s future into an object of the West’s own desire and dictatorship.

More specifi cally, various Western media actors use the speech acts of threat, warning or command, sometimes coupled with promise of reward, in speaking of the future of Hong Kong and of China’s behavior. Often it is said to the effect, “let Hong Kong remain Hong Kong or else we will ...”. In such cases, they invoke (American-) Western power, Hong Kong and China’s own “self-interest”, the dire “consequences” if “they” (fail to) do such and such, and so on and so forth. How-ever, such “self-interest” and “consequences” are also inextricably linked with the West’s own norms and perspectives. What Hong Kong should become and what China is allowed to do and obliged to do with regard to Hong Kong are therefore also premised on Western wishes, Western plans and, above all, Western rules. These cross-cultural argumentative media practices can then be seen as perform-


ing acts of patronizing and intimidation. Seen from another perspective, the fu-ture identity of Hong Kong has less to do with the West’s genuine interest in Hong Kong’s possible cultural development than to do with the West’s own self-interest and desire to regiment the cultural Other’s behavior accordingly.

Let us look at a few examples to see how such coercive mediation of the fu-ture identity of Hong Kong is exercised in various Western media.

Example [1][...] the most fascinating question is not how China will change Hong Kong but how Hong Kong will change China – and the world.Human rights in Hong Kong are already emerging as another focal point for Chi-na-American relations, and any kind of crackdown in the territory could trigger a serious downward spiral in relations between Washington and Beijing. “Big change is coming – to whom and how?” International Herald Tribune, 01/07/97

In this example from the American newspaper, apparently, an inquisitive ques-tion is raised – what Hong Kong will turn into after its return to China; N.B. “the most fascinating question”. And yet, far from being a cultural development to be speculated about or predicted, Hong Kong’s future is already being fashioned by external desires and concerns. First, it is pointed out to China that human rights in Hong Kong have already emerged as an issue. The paper alerts China, too, that this is becoming central to its relation with the United States. Further, it is-sues a more stern warning to the Chinese government’s leaders (N.B. “Beijing and Washington”): they may be given a punishment of “a serious downward spi-ral in relations between Washington and Beijing ‘if they dare to attempt’ any kind of crackdown in the territory”. Of course one of the basic premises under-lying these statements regarding the Sino-American relations is that China needs a good relationship with the U.S. Thus, it may not be an exaggeration to say that “Big change is coming – to whom and how?” (the title of the article) is a local cultural development for the American media, and the American Administration whose interest it represents, to prescribe and engineer.

Example [2]This is why all the rhetoric about Hong Kong’s future has a far larger purpose; it is really about China’s future.[...]Will the Hong Kong handover advance or retard US-China relations? It depends upon two factors. First, China must ensure that “one country, two systems” works, which means honoring the Basic Law it has endorsed to secure Hong Kong’s guarantees.[...]


But if “one country, two systems” has this design tension, it contains its reward. [...] Once China shows the concept works in practice, then it has the perfect ar-gument to put the incorporation of Taiwan on the agenda. “Whose values will prevail?” The Australian, 02/07/97

This Australian text at the historic time would be expected to be in the same “nat-ural” context of questioning about what Hong Kong will become. However, the question posed here is a preformulated and designed one: it is linked specifi cally with the “make or break” of the Sino-American relations (“advance or retard”); in addition, it is concerned with “[w]hose values prevail?” More importantly, the answer given to it is not a prediction or description, but an injunction to China. It is an injunction because it tells China what it must do (“must ensure”); it is an injunction also because it specifi es or stipulates for China (the meaning of) what it must do (”which means”). Although this imperative is issued by different (viz. Australian) media, they refl ect the same concern or desire: namely, China does what the media require.

Hong Kong’s future identity (in that connection what China must [not] do to it) is not only an object of discursive coercion, but it may be an object for Ameri-can-Western reward as well, if certain conditions are met. Thus, in this text, what China will do and what Hong Kong will be are not just a matter for threatening and warning, but are placed in a moral order which the media, and the West-ern interests they represent, set for them as well. Here it may be recalled that it is widely understood that China needs a good relationship with Washington, not least with regard to the issue of Taiwan.

In the following two Austrian examples, the course of future is laid out force-fully for the Chinese government and Hong Kong by stressing the “internation-al” norm as well as “their own interest”:

Example [3]Ein Satz sollte unauslöschlich in das Gedächtnis der Beijinger Führung sowie in das von Tung Chee-hwa, des Regierungschefs der chinesischen Sonderverwal-tungszone Hong Kong, eingeschrieben sein: Die Augen der Welt sind auf Hong Kong gerichtet [...]. Beijing sollte schon im eigenen Interesse Hong Kong Hong Kong sein lassen. Nicht nur, weil es die vielzitierte Gans ist, die goldene Eier legt. China wird doch, sollte man hoffen dürfen, auf die Tilgung der einen Schmach nicht eine neue folgen lassen: die Zerstörung des wiedererlangten Territoriums. (One sentence should be irreversibly engraved on the memory of both Beijing’s leaders and Tung Chee-hwa, the chief executive of the Chinese Special Admin-istrative Region of Hong Kong: The eyes of the world are directed at Hong Kong [...]. In its own interest, Beijing should let Hong Kong remain Hong Kong. Not just because it is the much-quoted goose which lays golden eggs, but also be-


cause, after the elimination of one humiliation, China will not let a new one fol-low (at least, we may hope so): the destruction of the regained territory.) “Ein Land, zwei Systeme (One country, two systems)”, DER STANDARD [An Aus-trian newspaper], 01/07/97

Example [4]Machte Peking das Vertrauen in die Finanz- und Handelsmetropole zunichte, gingen ihm unschätzbare wirtschaftliche Möglichkeiten verloren. Damit würde aber auch das Vertrauen des Auslandes in Chinas Politik der Öffnung schwer er-schüttert. (If Beijing destroyed the confi dence in the fi nancial and commercial metropolis [Hong Kong], then it would lose invaluable fi nancial opportunities. At the same time, the confi dence abroad in China’s policy of opening would be seriously shaken) Helmut L. Müller: “Hong Kong wird zum Testfall (Hong Kong will be a testcase)”, SALZBURGER NACHRICHTEN [An Austrian newspa-per], 28/06/97

Like the previous two texts, these two are also concerned, implicitly, with the question of the future of Hong Kong, with special reference to the role of Chi-na in the process. Just as in the previous examples, the future development of Hong Kong is woven into the argumentative discourse. Especially the text in Ex-ample [3] strongly reminds China and Hong Kong (leaders) that they should re-member the rule and expectation of “the world”: N.B. “should be irreversibly en-graved on the memory” and “the eyes of the world are directed at Hong Kong”. Formulated in this way, this reminder also sends an explicit injunction and warn-ing: the “the world” – the Big Brother – is watching and you should never for-get it. (In this text, the threat comes from a broader agent – “the world”, instead of “Washington”.)

In addition, slightly different from the external “reward” argument in Exam-ple [2], the “self-interest” strategy is used in these two texts: that is, the argumen-tative discourse appeals to the China’s “own stake” in Hong Kong. The two texts analyze for China its stake into two kinds: one positive (“the much-quoted goose which lays golden eggs”) and one negative (“let a new one [humiliation] follow [...]: the destruction of the regained territory”; “lose invaluable fi nancial oppor-tunities” and “the confi dence abroad in China’s policy of opening would be se-riously shaken”). However, it might be pointed out that what China is persuaded to do here dovetails precisely with what “the world” requires, namely, “let Hong Kong remain Hong Kong”, or in other words, keeping the status quo. A similar restrictive kind of way of prescribing the cultural Other’s future may be seen in the next Dutch example:


Example [5]Succes van Hongkongs experiment zal blijken uit degrag locale grootheden. (The success of Hong Kong’s experiment is yet to be seen from the behavior of the lo-cal fi gures.) De Volkskrant, 02/07/97

Here the statement strategically links the Other’s preferred future outcome of Hong Kong’s transition to the “behavior” of one particular group of people. By the same act, it excludes other factors. In this way, it places the responsibility, and possible blame, on the named group of people.

3.2. Speaking for the Other

If the kind of discourse characterized above attempts to engineer the future of a cultural Other through warning, threat and patronization, then there is anoth-er kind of domineering discourse in the Western media that categorizes and de-fi nes the cultural Other’s present and past in an authoritarian, ahistorical and de-rogative way. Such discourse is often premised on some authoritarian and “true” knowledge, some Western standpoint, or some negative “facts”. In this perspec-tive, the categorizations and characterizations of cultural Other are part of the rhetorical strategies to suit the West’s own desires and perspectives (Shi-xu 1996). Consequently, an asymmetrical cultural relationship emerges: the cultural Other is silenced, dismissed and belittled, thereby the West’s knowledge, authority and thus superiority are maintained.

The issue here is, of course, not that of defi nition and categorization. A cul-ture perhaps always needs to categorize and defi ne its own reality and others. Rather, what we take issue with is the manner – the certainty, the authority, the disdain – in which a culture speaks of the Other and, consistent with it, the lack of willingness to construct with the Other the realities in question. Such a criti-cal attempt is all the more useful in the contemporary context of decolonization: if the West has always spoken for and instead of its Other in the past, alternative, new voices are harder to suppress in the future.

To have a concrete idea of what certainty, what authority and what disdain have continued to be at work and how in the Western media, let us look at some examples. We shall begin with how the former British Governor of Hong Kong determines the past cause of success of Hong Kong (Example [6]) and how he defi nes its present state (Example [7]):

Example [6]I get thrown back again and again to a wonderful quotation of de Tocqueville, in which he said if you want to know why a country or a city is rich and prosper-ous don’t look at its forests, don’t look at its harbours, don’t look at other national


resources, look at its laws. Does it have laws which encourage people and help people to thrive and excel? And that’s precisely what Hong Kong has had. “We did a pretty good job”, [interview with Christopher Patten] Newsweek Special Issue, 05/07/97

It should be noted that in the background of this argument there were many dif-ferent kinds of explanations of Hong Kong’s success, especially China’s and Hong Kong’s among them. It may be observed in this text that plausible causal candi-dates for Hong Kong’s success are ruled out one by one (N.B. the alliteration of don’ts) and the one singled out is highlighted as a result. The negations here ef-fectively invoke but undermine alternative accounts, potential or real. The con-struction of auto-question-and-answer (“Does it have laws which encourage ... to excel? And that’s precisely what Hong Kong has had”), which might be in-terpreted as the output of a rhetorical strategy which renders the premises of an argument more evident (a fi gure called “subiectio” in ancient rhetoric, Quintil-ianus 1953: 9.2.14f.), has a similar effect. More importantly, the recourse to the authority of de Tocqueville most effectively warrants the preferred explanation. In this perspective, it becomes clear that it is the laws established by the British government that caused the actions that led to Hong Kong’s success, though such an understanding would be based on the presupposed knowledge about the role of the British administration in the laws. It may be argued, therefore, that the re-ality of how Hong Kong has achieved economical success is associated with an argumentative and sociocultural motive, viz. excluding alternative claims of the causes and thereby glorifying British colonial rule (“its laws”). This may also be evidenced by Patten’s quotation in the title.

It is in this context of seeing Hong Kong’s success as the result of British rule that Patten categorizes and defi nes the current Hong Kong:

Example [7]Christopher Patten: [...] It [Hong Kong ...] is a very international city. And I think that anything which detracts from that in the future would be very damaging. “We did a pretty good job”, Newsweek Special Issue, 05/07/97

In this instance, the former Governor of Hong Kong categorizes Hong Kong in a particular way (i.e. “very international”), against possible others. (Here it may be added that Patten talks about this also in the context of his daughters hav-ing many international friends there.) Further, he defi nes that particular qual-ity of Hong Kong as valuable and something that Hong Kong and China must keep. That this defi nition is also presented as a warning is marked by calling other kinds of identity as negative (note “very damaging”). Thus, this authori-tarian way of characterizing Hong Kong as “very international”, in the context


of its return to China, not only ignores or excludes a possible alternative, native perspective, but also, with the warning, has the effect of restraining the cultural Other’s sphere of action.

A similar Other-denying way of defi ning the Other’s situation may be seen in the following German text:

Example [8]Martin Lee kann jedoch einen überzeugenderen Trumpf ausspielen, für den es kein Gegenargument gibt: „Hong Kong verdankt seinen ungeheuren Erfolg al-lein seinen Freiheiten“. (Martin Lee, however, can play a more convincing trump card, against which there is no counter argument: “Hong Kong owes its huge suc-cess exclusively to its political liberties”.) Gabriele Venzky: “Recht muss Recht bleiben (The law’s the law)”, ZEIT Punkte 3 (1997), p. 77.

Here the newspaper article’s author defi nes an argument about Hong Kong as ex-clusive and overwhelming (note “a more convincing trump card, against which there is no counter argument”). Importantly, it should be realized that in the background of the German author’s favored argument, there have been numer-ous very different and even contrary arguments, from Hong Kong, from China and elsewhere. Such universalist and repressive practice constitutes again a re-lationship of domination, or specifi cally what might be called that of “the West speaks for its Other”.

Example [9]At dawn today, China stamped its authority on its new possession, when 4,000 troops backed by armored cars and helicopters crossed into the territory. [...][...]At the formal handover ceremony, Prince Charles bequeathed Britain’s last big overseas domain to Jiang Zemin, a former trainee at the Stalin Auto Works in Moscow and now head of the world’s last major, albeit zealously capitalist, Com-munist Party.[...]The substitute legislature immediately began its fi rst formal session, ready to pass an omnibus law activating a string of legislation, including curbs on protests and the funding of political parties, which had been approved before the handover.“Last hurrah and empire that covered a quarter of the globe closes down”, The Guardian, 01/07/97

There are several features worth noting here. For one thing, the Guardian arti-cle still refuses to recognize the historical fact of British aggression and coloni-zation (“new possession”, “Prince Charles bequeathed Britain’s last big overseas


domain”). For another, it selects potentially negative aspects to defi ne situations (“4,000 troops backed by armored cars and helicopters”, “a former trainee at the Stalin Auto Works in Moscow”, “legislation, including curbs on protests and the funding of political parties”). Furthermore, it creates incongruity, contradictions or even ludicrousness in the Other (“China stamped its authority on its new pos-session, when 4,000 troops backed by armored cars and helicopters crossed into the territory”, “Prince Charles bequeathed Britain’s last big overseas domain to Jiang Zemin, a former trainee at the Stalin Auto Works in Moscow and now head of the world’s last major, albeit zealously capitalist, Communist Party”, “The sub-stitute legislature immediately began its fi rst formal session, ready to pass an om-nibus law activating a string of legislation, including curbs on protests and the funding of political parties”).

Undermining the Other can be achieved through even more subtle ways. From the same article and from the same Western media position, a local native is cho-sen here to make a desired negative characterization of the Other:

Example [10]“Why must we pay such a price to be Chinese?” asked Martin Lee, leader of the Democratic Party.“We are proud to be Chinese, more proud than ever before. But why is it that our leaders in China will not give us more democracy, but take away the mod-est democracy we have fought so hard to win from the British government.”, The Guardian, 01/07/97

4. Conclusion

We began this study with the observation that a cultural turn to discourse also re-quires a look at one’s own cultural discourse of the Other. A critical self-refl ection is particularly relevant to Western culture and communication research in par-ticular because it has historically and continues to speak ethnocentrically of the Other (Said 1978, 1993). In this case, it will be interesting to examine how acts and relations of domination are reproduced, especially in the now cross-cultural-ly oriented media discourse. Further, we suggest that while the role of discourse in the construction of culture(s) is now well recognized in cultural, media, lin-guistic and communication studies, the detailed discursive complexities and dy-namics of cultural (re)production, remain to be explored. So in an “inward” look such as this, we should pay attention to the strategic ways through which cross-cultural repression is achieved. Finally, since repressive discourse is contentious, we surmised that argumentation would be an important device in the defi nition,


maintenance and transformation of cultures. Thus, it will be useful to investigate how argumentation operates in the process.

Accordingly, we highlight two interrelated patterns of Western media dis-course on the transition of Hong Kong. Firstly, we showed that the future iden-tity of Hong Kong has been subjected to argumentatively organized, threaten-ing acts of Western media discourse. Thereby, we revealed that the future con-duct and development of Hong Kong and China are inextricably bound up with the wishes and desires of the powerful Western media (and the institutions they represent). Secondly, we showed that the Western media have categorized and characterized the situations and facts of Hong Kong in ways that suit Western interests and in the process also restricted the cultural Other’s own freedom of thinking and speaking, or specifi cally, possibly their own ways defi ning and char-acterizing themselves.

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Flowerdew, J. and R. Scollon 1997 Public discourse in Hong Kong and the change of sovereignty. Journal of

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1992 Alltagslogik. Stuttgart: Frommann /Holzboog. 1993 Vernünftig Argumentieren. Reinbek: Rowohlt.

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Said, E. W. 1978 Orientalism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1993 Culture and Imperialism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

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tercultural contexts. International Journal of the Sociology of Language. 122, 47–72.

1997 Cultural Representations: Analyzing the Discourse of the Other. New York: Peter Lang.

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grounds and Contemporary Developments. Mahwah, N.J.: Erlbaum.

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register variation?: Case studies of variation between Hong Kong and inland China news reporting]. [Zhongguo Yuwen] 1, 35–41.

Chapter 7Hong Kong’s press freedom:A comparative sociology of Western and Hong Kong’s views

Junhao Hong

1. Introduction

The historic return of Hong Kong to China in July 1997 has been one of the fo-cal points in the international media. This is partly because the event has a great deal to do with not just the Asian-Pacifi c region, but also the rest of the world. Economically, Hong Kong is one of the world’s most important trade and fi nan-cial centers; politically, Hong Kong’s future is a showcase to Taiwan, which is in a very complicated and uncertain process of reunifi cation with mainland China; and culturally, Hong Kong is the media and culture production center in Asia, as well as one of the world’s major media and culture exporters.

Since Hong Kong returned to China in 1997, much attention – from both in-side and outside Hong Kong – has been paid to the situation of Hong Kong’s press freedom. For many years, press freedom has been seen as one of the cornerstones of Hong Kong’s capitalist society and its democratic system. In particular, it has been regarded as crucial to Hong Kong’s economic prosperity and political sta-bility, as well as a vital part of the lives of millions of people in Hong Kong. It has also been feared, however, that, after its return to China, Hong Kong would no longer have press freedom. Thus, one intriguing question would be what hap-pens to Hong Kong’s press freedom after Hong Kong’s transition.

Indeed, press freedom is a crucial issue in any society. For one thing, the de-gree of press freedom refl ects the sociopolitical framework that a media system is embedded, for example, an authoritarian system, a totalitarian system, a libertar-ian or democratic system. As Siebert, Peterson and Schramm (1956) state, a me-dia system is a mirror of a social system and political structure: the press always takes on the form and coloration of the social system and the political structure within which it operates. Thus, the situation of Hong Kong’s press freedom is one of the most important and useful indices to measure the situation of Hong Kong’s social system and political structure after its handover. For another, in any soci-ety, regardless of its social system and political structure, media and communi-

104 Junhao Hong

cation issues are never merely professional and institutional matters; they always manifest, overtly or covertly, political, ideological, social, cultural and econom-ic desires and concerns. Therefore, a study of the views of a society’s freedoms, especially that of the press, as in the present case of Hong Kong’s press freedom, may shed light on what a society is like and what it will aspire to become.

An even more fundamental issue here is how press freedom is defi ned, and whose and what criteria are used to determine the degree of press freedom. There are two, apparently contradictory aspects to this issue. On the one hand, the dif-ferences in social structures, political systems and ideologies are often manifest-ed in their views, or discourses, of press freedom. On the other hand, these very discourses can also be managed in such a way that they conceal those structural and ideological differences. Further – a crucial point to emphasize here – the dif-ferences in the views of press freedom may result in divergence in the implemen-tation of press freedom, with regard to, for example, what kind of press freedom would be allowed and to what extent the press can enjoy freedom.

Before and after Hong Kong’s return to China, Western countries have been using their own perspectives and criteria in evaluating press freedom issues in Hong Kong. The views of the people of Hong Kong, a population of seven mil-lion, on the other hand, are largely neglected or ignored in the Western media. More crucially, the very notion of press freedom is a Western historical product. One may thus ask: Is the Western model of press freedom the only correct one? Should that be used for the case of Hong Kong? For what purposes and with what consequences? Shouldn’t the issue of press freedom be judged by the people of Hong Kong and of China as well? And how should it be evaluated anyway?

Based on primary sources obtained through my several research trips to Hong Kong before, during and after the island’s turnover to China, I shall fi rst exam-ine the situation of Hong Kong’s press freedom since its return to China in 1997. Then, I shall compare the Western discourse of press freedom in Hong Kong and Hong Kong’s own view of the situation. Finally, I shall try to account for the dif-ferences between these views and explore the implications of these for cultural studies and discourse studies. In the process, it will be shown that the Western view of Hong Kong’s press freedom does not necessarily refl ect the experience of the Hong Kong people. In fact, it will be seen that the Western countries' strong criticism of Hong Kong’s press freedom since 1997 has refl ected clear attributes of a Western hegemony: using Western models and standards for other countries as the “universal” standards.

105Hong Kong’s press freedom

2. Media and communication in Hong Kong

It is true that before Hong Kong was turned over to China, Hong Kong and Chi-na used two different approaches to media, communication, culture, and almost all political, economic, and cultural issues. But it is also true that after Hong Kong returned to China, Hong Kong and China are still using two different ap-proaches to many issues, especially politics and ideology related issues, includ-ing press freedom.

In China and Hong Kong, media and communication play two different roles. Their different media and communication policies, purposes, functions, and op-erations are derived from or/and are accustomed to their own social systems, po-litical structures and ideological frameworks (Chen and Chaudhary 1995). While China follows the Marxist-Leninist concept of integration of press and govern-ment, media and communication in Hong Kong represent a democratic or free market model: media institutions do not belong to any political party or govern-ment, but are regarded basically as enterprises; media and cultural products are considered mainly as commodities, not ideologies; media and cultural activities are generally motivated by economic purposes rather than political or ideologi-cal purposes.

Historically, Hong Kong is one of the birthplaces of the modern Chinese mass media and communication. In the past several decades, due to the abundance of advertising revenue and purchasing power, Hong Kong has developed a vibrant media and communication industry and has become a major regional center for the world’s news and entertainment products (Mu 1987). Consequently, Hong Kong has been a free-market stronghold, where media and communication or-ganizations generate content in search of profi ts, and where the media and cul-tural industry is highly free in the international arena. Press in Hong Kong is among the freest in Asia, and its media and communication are the second fre-est, only after Japan’s. For instance, a poll on eleven Asian countries’ media and communication about censorship, quality and access to foreign materials shows that Hong Kong is ranked the best, followed by those of the Philippines, Japan, Thailand, South Korea and Taiwan.1

Because of the differences between Hong Kong and China, Hong Kong’s take-over by China could mean a new challenge to press freedom on the island.2 There-fore, whether or not Hong Kong’s press freedom will be maintained has been a major concern among the journalists as well as the public in Hong Kong. With-out a free press, a society is in trouble. As Patten asked, “How can a society claim to be free if it is not possible to tell freely what is going on in that society? It is through freedom of the press that so many of the other attributes of a free society take on life and meaning,” because “all these freedoms interrelate; damage one and you harm another; uphold one, and you reinforce the rest” (pp. 43–44).3

106 Junhao Hong

Therefore, the majority people in Hong Kong were afraid that Hong Kong’s free media and communication system may be crushed by the communist media system and consequently “the press in Hong Kong may be in danger”.4 According to a public survey conducted one year before Hong Kong’s return to China, among the twelve most serious concerns after 1997, the majority people in Hong Kong pointed to press freedom, which topped corruption, infl ation, and other issues.5

They believed that “China will present the press with many challenges to remain free”.6 Also, most journalists in Hong Kong were very concerned with the “possi-bly shriveled press freedom”.7 Even the World Journalists Association was worried that after China’s takeover of Hong Kong press freedom in Hong Kong would be reduced.8 Press freedom in Hong Kong has thus become an issue of worldwide attention and carries much more implications than many other things.

With the knowledge of this, long before Hong Kong’s return to China, Chi-nese offi cials started reassuring the Hong Kong residents about a few concerns in an effort to ease fears over the future of Hong Kong.9 Among the concerns, China was very well aware of the importance of Hong Kong’s press freedom to the society’s political stability and economic prosperity. Therefore, on many oc-casions the Chinese Communist Party’s topmost leaders pledged that China will enact a specifi c law for Hong Kong and that the law will insert some articles to protect press freedom and to keep the press independent from the central gov-ernment’s interference.

As early as in 1994, Chinese President Jiang Zemin promised the owners of Hong Kong’s six largest newspapers and magazines that China will fi rmly im-plement Deng Xiaoping-set “One Country, Two Systems” policy and will keep the press in Hong Kong free and independent after 1997.10 At a conference on Hong Kong’s journalism in 1995, Zhang Junsheng, Vice Director of Xinhua News Agency Hong Kong Branch, the representative of the central government in Hong Kong before 1997, gave a speech in which he said that after Hong Kong’s return to China, “Hong Kong’s press freedom will be protected by the specially estab-lished Basic Law for Hong Kong, and Hong Kong’s press freedom after 1997 will only be increased, not decreased”.11 Just before the takeover, Zheng Jian-zheng, Minister of Information Offi ce of China’s State Council, once again told reporters that after 1997, Hong Kong will be guaranteed “a full press freedom” by the Basic Law.12 The central government also explicitly told Hong Kong’s me-dia that “after 1997 the central government will not practice censorship for Hong Kong’s media”.

Moreover, pledge of press freedom in Hong Kong by the Chinese authorities is documented in the Basic Law, which was drafted by representatives from all parts across China and passed by the National People’s Congress in 1990 and put into effect as of 1 July 1997. This special law was a product of China’s “One Country, Two Systems” principle for Hong Kong and that principle was enshrined


in The Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984, the main document under which Hong Kong is to revert to China. The Basic Law is intended to be the “consti-tution” for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), the offi -cial name for Hong Kong after 1997. In the Basic Law, Article 27 is specifi cal-ly about press freedom, which reads: “Hong Kong residents shall have freedom of speech, of the press and of publication; freedom of association, of assembly, of procession and of demonstration; and the right and freedom to form and join trade unions, and to strike”.13

Under these pledges, since Hong Kong returned to China, Hong Kong has con-tinued to enjoy freedom of speech and of the press, and the press has remained free and so far so good, because “no journalist has been arrested, no media and communication organization has been shut down, and democratic activists have been demonstrating”.14 China has been claiming that the press in Hong Kong af-ter 1997 has been enjoying as much political freedom as they did before 1997.

3. The Western view of Hong Kong’s press freedom

From the very beginning, Western countries were using a Western-styled view and discourse for press freedom in Hong Kong. Although their view is based on the Western experience and is defi ned with Western concepts, it has always been used as a universal model and the only correct model to judge all the countries in the world. Therefore, despite the fact that press freedom in Hong Kong is pledged by the Chinese communist authorities and documented in various laws and acts, the West has often expressed its concerns with Hong Kong’s press freedom after China’s takeover. In its view, the situation of Hong Kong’s press freedom after 1997 has been deteriorating and they have attributed this to covert or overt inter-ference from the Chinese communist authorities.

Among the West’s various criticisms of Hong Kong’s press freedom after 1997, the biggest one is that Hong Kong’s press freedom has changed from an approach commonly used by Western countries to an approach defi ned by the Chinese com-munist leaders. They argued that the Chinese approach to press freedom means a limited, conditioned, and managed press freedom, or, a press freedom under the guidelines, or the interference or control, of the Communist Party and gov-ernment. In other words, in the view of Western countries, Hong Kong’s press freedom after the handover is no longer the same press freedom as that which prevailed before the handover. First, unlike before, even constitutionally, current press freedom is under many restrictions. Second, press freedom is not in the hands of the press, but in the hands of the Communist Party and the central gov-ernment. When domestic and international political situations require press free-dom, the Chinese Communist Party gives freedom to the press; when domestic

108 Junhao Hong

and international political situations do not, the Communist Party takes it away from the press. In the view of the West, therefore, it is the Communist Party and the central government that owns press freedom and decides when and whether or not to give freedom to Hong Kong’s press.

Some Western critics further argued that, although the Basic Law guarantees Hong Kong press freedom one the one hand, it also limits the freedom on the other (Schidlovsky 1996). While Article 27 of the Basic Law provides the press freedom, Article 23 sets restrictions to press freedom, for Article 23 stipulates: “The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall enact laws on its own to prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the Central People’s Government, or theft of state secrets, to prohibit foreign political orga-nizations or bodies from conducting political activities in the Region, and to pro-hibit political organizations or bodies of the Region from establishing ties with foreign political organizations or bodies”.15

To Western countries, Article 23 has little to do with press freedom; instead, it has opened the door to press restrictions and given Hong Kong’s current pro-Beijing government broad power to curb free expression (Cohen, 1997). Accord-ing to a UPI report, Article 23 actually gives pause to every journalist in Hong Kong, regardless of nationality, for, the article does not, nevertheless, delineate what constitutes “political activities”.16 That means that China’s communist lead-ership has a broader power in interpretation.

Particularly, Western observers used two events to support their criticisms. One, in an interview with the infl uential Asian Wall Street Journal on 16 Octo-ber 1996, Qian Qichen, China’s Vice Premier in charge of foreign affairs, con-fi rmed that future commemorations of the Tiananmen killings would be banned in Hong Kong, as would “personal attacks on the Chinese leaders”, however defi ned.17 Qian later again stressed that press freedom “should not include and does not protect rumor-making and personal attacks”, emphasizing that anti-Chi-nese leader slogans such as “Down with Deng Xiaoping” will be illegal in Hong Kong after 1997.18 Two, Lu Ping, Director of the Hong Kong Affairs Offi ce of China’s central government at that time, also warned the Hong Kong press that “it’s all right if reporters objectively report, but if they advocate, it’s an act; it has nothing to do with freedom of the press”.19 As some Western reports com-mented, these discourses of press freedom were not only vague but also arbi-trary – there were so many questions unanswered. What is personal attack and what is criticism? And, what is objective report and what is advocacy? The an-swers to these questions can only be open-ended, and only the Communist Par-ty leadership and the central government have a fi nal say. They concluded that these remarks and discourse of press freedom made by Qian and Lu greatly in-creased the “growing sense of unease” among the people in Hong Kong as well as journalists and news organizations across the world, reeling from a series of


body punches delivered by senior Beijing offi cials over the future of press free-dom (Sung 1997).

4. The view of the people in Hong Kong

Both before and after Hong Kong’s return to China, press freedom has always been an important issue among the people in Hong Kong. Given the fact that Hong Kong has recently gained democracy, this concern is not surprising. Also, given the fact that Hong Kong is the only Chinese society in which “leftists, neutral-ists, and rightists are almost evenly distributed”,20 it is very natural, too, that the views of Hong Kong’s people and media organizations regarding press freedom in Hong Kong since 1997 have been varied.

Indeed, it is true that there are still some people and media organizations in Hong Kong who are still very concerned with Hong Kong’s press freedom after the island’s takeover by China. For instance, in the view of K. Liu (1997), Vice Chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, on the surface, the press free-dom in Hong Kong looks like “business as usual,” but in reality, “if one listens and looks carefully enough, one can defi nitely sense a lot of undercurrents.” Also, in the view of M. Cheung (1998), a former Director of Broadcasting, Radio Tele-vision Hong Kong, media and communication in Hong Kong after 1997 are rel-atively free and “only relatively free,” because both the authorities in China and Hong Kong “have shown more restraint than expected”. For example, when Qian Qichen talked about Hong Kong’s textbooks, he stressed that Hong Kong school books that do not conform with China’s principles should be revised, though Qian gave no details of which textbooks would have to be changed or in what way they contradicted the Basic Law. Despite Qian’s statement that “both the Sino-Brit-ain Joint Declaration and the Basic Law guarantee Hong Kong’s autonomy in educational matters after 1997”, willingly or unwillingly, Hong Kong’s textbook publishing fi rms had to take Qian’s words seriously and many books were “care-fully revised”. Another example is that until today critical reports about the four “Ts” – the topmost Chinese leaders, the Taiwan issue, the Tibet issue, and the Ti-ananmen Square Movement issue – are still taboos for most Hong Kong media organizations (Cheung 1998).

According to these people, the central government has been slowly eroding freedom in Hong Kong, including the island’s press freedom. Subtle and invisible changes as well as open actions towards Hong Kong’s press freedom have been taken either directly or indirectly by the central authorities since 1997. Moreover, “there are a host of subtle changes evident only to the most experienced China hand.”21 According to Mann, the common theme in the press is that the Chinese

110 Junhao Hong

leadership, long accustomed to press coverage that supports its own policies, now is also seeking to rein in Hong Kong’s free-wheeling journalism.22

However, most people and media organizations in Hong Kong are not so critical or pessimistic about Hong Kong’s press freedom after its return to China. On the contrary, while some people and media organizations are critical of Hong Kong’s press freedom since the 1997 transition, the majority people and media organiza-tions hold a generally positive, or approving, view. A survey about the “health sit-uation” of Hong Kong’s press freedom and the society conducted in the summer of 2001 found that four years after Hong Kong’s return to China, on a one to ten scale where ten means the highest, the public’s opinion of the degree of freedom and the credibility of Hong Kong’s press is 6.54. This fi nding is very important, because, according to a similar survey which was conducted in 1997, the public’s opinion towards the freedom degree and the believable degree of Hong Kong’s press was 6.44 (So and Chan 2001). The difference between these two numbers is not mathematically signifi cant, but it is critically meaningful.

First, the fi nding in 2001 means that in the view of the majority people the “health situation” of Hong Kong’s society in general and press freedom in par-ticular after the 1997 transition has not been deteriorating or eroding. And sec-ond, moreover, the improved rating on the scale actually demonstrates that the overall situation of Hong Kong’s society and press freedom in 2001 is even better than that before the 1997 transition. More importantly, based on the surveyors’ interview with the media practitioners in Hong Kong, although many reporters did have some concerns, worries, and fears about the future of press freedom in Hong Kong around the time of the 1997 transition, and some of them may still have some uncertainties for the future, for the past several years they felt at least “things didn’t get worse or probably even slightly get better” (So and Chan 2001). Especially, in the view of Hong Kong’s media practitioners, they were afraid that the Chinese communist regime would bit by bit take away freedom from Hong Kong’s press after Hong Kong became part of China, but surprisingly, the cen-tral authorities have behaved “very tolerantly” towards Hong Kong’s press and “kept their pledges” of press freedom in Hong Kong (So and Chan 2001). Even the Hong Kong government-owned Radio Hong Kong has always been very critical of the new government in Hong Kong established with the transition.23 Therefore, although it is not predictive of the future of Hong Kong’s press freedom, so far, in the view of the majority people and most media organizations in Hong Kong, press freedom on the island has been “healthy” and in general has not received negative effects by the 1997 transition (So 2001). Moreover, according to an in-terview with W. Chan, Political Editor of Apple Daily, the representative “right wing” newspaper in Hong Kong and the only Hong Kong newspaper that has been forbidden by the Chinese central authorities to come to China for political news coverage and to be circulated in China due to its strong advocating position for


“democracy, freedom, and human rights”, the situation of press freedom in Hong Kong in general and for the newspaper itself after 1997 has been much better than it was expected.24 In the view of W. Chan, press in Hong Kong is still enjoying the same freedom as it did before 1997 and “no deterioration has been felt”.

One more interesting fi nding of the above-mentioned survey is that the so-cial status of Hong Kong media practitioners has been declining (Chan and So 2002).25 Many people now are dissatisfi ed with the performance of Hong Kong’s media, saying that there is too much sensational stuff in the media and the mo-rality and self-discipline of the media has been declining. These phenomena have been attributed mainly to the pervasive infl uence of the Western model of the media (Chan and So 2002).

Hong Kong’s continuing press freedom after 1997 is not an isolated social phe-nomenon. The results of the survey about Hong Kong’s press freedom are matched by the fi ndings of a recent survey about the public’s opinion of Hong Kong’s new government and new governor. According to this survey conducted in January 2002, the public’s confi dence indexes of Hong Kong’s new governor and new government have all reached the highest since 1997, with the index of the new government being 92.3% and the index of the new governor being 105.3%. Giv-en this, not surprisingly, the new governor was the only candidate for the second election held in February 2002 and won a second term as the governor of Hong Kong. Moreover, even the public’s confi dence index of Hong Kong’s future po-litical prospect has also shown a steady increase. Compared to the number one year ago, the index has increased by 9.2%.26 In fact, the public’s confi dence in Hong Kong’s press freedom, Hong Kong’s new government, new governor and future political prospects are interrelated and interactive. Thus, it might be said that the more confi dent the public of Hong Kong is in the new government, new governor and future political prospect, the more they are in Hong Kong’s press freedom and vice versa.

5. Critical refl ections on different views of press freedom

In the above, we saw that, from the point of view of mainland China, there have been continued freedoms in Hong Kong, including that of speech and press, since Hong Kong’s return to China in 1997. One of the primary motives for the Chi-nese central authorities to allow Hong Kong to keep press freedom, even though it might be a Chinese-styled one, is to help secure Hong Kong’s political loyalty to the Communist Party and the central government. More specifi cally speaking, it may be suggested that four factors may have contributed to a continued press freedom in Hong Kong after China’s takeover.

First, the Chinese communist leaders are bound to the “One Country, Two

112 Junhao Hong

Systems” policy and the Basic Law, both of which were set by China’s late par-amount leader Deng Xiaoping, which warrant Hong Kong continued freedoms, including press freedom. Second, the international community has pressured China to implement its specially designed policy on Hong Kong. Before and af-ter Hong Kong’s handover, state leaders of many countries asked Chinese leaders to keep their pledges about Hong Kong’s political freedom and economic pros-perity, saying that “after Hong Kong’s handover, China not only needs to respect Hong Kong people’s economic freedom, but also needs to respect Hong Kong people’s political freedom, including juridical freedom, press freedom, and other civil rights,” emphasizing that these were promises made by China in the 1984 Sino-British Declaration and that was “an international agreement”.27 Third, the central government wanted to exchange press freedom for Hong Kong’s political stability and economic prosperity, the central government’s popularity in Hong Kong, and Hong Kong people’s loyalty to the Communist Party and the central government. And fourth, China has intended to use Hong Kong’s handover as a showcase to Taiwan. The continued press freedom in Hong Kong has been pre-sented as a good example of the Communist Party’s sincerity about “One Coun-try, Two Systems”.

Western countries, on the other hand, have been critical of the situation of Hong Kong’s press freedom and have strongly criticized China’s handling of Hong Kong’s press freedom since 1997. One of their central arguments has been that the present press freedom in Hong Kong is no longer the same as that before Hong Kong’s handover. Now press freedom in Hong Kong is something that is given and owned by the central authorities and does not belong to Hong Kong’s press. In their view, press freedom should belong to and should be owned by the press, and it should not be given to the press by the authorities as their mercy.

Although Western countries have often attempted to act as a proxy for Hong Kong, as when criticizing China for its handling of Hong Kong’s press freedom, the view of the public and most media organizations in Hong Kong towards press freedom is quite different from that of the West. In fact, people in Hong Kong have their own standards, choices, preferences and judgments. In the view of Q. Chan, President of Hong Kong Newspapers Evaluation Committee, for example, the press in Hong Kong should make efforts to balance freedom of the press and re-sponsibility of the press; the West-advocated absolute press freedom may not be a good choice for Hong Kong.28 Chan further points out that true press freedom will never be without responsibility, and no press can be said to be a truly free press if it is to be responsible; the society should have some mechanisms to supervise the press, check the power of the press, avoid the abuse of press freedom, and make sure that the public’s interests be ahead of the interests of the press. Recent sur-vey results have clearly shown that, to Western countries’ surprise, Chan’s view is widely shared by the majority of people in Hong Kong. Moreover, some peo-


ple in Hong Kong have questioned Western-styled press freedom, calling it “the freedom of few social elites, economic riches, and people in power”.29 The im-plications of these survey results and the criticism from the people in Hong Kong ought to make Western countries to reconsider their position.

Based on these newly selected readings, let me attempt a few critical observa-tions, with special reference to the current project of reading cultural others.

First, it may be noted that, through reading the cultural Other comparative-ly, it becomes clear that even the basic notions and hence the referents, as in the current case of the constitution of “press freedom”, can be different. These dif-ferences not just refl ect culturally different interests or concerns, but also have important implications for reading the cultural Other. They point to the need to read the Other; and they also render questionable the values that “we” invoke in making sense of the Other. This leads to my next point.

Secondly, the normative judgments made without regard to those by the Oth-er’s own can be not only misleading but also repressive in effect. For, different assumptions and values are used, and erasure or marginalization of other per-spectives universalizes one‘s own ethnocentric standpoint. In the present case, the Western criticism, on the one side, has refl ected a hegemonic tendency: it uses Western models, approaches, and ideologies as the “authentic” and “universal” standards. On the other side, Hong Kong and China attach, in fact, different and new values to their notion of press freedom, for example, social responsibility and the interest of the public over and above that of the press.

In the present particular case, thirdly, the Western critics who impose their own standards in evaluating Hong Kong’s press freedom express an imperialist desire. Their argument that Hong Kong’s press freedom is no longer the same as before is essentially an ahistorical reading regarding the “Other” and an expres-sion against change. As I explained at the outset, press freedom is not an isolated phenomenon, but embedded in social, political, cultural and institutional settings. When Hong Kong returns to China as a new historical condition, press freedom will reorient itself inevitably.

6. Epilogue

Even though sharp differences between Hong Kong and China unavoidably ex-ist, according to an interview with X. Yu (journalism professor and chairman of journalism department, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong, and a lead-ing researcher on the press of Hong Kong), most people and press organizations in Hong Kong are satisfi ed with the present situation of press freedom and are optimistic about the future of press freedom in Hong Kong. They believe that Hong Kong will continue to be the center for free speech for the Chinese media

114 Junhao Hong

and the center for political and international exchanges between China, Taiwan and overseas Chinese communities, for this is one of the foundations for Hong Kong’s prosperity, democracy, human rights and rule of law.

Notes

1. W. Liu and D. Yin, Asian Media Poll Puts Hong Kong on Top in Media Quality, Mainland Near Bottom. China News Digest, 14 June 1998.

2. C. Henderson et al. A new era in Hong Kong could mean a new challenge to the freedom of the press. CNN Newsroom Worldview, 29 April 1998.

3. C. Patten, Standing up for press freedom. Media Asia. 1994, 21(1), 43–44.4. Wang, J. One hundred days after the transition. China Times, 18 April 1997, p.

11.5. Z. Tan, The gloomy prospect of Hong Kong’s press freedom. China Times, 28 Jan.

1997, p. 10.6. Will Hong Kong’s Press Remain Free? – Here’s What To Watch For. American

Journalism Review, Sep. 1997, Vol. 19, No. 7, p. 16.7. Y. Liu, The freedom of press. World Journal, 1996, 20, A18.8. Z. Tan, Poll shows the majority people in Hong Kong are concerned with the fu-

ture of the freedom of the press. China Times, 28 Oct. 1997, p. 12.9. F. Wu and D. Yin, Beijing eases over the future of Hong Kong after handover. Chi-

na News Digest, 4 April 1997.10. Jiang Meets Hong Kong Media Tycoons. People’s Daily, 31 March 1994, p.3.11. Hong Kong’s Press Freedom Will Be Protected by the Basic Law. People’s Daily,

29 Nov. 1995, p.5.12. State Council Stresses Hong Kong’s Press Freedom After 1997. American Liberty

Times, 5 April 1997, p. 25.13. The Basic Law (1997), Beijing: People’s Publishing House.14. K. Liu, Hong Kong Press Wears Gag. Windsor Star, 4 Oct. 1997, p. A9.15. The Basic Law (1997), Beijing: People’s Publishing House.16. Hong Kong Press Chilled by Self-Censorship. UPI, 24 June 1997.17. Qian Qichen On Hong Kong’s Press Freedom, China Times, 4 Nov. 1996, p. 11.18. G. Xie and D. Jia, Anti-Chinese leader slogans Illegal in Hong Kong after July 1.

China News Digest, 26 Feb. 1997.19. Lu Talks about Hong Kong’s Media Practice. China Times, 28 Dec. 1996, p. 12.20. C. So and J. Chan, The believable degree of Hong Kong’s media obviously come

back. Ming Bao, 15 Nov. 2001, C16.21. C. Ligible, Hong Kong after the Handover. Metro Connections, 16 Nov. – 6 Dec.

2000, p. 8.22. J. Mann, Chinese slowly eroding freedom in Hong Kong. Los Angeles Times, 12

Nov. 2000, p. H-5.23. C. So, The ecology of Hong Kong’s media in 2001. Media Perspective, 4–6 August

2001.24. W. Chan, Interview with W. Y. Chan, Political Editor of Apple Daily, Apple Daily,

28 January 2002.


25. J. Chan and C. So, The social status of Hong Kong’s media practitioners declines. Ming Bao, 3 January 2002, B15.

26. Governor’s Confi dence Index Sharply Increased. Ming Bao, 18 January 2002, A10.

27. W. Wang, Clinton pressures China to maintain Hong Kong’s political freedom. Central News Agency, 21 April 1997.

28. Q. Chan, Try to Balance Freedom of the Press and Responsibility of the Press. Ming Bao, 26 January 2002, B12.

29. S. Cavallini, Watchful calm in Hong Kong. IPI Report, Oct. –Nov. 1997, 25.

References

Chen, C. and G. Chaudhary 1995 Asia and the Pacifi c. In J. Merrill (ed.), Global Journalism. 3rd ed. New York:

Longman.

Cheung, M. 1998 Hong Kong and the media: One year after the handover. Paper presented at

the International Symposium “Hong Kong: One Year After Transition,” July 6–8, Vienna, Austria.

Cohen, E. 1997 Hong Kong: The future of press freedom. Columbia Journalism Review, May–

June, 22–26.

Mu, Z. 1987 Mass media in Hong Kong. Publishing Information 262, 3.

Schidlovsky, J. 1996 Grim prospects for Hong Kong. Media Studies Journal 10(4), 45–52.

Siebert, F., T. Peterson and W. Schramm 1956 Four Theories of the Press. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Part 3. Complexity, diversity and Otherness of non-Western discourse

Chapter 8Unfamiliar voices from the Other:Exploring forms of Otherness in the media discourses of China and Hong Kong

Shi-xu

1. Introduction

In the last three chapters, we saw that the Western discourse on Hong Kong’s de-colonization systematically repressed China’s and Hong Kong’s voices, as part of the continued imperialist processes and tendencies. On the one hand, it often sub-jected Hong Kong and China to warnings, threats and injunctions. On the other hand, it kept silence about certain issues, or offered contrary views about other issues. In this chapter, I want to make a cultural turn towards the cultural “Oth-er” and highlight some of the mainland China and Hong Kong’s discourses or voices on the “same” or similar issues that have been marginalized in the West-ern media. My purpose will be twofold. On the one hand, I want to show how incommensurably different the Other’s discourse is from the relevant Western counterpart. This will effectively help deconstruct the Western truths and cen-trality. And this will have theoretical implications, too: non-Western discourses, including their particular concerns, hopes and circumstances cannot be encaged or restrained within a “universal”, “integrated” or whatever other imperialist mas-ter narratives. On the other hand, I want to reveal that that very particularity of non-Western discourse, or in this case the Chinese discourse, does not, howev-er, consist in some consistency or identity of linguistic structures and functions, but some kind of family resemblances and even divergences (see also Wu 1999, 2001; Wu and Hui 2001).

Such discourse of difference cannot, in my view (Chapter 1), be understood merely from a nationalistic point of view (cf. Lee et al. 2002). Rather, it should be seen from a historical and cultural point of view. This means in particular that non-Western discourse be considered from the standpoint of its embedding in the broader international order of historically-derived colonialism and cultural impe-rialism (Fanon 1967: Chapter 4; Young 2001). It will be particularly interesting then to examine how the apparently “Chinese” and “Hong Kong” texts operate in the broader cultural-power network and exert their forms of cultural Otherness.

120 Shi-xu

The new discourse of difference may obviously take many forms, but I shall confi ne the present research to a few areas. Thus, I shall try to classify and char-acterize the various texts in terms of particular topics, themes and actions con-structed therein and with special reference to the textual and contextual means employed to realize them.

In the analytic process, for example, I shall pay close attention to how China and Hong Kong’s discourses put up a postcolonial, anti-imperialist stance on the one hand, and voice China and Hong Kong’s sentiments, concerns and aspirations on the other. At the same time, I shall try to tease out how the Chinese and Hong Kong’s texts diverge from each other within the broad sweep of “non-Western discourse”. Because these new discourses (as will be seen later) differ from the relevant Western discourse in signifi cant ways and constitute unfamiliar voices, their study can prove instructive to the Western (scholarly) community.

2. Methodological preliminaries

The general methodological principles for the current volume have been spelled out in Chapter 1. Here I will only mention a few more particular procedures rel-evant to the task in this chapter. To start with, it may be asserted that the aim of this study is not to achieve accurate or representative description of China and Hong Kong’s discourses. Rather, it mainly attempts to draw attention to, highlight and so tendentiously rearticulate some elements and properties of these discours-es, especially those that have been marginalized or excluded by the West media. Therefore, the approach to data and analysis will be qualitative in orientation.

Guided by this methodological orientation, I have adhered to two particular criteria of data collection. One is that the texts to be taken up must have been generally ignored or dismissed in the Western media. Another is that they must be different in terms of the version of events or nature of action from the relevant Western discourse. In either case, furthermore, the data must refl ect a recurrent discourse (i.e. not represented by singular or incidental texts) in the mainstream Hong Kong and Chinese media. The media material I have chosen to study ap-peared between May and July 1997 (see Primary Sources)*.

It should be noted that in this study, I have avoided direct and obvious products of political parties as I am concerned with public media discourse. In that con-nection, it may be mentioned that Hong Kong’s media are more diversifi ed than the Chinese media, which are largely state-controlled (Lee 1994; Hong this vol-ume). Not infrequently there have been texts in negative terms and perspectives vis-à-vis China (e.g. Apple Daily and the Hong Kong Economic Journal). There is no point for me, however, to repeat or refl ect those voices critical or skeptical of China and the reunifi cation with it, since the Western media have already pre-

121Exploring forms of Otherness in the media

eminently rehearsed them, and because my purpose is to show to the Western (academic) readership some discourses of Hong Kong and China that are unfa-miliar to and repressed in the Western discourse community.

The importance of the historical background – the long centuries of brutal British colonialism lying behind the current analytical focus – cannot be over-emphasized. This has unfortunately often been overlooked or smoothed over, as I pointed out in Chapter1, which recurs in various nationalist analyses of the dis-courses on Hong Kong’s transition, that is, where discourses from Hong Kong, China, Britain, etc., are posited as simply driven by individual national/local ide-ologies. Since the general outline of the historical background has already been furnished in Chapter1, I will not, however, repeat it here. In the remainder of this section, I will just make a couple of methodological points regarding the inter-pretation of the discourses in question.

The fi rst point is about the in-between-the-East-and-West cultural approach I want to take here. Contemporary culture, including discourse, is history-specifi c and contested. Monocultural reading becomes necessarily ethnocentric. There-fore, knowledge about the relevant cultures and histories and ethnographic expe-rience in the local people are particularly important for genuinely intercultural communication (Shi-xu 2001). Also, in reading non-Western discourse as I shall attempt here, tension often arises between “master”, “elite” or “general” method-ologies and local perspectives, concerns and issues. “General” and “local” per-spectives need therefore be integrated as closely as possible. I come from China but have been living literally in between Western and Eastern cultures for the past fi fteen years. This diasporic, intercultural, in-between-cultural and multilingual experience has oriented, and motivated, me towards a pluralist and cultural-po-litical understanding of language and communication, which I shall adopt here.

A particular dimension of this in-between-cultural approach may be empha-sized here. It takes the historical context seriously. In the specifi c instance of the China and Hong Kong’s discourses, this means that I must read the data histori-cally, especially in terms of the long and continued colonial process initiated by the European and Japanese aggression (see Chapter 1). Thus, for example, when they express cultural and national pride on the return of Hong Kong, and when they talk about their interrelations, we should understand such moves as a product of the colonial and anti-imperialist history. Ignoring this past may easily mislead one to conclusions of “chauvinism”, “extremist nationalism” and so on, as has fre-quently occurred in Western complicit-postcolonial accounts of Hong Kong and China’s discourses (cf. Chow 1992).

In order to reduce the obvious tension between dealing with large bodies of discursive data and coming up with concrete details, I have decided to offer two kinds of analyses, one “general” and one “specifi c”. Thus I shall fi rst provide an overview of a discourse in question in terms of the topic and the proposition(s)

122 Shi-xu

about it. Then to illustrate such a discourse, I shall examine a couple of concrete texts with special reference to the textual and contextual devices that contribute to the construction of the discourse being studied. (The bold used in the sample texts highlights the formal properties of the discourse under discussion).

The English translation of the Chinese examples examined below is mine. Here I have tried to render the translation as literal as possible – partly to refl ect the differences in ways of thinking and speaking across the languages and cul-tures. It should be cautioned that some of the English translations carry different meanings in the Chinese language: for example, “the Chinese nation”, “patrio-tism”, “the motherland” carry positive cultural values in this historical context of decolonization and the reunion of China and Hong Kong.

3. Forms of Otherness

3.1. How did the return of Hong Kong become possible?

Reading between the Western discourse and that of China and Hong Kong on the question of the decolonization and return of Hong Kong, one would fi nd the most conspicuous and incommensurable difference is perhaps in the treatment of the question of why and how the return of Hong Kong became possible at the time it did. The British and the Western media as a whole are nearly completely reticent about it. By frequent reference to the 99-year lease, which expires on 30 June 1997, they make the inference available that the British government is “handing over” Hong Kong at the time according to a historical document. The very persistent use of the term “handover” is a case in point. In contrast, the Chinese and Hong Kong’s media insist that the latter’s decolonization and return to China are the re-sults of oppositional, anti-colonial efforts by China and Hong Kong. The broader contrast here refl ects and reveals, more importantly, not a nationalistic difference, but rather the underlying cultural power competition and resistance.

In the Hong Kong media, there is a size-able consensus that Hong Kong should be decolonized from British rule and that Hong Kong should be returned to China. There are expressions of con-cern over the manner and aftermath of the return, which is sometimes offered as the reason for ensuring a smooth transfer. But on the inevitability of the return, it is generally understood that

In the Chinese media, there is an elab-orate discourse on what makes the re-turn of Hong Kong to China possible. It stresses that all the previous Chinese governments rejected the unfair trea-ties signed between Britain and the Qing government and that they tried, though in vain, to reclaim Hong Kong from the imperial Britain. More signif-icantly perhaps, it suggests that, at the


colonial society is a backward form of existence and therefore must be left be-hind and that many people do want to shake off the humiliation from the co-lonial past. Moreover, it is frequently suggested, albeit sometimes implicitly, that the reason for the return of Hong Kong to China is that Hong Kong peo-ple are basically Chinese and the return can inject new vitality into both China and Hong Kong. Thus, for example, the author in an article analyzing the ele-ments and forces opposing the reunifi -cation offers the following account:

Example [1]

[…]

(Imperialism and colonial-ism have re-constructed many societ-ies; anti-imperialism, anti-colonial-ism and de-colonialization then are a rather natural result. [...] Hong Kong’s colonial history has not been complete-ly separated from her mother’s body, so the mother’s blood and emotional bond have long been implanted in her own body. [...] In the second half of the 80’s, with China’s reforms and open-ing-door, Hong Kong’s economic forc-es spread to South China and gradu-ally Hong Kong has become merged into the mother’s body. Such histori-

start of the long drawn-out negotiations in the early 1980s, the British govern-ment continued to refuse to relinquish the territories obtained from those un-fair treaties. Eventually, because of her increased political and economic vital-ity and newly gained international po-sition, China succeeds in reclaiming all the lost territories of Hong Kong from the British colonizer. A variety of rhetorical means, as well as large me-dia space, is devoted to how and why the return of Hong Kong becomes pos-sible on 1 July 1997.

Example [2]

[… ]

…

…

(For this day [...] our country’s gov-ernment has repeatedly solemnly de-clared that Hong Kong has been an in-extricable part of the Chinese territo-ry since ancient times, that it does not recognize the three unequal treaties that the British imperialists imposed

124 Shi-xu

on China [...] it had achieved greater productivity, strengthened the overall national capability and raised its inter-national status. [...] These created the necessary condition for the smooth re-turn of Hong Kong. For this day, the Chinese government [...] provided a practical and feasible solution to the problems of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan and, ultimately, to the prob-lem of the motherland’s reunifi cation.[...] we realize more deeply than ever before that, without the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, withoutthe motherland’s thriving and consoli-dation, without the great achievements of reform and opening-up, without the persevering of New China’s third-gen-eration leadership, especially withoutthe guidance of Deng Xiaoping’s the-ory of building-socialism-with-Chi-nese-characteristics, Hong Kong’s re-turn today would not have been pos-sible. This is the solemn conclusion inscribed by a century’s Chinese his-tory. Editorial: A century’s exhilarat-ing event of the Chinese nation, Peo-ple’s Daily, 01/07/97)

A little contextual information sur-rounding the text may be provided at the outset of the analysis. That is, pre-ceding the current fragment is a theme relevant to the understanding of this ex-ample. Namely, the old, weak and poor China tried but failed to re-gain Hong Kong from the colonizer. Effectively this serves as a piece of “negative” ev-idence for the proposition being advo-cated in the text – Hong Kong’s return would not have been possible without

cal processes are not something that any Hong Kong’s politician or polit-ical party can resist or reorientate.Guo Shaotang, Subjective conscious-ness cannot block the march of histo-ry, Ming Bao, 30/06/97)

First of all, it may be suggested that this part of the article can be read as an account for Hong Kong’s reunifi ca-tion with China as a whole. There are indirect and explicit dimensions to this accounting activity. The explicit verbal indications can be seen from such tex-tual expressions of causal relations as

(...) (is a ... result) (so)

(not some-thing that ... can resist or re-orien-tate)

There are hence three sub-accounts identifi able in this text.

At the implicit level, the current text can be read as an act of explain-ing Hong Kong’s transition as well. For, as should be pointed out, this text is embedded, on the one hand, in the cur-rent article that purports to answer the questions of how Hong Kong’s return comes about and why the opposition to it did not succeed, and on the oth-er hand, in the general, broader con-text of Hong Kong’s public (media) dis-course in which why Hong Kong’s re-turn to China is taking place is very much a topic of debate. In addition, the title of the article itself is a sort of an-swer (in terms of history) to the back-ground question of why Hong Kong is returning to China. These contextual


clues confi rm that the text in question offers an account of why the return of Hong Kong is inevitable and actually taking place.

Having determined the nature of the overall text presented here, sec-ondly, we may now move onto observ-ing the “micro” structures of the sev-eral accounts making up the text in question. Here two levels of causes to Hong Kong’s reunifi cation with China can be identifi ed, one direct and one indirect. Specifi cally, in each of the three pairs of complex sentences offer-ing accounts, the former part describes a cause and the latter part the result. To put this schematically, where “�”stands for “causes” or “gives rise to”:

– Creation of many new societies by imperialism and colonialism �

anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism and de-colonization � the return of Hong Kong to China

– Failure of colonialism to separate Hong Kong from her mother’s body � continued blood and emotional bond with the mother � the return of Hong Kong to China

– Spreading of Hong Kong’s econom-ic forces to South China � merge of Hong Kong into the mother’s body �the return of Hong Kong to China

Thirdly, what is particularly important to highlight here is the three kinds of immediate causes of Hong Kong’s re-union with China because they direct-ly and effectively challenge the back-ground Western discourse. Let me ex-plain. One of the causes here is the

the leadership of the Chinese Commu-nist Party and hence its achievements (N.B. the last sentence).

The text proper then displays a host of causes for Hong Kong’s re-turn. These can be distinguished into different types. The formal distinc-tions of these constructed causes may be recognized from a set of different form(ulation)s:

– The construction of the objective of an action, … (for this day ...)

– The construction of the necessary condition of a change or effect, …

(... created the necessary condi-tion for the smooth return of Hong Kong)

– The construction of the possibili-ty for a change or effect, …

(... provided a practical and feasible solution)

– Exclusion of other possible caus-al relationships, (without ... it would not have been possible)

In addition, it may be noted that the text also expresses a strong certainty regarding its construction of the caus-al relationship. This may be seen espe-cially in the last part of the text where the assertiveness is made through a va-riety of forms: 1) the construction of deep refl ection (“ /realize more deeply”, which strength-ens its truthfulness); 2) the double-negative conditional conjunction (“

/ without ... it would

126 Shi-xu

movements of “ ”(anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism and de-colonization); another is “

” (the mother’s emo-tional and blood bond) and still an-other the actual connections with Chi-na already formed: “

” (gradually Hong Kong has be-come merged into the mother’s body). While these causal explanations par-tially overlap with those offered in the Chinese media, they run counter to the Western notions that Britain is honor-ing a historical ‘agreement’ with China and that Hong Kong is a separate en-tity and identity from China.

Finally, it may be stressed that these causal accounts of Hong Kong’s re-turn are not merely descriptive, nar-rative and, for that matter, explanato-ry regarding the return of Hong Kong. Rather, they are argumentatively mo-tivated and rhetorically oriented. That is, this piece of accounting discourse refutes the implicit Western discourse referred above and offers a differ-ent version of events and, at the same time, constitutes an attempt to per-suade doubters of HK’s reunifi cation with China that this is inevitable. The characterization of the causal link in terms of certainty and inevitability in the last sentence is a clear indication of the rhetorical and persuasive nature of the account.

not have been possible”, which negates all other possible causal relationships); and fi nally 3) the construction of con-clusiveness in terms of history (“

/This is the solemn conclusion inscribed by a century’s Chinese history”, which con-solidates the truthfulness of an asser-tion).

A number of kinds of causes of the return of Hong Kong may be teased out here. Thus, a fi rst kind of cause is the anti-colonial struggle that the series of Chinese governments have engaged in. Another is the recent Chinese eco-nomic and political achievements and enhanced international status. Above all, it seems that the text identifi es the Chinese Communist Party’s leadership and especially Deng Xiaoping as the most important causal factor to Hong Kong’s decolonization and return to China (e.g.

, the guidance of Deng Xiaoping’s theory of building-social-ism-with-Chinese-characteristics). Thus, although these are to some ex-tent different from the causes the Hong Kong media discourse draws attention to, they, as a whole and like the Hong Kong discourse, oppose the common assumptions made in the Western me-dia by not only rejecting colonialism, but also attributing the historical event to the side of the Chinese.


3.2. What does the return mean to Hong Kong, China and the world?

A second, very much suppressed theme in the Western media discourse regards the question of the meaning or signifi cance of Hong Kong’s return. As suggested in the preceding chapters as well as earlier in this chapter, while there is occa-sional mention in the Western media of Hong Kong’s “handover” as signifying the end of one of the last British overseas possessions, it is predominantly concerned with the “uncertainty” of the “political” and “economic” future of Hong Kong. That means that it is essentially more interested in what the “handover” means to the former empire itself and the Western world as a whole, rather than in what it means to the peoples of Hong Kong, of China and of the rest of the world, es-pecially as far as the world colonial history is concerned. The Hong Kong and Chinese media, in contrast, are overtly and eminently elaborate about the vari-ous symbolic meanings, that is, beyond the “inherent” meanings of the geopo-litical transition. In particular, as may be pointed out here, they construct the re-turn, including the ceremony thereof, as signifying the triumph of the local and international struggle against colonialism. At this juncture, it may be suggested, too, that, after all, if the media saw prior rational reasons for Hong Kong to re-turn to China, as we witnessed above, then it might be natural that they also saw special, symbolic signifi cance when the return does occur.

A number of relevant symbolic meanings and their forms may be highlight-ed here. Firstly, the prevailing term of reference for the historical event as used in the Hong Kong’s and Chinese media sources is “ ” (“return”) or less fre-quently “ ” (“take back”), as opposed to the British/American Western “han-dover”. (I have already pointed out that, in the West[ern media], the event is for-mulated as handover and that “handover” does not connote any ownership and, therefore, denies the basic fact of colonial history.) Secondly, there is a cluster of interrelated verbal expressions of “joy”, “national pride”, “new beginning”, “new opportunities” and “human justice” in the wake of the decolonization of Hong Kong (though in the Hong Kong media sometimes mixed with trepidation). These motifs are consistent with the fi nding above of the central theme that Hong Kong should be returned to China, but contrasts with the Western discourse that regu-larly voices concerns over China’s role in Hong Kong’s future. Thirdly and more importantly, there is a prominent assertion in the data under study that the return of Hong Kong to China marks, paradoxically, Hong Kong’s self-government for the fi rst time in the entire history of China and Hong Kong (N.B. the democrat-ic reforms did not occur until after the Sino-British negotiations had started). In that connection, it should be noted that the historical change is also interpreted as signifying the beginning of the reunifi cation of Greater China. Let us look at some concrete details.

128 Shi-xu

Example [3]

(Today is the beginning of a new era for Hong Kong. The founding of the PRC Hong Kong Special Administrative Region marks the de-colonization of the most modernized Chinese community in the world and her return to the motherland. Further, it injects new vitality into the modernization drive by the mother-land with a population of 1.2 billion people and opens up a new space for East-West exchanges. Editorial: Two-systems should feature both separa-tion and integration, Hong Kong peo-ple should be neither humble nor arro-gant. Ming Bao, 01/07/97)

It may be noticed that in this fragment, the return of Hong Kong and its cere-mony are not described as what those words or the events that they represent would conventionally mean. Rather, a variety of symbolic, often metaphoric, meanings of the whole event are pro-jected. Thus for example, “today” is assigned such meanings as 1) the be-ginning of a new era, 2) historic free-dom from colonial rule, 3) return to the mother’s embrace, 4) new vitali-ty being injected in the mother coun-try’s modernization drive and 5) open-ing up of new ground for East-West exchanges. Very few of these appear

Example [4]

(The return of Hong Kong signifi es that we Chinese people have snow-washedthe hundred-old national humiliationfrom Hong Kong’s occupation and that we have ushered in a new era for the joint development of Hong Kong and the mother country. It also signifi esthat we have made an important stridein the course of national reunifi cation. And it signifi es that the Chinese peo-ple have made new contributions to the cause for peace, development and progress of the world. Jiang Zemin: Speech to all walks of life in the capi-tal’s commemoration of Hong Kong’s return. Wen Hui Bao, 02/07/97)

First of all it should be noted that this speech is made by the top Chinese leader Jiang Zemin and published in one of the major broad-sheet news-papers in Mainland China. Its impact on China and the Chinese diaspora is therefore paramount.

Four broad themes of the symbol-ic meanings of Hong Kong’s return may be identifi ed here. These mean-ings are manifested in the four clausal structures (“that ...”) represented in the text. But it is the set of special devic-es that renders those meanings “sym-bolic”. One of them is the use of the


in the Western media discourse, and those that do appear at all do so only marginally.

The construction of symbolic meaning is facilitated by one of two ways, one explicit and the other im-plicit. The explicit form of producing symbolic meanings is the verbal mark-er of “ ” (mark or symbolize or signal). This directly and manifestly produces an unconventional meaning of a given topical object, in the present case, the return of Hong Kong to Chi-na on 1 July 1997. Similar, comparable Chinese words in this context would be “ ” or “ ”. The other, more im-plicit form of expressions is metaphor. That is, the topical object is rendered something else than what it is conven-tionally understood to be. This is done through either the link verb “to be” as in “ (is ... the begin-ning of a new era) ” or action verbs as in “ (inject new vitality)” and “ (open up a new space)”. In addition, the epithet “ ”(new) helps to assign a new meaning to a topical object as well, by qualify-ing its property or effect as different, as in the case of “ (the new era)” and “ (a new space)”. Again, new meanings and new themes such as these are virtually absent from the counterpart Western media.

lexical item “signify”; it introduces a different or new meaning of a topic of interest. Note that the term is repeat-ed three times – a typical grammati-cal construction in Chinese that gives rhythm and emphasis.

Another is the epithet “new”; it gives further symbolic meaning to Hong Kong’s return. This is used twice, by the way.

In addition, the use of metaphors makes the return of Hong Kong sym-bolic, too. It is multiple in number as well.

Thus, fi rstly, Hong Kong’s return is constructed as snow-washing (met-aphor) a hundred-year national humili-ation. Second, it is portrayed as usher-ing in a new (new-epithet) era (meta-phor) for the joint development between China and Hong Kong (not to say the metaphor of mother and daughter im-plicit in the phrase). Third, it is con-sidered as a new stride (metaphor) to-wards national unifi cation. Finally, it is assigned the meaning of new (epithet) contributions made to the world peace, development and progress. These “un-familiar” meanings give great scope and depth of signifi cance to the return of Hong Kong, unseen in the Western media.

130 Shi-xu

3.3. How are Hong Kong, China and the world related?

Earlier I suggested that the Western popular and scholarly discourse regarding Hong Kong tended to emphasize the uniqueness of Hong Kong, hence its inde-pendent identity, through the rhetoric of either “hybridity” or “colonial blend” (see also Chapters 1 and 6). I also argued that this discourse used the “unique-ness” as a strategy to de-link Hong Kong from China in particular. Consistent with this discourse was also the recurring notion that Hong Kong is taken over by another “colonizer”, China (see, for example, Chow 1992).

What is usually ignored or, rather, suppressed in the Western discourse, how-ever, is the possibility of relations of Hong Kong with China and the wider world. It is therefore important to highlight here the prominent discourses in the Hong Kong and Chinese media that formulate relations of Hong Kong. The relations are of various types, contrary to the Western discourse as well as the discourse in Hong Kong that opposes reunifi cation. From the postcolonial, multicultural framework of discourse I outlined earlier, it would be realized that these new dis-courses (re)articulate and maintain relations of Hong Kong with China and the rest of the world, beyond “identity” and separatism. Let us compare these two subdiscourses of relation-building.

There is a variety of ways in which Hong Kong media does relation-building work. It contains various ar-guments for linkages that range from historical, cultural, economic, and geographic to developmental aspects. Thus, for example, the bond between Hong Kong and China is rendered through such notions as returning to the motherland, compatriots, interre-lations in trade and commerce, blood, language, culture and geography. The use of metaphors, too, plays a promi-nent part in reproducing the bond. For example, Hong Kong is regularly por-trayed as a “bridge” between China and the rest of the world, a “window” to the world, close “neighbors”, “fron-tier-and-hinterland” and “root-and-growth”, etc.

In the Chinese media discourse on the links between Hong Kong and China, there is not only a recurrent motif of connections, but also an active strate-gy to reproduce and maintain relations. One textual pattern found in the data is the construction of linkage in terms of the shared historical experiences of (a) foreign domination, (b) painful separa-tion and (c) continuous struggle to re-gain sovereignty. For example, it is re-peatedly said in the media that China has governed Hong Kong since antiq-uity, and that Hong Kong became sepa-rated from China only because of Brit-ish imperialist aggression as well as other countries’ repression on the one side and the weakness and corruption of the Qing government on the other side. At the same time, it is often stated


Example [5]

(Hong Kong has become not only the capital-ist world’s pioneer into mainland Chi-na’s market, but also mainland Chi-na’s guide for “joining tracks with” the international community. [...] In the past over ten years, Hong Kong’s interests have begun to emerge withthose of Mainland China. After ’97, Hong Kong’s prospects will become even more inseparable from the broad-er background and the greater cause of China. [...] In the new millennium, the world will need China more and Chi-na will also need the rest of the world more. Hong Kong, as China’s most im-portant meeting point with the world, will become not only more Chinese, but also more international and more pluralistic. Bi Feng: Hong Kong is the meeting point between China and the world. Asia Weekly, 02–08/06/97)

Here connections and interconnections are made between Hong Kong, China and the rest of the world through multi-ple levels of textual structures. A most obvious type is the lexicogrammatical constructions such as “

that the Chinese people and the previ-ous and present governments have nev-er accepted the unjust treaties severing Hong Kong and China, nor have they stopped trying to reclaim Hong Kong. Further, the historical connections be-tween China and Hong Kong are, in turn, rendered through the shared so-cial, moral and psychological experi-ence. Thus, a variety of psychological bonds are invoked: for example, emo-tion and memory between the Chinese and Hong Kong compatriots. Similarly, future relations are rendered through the expression of political and institu-tional support, cooperation and the ra-tionalization of these forces. For exam-ple, an eminent way of relating to Hong Kong in this regard is the elaboration of the judicial notion of “one-country-two-systems”. It should be mentioned here, too, that the use of metaphor plays an important role in forming and main-taining links between China and Hong Kong: the mother-child relationship, a bridge between China and the rest of the world, a window for exchange be-tween the two, etc. Look at the follow-ing example for an illustration of the discourse of connections.

Example [6]

132 Shi-xu

(merge with)”, “ (inseparable from)” and “ (meeting point)”. A second connecting device is what might be called a “reversed-reciprocal clause”: in this case, “X (need) Y, Y (also need) X”. This fea-ture connects two agents through a mutual action expressed by the textu-al structure. Still another type is the se-mantic construction of a functional re-lationship between two entities. Thus, Hong Kong is portrayed as serving the functions of “

(the capitalist world’s pi-oneer into mainland China’s market)” and of “

(mainland China’s guide for ‘joining tracks with’ the international community)” for China. In this way, not only is Hong Kong linked to China but, because of the constructed bridg-ing function for two other entities, it is linked to the rest of the world. Final-ly, semantically assigning the property of one entity to another also provides a link. Here a future link is created be-tween Hong Kong, China and the rest of the world by predicting Hong Kong to assume characteristics of China and of the rest of the world: “

(become more Chinese)” and “ (become more inter-

national and diversifi ed)”.

Noteworthy in these intercon-nections is that Hong Kong is given a dominant position therein. For ex-ample, Hong Kong is not merely one of the two parties in a given relation-ship, but also “ (pioneer)”, “(guide)” and “

(the most important meeting point

(Mainland China, the vast economic hinterland, provides a huge space for Hong Kong’s economic expansion. The mainland’s healthy economic growth brings enor-mous profi ts to Hong Kong’s economy.The mainland’s increasing investment in Hong Kong has become an impor-tant force in the stabilization and de-velopment of Hong Kong’s economy. At the same time, Hong Kong is a cen-ter of trade, fi nance, transport, tour-ism and information in the Asia-Pa-cifi c region as well as the world; it is China’s window, bridge and conduit to the world economy. These capaci-ties have played an irreplaceable part in the mainland’s drive for modern-ization. Su Bei (commentary): Tomor-row will be more beautiful. Bi-Month-ly, 97 (13))

In this text, the interconnections be-tween China, Hong Kong and the rest of the world are created through sev-eral levels of textual properties. First-ly, a semantics of economical benefi ts of one entity for the other is created through descriptions of economical advantages which China brings to Hong Kong on the one hand, and de-scriptions of the economical links that Hong Kong offers to China as well as the rest of the world on the other. In this way a functional relationship is generated. Secondly, particular lexi-cal-metaphorical constructions that project different forms of linkage are presented (e.g. “ (center)”, “(bridge)” and “ (window)” and “


3.4. How did Hong Kong’s success come about?

Still another incompatible and incommensurable form of China and Hong Kong discourse is their explanations of Hong Kong’s success. China and Hong Kong’s media provide accounts of the success of Hong Kong that are categorically dif-ferent from those either implicit or verbalized in the Western media. Generally speaking, they are far more multifaceted and wide-ranging, unlike the Western account which attributes the success almost entirely to British colonial rule. Re-call, for contrast, Patten’s argumentative explanation (quoted above); it is typi-cal of the Western discourse which exalts British rule but rarely pays attention to Hong Kong people’s own role and China’s consistent historical relationship with Hong Kong and its recent economic support for Hong Kong.

There is another, perhaps more important, dimension to China and Hong Kong’s account. From a common, but necessarily restricted, national-linguistic point of view, the “variability” between this Chinese discourse and the Western discourse would be interpreted as refl ecting linguistic and ideological “differenc-es”. However, when the broader but historically-specifi c contexts behind the dis-courses is taken into consideration, which I argued for in Chapter1 and at the out-set of this chapter, then we shall see that the Chinese discourse has to do with the anti-colonial reclaiming of cultural agency and identity. We shall realize, too, that whereas the British Western media continues to defend colonial history by hark-ing back to the colonial administration, China and Hong Kong’s media, through alternative explanations, effectively resist colonial discourse as a whole.

between China and the world)”. Such constructions assign a much stronger agency and centrality to Hong Kong, vis-à-vis China and the world, than the Western media discourse would accord it. Nevertheless, it may also be noted that China’s “ (great-er cause and broader background)” is acknowledged as the basis of Hong Kong’s position. Thus, the mutual im-portance also constitutes a form of re-lationship.

(conduit)”. They, too, serve to repro-duce relationships and, moreover, are effective devices because they are ev-eryday usages and therefore readily ac-cepted. Finally, a macrostructure or su-prasentential structure marked through “ (at the same time)” links up two strings of clauses that construct recip-rocal events: X relates to Y in a, b, c ways; at the same time ( ) Y re-lates to X in o, p, q ways. As a result, a higher level of interrelations is built between China and Hong Kong.

134 Shi-xu

Hong Kong’s media generally explic-itly emphasizes the role of the Hong Kong people themselves. In the ac-counts undermining China’s role, how-ever, there is a good measure of ac-knowledgement of Western, especially British, infl uence in terms of adminis-tration and law. Nevertheless, it should be mentioned that there is a back-ground story in the media that coun-ters that view. Namely, Hong Kong’s economic rise did not begin until in the fi nal decades of Britain’s one and half centuries’ rule (since the 1970s). Hong Kong was more backward than Shang-hai until 50 years ago and its economic growth parallels with the economic re-form and open door policy in China.

Example [7][ ]

[…]

(Some people say that the reason for [Hong Kong’s] success lies in the effi cient management by the British, but that cannot explain why the Brit-ish have not done so well in the coun-try of the “origin”. Some other people think that the people of Hong Kong are particularly capable. But Hong Kong

Especially China’s media and its me-dia actors consistently offer diverse causes to Hong Kong’s economic de-velopment and success. The fullest ac-count I have found in the data is the speech in the English language news-paper South China Morning Post by China’s president, Jiang Zemin. Frag-ments of this are cited below:

Example [8]Hong Kong’s success today is, in the fi nal analysis, the work of the Hong Kong compatriots. [...] Hong Kong’s success today is inseparable from China’s develop ment and the support of the people from the mainland. [...] Hong Kong’s success today is also at-tributable to a number of other factors. Its advantageous geographical loca-tion, its free port policy of complete openness, its well-developed legal sys-tem and highly effi cient team of civ-il servants, and its effective econom-ic management and civic administra-tion, have all facilitated Hong Kong’s economic development. [...] “A shining page in the annals of the Chinese na-tion” [speech by Jiang Zemin], South China Morning Post, 02/07/97

Here a number of attributions are made that involve not only particular agents – the Hong Kong people, but also to sit-uational factors – the development and support of the mainland Chinese peo-ple as well as a range of other items. This “personal” and “situational” dis-tinction of the causal explanations of-fered here (Shi-xu 1999) gives clear in-dication that the speech/speaker rec-


people are merely Chinese who happen to live in that place. Why do they be-come so different as soon as they emi-grate to Hong Kong? [...] The real rea-son why Hong Kong people are suc-cessful is that they can integrate the civilizations of the East and West with commercial interests, creating a unique management milieu and cul-ture that are “neither a donkey nor a horse”. Consequently, they are able to seize every new opportunity and trend for development in the world. Bi Feng: Hong Kong is the meeting point be-tween China and the world. Asia Week-ly, 02–08/06/97)

From the textual, thematic perspec-tive, this text is argumentatively or-ganized. It fi rst rejects two kinds of explanation of Hong Kong’s success and then puts forward a third, differ-ent explanation. The initial refutation is done through a set of devices. One is the pair of contrastive structures that undermine opinions by pointing at what they fail to account for: “

(some people say ... but cannot explain ...)”; “

(some other people think ..., but x is/does merely y)”. An-other is the rhetorical question: “

(Why ... not ...?)”, which as-sumes an answer contrary to the one implicit in the proposition in question. These textual strategies serve effec-tively to refute the background West-ern notion that Hong Kong’s success is owing to British rule alone and the lesser discourse in Hong Kong that it is due to the special ability of the peo-

ognizes the Hong Kong people as the chief force behind Hong Kong’s suc-cess. From a lexical and grammati-cal point of view, it may be seen that, somewhat differently, three types of causes of Hong Kong’s success, de-fi ned in different kinds of force and hence different kinds of strength, are presented. The relevant linguistic fea-tures here include (a) the sequencing of the attributions made, (b) the em-phatic expression, “in the fi nal analy-sis”, (c) “inseparable from”, and (d) the “qualifi ed” expressions such as “oth-er (factors)” “also attributable to ...” and “facilitated”. These expressions defi ne and determine the different na-tures of the causes to Hong Kong’s suc-cess. Thus, fi rstly, the Hong Kong peo-ple’s role is the “root” and the most important cause of the success. Sec-ondly, mainland China’s development and support are closely related to Hong Kong’s success but of secondary im-portance. The third place, as it were, is given to a number of other factors. Then, a number of “other” factors are external but not necessary conditions of Hong Kong’s success.

It should be noticed that this ac-count of Hong Kong’s economic de-velopment and success not only dis-tinguishes different kinds of forces behind them (a case, by the way, that defi es the simple division between the personal and situational attributions as commonly assumed in attribution the-ory), but also offers a wide range of factors behind them and the widest at that in the data examined. It is thus a

136 Shi-xu

4. Conclusion

In turning to culturally-marginalized discourses, I have identifi ed and character-ized a number of new and different patterns in the China and Hong Kong’s media on the issue of the latter’s historic transition. In order to illustrate their details, I have also analyzed some sample texts and highlighted their textual properties and contextual functions. My emphasis has been on the various forms of Otherness of these Chinese discourses as a whole, as opposed to the Western discourse in the background, but I have also indicated their internal nuances and complexities.

Firstly, from a cultural perspective, beyond national relativism, I showed that China and Hong Kong’s media display forms of Otherness unseen in the West-ern media. Other than the taken-for-granted and recurrent notions of China as the “repressive Other” or Hong Kong as the “unique Other” in the Western media, China and Hong Kong’s media projected new meanings, introduced new narra-tives, built up new relations between Hong Kong and China as well as the rest of the world, and proffered new explanations. These unfamiliar discourses contra-dict and refute some of the most prevalent notions in the Western media, albeit often implicitly and indirectly, and bring into sharper relief the myth of the im-perial truths and the reality of cultural plurality of discourses.

ple of Hong Kong, respectively. These arguments provide the foundation and scope for the subsequent standpoint that the text is going to introduce.

The latter part of the text offers a new threefold, interrelated explanation: (1) the Hong Kong people are good at combining the Eastern and Western civilizations as well as their commer-cial interests, (2) they have been able to create an in-between, “third” kind of business environment and culture and (3) Hong Kong has been able to grasp every new trend and opportunity for development in the past half of a centu-ry. These explanations form an oppo-sition to existing attributions of Hong Kong’s success, reclaiming and high-lighting Hong Kong people’s agency and creativity.

more comprehensive and more inclu-sive account.

This account contrasts with the British and Western discourse in fun-damental ways: in the latter, the cause is largely singular and marked as main-ly British, whereas the role of the Hong Kong people is hardly mentioned. Thus, Jiang Zemin’s speech here not only redescribes history and returns the full credit to the Hong Kong peo-ple, but also indirectly challenges the biased Western discourse and rejects its colonialist attitudes.


Secondly, I showed that the “Other”, Chinese discourses represented here con-sist not so much in formal linguistic differences as in the social actions of anti-co-lonial resistance that they perform. That is, they contradict, refute or undermine the existing relevant Western discourse. This action dimension, as it may be not-ed, too, constitutes the broader cultural-discursive order or relationship between the West and its non-Western Other. In other words, the present analysis reartic-ulates what the Western discourse has ignored, marginalized or dismissed.

In addition, I revealed the diversity and complexity of the non-Western, post-colonial Chinese discourse. Although China and Hong Kong’s discourses on the latter’s transition share important concerns (e.g. symbolic signifi cance of the re-turn of Hong Kong and the causes of Hong Kong’s return) and perform recipro-cal actions (e.g. relationship [re]building), it is also true that differences between China and Hong Kong’s media discourses exist. In the recuperative work of re-building relations between Hong Kong, China and the rest of the world, for ex-ample, the Hong Kong discourse seems to take a more assertive stance and pres-ents Hong Kong as the major player in the relationship, whereas the Chinese dis-course tends to emphasize its support for Hong Kong, the notion of Hong Kong as a bridge between China and the world and the economically complementary relationship between China and Hong Kong.

Note

* I would like to thank Lee Cherleng for providing me with some of the data for this research.

Primary sources

(People’s Daily), (Wen Hui Bao), (Bi-Month-ly), China Today, South China Morning Post, (Ming Bao), Asiaweek,

(Asia Weekly), (Wen Hui Bao).

References


aspora 2 (2), 152–170.

Fanon, F. 1967 The Wretched of the Earth. London: Penguin Books.

138 Shi-xu

Lee, C.-C. (ed.) 1994 China’s Media, Media’s China. Boulder, Colo: Westview Press.

Lee, C.-C., J. M. Chan, Z.-D. Pan, and C. Y. K. So 2002 Global Media Spectacle: News War over Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong

University Press.

Shi-xu 1999 Attributional explanation: Exploring structural and qualitative complexities.

Journal of Language and Social Psychology 18 (4), 356–376. 2001 Critical pedagogy and intercultural communication: Creating discourses of

diversity, equality, common goals and rational-moral motivation. Journal of Intercultural Studies 22 (3), 279–293.

Wu, D. 1999 Chinese language and culture through discourse: Its production and applica-

tions. In H. M. Lee (ed.), Papers on Chinese and Bilingual Teaching. Hong Kong: The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Press, 42–51.

2001 [Linguistic conventionalization in advertise-ments]. In Y. P. Dong and C. M. Wang (eds.),[Linguistics in China: Theoretical Explorations and Applications]. Shang-hai: Shanghai Foreign Language Publishing House, 516–535.

Wu, D. and M. H. Hui 2000 ? [Dialect or

register variation?: Case studies of variation between Hong Kong and inland China news reporting], [Zhongguo Yuwen] 1, 35–41.

Young, R. 2001 Postcolonialism: A historical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Chapter 9Media and metaphor:Exploring the rhetoric in China’s and Hong Kong’s public discourses on Hong Kong and China

Lee Cher-Leng

The return of Hong Kong to China in 1997 is a historic event to Hong Kong, Chi-na, as well as the rest of the world. And yet the meaning of the whole event has been represented variously in the international media. In this contribution, we want to take up media discourses from the Hong Kong and China’s press on Hong Kong’s transition. Our aim is to document and examine how Chinese and Hong Kong media discourses have represented China, Hong Kong and their relations. In the study presented below, we show how metaphors are used to construct iden-tities and relations, and how they are used differently in China and Hong Kong’s media discourses, respectively, with special reference to the relevant cultural cir-cumstances and ideological preferences. Through such an exercise, we hope not only to amplify the “local” cultural voices, that is, the voices of the people them-selves, against the backdrop of the dominant Western media discourses on Hong Kong and China, but also to identify the complexity and plurality of voices with-in China and Hong Kong’s media discourses.

Plowing through the leading newspapers in China and Hong Kong (see below), we have found that there are fi ve dominant sets of metaphors: 1) The Homecom-ing metaphors referring to the handover (which include Embrace of the Father-land, Coming Home to a Big Family, the Mother-Child Metaphor); 2) the Mas-ter metaphor referring to Hong Kong’s identity (which includes the metaphors of Own Master, the True Master and Controlling Own Destiny); 3) the Bridge met-aphor referring to Hong Kong’s position (including the Bridge, Window, Chan-nel, Door and Floodgate); 4) the Backing metaphor referring to China’s role; and 5) metaphors of relationship between Hong Kong and China (which include the metaphors of Shoot and Root, the Lips-Teeth and the Flesh and Blood).

1. Metaphors in political discourse

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) argue that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language, but also in thought and action. This view is in contrast to

140 Lee Cher-Leng

the general understanding of metaphor as a device of the poetic imagination, characteristic of language alone or a matter of words rather than thought or ac-tion. In other words, metaphors are not merely poetical or rhetorical embellish-ments, but are a part of everyday speech that affects the ways in which we per-ceive, think and act. Lakoff (1996) further argues that our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphori-cal in nature. In his later work, he further stresses that metaphors not only help people make sense of complex situations, but also help them describe, prescribe and evaluate behavior.

Metaphors are used to transfer one set of abstract, unknown or emotional ex-periences into a more concrete, familiar and material set of experiences. As such, time is seen as a commodity and love as a journey. In his work on the metaphors used on the Gulf War, Lakoff (1992) shows how “war” is conceptualized and ar-ticulated in terms of a “game” in which one talks about “making a right move” or “making a wrong move”. In stressing the importance and hence the power of metaphor in political discourse, Lakoff (1992: 26) says, “Reality exists. So does the unconscious system of metaphors that we use without awareness to compre-hend reality. What metaphor does limits what we notice, highlights what we do see and provides part of the inferential structure through which we reason. Be-cause of the pervasiveness of metaphor in thought, we cannot always stick to dis-cussions of reality in purely literal terms. There is no way to avoid metaphorical thought, especially in complex matters like foreign policy ... metaphors backed up by bombs that can kill.”

Similarly, Chilton and Schaffner (1997: 44) pointed out that “[a] crucial con-ceptual and semantic mechanism in the production of political meanings is met-aphor. It is important to note that metaphors are not merely one-off ‘rhetorical fl ourishes’ but cognitive devices for forming and communicating conceptualiza-tion of reality.” Metaphors are useful pragmatic devices through which politi-cians convey their ideologies, arouse emotions, and manipulate thoughts (Kitis and Milapides 1997; Lee 1992; Wei 2000). These metaphors allow the politicians to highlight as well as hide a variety of meanings and inferences. In his discus-sion on metaphors in politics, Wilson (1990: 104) says that “[m]etaphors and metaphorical language have a central role to play in political communication. In general, metaphors can assist in the explanation of complex political arguments by reducing such arguments to a metaphorical form. They may be employed for connotative or emotional purposes in arousing emotions and reinforcing partic-ular perspectives, and they can be used to elicit absurd images, which can then be employed for the purposes of ridiculing one’s opponent.”

As said earlier, metaphors are tools in the hands of politicians to paint the picture they would like their audience to see. As an example of how metaphors are used to shape the perception of Hong Kong after the handover, and how the

141Rhetoric in China’s and Hong Kong’s public discourses

same metaphor can be used by different parties to achieve their own goals, we shall cite the metaphor of a ship employed by Tung Chee Hwa, Chief Executive of HKSAR (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region), in contrast with that by Li Yi, Chief Editor of Nineties. Tung Chee Hwa says that from now on, Hong Kong will be like a ship sailing into its bright future. Li Yi, on the other hand, says that Hong Kong is like a ship sailing towards a volcano island, where volca-noes are not dead but alive. When the volcano erupts, the freedom and prosper-ity will all be burnt away. This contrasting difference between the two ways in which the same metaphor is used explains how the same metaphor may be used as a vehicle for confl icting arguments.

Text 1

With the bright rays of respect, trust, love from the land of the forefathers, Hong Kong – a large ship in a new era – will sail with full confi dence towards the goal of rejuvenation and national reunifi cation.(Speech made by Tung Chee Hwa, the fi rst Chief Executive of HKSAR, at the ceremony for the inauguration of the HKSAR and the swearing-in of the HKSAR government on 1 July 1997. People’s Daily, 2 July 1997) 1

Text 2

Hong Kong is like a ship sailing towards a volcanic island, and 1997 is the year it reaches the island ... The live volcanoes are not dead yet; they can erupt any time and endanger the lives, freedom, properties, and dignity of the residents liv-ing at the foot of the mountain.(Li Yi Nineties July 1997)

2. The data

In our selection of data, we have used Chinese texts mostly produced by the poli-ticians and news actors themselves, as reported in the press. In addition, we have also included, where relevant, comments in editorials. The main sources of data for this paper are shown in Table 1.

142 Lee Cher-Leng

Table 1. Main sources of data for this paper

SourcesNo. of articles surveyed

No. of articles containing the metaphors discussed

1. People’s Daily

(21/6–12/7,1997)PRC 69 24

2. Ming Pao

(26/6–2/7,1997)Hong Kong

49 15

3. Wen Wei Po

(23/6–8/7, 1997)Hong Kong

28 16

4. Mr. Tung’s speeches

(17/4–20/12, 1997)22 14

5. Zhao and Zhang ed. (1997)

221 33

Under the discussion of each set of metaphors, the similarities and differences of the same metaphor used by the various parties, namely, the Chinese government, the Hong Kong government and Hong Kong press will be examined. The data shows that the Chinese government has only one united voice. In Hong Kong, the situation is quite different: there is the Hong Kong government, followed by the voice of different parties, and the voice represented by the different newspa-pers. For the purpose of this study, we will concentrate on contrasting the meta-phors used by the Chinese government and those by the Hong Kong government. When relevant, we will show the third voice represented by the press in general. Since the information on the historical background of the return of Hong Kong to China provided in the Introduction of the volume is already suffi cient for the current analysis, I will not go into that any more (see also Lau 1997; Lo 1997; Zhao and Zhang 1997).

3. The “handover”

One dominant motif in China and Hong Kong’s discourses over the latter’s re-turn is, naturally, the “handover”. Over this there is a prominent set of metaphors that expresses such notions as embrace of the fatherland, coming home to a big family and the mother and child reunion. Rhetorically, these metaphors appeal to the emotions involved in returning home after long separation. At the same time, they refl ect the colonial times of forced national separation. There are, however,


internal differences in the use of these metaphors between the Chinese govern-ment, the Hong Kong government and the Hong Kong press use which we want to treat in some detail.

3.1. Embrace of the fatherland

The metaphor of being back in the embrace of the fatherland is most frequently used in the Chinese media. The Chinese government has the highest number of usage (see Table 2). The Chinese President, Jiang Zemin, for example, refers to the Hong Kong people as compatriots who have fi nally returned to the embrace of the fatherland (Text 3). In his congratulatory address, similarly, Premier Li Peng describes the return of Hong Kong’s sovereignty as coming back into the embrace of the fatherland (Text 4).

Text 3

I wish to extend cordial greetings and best wishes to more than 6 million Hong Kong compatriots who have now returned to the embrace of the fatherland.(Speech made by Chinese President Jiang Zemin, at the ceremony for the hando-ver of Hong Kong on 1 July 1997. People’s Daily, 2 July 1997)

Text 4

Now, I would like to propose a toast: To the return of Hong Kong to the embrace of the fatherland and to its long-term prosperity and stability ...(Speech made by Li Peng, Premier of China’s State Council, at a reception cele-brating the Hong Kong’s return to China. People’s Daily, 2 July 1997)

It may be noted, moreover, that the “embrace of the fatherland” is often coupled with the theme that Hong Kong had suffered much hardship under British rule, being “half colonial” and “half conservative” by nature, “living under the nose of others”, being “second class citizens” and the notion that China itself had been bullied, abused, and shamed by imperialism.

Text 5

144 Lee Cher-Leng

Hong Kong, which has gone through countless vicissitudes, has fi nally returned to the embrace of the fatherland.(Speech made by Li Peng, Premier of China’s State Council, at a reception cel-ebrating the return of Hong Kong to the land of the forefathers. People’s Daily,2 July 1997)

Text 6

Hong Kong, after more than one hundred years of vicissitudes, has fi nally re-turned to the embrace of the fatherland.(Qian Qichen, People’s Daily, 18 June 1997)

Text 7

Our land of the forefathers had been bullied and humiliated by imperial power and had fallen into the half-colonial, half-feudal situation gradually ... Hong Kong now has shaken off the shame of being ruled by British colonials and come back to the embrace of the fatherland ... Hong Kong people are no longer “Second Class Citizens” living under the other’s roof, but the true masters of our own country.(Speech made by Li Ruihuan, Chairman of the National Political Consultative Conference and the standing member of the Political Bureau of the Central Com-mittee of the Chinese Communist Party, when he had a discussion with Hong Kong and Macao representatives on 13 March 1995.)

Although pro-Chinese Hong Kong leaders have also used the metaphor of re-turning to the embrace of the fatherland, the difference is that there is no criti-cism of the British rule.

Text 8

As the wheel of time rolls forward, history has turned a new page: Hong Kong has returned to the embrace of land of the forefathers.(Lei Jaak-tim, member of Hong Kong Trade Unions Association, Wen Wei Po,30 June 1997)


Text 9

As the 1st@@0kof July 1997 approaches, Hong Kong’s return to the embrace of the land of the forefathers is just around corner ... all people of our nation are in great jubilation.(Siu Wai-wan, member of the Preparatory Committee of HKSAR, Wen Wei Po,29 June 1997)

3.2. Coming home to the big family

Another related, extended metaphor that tugs at the strings of the heart of the Hong Kong people is that of the “same big family” metaphor. At the handover ceremony, Jiang said,

Text 10

On behalf of the central government and people of all ethnic groups, [...] I would like to extend a warm welcome to the 6 million Hong Kong compatriots who have returned to the big family of the land of the forefathers.(Speech made by Chinese President Jiang Zemin at the ceremony for the Hando-ver of Hong Kong on 1 July 1997. People’s Daily, 2 July 1997)

The subtle difference in the use of this metaphor is seen in Mr. Tung carefully stressing on a family reunion, which implies that all parties are equal, rather than returning to the family, which implies that Hong Kong is the child returning to the family. In Text 11, Mr. Tung uses a somewhat more neutral phrase, “stepping into the warmth of home”, again showing that there is no hierarchical difference and, in Text 12, a family reunion after 156 years of separation.

Text 11

After 156 years of long journey, Hong Kong has fi nally stepped into the warmth of home.

146 Lee Cher-Leng

(Speech made by Tung Chee Hwa, the fi rst Chief Executive of HKSAR, at the ceremony for the inauguration of the HKSAR and the swearing-in of the HK-SAR government on 1 July 1997. People’s Daily, 2 July 1997)

Text 12

It was a joyful and proud day for all Chinese in the world when Hong Kong re-united with People’s Republic of China after a separation of 156 years.(Speech delivered by Chief Executive Tung Chee Hwa at a banquet for Interna-tional Forums of Higher Education Leaders on 3 July 1997)

Some important spokesmen in the Hong Kong society also used the phrase “be-come a family”, in which there is again no hierarchical difference (as compared to saying that one party is “returning” to the big family).

Text 13

After returning (to the mainland) we shall become a family.(Speech made by Mr. Yang Ti-liang, member of the Executive Council of HK-SAR. Wen Wei Po, 28 June 1997)

3.3. The mother-child reunion

One would have thought that the mother-child metaphor would be a most com-monly used one to describe the return where Hong Kong is like a child returning to her mother – China. However, this metaphor is seldom used among the Chi-nese and Hong Kong leaders. The reason could be that this metaphor immediate-ly shows a clear hierarchy and therefore should be avoided: China is the mother and Hong Kong is the child. For in the common-sense understanding, the moth-er is superior to the child and the “mother” image could also mean “control” and “authority” instead of “love” and “warmth”.

In Text 14, we fi nd just a rare example where, in addition to the metaphor of “returning to the embrace of the fatherland”, a comparison of Hong Kong is made with a long-lost child returning to the mother.

Text 14


As a Chinese living in Hong Kong, it is my great honor to witness Hong Kong’s return to the land of the forefathers. I feel so happy and proud of it. Like a long-lost child who has fi nally come back to his mother, my feelings of warmth and happiness are just beyond words.(Speech made by Jang Hin-ji, a member of the Standing Committee of the Nation-al People’s Congress, when interviewed by the People’s Daily on 25 July 1997)

Interestingly, this metaphor is commonly picked up and used by the ordinary people in a somewhat sarcastic manner, as may be seen in the next two extracts (Texts15 and 16). In Text15, on the forum page, it is commented that Hong Kong people, from school children to adults, are made to perform a celebration of the handover. For example, school children are made to act out the play of young swal-lows returning to their nest over and over again in different assemblies. There are decorated fl oats with singers singing the handover songs, celebrating the coming handover, which weave through streets and alleys. The metaphor used here hints that the act of returning to the mother’s nest is not something natural but some-thing that is artifi cial and construed for show.

Text 15

The primary students in Yuen Long district are to act out a play with the theme of “baby swallows returning to their nests” in turns in every hall of their district; while the festooned vehicles parade noisily through the indifferent crowds and murmuring tramps. And dozens of celebrities chorused “Song of Returning: Day and night, generations by generations we look forward to returning.”(Leung Sai-yung, Ming Po [Forum page], 23 June 1997)

Text 16

In order to celebrate the reunion with long-lost mother, my friends have arranged in advance all kinds of Hong-Kong-style festival activities, such as playing cards, eating buffets and singing karaoke ...(Ng Jun-hung, a lecturer at the Department of Sociology, Hong Kong University. Ming Po [Forum page], 29 June 1997)

148 Lee Cher-Leng

In an attempt to summarize Hong Kong’s political history and its confl icting re-lationship with China, a journalist said that (Text 17) “Hong Kong’s colonial his-tory has never been detached from that of land of the forefathers. The mother’s blood is buried in it. Ironically, Hong Kong’s social facade is fi lled with feelings of anti-communism and anti-mother ... Hong Kong has been absorbed into the land of the forefathers gradually.”(Gwok Siu-tong Ming Po (Forum page), 30 June 1997)

Text 17

In another Forum page of the Ming Po (Text 18), it says that people talk about the handover as a wandering child returning home, while in actual fact, what is happening is, as the government offi cials would say: It is China regaining au-thority over Hong Kong.

Text 18

Hong Kong has fi nally returned, and everyone says so. There is nothing wrong with the expression “home coming for the wandering child”. However, it is an expression used by ordinary people. The formal and offi cial version is that Chi-na “resumes the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong”.(Loh Foo Ming Po [Forum page], 30 June 1997)

Table 2 summarizes the discussion in this section.

Table 2. Metaphors of “handover as homecoming” used by Chinese and Hong Kong leaders and the Hong Kong press

Embrace of the fatherland

Family/home Mother-child

China 21 2 1

Hong Kong (Tung) – 1 –

Hong Kong media other than Tung

3 1 4

From the data, we have found that although both the Chinese and the Hong Kong leaders use similar metaphors, there are subtle differences. The metaphors used


by Tung are those that avoid the difference between one party being the major one while the other being the minor. Instead, the metaphors he uses slants to-wards both parties being equal. “Embrace of the fatherland” is the most popu-lar metaphor among the Chinese leaders. It has however, from our sources, not been used by Tung. This could be due to the jargon being very typically that of the mainland Chinese expression. As for the “family” metaphor, China says that Hong Kong is returning to a big family, while Tung says that Hong Kong and China belong to one big family; Tung also says that Hong Kong fi nally stepped into the warmth of home, and that the handover is indeed a “reunion” – an impor-tant, happy event for the Chinese family during the eve of Chinese New Year. A reunion focuses on the togetherness of a family without indications of hierarchy within the family. Ironically, it is the non-offi cial reports that used the “mother-child” metaphor, although it is mainly used in a sarcastic way.

4. Hong Kong’s identity

The most commonly used metaphor by both the Chinese and the Hong Kong lead-ers to refer to Hong Kong’s identity after the handover is the metaphor of the mas-ter of the house. Hong Kong had been under British rule for the past 156 years, with Hong Kong people carrying the British passport and using British money. At the time of the handover, the leaders of China and Hong Kong use the master metaphor to convince the Hong Kong people that they are fi nally their own mas-ters, able to direct and control their own destiny. This is obviously said to make the Hong Kong people feel good that they will never have to subject to foreign (i.e. British) rule any more, that they are fi nally independent. When the master metaphor is used, nothing is mentioned that now Hong Kong is part of China. It is often said that metaphors can be half-truths rather than whole truths, yet they serve the means of convincing the audience that things are getting better, that the handover will benefi t the Hong Kong people.There are three variations to this metaphor, namely, “own master”, “true master” and “control one’s own destiny”. Both the Chinese and Hong Kong leaders used the “own master” metaphor, but only the Chinese leaders used the “true mas-ter” metaphor whereas the Hong Kong leaders the metaphor of “control one’s own destiny”.

4.1. The own master metaphor

The metaphor of “own master” is prominent in the speeches of Chinese President, Jiang Zemin (hereafter Jiang), Chinese Foreign Minister, Qian Qichen, and the

150 Lee Cher-Leng

governor of Hong Kong, Tung Chee Hwa (hereafter, Tung) as well as the speeches of other important offi cials in Hong Kong. In a conference with Hong Kong and Macaw representatives on 28 February 1997, Jiang emphasizes that, for the fi rst time in history, the Hong Kong people will be their own masters:

Text 19

After a hundred days, Hong Kong will return to her land of the forefathers and six million Hong Kong people will be able to exercise the rights of being their own masters ... It is for the fi rst time in the history that Hong Kong compatriots are entitled to such democratic rights.

At the closing ceremony of the second plenary meeting of the preparatory com-mittee of the HKSAR on 25 March 1997, Qian Qichen stressed that only after the colonial rule and its return to China, can Hong Kong truly be her own mas-ter and truly democratic. Here he is obviously contrasting Hong Kong as a Brit-ish colony and a decolonized Hong Kong after the return:

Text 20

To Hong Kong people, real democracy means that they can be their own mas-ters. This will be achieved only after colonial rule ends and Hong Kong returns to land of the forefathers. At that time, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region will be established on the basis of the “One Country, Two Systems” prin-ciple and “Hong Kong will be administered by Hong Kong People” with a high degree of autonomy.

During his address at the competition for the best news writing and best photos held by Hong Kong Newspaper Association on 17 April 1997, Mr. Tung said that soon they would be their “own masters”:

Text 21

In a couple of months’ time, we will be our own masters ...

And:


Text 22

Due to historical reasons, Hong Kong people never had a chance to be their ownmasters and to manage their own affairs. But things will be totally different af-ter Hong Kong’s return to China.

Similarly, soon after the handover, a spokesman for the Wen Wei Po, Ms. Choi So-yuk, said on 7 July 1997 that history has never permitted Hong Kong to be her own master, but after the handover, life will be very different for Hong Kong.

4.2. The true master

In using the master metaphor, the Chinese politicians take a step further and say that Hong Kong people are their own true masters. They do so presumably because they want to highlight the difference from Hong Kong’s colonial times. During the ceremony of the handover, Jiang said that Hong Kong will be her own “true master”. Li Peng reiterated it on the following day. For example,

Text 23

... from now on, Hong Kong compatriots have become true masters of this Chi-nese land and that Hong Kong has now entered a new era of development.(Speech made by Chinese President Jiang Zemin at the ceremony for the hando-ver of Hong Kong on 1 July 1997. People’s Daily, 2 July 1997)

Text 24

With the Hong Kong’s return to China, Hong Kong compatriots have become the true masters of this land.(Speech made by Li Peng, Premier of China’s State Council, at a reception cel-ebrating the return of Hong Kong to the land of the forefathers. People’s Daily,2 July 1997)

4.3. Control of own destiny

In contrast, Hong Kong politicians do not use the “true master” metaphor, as mentioned above. This indicates that the Hong Kong leaders do not feel comfort-

152 Lee Cher-Leng

able using this metaphor since, in actual fact, Hong Kong is now part of China. At the swearing-in ceremony on 1 July 1997 and on a celebration two days af-ter, Mr. Tung said that Hong Kong people will be able to control their own des-tiny. Herein lies the subtle difference between Hong Kong being the “true mas-ter” and Hong Kong being able to “control her own destiny”. The former meta-phor puts things in very absolute terms, that others are not “true” masters except Hong Kong herself, whereas the latter takes a step back to say that she can now have the ability to control her own destiny (thus metaphorically extending the ability to control concrete objects to abstract entities like “destiny”). This is seen in Texts 25 and 26.

Text 25

It is most precious that a people can grasp its own destiny. For the fi rst time in history, we, the people of Hong Kong, will shape our own destiny.(Speech made by Tung Chee Hwa, the fi rst Chief Executive of HKSAR, at the ceremony for the inauguration of the HKSAR and the swearing-in of the HK-SAR government. People’s Daily, 1 July 1997)

Text 26

For the fi rst time in history, Hong Kong is administered by the Hong Kong peo-ple. We have fi nally been able to control our own destiny and be responsible for our own decisions and the corresponding consequences.(Speech by Chief Executive Tung Chee Hwa at “International Gathering to Cel-ebrate Hong Kong’s return” on 3 July 1997)Table 3 summarizes the fi ndings in this section.

Table 3. The “master” metaphor used by Chinese and Hong Kong leaders

Own master True master Own destiny

China 18 6 1

Hong Kong 6 6

From this table, we can notice that although both Hong Kong and Chinese lead-ers use “own master” to describe Hong Kong’s position, China goes a step fur-ther to say that Hong Kong is the “true master”. Obviously, it is not easy to decide


who is the “true” master, since Hong Kong is still under China’s rule. Thus, it is no surprise that Hong Kong should steer clear from such metaphors and instead stress more on being able to “control her own destiny”.

5. Hong Kong’s strategic roles

The Chinese politicians emphasize the strategic location of Hong Kong with re-gard to China, using metaphors such as the bridge, the window, the channel and a door that opens or connects China to the world or to the West. Hong Kong is said to be an important connection in trade, fi nance, shipping, culture, etc., for China and the rest of the world. These metaphors are used to show Hong Kong people that China values Hong Kong and will assure them all of political stabil-ity to ensure prosperity in Hong Kong.

5.1. The bridge metaphor

Hong Kong is said to be the bridge for economic and cultural exchanges between China and the world. This metaphor is the most popular one used by Chinese po-litical leaders such as Jiang Zeming, Li Peng, Lu Ping and Qian Qichen. Some examples are given below:

Text 27

Hong Kong, as an important bridge linking China and the rest of the world in economic, scientifi c, technological and cultural exchanges, has benefi ted from it immensely. With the continuous advance of China’s modernization drive, Hong Kong’s economic link with the mainland will become even closer and its role as a bridge will be increasingly enhanced. This in turn will give a stronger impetus to Hong Kong’s economic growth.(Speech by Chinese president Jiang Zemin at the ceremony marking the estab-lishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region [HKSAR] of the Peo-ple’s Republic of China. People’s Daily, 2 July 1997)

Text 28

154 Lee Cher-Leng

The sustained, rapid and sound development of national economy in the main-land areas as a result of the reform and opening policy has provided the economy of Hong Kong with strong support. An enhanced role of Hong Kong as a bridgeand linkage between the mainland economy and the international economy will facilitate the modernization drive of the mainland.(Speech by Li Peng, premier of China’s State Council, at a reception celebrating the return of Hong Kong to the land of the forefathers on 1 July 1997. People’s Daily, 2 July 1997)

The bridge metaphor was also used widely by Hong Kong politicians and entre-preneurs:

Text 29

As before, Hong Kong is still a safe tourist spot; it still has an open society and its economy stays prosperous. You can see that the idea of “one country, two sys-tems” has been materialized. Hong Kong is the bridge linking China and all parts of the world. As such a role becomes increasingly important, I believe Hong Kong should enjoy continual development and improvement.(Speech by Mr. Donald Tsang, Financial Secretary of the Hong Kong Govern-ment, at the Fourth Asia-Pacifi c Life Insurance Conference on 22 August 1997)

5.2. The window on the world

Hong Kong is said to be the “window” through which China gets to see the world. The window metaphor is used by both the Chinese (Texts30 and 31) and the Hong Kong political leaders (Texts 32 and 33).

Text 30

Hong Kong is China’s window facing the outside world.(Comments made by Li Peng, Premier of China’s State Council, on 7 October 1995 during his visit to Mexico.)

Text 31


Hong Kong, as a window facing the West and a bridge leading the West into Chi-na’s market ...(Speech made by Director of the Offi ce of Hong Kong and Macaw Affairs, the State Council of the PRC, Lu Ping, on 6 May 1994)

Text 32

Our Hong Kong will be ... a window for exchanges between China and the rest of the world;(Speech delivered by Tung Chee Hwa, the fi rst Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region [HKSAR], at a grand celebration party marking the establishment of the HKSAR on 1 July 1997)

Text 33

Make Hong Kong a window and let it play an important role in the moderniza-tion drive of mainland.(Speech by Yang Ti-liang, a member of the Executive Meeting of HKSAR. Wen Wei Po, 28 June 1997)

5.3. The channel for exchange

This metaphor is only found in the speeches of Chinese political leaders such as Qian Qichen and Zhou Nan (Texts 34 and 35).

Text 34

China needs Hong Kong to continue its role as a window for her reform and open-ing to the outside world and as a channel leading China to the world trades.(Speech entitled “China’s Development and Sino-British relations” given by Qian Qichen, Vice-Premier and Foreign Minister of PRC in British Royal Internation-al Institute on 3 October 1995)

Text 35

156 Lee Cher-Leng

In the future, Hong Kong, either as a main investor or as a channel-like middle-man, will to a great extent thrive on the close tie with the mainland China.(Speech entitled “The Importance to Maintain Hong Kong’s Economic System” delivered by Zhou Nan, Director of Xin Hua News Agency, Hong Kong Branch, on 16 November 1994 at an anniversary banquet of the Hong Kong Management Professional Association)

5.4. The fl oodgate

Hong Kong political leaders use the metaphor of fl oodgate to assure Hong Kong people that they will be the fi rst to benefi t when China prospers in a few de-cades.

Text 36

In a couple of decades, as China becomes the biggest economic system in the world, unlimited opportunities will come ... there is no place more suitable than Hong Kong to be a natural fl oodgate of China.(Speech by Chief Executive Tung Chee Hwa at “International Gathering to Cel-ebrate Hong Kong’s Return” on 3 July 1997)

A summary of the use of these metaphors of “structure” are shown in Table 4.

Table 4. The “structure” metaphor used by only the Chinese and Hong Kong leaders

Bridge Window Floodgate Channel Door

China 13 11 – 4 1

Hong Kong 3 2 1 – 4

The table above shows that “structural” metaphors, such as “bridge”, “windows”, “channels” and “doors”, are commonly used by the Chinese and Hong Kong po-litical leaders to show that Hong Kong is geographically very strategic and has great fi nancial value to China. These metaphors assure the Hong Kong people that since Hong Kong is of great value, China will defi nitely continue to ensure its prosperity; Hong Kong is constructed as important to the fi nancial and inter-national well being of China.


6. China’s role: Backing behind Hong Kong

Chinese leaders and some members of the Hong Kong government use the back-ing metaphor to assure Hong Kong that China will always be behind them and support them. Tung, however, does not use this metaphor again to avoid show-ing that China is more powerful than Hong Kong or any hierarchical difference. Texts 37 and 38 show the use of the metaphor by the director of a Chinese news agency and Li Peng himself.

Text 37

China enjoys a rapid development and becomes increasingly powerful and is a strong backing for Hong Kong, while Hong Kong is connected to the nation’s fu-ture as closely as in the same breath.(Speech delivered by Zhou Nan, Director of Xin Hua News Agency, Hong Kong Branch, at a New Year’s Party held at the Hong Kong Exhibition Center on 17 February 1997)

Text 38

With the powerful backing of the land of the forefathers, Hong Kong will enjoy a stronger status in international activities.(Speech made by Li Peng, Premier of China’s State Council, at a reception cel-ebrating the return of Hong Kong to the land of the forefathers. People’s Daily,2 July 1997)

Text 39 shows the use of the metaphor by a Hong Kong politician, but not by Tung. The “backing” implies protection. If Tung says that China is a backing for Hong Kong, he would be seen as suggesting that China “protects” Hong Kong, and to say so would be taken as implying that Hong Kong is lesser than China. To avoid defi ning a hierarchical relationship between Hong Kong and China, Tung avoids the metaphor.

Text 39

With the land of the forefathers as a powerful backing, Hong Kong is able to maintain a long-term prosperity and stability.

158 Lee Cher-Leng

(Rita Fan, President of Provisional Legislative Council. People’s Daily, 26 June 1997)

Text 40

Without a land of the forefathers as a powerful backing, no diplomat will be able to attempt and accomplish anything.(Ling Qing, the former Chinese Ambassador to the United Nations, grandson of Lin Zexu, a national hero known for his attempts to fi ght against British invasion in 1890s. Wen Wei Po, 30 June 1997)

Table 5 summarizes the use of the “backing” metaphor.

Table 5. The “backing” metaphor used by Chinese leaders and Hong Kong spokesmen

Backing

China 12

Hong Kong (Tung) –

Hong Kong (spokesmen other than Tung) 1

7. The relation between Hong Kong and China

Some metaphors are used to show the closeness between China and Hong Kong in a non-hierarchical manner, for example, they are of the “same root”, they are as close as “lips and teeth” and they are “connected by fl esh and blood”.

7.1. Shoot and root

In Text41, Mr. Tung said that he was proud of Hong Kong’s new identity in return-ing to her “roots”. The plant metaphor allows Tung to mean the same relationship as that of the part returning to the whole without showing the hierarchy between that of a child and a mother. In Text42, Tung also uses the root metaphor to stress mutual respect and mutual progress rather than one leading the other.

Text 41

We are proud of our new identity after the return and our Chinese roots.


(Speech delivered by Chief Executive Tung Chee Hwa at a Best News Writing and Pictures Competition held by the Hong Kong Newspaper Association on 17 April 1997)

Text 42

Hong Kong is an indispensable part of China and we share the same birth and same roots ... On the basis of the mutual respects, we can move forward togeth-er, shoulder to shoulder.(Speech made by Chief Executive Tung Chee Hwa at an “International Gather-ing to Celebrate Hong Kong’s return” on 3 July 1997)

7.2. Lips and teeth

Tung also uses the lips-and-teeth metaphor to show that the relationship between China and Hong Kong is one of mutual interdependence, not one depending on the other. This is seen in Text 43 and Text 44.

Text 43

Hong Kong is not only economically interdependent with mainland like lips and teeth, but also shares the same heritage and culture with the mainland compatri-ots ... I hope Hong Kong citizens understand and treasure such relationship, and work together for the new future of Hong Kong.(Comments made by Tung Chee Hwa in a dialogue titled “Stepping towards the Month of Returning” on 2 June 1997)

Text 44

The relationship between Hong Kong and Guangdong Province is like that of lips and teeth. I believe in the future there will be cooperation in many econom-ic fi elds, especially in infrastructure.(Comments made by Tung Chee Hwa at a news conference Wen Wei Po, 3 July 1997)

160 Lee Cher-Leng

7.3. Flesh and blood

This fl esh-and-blood metaphor is an idiom in mainland Chinese culture referring to the closeness of blood relationship. It is only used among the Chinese leaders and not those in Hong Kong because, arguably, it would be considered too crude of a cliché for Hong Kong culture.

Text 45

Notwithstanding the prolonged separation, the fl esh-and-blood bond between the people on the mainland and Hong Kong compatriots had never been severed.(Speech by Chinese President Jiang Zemin at the ceremony marking the estab-lishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Re-public of China. People’s Daily, 2 July 1997)

Table 6 summarizes the fi ndings in this section.

Table 6. Metaphors to show interdependence

Flesh and blood Root and shoot Lips and teeth

China 1 2 1

Hong Kong (Tung) – 8 2

Hong Kong 2 1 1

From the table, we understand that Tung clearly prefers the metaphors of “root and shoot” and “lips and teeth” relationship over the “fl esh and blood” relation-ship. This is apparently because the root-shoot and lips-teeth relationships show the interdependence of Hong Kong and China without necessarily showing dif-ference in hierarchy and authority.

8. Conclusion

In this study, we looked at a range of largely political media discourses found in Hong Kong and China, respectively, and focused on how they both represent Hong Kong’s historic transition through the use of metaphors. In particular, we examined how politicians as well as other news actors metaphorically formulat-


ed Chinese identity, Hong Kong’s identity and their interrelationship. Through this analysis, we identifi ed a number of dominant, metaphorically-mediated dis-courses of identities and relationships: 1) the handover as a homecoming event; 2) Hong Kong as her own master; 3) Hong Kong’s strategic position as a bridge be-tween China and the rest of the world; 4) China’s role as a backing behind Hong Kong; and 5) the relationship between China and Hong Kong as that of fl esh and blood, root and shoot and lips and teeth.

Through comparative analysis of this broad sweep of metaphorical discourses, we found that there is a variety of differences between Chinese and Hong Kong politicians, between the Chinese and Hong Kong press and between the leaders and the media. Let me give a summary account of these differences.

First, it may be noted that, in the current case of Hong Kong and Chinese me-dia discourses, metaphor, as a poetic, rhetorical form of discourse is not periph-eral but central to the construction of identity and relationships. That is, the use of metaphors is a predominant means of constructing identities and relationships in the discourses under study. To that extent, those metaphors constitute the pro-jected identities and relationships.

Second, Hong Kong and China’s media discourses share some of the meta-phorical forms. Where they do, they effectively reciprocate and thereby identify with each other and mutually reconnect the two Chinese speaking communities. For example, both discourses draw on the metaphors of bridge, window, channel, door and fl oodgate to characterize Hong Kong’s strategic position as a useful con-nection between China and the rest of the world. These metaphors imply benefi ts to both communities and they do not convey relations of domination.

Third, it may also be observed that there are also subtle differences, in terms of both metaphorical forms (e.g. words and idioms) and contextual use. These oc-cur sometimes because of different local conventions and sometimes because of different political motives. For example, in seeing the handover as a homecoming event, Chinese media prefer the metaphor of “embrace of the fatherland”, while Hong Kong leaders prefer to use the “big family” metaphor. This shows that Chi-nese media take the stance that Hong Kong’s handover is returning Hong Kong to where she originally belongs, whereas Hong Kong leaders’ “big family” stresses the reunion of family members instead of one belonging to the other. Also, in the use of the metaphor constructing Hong Kong’s identity as being her own master, Chinese media prefer to stress that Hong Kong is her “true master”, while Hong Kong leaders state that Hong Kong can now control her own destiny. The ver-sion of Chinese media not only alludes to the repression of British colonial rule, but also reaffi rms Chinese commitment to Hong Kong’s freedom. From the per-spective of Hong Kong, it is not totally free, however. Hence the leaders can only say that Hong Kong can control her own destiny.

162 Lee Cher-Leng

Finally, it can be argued that, generally, the metaphors found dominant in the Hong Kong and China press construct a shared identity between Hong Kong and China and a mutually benefi cial relationship and serve effectively to mobilize feelings of reunifi cation. This image of relationship is largely absent from the Western media. For example, on the relationship between Hong Kong and Chi-na, the Chinese press tends to choose metaphors that are rooted in Chinese con-ventions, for example, “fl esh and blood”, whereas the Hong Kong media usually use “shoot and root” and “lips and teeth”. But on the whole, they all serve to pro-duce a close and fi rm identifi cation.

Note

1. Only the offi cial speeches by Chinese and Hong Kong political leaders are translat-ed in People’s Daily. Most of the English translations in this paper are my own.

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A case study. Journal of Pragmatics 28, 557–590.

Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson 1980 Metaphors We Live by. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Lakoff, G. 1992 Metaphor and war: The metaphor system used to justify war in the gulf. In

Martin Putz (ed.), Thirty Years of Linguistic Evolution: Studies in Honour of Rene Dirven on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 463–481.

1996 Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know That Liberals Do Not. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Lau, C. K. 1997 Hong Kong’s Colonial Legacy: A Hong Kong Chinese’s View of the British

Heritage. Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Lee, D. 1992 Competing Discourse: Perspective and Ideology in Language. New York:

Oxford University Press.


Lo, S.-h. 1997 Political opposition, co-optation and democratization: The case of Hong Kong.

In Pang-kwong et al. (eds.), Political Order and Power Transition in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 127–157.

Wei, J. M. 2000 An analysis of the metaphorical usage of campaign slogans in the 1996 presi-

dential campaign in Taiwan. Journal of Asian Pacifi c Communication 10 (1), 93–114.

Wilson, J. 1990 Politically Speaking: The Pragmatic Analysis of Political Language. Cam-

bridge: Basil Blackwell.

Zhao, R. and M. Zhang (eds.) 1997 Zhongguo lingdao ren tan xianggang [Chinese Leaders on Hong Kong]. Hong

Kong: Ming Pao Publications.

Chapter 10Voices of missing identity:A study of contemporary Hong Kong literary writings

Kwok-kan Tam

1. Introduction

The political, economic and cultural development of Hong Kong in the last quar-ter of the past century has presented a theoretical problem to all critics and politi-cians. All existing discourses of colonialism and postcolonialism are concerned about a colony which faces the rise of nationalism after it has gained indepen-dence. In the case of Hong Kong, the problem is not a future of independence af-ter its decolonization from the British colonial center. But rather, it is a merger with China, an Oriental power in experiment with the transition from a planned economy to a market economy and to a culture of globalization. China’s plan has been to include Hong Kong in its practical politics of a Greater China of “one country, two systems”, which is intended to put an end to the political split of the country. In contrast to all other postcolonial societies, Hong Kong has neither a precolonial past, a postcolonial future, according to postcolonial theory. The anomaly of Hong Kong is marked by a double absence of a past and a future, but exists only in its present.

Hong Kong presents an anomaly, a counterargument against all existing the-ories of colonialism.1 When Britain as a colonizer ruled Hong Kong before 1997, Hong Kong had already become a fi nancial and cultural center in the region of East and Southeast Asia. This fact alone serves as a marker of Hong Kong in its development beyond the control of the British colonial empire. Thus the theories of colonialism that hinge on relations of a center-periphery power structure do not apply to Hong Kong. In fact, Hong Kong had become a postcolonial entity caught in the political and economic tug-of-war between Britain and China. The causes behind such an anomalous development of Hong Kong are many. The riots in 1967 shook the foundation of the century-old British rule. Beginning in the 1970s, the “old British pillars” in the fi nancial structure, particularly Hong Kong Bank and Jardine and Swire, found their positions threatened by the newly risen local Chinese tycoons. Since the 1980s when China opened its doors, Hong Kong has

166 Kwok-kan Tam

expanded beyond its geographical territory into China and, thus, become part of the expanding Chinese economy. In the two decades before its reversion to Chi-nese sovereignty in 1997, Hong Kong remained a British colony more in name than in fact. Put another way, Hong Kong was colonial in political structure, but postcolonial in economy and in many other aspects of social life.

What is of interest to political scientists and cultural critics is the anoma-lous identity of Hong Kong people which is negotiated in discourses of the pub-lic sphere. In Habermas’ theory (1984, 1987), the public sphere is a social insti-tution, which makes possible the negotiation of power and opinions between the ruling class and the ruled. The public sphere serves as the rudimentary form of modern democracy. In Hong Kong, as well as in many other Asian societies, the theater and journalistic literary writings have been functioning as political do-mains in the public sphere, in the sense that they circulate in society in distinct forms of ideology which have powerful discursive effects in shaping the subject. Hong Kong shares with many other Southeast Asian societies in its quest for a postcolonial identity. Theories of postcoloniality derived from the experience of Southeast Asia, Africa and the Caribbean have postulated nationalism as the new identity after independence. Hong Kong, however, is faced with reunifi cation with China, from which it was forcibly separated by a colonial power.

Following the 1997 return of Hong Kong to China, many Hong Kong people, who previously considered themselves as passengers on a “bridge” (an image that Homi Bhabha [1994: 5] has created for the rootless and “unhomed” people), have now decided to stay on the bridge, rather than to go either ends. In the contem-porary journalistic literary writings of Hong Kong, there is the representation of the dilemmas, uncertainties, disillusionment, and the feeling of frustration among the Hong Kong people in the 1970–1990s, which can be analyzed as discourses of cultural anomaly. In this unique situation, the people of Hong Kong are forced to redefi ne and reconstruct themselves.

2. Hong Kong literature

In today’s Hong Kong, 98 percent of the population are Chinese and Cantonese speaking, so most of the writers write in Chinese, though some prefer to write in English. In the tradition of Chinese literary writings in Hong Kong, most writ-ers prefer to call themselves “Chinese writers” rather than “Hong Kong writers”, as their writings are not limited to the portrayal of life in Hong Kong, and the themes they deal with are often about some transcendent issues that are shared by the Chinese either on the mainland, or in Hong Kong. English writers in Hong Kong also seldom label themselves as “Hong Kong writers”, for the themes they write about have much in common with Southeast Asian literature, particularly

167A study of contemporary Hong Kong literary writings

on the cultural issues of East-West encounters. In the 1970s, in many literary and popular magazines as well as in Chinese newspapers published in Hong Kong, there were debates on whether there is Hong Kong literature and, if there is, how it should be defi ned. The general opinion at that time was that Hong Kong liter-ature was a misnomer, in the sense that Hong Kong literature should be consid-ered as part of Chinese literature, as it was written in Chinese, and it is almost impossible to defi ne who was qualifi ed to be called a Hong Kong writer. How-ever, since the 1980s, there is a growing tendency for writers, Chinese or Eng-lish, in Hong Kong to call themselves “Hong Kong writers”. This is a tendency that shows a growing consciousness of Hong Kong identity. At the same time, the rise of localism in Taiwan and on the mainland forces the Hong Kong peo-ple, especially the younger generation, to rethink who they are, if they are not the same as mainlanders or Taiwanese. The 1997 handover of sovereignty is an im-mediate issue that put in front of the Hong Kong people the question of how they should redefi ne themselves in relation to China. And hence, in the literary writ-ings, newspaper essays, dramatic productions and public debates in Hong Kong since the second half of the 1980s, there are voices that show a belated postcolo-nial space in which the subaltern speaks. The texts that I examine below are all originally in Chinese.

3. Hong Kong: The anomaly of (post)coloniality

Hong Kong’s unique case as an anomaly of (post)coloniality can be seen in the following description from the 1997 issue of the London Review of Books:

One of Hong Kong’s most profound problems is also one of its greatest achieve-ments. This anomalous place, this old margin between East and West, has in the last decade acquired a cultural and artistic life of its own. In the ritual exchange of fl ags and empires, this extraordinary fact may be overlooked. And it is all the easier to overlook because Hong Kong’s culture has emerged in the absence of all the things that are supposed to make cultures happen. It doesn’t have much of a history – 155 years at most – and what it has is largely invisible: the city is in a state of relentless fl ux, its historic buildings torn down, its street-scapes altered, so that no accumulation of resonances is possible. Even the map of the physical territory is utterly unstable: small islands have been an-nexed to the larger one by fi lling in the harbor; frantic reclamation has remolded the shape of surrounding seas. (O’Toole 1997: 18)

In many novels published in recent years, the general image used to describe Hong Kong is that of either a fl oating city, or a crazy city.2 Such an image is il-luminating not only in its refl ection of the geopolitical reality of Hong Kong, but also in its function as a discourse to describe how Hong Kong people reconstruct

168 Kwok-kan Tam

themselves. In actual truth, Hong Kong does not build its culture by accumulation and does not rely on tradition. It is a place where everything fl oats and nothing seems to have been built on solid ground. The phenomenon that people in Hong Kong have to continually talk about their identity is a refl ection of an attempt to search for and forge new identities that can reassure themselves of their relation to the new realities in Hong Kong. In this sense, what is important does not lie in what identity the Hong Kong people have, but in the process of questing for new identities. For the Hong Kong people identities are not something fi xed, but something that appears, disappears and reappears.

In his memoirs essay, “Ji dao chunqiu guangying zhong” [Films in My Youth, 1995], Gu Cangwu, the noted Hong Kong poet and journalist, has the following observation about the youth in the 1960s:

For us people growing up in a “fl oating city,” we were born with a sense of anxi-ety and uncertainty. . . . We were worried about the Cultural Revolution that oc-curred in China. The 1967 Riot was only a small-scale re-enactment of the Cul-tural Revolution, yet many people were so frightened that they fl ed Hong Kong. The people of the “fl oating city” were brought back to face history squarely for the fi rst time since the 1950s. For our generation, we also for the fi rst time seri-ously thought about our identity and our situation as Hong Kong Chinese. In the journals we edited, we began to explore issues of our Chinese identity and orga-nized many seminars in the style of the “Free University.” But the more we ex-plored, the more we felt puzzled.3 (Gu 1995: 59)

The image of a fl oating life and a fl oating identity marks the discourse that Hong Kong people in the 1960s used to construct themselves in relation to their Chi-nese identity. It refl ects the lack of confi dence among the Hong Kong Chinese, not only in China, but also in themselves.

4. Hong Kong Chinese: Discourses of a fl oating self in a fl oating city

For the people living in a fl oating city, identity is not just a matter of cultural pol-itics, but also an issue of personal anchorage, cultural root, self-positioning and self-assurance. In contemporary Hong Kong writings, there is a similar quest of identity that seeks its roots in Chinese civilization. In the play, Long qing hua bu kai [An unresolved China complex 1997] by Mo Xi (Mok Hei), there is the ex-pression of strong sentiments toward China as a source of root in identity:

Ah-Gun: No matter how many times I have to go to China, I must fi nd out where my hometown is. (Mo 1999: 140)


The disillusionment with China urged many Hong Kong writers to look back to Hong Kong and seek their identity in the immediate present of the reality. Hong Kong in the late 1970s was marked by its rapid and large-scale sociocultural de-velopment, with the Mass Transit Railway (MTR)4 being built as a signpost of urban transformation from a “fl oating city” to a highly modernized society be-yond the imagination of colonialism:

What Hong Kong most powerfully suggests is that it is no longer possible to de-fi ne a culture by the presence or absence of any or all of these markings. For the fi rst time anywhere a vibrant culture has emerged almost entirely from within the elements of mass consumerism. The vast bulk of Hong Kong’s population may have come from China bringing language, lore and learning with it. But what is going back to China is patently not what was extracted. It is something else alto-gether – an identity forged through popular culture. (O’Toole 1997: 18)

In the midst of this urban transformation was the rise of consumerism and pop-ular culture, which is a sign of the emergence of many Asian cities as regional beyond the cultural boundaries of colonialism. In his critique of Hong Kong, Gu Cangwu has the following to say in his poem “Taiping Shan shang, Taiping Shan xia” [Over Victoria Peak]:

Oh!Is this the city in which I have livedFor thirty years?Were it not that someone mentioned:We should thank Emperor Dao Guang5

I would have forgotten:This harborHas a nameThe British QueenVictoria – Victory!

The weight of a hundred years’ historyCrushes on my long-numbed brainThunder clappingMy stubborn illness that was healed a long time agoIs made to re-surge

In the pain:I see that on an island and on a peninsulaNumerousGolden poleshave been forced inBetween golden polesUnderneath the golden poles

170 Kwok-kan Tam

Spilling bloodThe harbourDyed fi shy red6

(Gu 1980b: 68–70)

5. An alternative identity: Images of China as the homeland

In their quest for identity, Hong Kong writers began in the 1950s and 1960s with seeing themselves as a “fl oating cloud” (Gu 1988: 371), drifting between China the homeland and the open world outside China. Instead of living self-deceptively in the past about the great Chinese cultural tradition, many Hong Kong writers are awakened to the fact that they have to live in the present and seek their identity in the future. This transformation originates from the inner change in the writers, to whom identity change is a matter of change in subjectivity. The grand socialist dream in China of the 1970s, unfortunately, turned out to be a myth.

While what puzzled many writers was the confusion of identity among the Hong Kong people in the 1960s and early 1970s, in 1997 when Hong Kong was ready to be reverted back to China, there was still this unresolved puzzlement of identity. This is evidenced in the play, Wu ren di dai [No man’s land 1997] by Zhan Ruiwen (Tsim Sui Man) and Deng Shurong (Tang Shu Wing), in which two prisoners assume the role of clowns and perform in an absurdist manner to make fun of both the mainland Chinese and Taiwanese identities. Yet to the two clowns, who are supposed to be representations of Hong Kong people, identity cannot be a choice between mainland China and Taiwan, and in the process of constructing a separate identity, they can only choose the “Diaoyu Islands” as their symbol – the symbol of a place forsaken by both mainland China and Taiwan:

J: Everyone has his own world, which is like a ball that rolls here and there and bounces up and down, but it cannot exist by itself apart from us. When we don’t move, the world also does not move, but once it moves, we have to move with it. In case we are not careful, the world may fall down and we cannot get hold of it. We may think of changing the world, but it is no longer the world that we origi-nally live in. Even though we may still pretend that the world is the original world we live in, it nevertheless is not the same. Sometimes the world that we play with may also not be the world that we belong to. Where then is the world that we live in? Who is the master of our world? (Zhan and Deng 1999: 96)

The world here that the clown “J ” talks about is of course the location that the Hong Kong people associate with in their construction of their identity. This ex-istentialist view of an absurd world, in which one is not one’s own master, ful-ly expresses the sense of helplessness in Hong Kong people’s uncertainty about their identity and their future.


A look at Hong Kong drama presented in the year 1997 will also show that there is the quest for a postcolonial identity, as distinguished from that of main-land China and Taiwan. In the play, Fei ba! Lin liu niao, fei ba! [Archaeological bird 1997] by Chen Bingzhao (Chan Ping Chiu), there is the description of Hong Kong in its quest for a postcolonial identity, which is not the colonial British, nor is it Chinese (mainland and Taiwan), but distinctively Hong Kong:

D: The songs of the Che7 people attracted many, many more boats to this sea-port. But when more and more people came to this place, the Che people sudden-ly disappeared with reasons unknown. It is like deleting a fi le in the computer, and no one knows what happened.E: The whereabouts of the Che people has become a riddle since. Some peo-ple say they had gone to the sea; but the fi shermen’s descendants think otherwise and say that the Che people could not have been their ancestors: it should be that the fi shermen had relocated themselves on the land and then later on they became the Che people. (Chen 1999: 210)

By tracing the origin of the Hong Kong people as descendants from the Che clan, which had been deleted from the collective memory of the Chinese in record-ed history, the play attempts to redefi ne Hong Kong people as distinct from the mainland Chinese or Taiwanese. The redefi nition of Hong Kong people can thus be seen as an effort in constructing a new Hong Kong subjectivity. Yet, in the midst of the process of redefi nition, there is a tone of sadness and helplessness in the face of China’s takeover in 1997:

Father: . . . .Da . . .da . . . da . . . da . . . da . . . da! Listen, this is the sound of burial. Let the gigantic wheels of the bulldozer rush toward us. Let them run over your ances-tors, smash your homes and crush all empty memories.Time is up. A great monument is going to be set up on our dead bodies.Time is up. What are you digging here? Time is up, except for my body, what have you excavated? (Chen 1999: 164)

6. A search for the missing links in Hong Kong identity

In the recent thirty years of Hong Kong’s history from the 1960s to the 1990s, there has been the persistent quest for identity shown in journalistic literary writ-ings. The disillusionment with the political reality in China has led to an awak-ening among many Hong Kong writers that their future lies exactly in their im-mediate present. History is both remembered history and reality in the contem-porary Hong Kong journalistic literary writings. In studying cultural critiques and journalistic literary writings produced in Hong Kong in 1997, one can have a

172 Kwok-kan Tam

more thorough perspective on the complex interplay not only of politics, but also of cultures between the East and the West, the colonizer and the colonized, the Rightist and the Leftist, and the colonial and the postcolonial in the emergence of a Hong Kong identity since the mid-1980s. The writers’ search for identity is actually a process of decolonization, in which the poet fi nds dissatisfaction with the British Hong Kong, the old exploitative colonizer. This pattern of identity quest has a strong personal tone in many Hong Kong writers, but it can also be seen as a general pattern in Hong Kong people’s collective search for identity. In the Hong Kong play, Archaeological Bird, such a pattern of identity quest at the levels of Personal-National-Cultural can also be discerned. Through the process of archae-ological excavation, the play attempts to show the complex relations among per-sonal identity, location, family history, ethnicity and nation. In the scene, “Fam-ily Heredity: My Tail”, which parodies the history lesson typical of Hong Kong education, there is an exercise in the form of “fi lling in the blanks”:

I’m in my ________, I’m about ________ tall, and quite ________ built, but I have rather ________ shoulders.

I have _______ hair. My eyes are ________ . I’ve got a rather ________ face, with a _______ chin, a _______ nose. I have _______ lips, and I usually have a _____ expression. My face changes a lot when I ________. I have a ______ forehead: I like to think it looks ________.

I have a Chinese tail, the most special thing on my body that I’ve got from the Chinese heritage. (Chen 1999: 247)

The “blanks” that need to be fi lled in are the missing links between personal iden-tity and ethnicity in contemporary Hong Kong. The linkage with Chinese heri-tage is seen in the play as a “tail”, which not only appears to be redundant, but also makes Hong Kong people feel uneasy about themselves. In another scene, “A Game of the Tail”, the quest for identity is parodied in the style of an absurd play as a game of children chasing after their tails (Chen 1999: 244). In this sense, the quest for identity in the 1960–1990s generation of Hong Kong people is seen as a sad, futile game. The use of English in this section of the play has the effect of lamenting not only the lack of a native language, but also ridiculing the reliance on English, the language borrowed from the colonial master, in the construction of identity. It points out the reality of Hong Kong people’s being situated, linguis-tically and culturally, in between the Chinese and English languages.

In many Hong Kong writers’ search for identity, there is also a shift of per-spective from seeing the self as the “unhomed” drifting in the fl oating city of a colonial Hong Kong to considering the self as the “homely” living in the local bridging culture of a postcolonial Hong Kong (see Bhabha 1994: 5–18). When


Hong Kong is considered as “home” and when “the boundary becomes the place from which something begins its presencing” (Bhabha 1994: 5), Hong Kong writers have found their own position in the emergence of a Hong Kong identi-ty which, according to Homi Bhabha, is a bridge that “gathers as a passage that crosses” (Bhabha 1994: 5). In the history of Hong Kong, the city has also been represented as a bridge between the East and the West. Now this is a bridge that gathers, and not just crosses. That is, Hong Kong has also become a place to form an identity of its own.

7. The discourse of postcolonial Hong Kong voices

The depiction of Hong Kong as a location on which Hong Kong identity can be constructed is also found in the play, Archaeological Bird, which affi rms that Hong Kong is a place with an identity. The play ends with an ambivalent voice between optimism and pessimism:

Voice Over:. . . About our future, we need not have any fear! . . . Do not give birth to children! Do not buy any property!. . . After the return of sovereignty, we will then become masters of this land!. . . Daughter, be careful with your boyfriends. Now Hong Kong people have be-

come Chinese people!. . . In this circle, so long as you remain nice, you will become famous!. . . If we do not want to have any burden, let’s not to have!. . . Do not give up so soon. Give more time to other people, and also give more

time to ourselves!. . . Mum, do not listen to Dad for everything. If you fi nd anything incorrect, you

have to raise objection!. . . Do it well, I will support you!. . . We have to create Hong Kong here and now!8 (Chen 1999: 270)

Discourse does not just represent the social reality refl ected in people’s mind; it serves more importantly an instrumental function in shaping ideologies. As Teun A. Van Dijk has pointed out,

Within the framework of a multidisciplinary project on discourse and ideology, a new conception of ideology is being developed in which ideologies are conceived of as the basis of the social representations shared by (the members of) a group. The social position, interests and other vital properties of a group, and its rela-tions to other groups, are thus socio-cognitively represented in such a way that the ideologies shared by its members may monitor the social representations un-derlying discourse and other social practices. (Van Dijk 1996: 7)

174 Kwok-kan Tam

Viewed from such a perspective, the images of Hong Kong around the 1997 issue are refl ective of a discourse that attempts to monitor the social representations, in which process the most obvious is the desire to reconstruct the subject. Ideology is thus also a matter of discursive formation. In the study of identity, what is in-teresting is how identity as a psychological process can be discussed in terms of discourse. Ian Parker has offered his view in this respect, as he says,

The object that a discourse refers to may have an independent reality outside dis-course, but is given another reality by discourse. An example of such an object is the subject who speaks, writes, hears or reads the texts discourses inhabit. . . a subject, a sense of self, is a location constructed within the expressive sphere which fi nds its voice through the cluster of attributes and responsibilities assigned to it as a variety of object. (Parker 1992: 9)

8. Conclusion

Through the construction of a discourse on the 1997 issue, the writers discussed in this chapter, be they poets or dramatists, have actually voiced their desire to reconstruct the Hong Kong people as subjects caught in the envisioning of a post-coloniality that is threatened in its very lack of a sense of subjecthood. This lack of a subjecthood results from language mix that points at the in-betweenness of contemporary Hong Kong identity. The year 1997 marks the end of a colonial Hong Kong, but it is not just a discourse about the social reality of Hong Kong. What marks the changes in Hong Kong has a long lasting effect upon the nostal-gic memory of its people in their identity construction.

In Western theories, postcoloniality entails two concepts, as well as two so-ciopolitical conditions, which are complimentary to each other. The fi rst concept, which describes postcoloniality as a historical development of a society after co-lonialism, is temporal in its defi nition. The second concept, which considers post-coloniality as the emergence of new cultural spaces beyond the confi nes of colo-nialism, is spatial in its theoretical orientation. The case of Hong Kong presents an example that counter-argues that postcolonial cultural spaces can emerge even in a colonial society prior to its return to China in the year 1997. The labelling of Hong Kong as an anomaly of postcoloniality thus addresses the cultural devel-opment of a modern society beyond its colonial space. Yet, this cultural space is not a space of certainty; nor is it a space that can be defi ned in any single tradi-tion of the West or the East. It is not entirely Chinese, nor is it entirely Western. It is something that is forever re-imagining itself in its disappearance and recon-struction. In Homi Bhabha’s terms, the postcoloniality of Hong Kong lies exact-ly in its in-betweenness of cultural anomaly. This cultural in-betweenness in the case of Hong Kong has been vividly represented as voices of “missing”.


From a Marxist point of view, the complexity of the emergence of postcolonial cultural spaces in Hong Kong prior to the year 1997 can also be attributed to the Hong Kong’s peculiar position as a “neighbor” of China that juxtaposes a high-ly capitalist colonized city with an anti-colonial big power. In Lenin’s State and Revolution, written in the beginning of the twentieth century, there was already the prediction that historical exceptions in the form of anomaly might occur in a small capitalist state, which had been subjected to the infl uence and pressure of a big socialist country as neighbor. There have been alternative political voices in Hong Kong throughout its history of colonization, due not only to the infl uence of traditional Chinese values among its inhabitants, but also to the rise of local economic and political forces that counter the colonizers. However, the alterna-tive voices that can be found in Hong Kong in the 1980–1990s are not the same as those that can be found in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The pre-vious voices are those that yearn for a return to the Chinese tradition, as well as to China, the motherland, while the voices around the year 1997 are those that show the puzzlement of identity, loss, nostalgia and uncertainty.

Notes

1. Rey Chow has characterized Hong Kong as an anomaly of postcoloniality in her various discussions of Hong Kong, for example, see Chow (1992).

2. For example, Xi Xi’s novel Fou cheng zhi yi [Floating city].3. All translations are mine, except otherwise stated.4. MTR stands for the Mass Transit Railway, the fi rst phase of which was built in

1977–1979.5. During Emperor Dao Guang’s reign in the Qing dynasty of China, Hong Kong was

ceded to Britain.6. English in the original.7. “Che” is the name of a local clan in Hong Kong, which is supposed to be the ear-

liest Chinese settlement.8. The last sentence in the quote is given in English in the original.

References

Bhabha, H. 1994 The Location of Culture. London/New York: Routledge.

Chen, B.-Z. [Chen Ping Chiu] 1999 Fei ba! lin liu niao, fei ba! In K-k. Tam (ed.), Xianggang de shengyin: Xiang-

gang huaju 1997 [Voice of Hong Kong: Drama 1997]. Hong Kong: Interna-tional Association of Theatre Critics, 218–270.

176 Kwok-kan Tam


aspora 2 (2), 151–170.

O’Toole, F. 1997 A singular territory. London Review of Books 3 July 1997, 18–19.

Gu, C.-w. 1980 Taiping Shan shang, Taiping Shan xia [Over victoria peak]. In C.-w. Gu Tong

lian [Bronze lotus]. Hong Kong: Suye Press, 68–70. 1988 Yimu yishi [Wood and stones]. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing. 1995 Ji dao chunqiu guangying zhong [Films in my youth]. In C.-w. Gu Beiwanglu

[Memorandum]. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 58–60.

Habermas, J. 1984 The Theory of Communicative Action Vol. I: Reason and the Rationalization

of Society. (Trans. T. McCarthy.) Boston: Beacon Press. 1987 The Theory of Communicative Action Vol. II: Lifeword and System: A Cri-

tique of Functionalist Reason. (Trans. T. McCarthy.) Oxford: Polity Press.

Mo, X. [Mok Hei] 1999 Long qing hua bu kai [An unresolved China complex]. In K.-k. Tam (ed.)

Xianggang de shengyin: Xianggang huaju 1997 [Voice of Hong Kong: Drama 1997]. Hong Kong: International Association of Theatre Critics, 104–217.

Parker, I. 1992 Discourse Dynamics. London: Routledge.

Van Dijk, T. A. 1996 Discourse, opinions and ideologies. In C. Schaffner and H. Kelly-Holmes

(eds.), Discourse and Ideologies. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 36–52.

Zhan, R.-w. (Tsim Sui Man) and S.-r. Deng (Tang Shu Wing) 1999 Wu ren di dai [No man’s land]. In K.-k. Tam (ed.), Xianggang de shengyin:

Xianggang huaju 1997 [Voice of Hong Kong: Drama 1997]. Hong Kong: In-ternational Association of Theatre Critics, 74–102.

Chapter 11Identity and interactive hypermedia:A discourse analysis of web diaries

Hong Cheng and Guofang Wan

1. World Wide Web: A new communication channel

In the present chapter, we want to study the Hong Kong diaspora’s attempt to use the new media for overcoming the predominant Western discourse about the handover of Hong Kong and at the same time for changing the usually asym-metric conditions of mass media communication. Moreover, we shall discuss the chances, limits and constraints which became manifest during the realiza-tion of this attempt.

Since the mid-1990s, the world has once again witnessed how technologies change human beings’ lives. As a fastest-growing segment on the Internet and a major force in computer-mediated communication (Cavanaugh 1998; Dizard 1997; Harris 1996; Jones 1997, 1998; Laver 1996;1 Niekamp 1996; Reddick and King 1997; Wu 1999), the World Wide Web has provided anyone – organization and individual alike – who has “a computer, modem, phone line, and ‘access pro-vider’ ” (Johnson 1995: 20) with an entirely new channel of communication.

Among the organizations that have jumped online were traditional news me-dia. Thanks to the Web, “the phrase ‘mass communication’ takes on a whole new meaning” for the fi rst time in history (Cavanaugh 1998: 3). Instead of the tradi-tional one-way communication of publishing to the masses, the Web “mediates human interaction better than any other medium” (Levy 1996: 27).2

In addition to their coverage of happenings with conventional journalistic genres such as hard news and feature stories on a daily – or even an hourly – ba-sis, many news organizations have mobilized their resources to provide extensive coverage of important international news on the Web. On 30 June and 1 July 1997, news Web sites3 from 62 percent of the countries or territories that used English as an operational language covered Hong Kong’s return to China; 56 percent of these countries or territories had all of their English-language news sites cover-ing this event. And 44 percent of the countries or territories that had their Eng-lish-language news sites covering Hong Kong’s handover offered the coverage on the front page of their sites, which does not need any further click on a news

178 Hong Cheng and Guofang Wan

site to see the news and naturally indicates the priority a news item is given on the site (Cheng 2000).

In the meantime, many news Web sites experimented with new techniques in their coverage. Almost a quarter of the countries that had English-language news sites in mid-1997 had at least one site offering a special project on Hong Kong’s handover (Cheng 2000). Sites with such a special project carried far more infor-mation on Hong Kong than the sites without such a project.

In this chapter, we shall focus on some dozens of diaries contributed by twen-ty individuals from Hong Kong to the U.S.-based Public Broadcasting Service’s Web site < http://www.pbs.com > during a six-month period before and after the handover. Our purpose is not only to provide a discursive perspective on the con-struction of identity by the local people themselves amidst global media attention, but also to explore the intricate and dynamic interconnections between identity development and Internet mediation.

2. “Hong Kong ’97: Lives in Transition”

“Hong Kong ’97: Lives in Transition” < http://www.pbs.org/pov/hongkong/ > is the title of a special online project created and hosted by the Public Broad-casting Service, still accessible on the Web today – more than four years af-ter Hong Kong’s handover. PBS, headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia of the United States, is a private, nonprofi t corporation whose members are 347 pub-lic television stations across the country. PBS claims that it “uses the power of noncommercial television, the Internet and other media to enrich the lives of all Americans through quality programs and education services that inform, inspire and delight.” Serving nearly 100 million people each week, PBS is available to 99 percent of U.S. homes with televisions and to an increasing number of dig-ital multimedia households (“About PBS” 2001).4 PBS’s featuring of “Lives in Transition” when Hong Kong’s handover took place was in line with its mission since this special online project could help inform its audience of a major world event via an innovative use of the Internet. As stated clearly on PBS’s home page,“Lives in Transition is about human-sized perspectives on Hong Kong’s histo-ry and transition” < http://www.pbs.org/cgi-bin/pov/hongkong/discuss/discuss.cgi >. Brian Clark, the project’s producer, further explained why PBS launched this special Web section:

The Hong Kong handover was such a complex issue that we knew the tradition-al media would give only “news attention” (which meant heavy on the formal speeches and declarations with few, if any, glimpses of the effect on the people). . . . [W]hile news was refl ected in the diaries, we envisioned the effort much more as “real-time” documentary for the Web. (Clark 2000: 2)5

179A discourse analysis of web diaries

As a cyber-forum for Web users, “Lives in Transition” began publishing diary entries on 30 April 1997. If one clicks on “By Date” in this special project, the seventy-one archived diaries will be listed in chronological order; if one clicks on “By Contributor,” the twenty participating diarists will be listed alphabetical-ly, with a one-paragraph biography for each of them and a photograph for four of them shown on the Web page. A diarist’s name is clickable, too, which leads to all entries contributed by the individual. From all walks of life, the diarists were men and women believed to be representative of those who live in Hong Kong. Hilary Klotz, the PBS project’s associate producer, found most of the diarists during a two-week trip to Hong Kong in April 1997.

We were trying to fi nd a wide variety of people to represent a broad spectrum of Hong Kong society – students, artists, business people, scholars, working-class people, and Chinese and non-Chinese residents. I had some contacts in Hong Kong before the trip and got referrals that way. Then once in Hong Kong, I found people via referrals and also through organizations like Hong Kong Journalists Association. So, I met all these people, introduced the project and asked them to volunteer to write diaries. Afterwards, when I returned to the U.S., we had a pro-duction meeting and selected participants. Again, we were looking for diversity and hoping to get people who would commit to writing regular installments over a period of four months. (Klotz 2000: 1)6

Some of the diarists chose to contribute under pseudonyms for fear of reprisals. Once the project got rolling, a few Web users joined on after sending e-mail to the PBS production team. One of them even wrote the most frequent entries (Clark 2000; Klotz 2000).

The diarists could not post their entries directly on the Web. They fi rst sent their entries via e-mail, fax or, occasionally, regular mail to the PBS team, who then posted for them because some of them did not have Web access at that time. For those diarists who only spoke Cantonese, a graduate student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong translated their entries into English. Again, PBS “want-ed to make sure we had both English and non-English speakers – as well as [the] young, old, wealthy, non-wealthy, etc.” (Klotz 2000: 1).

When PBS stopped actively publishing diaries to its site in late 1997 (remem-ber, the Internet population was relatively small then), the number of the Web users who had visited this special project was already more than 250,000. These visitors were virtually from all of over the world (Clark 2000).

Although “Lives in Transition” was not solely designed by PBS to collect Hong Kong citizens’ views on their identities, it provided an ideal and unique venue for us to examine such identities, which had, in fact, no shortage of ex-pression there.


3. Hong Kong people’s quest for identities

Identity defi ning in a postcolonial territory always involves “ideological battles” (Gibson 1995: 73). The “sense of an ending, of the completion of one period of history and the emergence of another, is ... hard to maintain in any simple or un-problematic fashion” (Childs and Williams 1997: 1).

The recent transition in Hong Kong has been very complex, subtle and pro-found because “the real transition is about identity and not sovereignty” (Wong 1999: 182). The identity of Hong Kong people is more complex than that of peo-ple in many other places of the world. “Vis-à-vis foreigners, Hong Kong people are of course Chinese, but vis-à-vis the Chinese from the mainland or Taiwan, they seem to have the imprints of the West” (Chow 1992: 155).

Compared with the people in most other former colonies, there are two major differences when Hong Kong people defi ne their identities. For one thing, there was “the passion for decolonization in the 1960s and 70s” since the citizens in those former colonial territories “believed that there was no higher good than self-government” (Campbell 1997: 253). But for Hong Kong, the decolonization was not a voluntary choice of its citizens; instead, it was a decision made by its former colonizer and its motherland. The other difference is that most former colonies became independent nation states after decolonization, so they could – at least in theory – determine their own fates. But for Hong Kong, its sovereignty was trans-ferred from one country to another. With these two differences, the identity defi n-ing in Hong Kong is more complicated, more controversial, and, naturally, more pressing than that for most other former colonies. Since the early 1990s, when Hong Kong’s return to China had become imminent, people in Hong Kong have been discussing their identities “with increasing fervor” (Ho 1998: 39).

In fact, the identity issue in Hong Kong could be traced back to 1842 when this territory was taken over as part of the ratifi cation of the Treaty of Nanking by the British, who wanted a trading port with China. From then on, Hong Kong became “a bridge between the East and West, with no existence of its own ex-cept as a convenient passage between these two cultures” (Ibid.). Natural disas-ters, economic crises, and political unrest in China forced many of its citizens to move to the British colony. So, in the fi rst half of the twentieth century, Hong Kong also became “a center for refugees who had no engagement with the city” (Ibid.). They worked hard and tried to make as much money as possible in order to immigrate to other places or return to China once the situation there improved. In this sense, “Hong Kong was only a railway station, with many romances but no marriages” (Ibid.).

Before communists took over China in 1949 ensued another massive fl ow of refugees, who psychologically and culturally still linked with China, although they had made Hong Kong their home. The fi rst baby boom in the 1950s gave birth


to “a truly ‘Hong Kong’ generation” (Ibid.), brought up in a British colony with no direct contact with China. To this generation, China became a distant entity.

No colonial power wants its colonists to have a strong sense of local identities. Over the years, the British government nurtured Hong Kong people with neither a Hong Kong nor a Chinese identity, encouraging them “to live in an ambigu-ous cultural state” (Ibid.). It was not until 1984 when Britain agreed to return Hong Kong to China in 1997 as a special administrative region of China, a need for identity became apparent. When the British government refused to grant the right of abode in the United Kingdom to Hong Kong citizens, it was made clear that Hong Kong people were not British, either. To many people in Hong Kong, the territory “remained a transcultural political entity that was neither Chinese nor British, neither Eastern nor Western” (Ibid. 40).

After the 1989 Tiananmen incident in China, Hong Kong people became more anxious. Many of them emigrated. For those who could not or did not want to leave, the need for establishing an identity – something they could hold on to – in-creased. For example, the Hong Kong Arts Center, an independent arts organiza-tion with no government subsidies, engaged itself in “the identifi cation and defi -nition of Hong Kong’s cultural identity by examining its visual culture” (Ibid.).

Since Hong Kong’s handover to China in 1997, it has become increasing-ly apparent that identity discussions in Hong Kong are polarizing into two ex-tremes. On the one hand, the Chinese government has worked hard to enlist the people’s patriotism; on the other hand, “the sense of Hong Kong-ness has never been stronger” (Ibid. 42).

In short, “[t]he history of Hong Kong predisposes one to a kind of ‘border’ or ‘parasite’ practice – an identifi cation with ‘Chinese culture’ but a distantiation form the Chinese Communist regime; a resistance against colonialism but an un-willingness to see the community’s prosperity disrupted” (Chow 1993: 22). In other words, “Hong Kong citizens themselves remain fascinatingly contradicto-ry in their diasporic consciousness” (Ibid. 23).

As a self-concept, identity is nebulous and multidimensional, occurring, among others, in two major types: cultural and social. Often referred to as one’s sense of belonging to a particular culture or ethnic group, cultural identity involves learn-ing about and accepting the language, tradition, religion, aesthetics, and thinking patterns of a culture. Parallel to cultural identity, social identity is shaped by the characteristics and concerns common to the members of a social group or seg-ment. The types of social groups or segments with which people identify vary broadly and may include perceived similarities such as age, gender, profession, ideology, social class and common interests (Lustig and Koester 2000).

Both cultural and social identities “are negotiated, co-created, reinforced, and challenged through communication” (Collier 2000: 23). As Hall (1994) point-ed out,


Instead of thinking of identity as an already accomplished fact, which the new cultural practices then represent, we should think, instead, of identity as a “pro-duction” which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted with-in, not outside, representation. (Hall 1994: 392)

As a major purpose of this study is to examine how Hong Kong people looked at themselves before and after the historic handover, the term identity is operation-alized primarily as the way the Hong Kong diarists looked at China regarding, in particular, its culture, social and economic systems, and the sovereignty transfer. When they admitted their cultural associations with China, they would be regard-ed as identifying with their “motherland” culturally. In the meantime, their atti-tudes toward the social, political differences and the different levels of economic development between Hong Kong and the mainland will be used as an indicator of their willingness or unwillingness to identify with China socially.

4. Discourse analysis and ideology

Seeing textual analysis not only as a method of research but also as “an autono-mous endeavor toward the construction of a sound theory of media discourse” (Van Dijk 1983: 20), discourse analysis “provides us with rather powerful, while subtle and precise, insights to pinpoint the everyday manifestations and displays of social problems in communication and interaction” (Van Dijk 1985: 7).

Among the goals of discourse analysis is to fi nd out the “underlying ideolo-gies” of media discourse. In other words, “[t]hrough more explicit linguistic dis-course analysis ... such work attempts to uncover implied meanings that repre-sent ideological positions” (Van Dijk 1983: 27). To achieve this goal, discourse analysis may be focused on what Van Dijk (1983) called “global coherence” that pertains to large parts of the discourse and “is usually described in terms of such notions as ‘topic’ or ‘theme’ ... accounted for theoretically in terms of so-called ‘semantic macrostructures’ ” (Van Dijk 1983: 25), which is “derived from the in-formation, represented in the respective propositions expressed by the text, of the discourse as a whole” (Van Dijk 1983: 33–34). “Theme is an important ele-ment for building cohesion. It is a major means by which information is struc-tured in text: It signals what is ‘given’ and what is ‘new’ information, what is prominent, and what the clause is about” (Stillar 1998: 17). As Van Dijk (1983) further elaborated,

... a fragment of a discourse or a whole discourse is considered to be globally co-herent if a topic (represented by a macroproposition) can be derived from such a fragment. Note that part of the meaningfulness criterion for discourse is not only that (sequences of) sentences have meaning, but also that they are “about” some-


thing; they refer to (real or imagined) facts and to components of facts, such as objects, persons, properties, actions, or events. (1983: 25–26)

In this chapter, we chose to focus on the cultural and social identities-related the-matic topics that emerged from the diaries posted on PBS’s website by various individuals in Hong Kong during the historic transition. To identify such themat-ic topics, we treated each diary as a complete discourse, paying particular atten-tion to its explicit linguistic features while uncovering its implied meanings with the help of contextual information. Through an examination of how these dia-rists associated with or detached from China culturally and socially, we hope to add to the literature of how ideology infl uences one’s cultural and social identi-ties, and how language, culture, and ideology interact with one another in a par-ticular context like Hong Kong’s handover.

5. Cultural and social identities revealed in PBS web diaries

In regard to cultural and social identities in Hong Kong, we found three themes that had emerged from the seventy-one diaries posted on PBS’s website from 30 April through 10 October 1997. Some diarists were willing to identify with China both culturally and socially. Even if they did not give any indication of their cul-tural identities, they could still identify with China socially. Some diarists iden-tifi ed with China only culturally but not socially. Some diarists identifi ed with China neither culturally nor socially. In a similar vein, they chose to focus on or to search for a pure Hong Kong identity. (Sometimes diarists also modifi ed their attitude during this period of contributions: see for examples [2], [7], [11] below by Einna; June/July/September 1997).

5.1. Both culturally and socially identifi ed with China

In this section, we selected and analyzed a few diary excerpts that indicated the diarists’ willingness to identify with China culturally and socially.

[1] In my case, my father and I had very little to do with the Brits. In fact, we didn’t distinguish between the Brits and other Westerners: I used the words “Brits,” “Westerners,” “gweilos,” etc., interchangeably right into adulthood. My life was fi rmly rooted in the Chinese and Cantonese folk culture of food, of the yearly cycles of festivals and worships, of Chinese medical remedies (my fa-ther worked in a wholesale shop dealing with Chinese herbs), of the stories and legends my mother relayed to me . . . I also read the newspapers my father brought home, often fi ghting with my brother for the inside pages, which were


full of reminiscences of life back in China, as well as forlorn poems and serial knight-errant stories. In a nutshell, the greater part of my life seemed to have gone on as if there had been no Brits in town. (Cat-Lover, 6 May 1997)7

Using narration of her personal experience as a communication strategy, this di-arist distinctly identifi ed with the Chinese culture, which as she mentioned, in-cludes food, customs, herb medicines, legends and literature. On the contrary, the diarist clearly expressed her indifference about the British ruling. Since her fam-ily life and her personal life had little to do with the British directly, the greater part of her life could go on after the handover “as if there had been no Brits in town”. To express such indifference and dislike for the British, the diarist even resorted to some highly derogatory words like “Brits” and “gweilos” in her writ-ing. This diary suggests that one’s personal experience with the British could, to a large extent, determine one’s attitude toward the colonial ruling and the han-dover. As Wong (1999) noted, “family experiences contribute to political values and identity formation” (1999: 188).

[2] At present, nearly 30 percent of the capital fl owing into Hong Kong is from mainland China. Many mainland investors and capitalists have established their companies here, issuing stocks and shares in Hong Kong. This kind of develop-ment will strengthen the economy of the territory. It also demonstrated that Chi-na understands the importance of Hong Kong as a center of international trade; to damage the strategic importance of Hong Kong’s status in the world econo-my is not in China’s interest. Subsequently, Chinese interference in the politi-cal administration of Hong Kong has decreased over these last two months. It seems that their attitude toward Hong Kong is getting more liberal. They have started to “act more, say less.” This is really a good phenomenon ....

As for me, my capital is invested in the Hong Kong property market, where the picture is currently quite rosy. Just since May, property values have in-creased up to fi ve percent. Speculation abounds that the price will continue to rise through October. By that time, according to my plans, I will have sold some of my properties. (Seek the opportunity!)

I have confi dence that when the leaders of the central government in Bei-jing turn their attention to Shanghai, the future will be quite positive. Shanghai people are generally pretty open-minded, and are willing to accept the ways of newcomers that superior to their own. I think they will be able to grasp the essence of the existing philosophy of management in Hong Kong and use our model to catch up with the world. (Einna, 1 June 1997)8

Although this diarist did not give any emphasis on her cultural identity in this piece, she socially identifi ed with the Chinese government’s Hong Kong policy.


Using a mix of reasoning and personal account as her communication strategy, the diarist expressed her optimism about the handover with little reservation. When she was reasoning, she selected such facts as the capital fl ow from China and the open-mindedness of the Shanghai people to support her argument. One thing is also obvious from this excerpt that the diarist’s positive view toward the Chinese government’s Hong Kong policy was based on the personal economic gains she had obtained in the new sociocultural ecology during the territory’s transition.

[3] Today, I am living and working in Hong Kong, enjoying every minute of it. The new SAR [Special Administrative Region] government is doing a pretty good job, and most people in Hong Kong are pretty happy with how things are turning out. Yes, there will always be opposition, but that is inevitable. Hopefully, the prosperity and peace in Hong Kong will continue, and gradu-ally a system will evolve that everybody likes. (Chu, 10 October 1997)9

Although the diarist did not mention anything related to Chinese culture here, his writing was permeated with positiveness about the new Hong Kong govern-ment, which represents Beijing’s policy toward this returned land. He was satis-fi ed with what the Chinese government had done in Hong Kong. This diary ex-cerpt is another example that when one is willing to identify with China social-ly, one would be positive about the transition in Hong Kong.

5.2. Culturally but not socially identifi ed with China

Studies have documented that “in the ethno-cultural sense, there was a strong sense of identifi cation with Chinese nation” by many Hong Kong citizens (Lau 1997: 9). But “as far as the People’s Republic of China and the socialist Chinese government were concerned,” many Hong Kong citizens’ feelings “were at best mixed, and at worst negative” (Ibid. 12). The following diary excerpts showed how some diarists identifi ed with the Chinese culture but not with the Chinese society.

[4] I have mixed feelings about China taking over again. On the one hand, as a Chinese person, I should be proud that my “mother country,” so to speak, is regaining control of something that is rightfully hers. I also have some faith that China will be sensible enough to leave the freedom and autonomy of Hong Kong’s people alone. On the other hand, I fear that the plays for power going on right now between locals, Chinese leaders, and a few remaining fi gures of British authority may contribute to a possible downfall of our fl ourishing col-ony. (Wong, 9 May 1997)10


The cultural identity as Chinese and the social detachment from China are both explicitly indicated in this diary. By calling himself “a Chinese” and China his “mother country,” and by saying he is “proud of ” China’s reclaiming its sover-eignty, the diarist clearly indicated his Chinese identity. In the meantime, by us-ing the words “sorry to see the British go” and “so to speak”, and the phrase “our fl ourishing colony”, he also indicated that he was socially more attached to the British than to the Chinese system. This diary excerpt is an example that discrep-ancy between one’s cultural and social identities could give rise to one’s mixed feelings about Hong Kong’s handover.

[5] It can be said without doubt that the British government transformed Hong Kong from a primitive place into a bright and well-known city. Invariably, ev-eryone hopes the success can and will continue. The British government has given us the largest degree of freedom we have ever known, both in our com-munity and in trade. Under the British, the rights of the Hong Kong people have been respected. I do hope China will use the British system as a blue-print for rectifying the weaknesses in her own plan. (Lau, 15 May 1997)11

Although the diarist did not deal with cultural identity directly here, his use of the word “her” when referring to China suggested his emotional attachment to his mother country. Meanwhile, his nostalgia for the British social system and his reservation about the Chinese social system were fully expressed by his hope that “China will use the British system as a blueprint for rectifying the weak-nesses in her own plan.”

[6] For myself, the end of the colonial rule is certainly great. Even though Hong Kong has been ruled by Britain [for] more than 150 years[,] I have strong feel-ings of connection to my motherland. When my family and I were watching the Olympic Games, we concerned ourselves with the performance of Chi-na’s teams and were proud of their victories. Few Hong Kong people, I be-lieve, would deny their Chinese identities. In this sense, we are eager to see the reunifi cation. But there are doubts as well. (Kwok, June 27 1997)12

This diarist’s Chinese cultural identity was so self-explanatory in his writing. The example of watching the Olympic Games was very forceful because it is a typical situation in which one would distinctively and forcefully express one’s cultural identity. “But there are doubts as well.” What doubts? Doubts concern-ing the social impact of the sovereignty transfer on Hong Kong. Since the diarist could not identify with China socially, his enthusiasm about the reunifi cation of the two parts of China was expressed with reservation.


[7] As a Chinese, I ought to be happy about the reunifi cation of Hong Kong with mainland China. However, my happiness has yet to sweep away my paradox-ical feelings about the future of Hong Kong. Why? Because just a few de-cades ago, the Chinese government was very conservative and stubborn. In 1949, China had just broken with a feudalistic dynasty to become a real uni-fi ed modern nation. But it wasn’t until the 1980s that she opened herself up.

The Chinese government is still developing advanced technologies while learning from the West a more democratic political system. However, Hong Kong has already been fully developed as a civilian and capitalistic society for quite some time. Our political system is now mature enough for greater democratiza-tion. Between these two places, China and Hong Kong, there exists a gap left to be bridged between two political and economic systems. We are worried whether our reinstated sovereign will or can catch up with us, and whether she will per-mit a greater pace of democratization. Or will it be the case that Hong Kong will need to step backwards for a little while and wait until our motherland is ready for greater political change? I really don’t know. (Einna, 10 July 1997)13

In this diary, the author expressed her social detachment from China frankly while admitting her Chinese cultural identity candidly. Her detachment came from her pessimistic view about China, which was seemingly based on an analysis of the discrepancies in social and economic situations between mainland China and Hong Kong. Through a brief review of Chinese modern history, the diarist com-pared the mainland with Hong Kong one aspect at a time. This diary excerpt is a perfect example to support the theory that a major reason for many Hong Kong citizens’ hesitation about reunifi cation with China is that they “had commonly regarded our motherland as backward and oppressive” (Ho 1998: 40).

Here, the use of a “why” question has demonstrated an important difference between writing a Web diary and writing a traditional diary. A traditional diary’s reader is usually the diarist, whereas a Web diary is apparently written for oth-ers – most likely, for other Web surfers. When admitting that her happiness has yet to sweep away her “paradoxical feelings about the future of Hong Kong”, this diarist had predicted that her readers would ask her why, so she raised the ques-tion for them in her writing and then answered it clearly by herself.

5.3. Neither culturally nor socially identifi ed with China

The diaries analyzed in this section showed how some diarists identifi ed with China neither culturally nor socially, or how they focused on a pure Hong Kong identity. As Chow (1992) once argued, citizens in a postcolonial city like Hong Kong need “a third space between the colonizer and the dominant native culture,


a space that cannot simply be collapsed into the latter even as resistance to the former remains foremost” (1992: 158).

[8] Suddenly I was gripped by the feeling of how quickly 1997 was approach-ing. I then took note of the changes I expected to happen in our daily life af-ter June 30, 1997, when governance of my hometown would be assumed by China. (Chi, 6 June 1997)14

This excerpt indicates that the diarist identifi ed with China neither culturally nor socially. Her unwillingness to identify with the Chinese culture was revealed by the adverbial clause, “... when governance of my hometown would be assumed by China”. Here, “China” sounded like a foreign country while Hong Kong was called “my hometown”. The diarist’s social detachment from China was also ev-ident. The verb “grip” used to describe her feelings about the handover strong-ly revealed that.

[9] At this very instant, the neon red digits on a clock in the heart of Beijing are fl ashing away audaciously, counting down to the second exactly how much time is left until the historic handover takes place. When I went to Beijing this summer, I was chilled to the bone as I stared at these incessantly blink-ing numbers, and realized there was only one year left. Now there is a mere month left, according to the “handover clock” installed at the local Regent Hotel, and I just can’t bring myself to believe July 1 is approaching so quick-ly .... (Wong, 23 June 1997)15

Although the diarist did not give any indication about her cultural identity here, it was clear that she had no social attachment with Beijing. “Audaciously” and “chilled to the bone” were two expressions that set the tone for this diary – its 16-year-old author did not like the handover at all. This diary excerpt is a typical example that “the Hong Kong-born generations were hesitant about the reunifi -cation” (Ho 1998: 40).

[10] In our Wednesday morning assembly, the fl ag of China was raised on the roof of my school for the fi rst time. At that moment, my emotions were in-deed mixed. The principal declared that as Chinese, we should revel in the moment.

Nevertheless, some of my classmates were criticizing the Chinese gov-ernment, saying that a gloomy period was coming. They feel that the [poli-cies] of the Chinese government are ambiguous and hypocritical, and diffi -cult for people to follow. The idea of being a Chinese was not so honorable, some of them said. Some were even unwilling to sing the national song .... They are passive. (Lau, 16 July 1997)16


Through description and narration, this diarist showed us how some Hong Kong high school students had experienced diffi culty in identifying with China either culturally or socially. Here, China’s national fl ag and national anthem were used to symbolize China, both culturally and socially. The “mixed feelings” aroused by the national fl ag and the students’ reluctance to sing the national anthem fully indicated that they had an emotional resistance toward China. Even though they admitted that they were Chinese, they did not like their Chinese cultural identity because “being a Chinese was not so honorable” to them.

[11] Now, however, we live under the reign of a Chinese-style government. Chi-nese rulers are accustomed to a system in which political power is central-ized. They tend to resist democracy. I am afraid that democrats will fi nd their fi ght for a dominant role in the current Hong Kong polity a diffi cult one.

Needless to say, Hong Kong should and can sustain her status as an in-ternational economic center. However, I am very worried about whether she will be able to preserve the principle of Rule of Law. Before the handover, the Privy Council of Great Britain acted as our Court of Final Appeal, set-ting controversial and complicated legal problems. Soon the People’s Con-gress will replace the Privy Council, and will enjoy the “divine” right to in-terpret our constitution.

In my view, the People’s Congress is not a proper and legitimate legal in-stitution. You know, almost none of the members in the Congress possess[es] a legal degree. For such an ancient society, China hardly has a mature le-gal concept. Therefore the Congress is, no doubt, going to commit mistakes when it operates as the supreme body for handling legal issues. (Einna, 18 September 1997)17

This diarist not only had strong detachment from China socially, but also ex-pressed great reluctance to identify with it culturally. Her social detachment was clearly shown from her forceful argument about the unlikeliness of a rule of law in Hong Kong after the handover because to her, the Chinese rulers do not have a strong sense of law and a legal heritage. She used the fact that “almost none of the members in the [Chinese] Congress possess[es] a legal degree” to reinforce her argument.

The diarist’s unwillingness to identify with China culturally was revealed by her diction. While she selected such affective possessive pronouns as “her” and “our” when referring to Hong Kong, she simply used such phrases as “a Chinese-style government” and “Chinese rulers” in her description of China. It sounds as if the people in Hong Kong were not Chinese (it is true that some of them are not), and the diarist even “forgot” that she was originally from mainland Chi-na herself.


[12] During the handover period I heard a number of speeches and soundbites in which Hong Kong was described as a place where “East meets West”. My personal view is that this is an empty cliché that reduced the territory to a passive and neutral site where forces from elsewhere come into contact. It wrongly treated local culture as merely the sum of given Chinese and West-ern components, and thus serves to blind us to that which is unique in the art or way of life of Hong Kong. In the handover ceremony itself, only Man-darin Chinese and English were used. The local Hong Kong dialect, Can-tonese, was not used even to announce to guests when they could sit down.

One of the biggest events of the handover period was the performance of a specially commissioned piece of music by composer Tan Dun. It was played during the July 1st fi rework display. I fi nd it signifi cant that a main-land Chinese composer who lives in the West was chosen, rather than a lo-cal Hong Kong composer. I’m not a musical expert, but the impression I’ve gotten from reviews and other comments is that Tan Dun’s piece had a kind of “East meets West” theme, mixing aspects of Western classical musical form with things Chinese. (Clarke, 4 August 1997)18

This excerpt showed the diarist’s very strong Hong Kong identity by doing three things. First, such an identity was indicated in the diarist’s unhappiness about seeing Hong Kong “reduced ... to a passive and neutral site” for external pow-ers to interact and dominate, and the Hong Kong locals were blinded to what “is unique in the art or way of life of Hong Kong”. Second, the diarist criticized the widely used but rarely questioned “cliché” that Hong Kong is a place where “East meets West”. The diarist’s unconventional view added much weight to his argu-ment. Third, the diarist used language and music, two important and typical cul-tural artifacts, to illustrate and reinforce his argument.

6. Identity, interaction and Internet

In this contribution, we examined how Hong Kong people searched for their cul-tural and social identities during the transitional period. As a complex and press-ing sociocultural issue in this former British crown colony, such identities were created, argued, and transformed in the seventy or so diaries posted on PBS’s Web site. From the above analysis of these diary discourses, we noticed that Hong Kong people had more disagreement than consensus on how they would relate with Chinese culture and Chinese society. As a long-term and dynamic process, the search for new cultural and social identities in the post-handover Hong Kong is most likely to be continued in the twenty-fi rst century.

Cultural and social identities are “important at some historical moments when


a people (or an individual ...) needs to strengthen and protect itself from becom-ing overwhelmed. However, an obsession with defi ning a singularly distinctive culture can be devastating, at least in the case of Hong Kong” (Ho 1998: 43). To many people in Hong Kong, the territory’s success was “built on its ability to ac-commodate, absorb, adopt, manipulate, and transform anything that can help re-solve our problems and enrich our life” (Ibid.). So, the rootlessness of Hong Kong is believed to have given birth to “an open, accommodative culture” (Ibid.), and “the collective sense of ambivalence, unease, anguish and insecurity” in identity is “very much part and parcel of the Hong Kong way of life” (Wong 1999: 199), all essential to the survival as well as success of this longtime trading port and former refugee center. As Chow (1992) pointed out, in Hong Kong, there exists “a kind of lack of nationality, a nationalessness, that is at once the city’s past coloni-ality, present uncertainty, and (one hopes) future openness” (Chow 1992: 167).

The diversifi ed ways in which the diarists under study identifi ed with or de-tached themselves from China culturally and socially have to do with their at-titudes toward Hong Kong’s handover. It was not diffi cult to see that they were more often than not willing to identify with Chinese culture but reluctant to iden-tify with Chinese society.

In addition to pinpointing the cultural and social identities-related ideological themes embedded in these Web diaries, this study has also observed intercon-nections between Hong Kong people’s quest for identity and Internet mediation. In these Web diaries, two such interconnections were evident. First, the Internet has extended the traditional diary writing from an intrapersonal communication mode to a many-to-many mass communication mode. As a channel for intraper-sonal communication, traditional diaries are mainly written for self-expression and self-refl ection and are usually read by the diarists themselves. Studies on tra-ditional diaries have documented that “the form involved in the personal diary or journal intime concentrates on the life of the individual rather than on large-scale events in the outside world” (Field 1989: 144).

As a new genre for many-to-many mass communication, however, Web dia-ries could – in theory at least – be posted by multiple diarists and read by numer-ous Web users anytime. The interactivity of this new mass communication genre led to a reader-centered writing style in the diaries posted on the PBS Web site, with the writer-centered style in traditional diary writing being avoided. For in-stance, the diarists often raised and then answered questions that they anticipat-ed from their readers. What was more, when expressing feelings and views on Hong Kong’s handover and seeking for identities, they tended to convince their readers and evoke the readers’ empathy by resorting to personal experiences or reasoning. Such writing techniques are not always necessary in writer-centered traditional diaries.

Meanwhile, the Web’s interactivity feature gave the Hong Kong Web diarists


numerous opportunities and great convenience for two-way communication, in-stead of the one-way communication that dominates traditional mass media. In “Hong Kong ’97: Lives in Transition”, a message board called “Share Your Opin-ion” was provided at the end of each entry. Those who wanted to respond to a diarist and to reach the general Web public may do so by a simple click to open the message board. In this board, they may choose to post their comments under the existing topics or to create a new discussion thread. Currently, ninety such opinion topics have been listed in the message board, which carries several hun-dreds of opinion items posted by the Web users who visited this special project on Hong Kong’s handover < http://www.pbs.org/cgi-bin/pov/hongkong/discuss/discuss.cgi >.

On the other hand, however, some factors may have limited the interconnec-tions between Hong Kong citizens’ identity search and the Internet mediation. For one thing, many audience members in the world, including some of the dia-rists for this PBS special project, did not have Web access and/or did not speak English. So, the many-to-many mass communication via Web diaries could not be fully practiced. For another, even those who had Web access and had no lan-guage barrier were still unable to provide their insight on the PBS website direct-ly because they had to go through the PBS production team to have their diaries posted. Such a “gate-keeping” practice may not have given enough public space to Hong Kong citizens for a more diversifi ed and more dynamic cyber-quest for identities. Admittedly, the PBS team’s deliberate selection may have already iden-tifi ed a much more diversifi ed and representative group of diarists than passively waiting for any Web users to post diaries.

In sum, the dozens of Web diary discourses analyzed in this chapter revealed signifi cant infl uences ideology exerted on Hong Kong people’s searches for cul-tural and social identities, which in turn determined their attitudes toward Hong Kong’s handover. Such infl uences and determination occurred in dynamic and multifaceted interactions of language, culture and ideology. These Web diaries also displayed how interconnections between Web users and online mediation could encourage and facilitate mass audience’s participation in civic lives and in dealing with social and cultural issues. In the meantime, however, the Web di-aries still had limited accessibility to general Web users because of the limited Web access and the language barrier that some Web users had experienced, to-gether with PBS’s “gate-keeping” on diary posting. In other words, these Web diaries, as a new communication genre, may have empowered the mass audience who had access to this innovative Web project while widening the knowledge gap between those who had and who did not have such access.


Notes

1. Laver, R., 1996, Custom-tailored news. Maclean’s (29 April), 50.2. Levy, S., 1996, The year of the Internet. Newsweek (1 January), 27.3. In this chapter, a news site is defi ned as one on the World Wide Web that features

news coverage. The site can be run by a news organization such as a newspaper or a television station; it can also be run by a non-news organization such as a com-pany or a government department.

4. “About PBS: Welcome.” Online Available: http://www.pbs.org/insidepbs/index.html. 31 August 2001.

5. Clark, B., 20 March 2000, An e-mail interview with ‘Hong Kong ’97: Lives in Transition’ producer.

6. Klotz, H., 16 March 2000, An e-mail Interview with “Hong Kong ’97: Lives in Transition” associate producer.

7. Cat-Lover, 6 May 1997, Here and there, part 1. Diaries. Online Available: http://www.pbs.org/pov/hongkong/diaries/Cat_Lover/5-6-97.shtml. 31 August 2001.

8. Einna June 1997, Seek the Opportunity! Diaries. Online Available: http://www.pbs.org/pov/hongkong/diaries/Einna/6-1-97.shtml. 31 August 2001.

9. Chu, J. 10 October 1997, Happy to be Home Once Again. Diaries. Online Avail-able: http://www.pbs.org/pov/hongkong/diaries/Chu/10-10-97.shtml. 31 August 2001.

10. Wong, N. 9 May 1997, Distancing of communities. Diaries. Online Available: http://www.pbs.org/pov/hongkong/diaries/Wong/5-9-97.shtml. 31 August 2001.

11. Lau, J. 15 May 1997, Can Success Continue? Diaries. Online Available: http://www.pbs.org/pov/hongkong/diaries/Lau/5-15-97.shtml. 31 August 2001.

12. Kwok, G., 27 June 1997, There Are Doubts. Diaries. Online Available: http://www.pbs.org/pov/hongkong/diaries/Kwok/6-27-97.shtml. 31 August 2001.

13. Einna 10 July 1997, Pearl of China. Diaries. Online, Available: http://www.pbs.org/pov/hongkong/diaries/Einna/7-10-97.shtml. 31 August 2001.

14. Chi, N., 6 June 1997, Society changing. Diaries. Online Available: http://www.pbs.org/pov/hongkong/diaries/Chi/6-6-97.shtml. 31 August 2001.

15. Wong, N., 23 June 1997, July 1st Is approaching so quickly. . . . Diaries. Online Available: http://www.pbs.org/pov/hongkong/diaries/Wong/6-23-97.shtml. 31 Au-gust 2001.

16. Wong, N., 23 June 1997, July 1st@@0kIs approaching so quickly. . . . Diaries. On-line Available: http://www.pbs.org/pov/hongkong/diaries/Wong/6-23-97.shtml. 31 August 2001.

17. Einna, 18 September 1997, Diffi cult Fight for Democrats. Diaries. Online Avail-able: http://www.pbs.org/pov/hongkong/diaries/Einna/9-18-97.shtml. 13 August 2001.

18. Clarke, D., 4 August 1997, Hong Kong Is more than a place where ‘East meets West’. Diaries. Online Available: http://www.pbs.org/pov/hongkong/diaries/Clarke/8-4-97.shtml. 31 August 2001.


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Chapter 12Narrating Hong Kong history:A critical study of mainland China’s historical discourse from a Hong Kong perspective

Lawrence Wang-chi Wong

1. Why Hong Kong history?

On 1 July 1996, a new program was shown on the offi cial television channel of the People’s Republic of China, the CCTV, entitled The Hundred Years of Hong Kong (Xianggang bainian ) (hereafter abbreviated as Hundred Years). This one and a half minute program appeared every day as a countdown for the return of Hong Kong’s sovereignty to China on 1 July 1997; it was one of the many mainland Chinese narratives on Hong Kong that appeared in the sec-ond half of the 1990s. Just the CCTV alone had three other programs on Hong Kong.1 Among them, The Vicissitudes of Hong Kong (Xianggang cangsang

) (hereafter abbreviated as Vicissitudes2) was highly similar to Hundred Years, but it appeared to be more authoritative, as it bore the inscription of Jiang Zimin, plus a team of “advisors” like Qian Qichen ( ), Wang Hanbin (

), Ji Pengfei ( ), Hu Sheng ( ), An Zijie ( ), Huo Yingdong (), Lu Ping ( ), Zhou Nan ( ) and Li Hou ( ), all prominent political

fi gures in China and Hong Kong. Although both programs were not meant to be a “history” of Hong Kong in a strict or conventional sense, they attempted to tell its past. For wider circulation, they were subsequently made into VCDs for sale and the transcripts of their narration (jieshuoci ) were published in book form (CCTV 1997a, 1997b, 1997c).

There are some conventional histories of Hong Kong written by distinguished mainland Chinese historians. The editors of Nineteenth Century Hong Kong (Shi-jiu shiji de Xianggang (hereafter abbreviated as Nineteenth Century) (Yu and Liu 1994) and Twentieth Century Hong Kong (Ershi shiji de Xianggang (hereafter abbreviated as Twentieth Century) (Yu and Liu 1995), Yu Shengwu ( ), Liu Shuyong ( ) and Liu Cunkuan (

), as well as most of the contributors, are all from the Research Institute for Modern History at the Beijing Social Sciences Academy. Liu Shuyong also wrote a History of Hong Kong (Xianggang de lishi ) (Liu 1996). It is sig-

198 Lawrence Wang-chi Wong

nifi cant because it was translated into English and published by the Foreign Lan-guages Press as An Outline History of Hong Kong (Liu 1997), probably the only English version of Hong Kong history published “offi cially” in mainland China. Jin Yingxi on the Past and Present of Hong Kong (Jin Yingxi Xianggang jinxitan

), a posthumous collection of articles on Hong Kong histo-ries of Jin, who received his undergraduate education in the British colony, is a serious academic work (Jin 1996). So is Qi Pengfei’s ( ) Sunrise and Sun-set: 156 Years (1841–1997) of the Hong Kong Question (Richu riluo: Xianggang wenti yibai wushiliu nian ) (Qi 1997), as both were written in a serious attitude and abound with historical materials. There are, of course, some less academic works that are targeted at general readers. Appar-ently, the history of the last colony of Britain in the Far East has all of a sudden become an attractive topic for mainland historians.

But one question may be asked: why is it that before the appearance of these books, which, as said, were roughly published all during the same period in the second half of the 1990s, there had not been a major work by Chinese historians on Hong Kong history?

Generally speaking, people consider A. J. Eitel’s Europe in China: The Histo-ry of Hong Kong from the Beginning to the Year 1882 (Eitel 1895), published in 1895, about half a century after the formal establishment of the Colony, the fi rst important Hong Kong history to appear. Of German origin, Eitel was a natural-ized British citizen and became, in some eyes, “more British than the British” (Jin 1996: 8). Hence it is not surprising that his work has been criticized as heav-ily colonialist (Fok 1995: 21–22). Nevertheless, following his example and quot-ing extensively his work, other European historians continued to write on Hong Kong history throughout the twentieth century. G. R. Sayer’s Hong Kong: Birth, Adolescence and Coming of Age (1841–1862) (Sayer 1937), as well as Endacott’s several works, such as A History of Hong Kong (Endacott 1973) and Government and People in Hong Kong, 1841–1962 (Endacott 1964), are well known. A more recent book on Hong Kong history is Frank Welsh’s A Borrowed Place: The His-tory of Hong Kong (Welsh 1993), fi rst published in 1993 and revised in 1997 as A History of Hong Kong (Welsh 1997) to include a new chapter on the fi nal years of the colonial days. The general comment, basically a fair one, on these books is that they write too much on the British and too little on the Chinese residents in Hong Kong (Jin 1996: 16; Fok 1995: 22).

While Hong Kong histories written by westerners are not lacking, we have not been able to fi nd comparable works in Chinese for a long period of time. Tradi-tionally, Hong Kong was in such a peripheral position, geographically and cultur-ally, to mainland China that the Chinese had little interest in its affairs. In fact, before it was ceded to the British, no one in China ever paid any attention to the barren island, which was inhibited by mainly the Tanka ( ), a fi shing tribe

199Narrating Hong Kong history

which had long been discriminated against and despised (cf. Chen 1946). When the Chinese emperor had to inquire about the position of Hong Kong when the British demanded cessation, his ministers gave confusing replies (cf. Ma 1998 I: 43–45). Then upon becoming a colony of the “barbarians” in 1842, Hong Kong acquired a “double peripheral” status: the peripheral of the peripheral (Lee 1995: 76). Well until the 1940s, mainland Chinese writers, if they ever would write on Hong Kong, would take an extremely critical and negative view (cf. Lo 1983). We cannot expect that mainland historians would be interested in writing a Hong Kong history.

But then what about the historians in Hong Kong? It looks inappropriate that local scholars have no interest in their own history. Yet a paragraph from a re-port prepared by The Committee on Chinese Studies appointed by the Governor in 1952 for the purpose of reviewing secondary and primary school textbooks on Chinese literature and history clearly reveals the diffi cult position that local scholars faced in writing a Hong Kong history in the colonial days:

In the Manchu Dynasty, the Chinese people, being under a foreign regime, were not patriotic. Also, due to lack of political training and enthusiasm, they were like “a mass of loose sand”. Since the founding of the Republic, Chinese politicians have striven hard to unite the nation by appealing to the people’s patriotism, nar-row nationalism and racialism. One handy short-cut to this end is to stir up ha-tred for foreign countries, and History textbooks have been looked upon as a very convenient tool to serve this purpose. This explains why History textbooks pub-lished in China usually contain anti-foreign allusions, comments and propagan-da, and are, therefore, not quite suitable for use in Hong Kong. There is indeed an urgent need to produce History textbooks with an unbiased and local outlook which will aim to promote international goodwill and understanding rather than hatred and misunderstanding. ... Objectivity in treatment is, of course, to be strict-ly observed, especially in connection with such topics as the Boxer Uprising and the so-called Opium War. (Education Department 1953: 31)

If the Chinese “Opium War” and the “Boxer Uprising” against foreign aggres-sors were sensitive issues to the colonial government, we could not expect any bold attempt to report and analyze the British colonial rule in Hong Kong from a Chinese or local perspective. Hence, although Xu Dishan ( ), a prominent modern writer and scholar who came to head the Department of Chinese at the University of Hong Kong in 1935, showed some interest in Hong Kong archaeol-ogy and wrote a couple of articles on the process of the cessation of Hong Kong, he was extremely cautious not to offend the British authorities.3 His colleague in the department, Luo Xianglin ( ), was even more tactful. A distinguished historian who defi nitely had a very keen interest in local issues, he chose to study and write on the early history (qiandaishi ) of Hong Kong, that is, the his-tory of Hong Kong before the arrival of the British (Luo 1959).4 This is certain-


ly a wise decision, as a serious scholar like him would certainly make fi ndings and analyses that would cause embarrassment to the colonial government. This might in turn put him into unnecessary troubles. It is therefore not surprising to fi nd that, for a long time, Hong Kong history has not been included into the pri-mary and secondary school syllabi, and that the students in Hong Kong know very little about its past.

Under this circumstance, solid studies of Hong Kong history should be most welcome. The authors of Vicissitudes write in the preface:

At the moment when Hong Kong is returning to the mother country, publish-ing the narration transcript of The Vicissitudes of Hong Kong can help readers to understand more precisely and comprehensively the origin of and the solution to the Hong Kong question. This bears important practical signifi cance. (CCTV 1997b and 1997c: 2–3)

Obviously, the key issue was the 1997 return of Hong Kong. When Hong Kong was going to be returned to mainland China, there was a need to know more about it. This is understandable, as it is such an important issue in contemporary Chi-nese history and politics. From this we know why all of a sudden there were so many histories of Hong Kong by mainland Chinese historians and it further ex-plains why, after 1997, again all of a sudden, there was not any more such narra-tion of Hong Kong histories. But there are other questions. In what ways was the narration of Hong Kong histories related to the 1997 issue? What is the meaning of bearing “important practical signifi cance”? Why should they think knowing more about the Hong Kong question bears “important practical signifi cance”? To answer these queries, an essay by one of the editors of Twentieth Century,Liu Cunkuan, entitled “The Return of Hong Kong and Cultural Identity” (Xiang-gang huigui yu wenhua rentong ) is enlightening. He brought up the issue of “return of the heart” (renxin huigui ):

We must soberly see that the return of sovereignty is only the fi rst step of Hong Kong’s return to China, though it is a major step. After China has resumed sov-ereignty in the Hong Kong district, there are many issues awaiting to be solved. Since the British have adopted a colonial rule in Hong Kong for over one and a half century, and because of various other reasons, we cannot deny that there ex-ists a question of return of the heart. (Liu 1998: 216)

To him, this question of “return of the heart” was more complicated and impor-tant than the question of return of sovereignty. If it was not handled well, the pros-perity and stability of Hong Kong and even the “grand venture of national unifi -cation” would be seriously affected. This was because, he admitted, there were many who were not eager for or even against the return of Hong Kong to China. This was a frank and even bold statement from a mainland historian, at a time


when others were busy hailing the great historical event.5 The method he suggest-ed to win the hearts of the people of Hong Kong was to establish a cultural iden-tity for them, that was, to teach them to identify themselves with the culture and history of their motherland. To achieve this aim, a good history lesson of Hong Kong was needed, one that would help to, on the one hand, break Hong Kong’s tie with the British, and on the other, build up a better link with Chinese histo-ry and culture. The following paragraph explains clearly what was meant by the authors of the Hundred Years when they emphasized the “practical signifi cance” of narrating Hong Kong history:

In this program [Hundred Years of Hong Kong], we will introduce to you the ori-gin of the Hong Kong issue and the process of solving it. We will introduce to you the fl esh-and-blood relationship between Hong Kong and the mainland, so that we can understand better the history of Hong Kong, understand better Hong Kong at present, and understand better the “Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Admin-istrative Region of the People’s Republic of China”. (CCTV 1997a: 1–2)

No doubt, the narration of Hong Kong history is not directed to the past, but to the present and even to the future, because telling the past story of Hong Kong serves the purpose of educating people to have a better understanding of not only old Hong Kong, but also Hong Kong at present and in future, because the Basic Law will rule Hong Kong in the years to come. Another historian was even more straightforward by relating the study of Hong Kong history to contemporary pol-itics of the Communist Party:

We demand a thorough grasp of the guidelines and policy of the [Chinese Com-munist] Party Center on Hong Kong. We must re-learn and have a new under-standing of the situation of Hong Kong. Here, a study of Hong Kong history is of prime importance. (Jin 1996: 17)

In the following sections, we will see what kind of a Hong Kong history has been presented by mainland Chinese historians with the purpose of making history to serve the present and the future. In the process, we will also examine the strate-gies adopted to serve such a purpose.

2. Cutting the British tie

Liu Cunkuan, in his essay on “return of the heart”, argues that the British Hong Kong government, in its colonial rule of over one hundred and fi fty years, effec-tively carried out a colonial policy, propagated colonialism and spread colonial culture. By prioritizing western ways of living, highlighting the importance of the English language and western culture, as well as giving prominent positions to


few “westernized”, “high-class” Chinese, the British successfully created a sense of belonging to colonial rule among many people in Hong Kong. This should be corrected, he asserts, by fi rst cutting the British tie (Liu 1998: 217). A careful look into the histories of Hong Kong published by mainland Chinese scholars will see that they have adopted various ways to achieve this goal.

Before we go to the more obvious ones, a subtle way to diminish the British infl uence, which may easily be overlooked and yet is adopted in almost all Hong Kong histories, is the omission of over thirty years of Hong Kong history. Inter-estingly, the CCTV has chosen the title Hundred Years of Hong Kong for its pro-gram, despite the fact that Hong Kong has been under British colonial rule for 155 years, from its formal cessation in 1842 until its return in 1997. It could not have been just a rough fi gure, as a total of fi fty-fi ve years, over one third of the entire Hong Kong colonial period, has been taken away. More importantly, in their nar-ration, as well as in almost all other histories, the thirty years between the 1950s and the 1980s vanish almost completely. For example, Hundred Years ends its fi rst part at the section called “The PLA arrived at the Shenzhen River” in 1949 (CCTV 1997a: 120–121). But what follows is a section entitled “The Economy of Contemporary Hong Kong”, which starts right at the mid-1980s. Similar situa-tion can also be found even in those that claim to be a “complete history” ( ), such as Liu Shuyong’s A Brief History of Hong Kong ( ) (Liu 1998: 375). Liu fi rst makes a chronological presentation of Hong Kong’s history from the beginning until the Anti-Japanese War and the “Failure of the Young Plan”, which happened in 1946. However, the next three chapters are: “Development in Industrialization and the Appearance of Social Confl icts”, “Rapid Economic Growth and Social Progress” and lastly, “The Joint Declaration between China and Britain and the Basic Law”. One wonders why he should not go on to present in a chronological manner the rest of the colonial history of Hong Kong.

There are, of course, practical reasons for this. As the relationship between Hong Kong and the mainland has been so close, it is natural that any detailed narration of the Hong Kong history after 1949 will easily be related to the history of the PRC. However, there are often sensitive issues that should not be touched upon lightly. The disappearance in Hong Kong histories of the 1989 Tian’anmen Incident in Beijing, which sparked off several mass demonstrations of over a mil-lion people in Hong Kong and a migration boom in the early 1990s, is under-standable.

Another important historical event is the 1967 riot in Hong Kong, the largest and most violent social disturbance in Hong Kong history. It started in April 1967 and lasted until December. According to the offi cial fi gures, fi fty-one were killed, almost one hundred wounded, and 5,000 arrested (Young 1994: 143). While its importance cannot be dismissed, it cannot be found in Hong Kong histories pub-lished by mainland Chinese scholars.6 The only explanation we can fi nd for this


is that the incident was closely related to contemporary politics in the mainland. As the riot was started by the extremists who were infl uenced by the ultra-leftist Party line during the Cultural Revolution, Chinese historians fi nd it diffi cult to comment on the issue because there is not yet a fi nal and defi nitive evaluation of the Cultural Revolution in the mainland.

A similar example is the Diaoyutai movement in Hong Kong, which started in the early 1970s and went on till the turn of the century. Nationalistic as it is, it has not been dealt with in the Hong Kong histories because the Chinese gov-ernment does not seem to support such strong actions against the Japanese occu-pation of the islands. If the history of Hong Kong is presented chronologically, there would not be a way to avoid these incidents. This shows very clearly that the writing of Hong Kong history is not aimed at providing a better and more comprehensive knowledge of what have happened in the past, or else these im-portant and far-reaching events should not have been deliberately omitted. The omissions reveal the interferences of writing a local history when it is narrated within the grand discourse of the nation. Practical considerations aside, the ma-jor reason for eliminating the thirty odd years after 1949 is that it will probably help to break the British tie.

We will leave for the moment the argument of whether or not Hong Kong was a barren island without any value before the arrival of the British. But no doubt, Hong Kong has turned into one of the major international commercial and fi -nancial centers in the world under the British rule. Great progress was made in the 1960s and after. For example, the number of factories in Hong Kong in Sep-tember 1981 was 46,729, with a total 0.95 million employees. Compared to the fi gures of 1951, there was a growth of 25 times and 8.6 times respectively (Jin 1996: 39–40). Further, there was also a growth of over 20 times in income per capita: in 1951, it was HK$ 1,117 while in 1979, it stood at HK$ 21,816 (Rao 1997: 378, 392). There are, of course, various reasons for the economic success of Hong Kong during this period. But the British rule there, with wise political, fi nancial and economic policies, is undoubtedly one of them. Unfortunately, on the Chinese side, there was not much to be boasted of. Ever since the closing of the Hong Kong Chinese borders in 1951, plus a closed-door policy of the Chinese government between the 1950s and 1970s, they could make little contribution to the growth of Hong Kong’s economy. Hence, mainland Chinese historians face a dilemma. On the one hand, they cannot attribute Hong Kong’s success to the Chinese rule. On the other, they do not want to give credit to the British. Skip-ping the issue altogether is probably the best way out.

More signifi cantly, the 1960s and 1970s saw a gradual development of a local identity in Hong Kong, one that, to the disappointment of mainland historians, does not associate with the mainland Chinese regime. Ever since the establish-ment of a British colonial rule, Hong Kong has become a refuge for the Chinese


at times of chaos in the mainland. But for a long period of time, most of them had no intention of staying in Hong Kong for good. When the situation in the main-land improved, they moved back to their native places. Under this circumstance, there was no way to build a Hong Kong identity.

However, the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 brought an unprecedented huge number of refugees to Hong Kong. Within the fi rst six months of 1950, over 0.7 million arrived at the British colony (Young 1994: 131). Unlike previous refugee infl uxes, they could not return easily this time. First, they were against the Communist regime and could not go home as long as it was still there, especially given that the situation in the mainland in the 1950s and 1960s was chaotic. Second, as said earlier, the Hong Kong-Chinese border was closed on 16 June 1951. As a result, they had to stay in Hong Kong, no matter how re-luctant they were. These people, with their roots and their past in the mainland, might not be able to identify themselves with the British rule. But the next gen-eration, those who were born in Hong Kong or were brought to Hong Kong dur-ing infancy and came of age in the 1960s and 1970s tended to take Hong Kong as their home. This explains why a Hong Kong identity began to emerge during this period.

In Hong Kong, unlike Taiwan, there has never been any call for independence. However, it does not mean that the people there do not develop any special identi-ty. A hundred and fi fty-fi ve years of British rule and an overwhelming majority of Chinese population is a combination that cannot be found elsewhere in the world. It is therefore not surprising to see that people of Hong Kong take themselves as a unique group. According to one study done in 1985, 59.5% of the interviewees, in a choice between “I am a Chinese” and “I am a Hongkongese”, picked the lat-ter (Lau and Kuan 1988). This is not a small proportion. Unfortunately, to some mainland historians, this statistic shows unmistakably that people in Hong Kong have no affi liation to China and lack a cultural identity with the motherland. As Hong Kong identity grew some time in the 1960s and 1970s, there is every rea-son to delete the period so that the origin of the identity can be eliminated.

However, this is but a passive tactic. In order to break the tie between the peo-ple of Hong Kong and the British rule, something more positive has to be done. One effective strategy is to take a nationalistic approach to denounce altogether the British occupation of Hong Kong as illegal.

To many, the colony of Hong Kong was born out of a war between Britain and China in 1840; China was defeated and forced to sign the Treaty of Nan-jing, which ceded the island of Hong Kong to the British. But there are different views on the nature of the war. On the Chinese side, the immediate cause of the war was the Chinese ban on the illegal opium trade. The British, in great demand of Chinese tea, imported opium into China from India to offset its trade defi cit. China, attempting to save the people and the economy, put a ban on the trade


and in the process, the British, eager to protect the great trade benefi t, started the war. Hence, the Chinese call it the “Opium War”. But from the viewpoint of the British, opium trade was not the main concern. It was rather because the British merchants were so badly treated in China that a war was needed to force China to make improvements and open her markets. Thus, western historians, like Ei-tel and Welsh, insist that it is wrong to call it the “Opium War” (Eitel 1895: 28; Welsh 1997: xi). They prefer to call it the “First Anglo-Chinese War”. It is not the purpose of this paper to ascertain the causes of the war, though one should ask the question whether it was right to start a war in the fi rst place.

What I want to briefl y analyze here is the way mainland Chinese historians narrate the war. Expectedly, they would concentrate on the opium issue, accus-ing the British for importing into China, just for economic reasons, a drug that is now banned all over the world. This, of course, holds truth and is appealing. But they mention nothing else. Not a single word can be found in those histories of Hong Kong on the trading and living conditions of the foreigners in Guangzhou at that time. This is in great contrast even to many of the histories on early mod-ern China published in the mainland, which, though emphasizing the opium is-sue, usually agree that one cause of the war was the mistreatment of westerners imposed by the Qing government and local bureaucrats. I am not at all suggest-ing that the British were right to resort to force if they were not well treated. But what should be pointed out is the mainland Chinese historians, in their narration of Hong Kong history, attempt to make sure that, when people read their works, they would blame the British for all the evil deeds.

3. Re-establishing the Chinese link

By all means, it is not enough to cultivate a cultural identity with China simply by condemning the British rule. More importantly, they should aim at building a strong link between the people in Hong Kong and their motherland, so that the Chinese would wish to return. This might appear to be a relatively easy task, as, after all, “blood is thicker than water”. However, a close reading of their narra-tive strategy may lead to interesting observations.

Firstly, almost all histories published by mainland historians start their narra-tion at the New Stone Age fi ve to six thousand years ago. By comparing the ar-cheological fi ndings in Hong Kong and in China, they establish a statement that “since ancient time, the culture of Hong Kong has been an inseparable part of the Chinese cultural system” (CCTV 1997a: 5); and from this, an even more im-portant statement is formulated: “Hong Kong has been an inalienable part of the territory of China since ancient times” (Liu 1996:1).7

Interestingly, the following sentences are found at the beginning of the Basic


Laws of Hong Kong: “Hong Kong has been part of the territory of China since ancient times. ... The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is an inalienable part of the People’s Republic of China” (http://info.gov.hk/basic_law/fulltext).

The two are so similar that one wonders if these statements are derived from geography, history or politics.

However, what is the point of putting so much effort in asserting a fact no one denies, namely, that Hong Kong has long been a part of China? To us, a more sig-nifi cant issue is: given that Hong Kong has all along been an inalienable part of China, what role has been played by China in Hong Kong history?

One difference between western and Chinese historians towards Hong Kong history lies in its “origin”. In the narration of Western historians, “the history of Hong Kong really begins with the coming of the British in 1841” (Endacott 1973: 4). Before this, to them, Hong Kong was a barren island, with a sparse popula-tion and little value. Clearly, this is a tactic often employed in colonialist histor-ical discourses. By asserting that the colony was uninhabited and useless, they attempt to justify their aggressive act and illegal occupation and exploitation (cf. Green and Troup 1999: 278). This is rebuked by the Chinese historians. By cit-ing the fi rst population count made by the British in May 1841, which stated that Hong Kong then had a population of 7,450, they want to prove that Hong Kong was prosperous before the arrival of the British. We are not going to argue the accuracy of the population fi gures, nor shall we judge if a population of seven thousand would make a place prosperous. But what we want to point out is: in all mainland Chinese discourse of Hong Kong history, despite the fact that they start at the New Stone Age, the part that covers the period before the arrival of the British is extremely brief. On the other hand, they usually go into great detail about what happened after the British arrival. This is highly ironic as it would only fortify the British historians’ assertion that Hong Kong’s history begins af-ter their arrival. Of course, one may argue that materials on Hong Kong before the nineteenth century are scarce, and it may be diffi cult to write a detailed his-tory. But if this is the truth, then again, the British assertion should be accepted. So this argument is not employed by mainland historians. What is more, we have earlier pointed out that Luo Xianglin has, with his students, written up a whole book on the pre-British period of Hong Kong history.

4. A brief conclusion

In the above sections, I have briefl y dealt with the major strategies adopted by mainland historians in their narration of Hong Kong history. The main problems they face lie in the constraints from the grand narratives of the Chinese history. With a clearly set political agenda, they cannot take a more “objective” stance.


Hence, very often they have to avoid some sensitive issues or twist historical ma-terials to suit their purpose. Despite great efforts by some historians to dig into and consult fi rst-hand materials, many of their arguments are unconvincing and self-contradicting.

While we are not suggesting that only the local people can write a good Hong Kong history, we sincerely hope that the “real” Hong Kong voice can be heard and that there can be some works free of imperialistic or colonialist discourses, no matter where they come from. Some scholars are trying hard, and we have seen some very different works to achieve this (Chan 1994; Law 1999; Wang 1997; Chan 1999; Ngo 1999; Tsai 2001). Hopefully, there will be more new Hong Kong histories soon.

Notes

1. They are The Vicissitudes of Hong Kong, A Hundred Questions on Hong Kong (Xianggang baiti ) (CCTV 1997d) and The Story of Hong Kong(Xianggang de gushi ). Cf. Zhongyang 1998: 52–53.

2. It bears an English title of its own: The Stories of Hong Kong. But obviously it does not correspond with the Chinese title at all. For this reason, I intend to give a more faithful translation of the title of the program in this paper.

3. For example, he attributed the cause of the Second Anglo-Chinese War to the anti-British sentiment of the Chinese in Guangzhou (Xu 1941: 194–195); and as one critic points out, he never used such terms as “imperialism” or “invasion” in his essay (cf. Jin 1996: 193).

4. As far as I am aware, before Luo Xianglin, there was not such a term as “Xiang-gang qiandai shi”. It was his book Hong Kong and Its External Communication Before 1842: A Early History of Hong Kong (Luo 1959) that defi nes the scope of the “early history” of Hong Kong.

5. The ex-chief of Xinhuashe (Xinhua News Agency) Xu Jiatun ( ) has earlier said something similar in his memoir: “Returning only the land but not the heart is not a complete return”. To him, “it is relatively easy to have the land returned, but the return of the heart in Hong Kong is very diffi cult” (Xu 1993: 93–94). But because he was then in defunct and self-exile, after the 1989 Tian’anmen Incident, such assertion could easily be dismissed as venomously intended.

6. The two only exceptions are Yuan Bangjian’s ( ) A Hong Kong History(Xianggang shilun ) (Yuan 1987) and Liu Shuyong’s A Brief History of Hong Kong (Liu 1998).

7. Similar sentences can be found in almost all Hong Kong histories published in the mainland. Cf., CCTV 1997b: 1; Jin 1997: 5; Qi 1997: 2; He 1994:1; Wang 1996: 1.


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Chapter 13A nascent paradigm for non-Western discourse studies: An epilogue

Narcisa Paredes-Canilao

This volume has explored data, concepts, analytical methods and theories that carry immense implications for cultural, linguistic, literary and communication studies. Other fi elds are implicated, too, which have lately realized the constitu-tive powers of language and as a result have taken a linguistic turn.1 The linguistic turn is inspired in a sense by Wittgenstein’s notion that “the limits of my language means the limits of my world”;2 the textual turn by the more unsettling insight of Derrida that there is nothing outside of texts (Il n’y a pas de “hors texte”).3

This book has not only developed and employed a paradigm critical of Western discourse, but provided directions for a nascent paradigm for analyzing and priv-ileging non-Western discourses as well. “Nascent” here is used in its two senses as newly born and more aptly in its use in chemistry as newly liberated from a compound. Thus, the word evokes Alberoni’s “nascent state” – as the formation of newer groups in the wake of the disintegration of the center. This systemic ten-dency where “disorder in a larger social fi eld provokes an attempt to create inter-personal unities” in the local, regional levels was later used by Jonathan Fried-man (1994). Friedman notes that “the declining hegemony” of the center logi-cally leads to the “liberation”, the “free play” of “already extant but suppressed projects and potential new projects.”4

However, rather than leaving the disintegration of the hegemony to systemic forces, the present study’s crucial thesis is that the general critique of Western domination of academic fi elds and everyday life liberates local knowledge and methodologies from cultural imperialism. The ultimate goal is to create a new paradigm inspired by a more inclusive, cohesive, but more heterogeneous and culturally pluralist politics. Such a political and cultural project could not have come at a more timely way. For, as Kristeva pointed out more than twenty years ago, historical events necessitate a different symbolic system:

The present mutations of capitalism, the political and economic reawakening of ancient civilizations (India, China), have thrown into crisis the symbolic systems enclosed in which the Western subject, offi cially defi ned as a transcendental sub-ject has for two thousand years lived out its life span. (Kristeva 1986c: 31)

212 Narcisa Paredes-Canilao

The following section will attempt to describe the nascent paradigm that poses a challenge to the hegemony of the monolithic symbolic system. In the process, attention is called to certain limitations of the deconstructive turn, however, for motivated engagements such as espoused in this volume.

1. Discourse and dialogue

The term “paradigm” is employed here to mean a theoretical framework made up of assumptions, crucial concepts and an accompanying methodology. Further, reminiscent of critical theory and Kuhn’s injunctions, the concept is conceived to include the motivations and knowledge interests of the speaking/writing re-searchers, as suggested by Shi-xu in the introductory chapter.

The volume uses a concept of discourse with an attendant methodology to critique Western discourse. “Discourse” is engaged not as a neutral term denot-ing an area or discipline in communication and cultural studies. It is understood rather as language achieving a meaning only in connection with actual speak-ing subjects situated in specifi c contexts. There are three crucial elements in this defi nition: 1) language, 2) subject and 3) context. But as will be made evident, the very meanings of these terms have undergone, and are still undergoing, rev-olutionary transformations. Not only that, in their manifold evolutions they nec-essarily imbricate upon each other, making an isolated analysis of each very dif-fi cult indeed. But we can cursorily identify some reconceptualizations of these terms that were assumed or used in the volume, constituting the conceptual ap-paratus of discourse analysis. A quick inventory of the primary and secondary concepts can be given, at the risk of presenting none adequately and doing vio-lence to all. Exegesis is, thus, not our present concern. The foremost is the prac-tical goal of outlining a compass of concepts and methodologies for critiquing Western discourse and privileging non-Western discourses.

1.1. From Cambridge to Paris: Reconceptualizing language

Contemporary language studies from the Anglo-American continent to Europe have greatly reconfi gured the scope and nature of language – from being a hu-man creation that limits and constructs not only social practices, but also the sub-ject and the unconscious, to the extreme position that language is everything. The fi rst step can be traced back to the concept of language-in-use as against language as a neutral and abstract system. Language-in-use is associated primarily with Wittgenstein’s view that the meaning of words should be discovered in their con-crete employment in language games – the actual use of words in specifi c con-

213 An epilogue

texts, and as spoken by specifi c speakers (Wittgenstein, 1958). Before this view, there were other prominent theories of meaning or explanations of what we re-ally mean when we say “this or that word means ...”. But all these previous the-ories regarded meaning as some form of entity that could be drawn from a mere analysis of words, abstracted from language at work, or from daily use. These words were then brought to the mind of the philosopher, who ended up analyz-ing “language on a holiday” (Wittgenstein 1958: 19). This is how most, if not all, of the traditional problems in Western philosophy originated from a linguis-tic confusion. The urgent problem of philosophers therefore was to analyze and clarify language in order to determine which problems were genuine and which ones were only due to language itself. Wittgenstein’s injunction is: “do not look for the meaning, look for the use.” This shifted language studies from a mere concern with syntax and semantics (the “saying” of language) to pragmatics (the “doing” of language).

Meanwhile, in the French scene in the 1960s, structuralism was beginning to supplant existentialism as the dominant philosophy. Modern structuralism was founded on Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics (Cours de Linguistique Generale, 1916/1983). For Saussure (1916/1983: 9), the study of linguistic struc-ture is the primary concern of the linguist. Structure is the key term here. It is used in its ordinary meaning as a set of interconnecting parts of any complex thing. More importantly, this structure, which is usually common to all things or events having the same form (isomorphic), can be rendered logically or math-ematically and can be used to explain or predict the behavior or changes in the thing/event.

From a structuralist point of view, a thing or a unit cannot be broken down into its single elements because the unit is defi ned not so much by the nature of the component elements, but by their interrelationships. In the case of language, its basic structural elements can be identifi ed objectively and general laws can be derived from them. Structurally, language is a system in which all elements fi t together and in which the value of any one element depends on its simultaneous coexistence with all the others. Thus, no linguistic item can ever be based ulti-mately upon anything other than its non-coincidence, difference, or non-similar-ity with the rest. For example, “dog” has value only because it is different con-ceptually (in its meaning) and materially (in sound and in spelling) from “cat”. This is the characteristic of difference. Likewise, there is neither an internal nor a natural connection between an idea and the sequence of sounds. The word e-le-phant, for example, is “unmotivated.” It has nothing to do with the looks or an idea of an elephant. This is the characteristic of arbitrariness. For Saussure, ar-bitrariness and difference are two correlative properties of the linguistic sign – they are inseparable (1916/1983: 66–69).


Discontentment with the objectivist approach of structuralism led to poststruc-turalism. The “post” signals that poststructuralism is both a continuation and a critique of structuralism. Its critique of structuralism is directed at the possibility of objective descriptions, particularly the objectivist notion of structure. Structure is viewed only as a simulacrum (a feigning, a fake resemblance) of linguistics’ object of study. It seems legible as a structure, but it erases the aims of structur-alism which is to provide objective description (Derrida 1976: 102).

There are many possible ways of understanding the deconstructive or textu-al turn. We can look at how it radicalized Saussure’s notions of arbitrariness and difference, the two correlative properties of the linguistic sign. Differance is a Derridean neologism which plays on two senses of the French verb différer (to differ). First, it means to differ, to be distinct and to be not the same. Its second meaning is to delay and to defer. These are the two aspects of difference –differ-ance as spacing (to differ) and differance as temporcalizing (to defer). Saussure used only the fi rst meaning, “to differ”, in his notion of difference. The neolo-gism also plays on the fact that differance and difference are pronounced the same way in French (dif-feh-rohns) which indicates its immense subversive potentials. The “a” of differance, is “not heard; it remains silent, secret and discreet like a tomb.” It is a silence that is not far from signaling the death of the King. Differ-ance is meant to delay the appearance of the King infi nitely. This is the second radicalization of Saussure by deconstruction: as distinct from difference, differ-ance points out the irreducibility of temporalizing. The delayed or deferred (tra-ditionally, the real meaning or referent) will never arrive, because it is seduced to indulge and tarry in the infi nite play of differences (Derrida 1973: 132).

As to arbitrariness, it can occur only because the system of signs is consti-tuted by the differences between the terms and not by their individual fullness. The elements of signifi cation are thus functioning not by virtue of the compact force of their cores or their nuclei, but by the network of oppositions that distin-guish them and relate them to one another. From this description of arbitrariness is drawn the consequence that the signifi ed concept is never present in itself. Ev-ery concept is necessarily and essentially inscribed in a chain or a system, within which it refers to other concepts by the systematic play of differences. The other implication of arbitrariness is that these differences, while playing a role in lan-guage, are themselves effects. They did not fall from the sky “ready made”. This is deconstruction’s third radicalization of Saussure. Differance in no way implies that the deferred presence can always be recovered, that it simply amounts to an investment that only temporarily and without loss delays the presentation of pres-ence (Derrida 1973: 151). Instead, differance, which is neither a word nor a con-cept, is a strategic note which indicates the closure of presence, a closure that is affected in the functioning of traces (Derrida 1973: 31).

“Presence” designates all those traditionally related with fundamentals, prin-

215 An epilogue

ciples, or center, such as essence, existence, substance, subject, truth, transcen-dentality, consciousness, or conscience, God, man, and so forth (Derrida 1978: 410–411). All these have been mustered by Western culture to justify monopoly of culture. While the term “trace” is a simulacrum of presence, infi nitely dislo-cating and displacing itself by referring beyond itself. To make this clearer, when do we say that something is a trace? Something is a trace by virtue of an absence of what it is a trace of. However, trace is radicalized to mean there never was an original cause of the trace – effacement belongs to the very structure of the trace (Derrida 1973: 156).

Because words are signifi cant for their difference from other words, they are no longer a creation or function of a speaking subject; rather, it is the speaking subject who has been reduced to a function of language – thus the term “decen-tered subject”. An individual becomes a subject only as a speaking or writing subject. He or it becomes a signifying subject only by entering into the system of differences (Derrida 1973: 146). Likewise, as a signifying subject, it is not self-present. Even if it is the speaker or author, it cannot dictate on an original or real meaning of the utterance.

In that connection, language par excellence is not speech but writing where the author is absent, reduced only to a trace or a simulacrum of presence. With-out a home of its own, it is always being effaced in each and every reading, which is itself writing. This is the meaning of the postmodern expression “death of the author”. Understandably, such a view of the subject or author upsets the “con-ventional” defi nition of discourse as “the present, living, conscious representa-tion of a text within the experience of a person who writes or reads it” (Derri-da 1976: 161). Discourse as such is denounced in deconstruction as metaphysi-cal presence: “all concepts hitherto proposed in order to think the articulation of discourse are caught within the metaphysical closure that I question here ...” (Derrida 1976: 160).

We are now in a position to understand the meaning of the textual turn or turn to textuality. Textuality is the condition where there is primacy of texts, in fact there are only texts. Nothing comes before – no origin, no author, no reality be-ing re-presented; nothing comes after – no defi nite interpretation, no goals, no appearance of that represented. Instead, texts refer back to other texts in an end-less and unresolved game of hide-and-seek. There was never anyone or anything who/which went in hiding in the fi rst place. And texts are not supposed to know, that is why they are absorbed in the game. But texts are not a substantive reality either. They are so only in so far as they are texts-as-writing. They are in them-selves arbitrary, invented and reinvented through writing.


1.2. Psychoanalysis and semiotics: Reconceptualizing subject

Recent reconceptualizations of the subject have affected a Copernican revolu-tion of the most intensive kind. And this time, “Copernican revolution” means its original sense in Copernicus (the decentering of man), as opposed to Kant’s appropriation of it (man’s constructive powers to constitute the world). The sub-ject in discourse, or the individual speaking subject here, is that subjectivity con-structed in and through language. Thus it is no longer the Cartesian unifi ed self-deluded entity thinking that there are “clear and distinct” ideas that can serve as axiomatic foundations of knowledge. Nor is it the transcendental self of Husserl able to survey itself from above. Rather, it is the Freudian-Lacanian self pulled from different directions and determinations, erroneously mistaking itself as uni-tary, self-contained and autonomous.

The radical decentering of the subject was already shown above in decon-struction’s idea that the subject is construction through text. This notion jives with the Lacanian view that the subconscious is constructed like a text. Derrida has in fact already noted a poststructuralist element in Freud, considered histori-cally signifi cant for interrogating presence in consciousness (Derrida 1973: 149). First, the Freudian unconscious can be viewed as differance given a metaphysi-cal name (Derrida 1973: 151). Second, the two different meanings of differance (to differ and to defer) seem to be tied together in Freud. The production of un-conscious traces can be interpreted as both a “placing on reserve”, as well as a differing. The unconscious, like differance also sends out, and delegates, repre-sentatives or proxies. But there is no chance that the mandating subject “exists” somewhere, that it is present, or is “itself”. In short, there is little chance that it will become conscious.

Lacan (1977) theorizes that the unconscious is “structured like a language”. The seeming unity and autonomy of self is only an illusion created by language. He demonstrates this in his account of self-construction, which is a linguistic re-reading of Freud. The process of self-construction can be traced to the use of language. It is only through entry in language that somebody takes up the posi-tion of subject. Thus for Lacan, communication is motivated by the desire to fi ll in the primordial gap in being. But another implication of this view is that out-side of discourse there is no self.

A less radical reconceptualization of the subject is however seen in Emile Benveniste, while an attempt to redeem the subject from deconstruction is found in Kristeva. Benveniste (1971) considered the most infl uential thinker in the de-velopment of a theory of discourse, refers by “discourse” to aspects of language that achieve determinate meaning only in relation to actual speakers situated in specifi c spatial and temporal contexts. His approach to language goes beyond language as a system or network of differences detached from a subject. He in-

217 An epilogue

troduced the terms, subject of the enonced (the “I” who thinks) and the subject of the enunciation (the “I” that is constituted as the subject-object of its own re-fl ection). In French, these are énonciation referring to the act of making an ut-terance, and énoncé, the verbal statement made. The enunciating subject and the subject of enunciation – the “I” who speaks and the “I” who is spoken – should never be confused with each other. The error of Descartes was the confl ation of the two. In “I think therefore I am,” the fi rst “I” is the “I” who speaks, while the second “I” is the “I” who is spoken.

Kristeva (1986b) has taken issue with how grammatology unsettles and dis-turbs logic and the subject of logic, but nevertheless suffers from a fundamental incapacity to account for the subject. Precisely this is the reason for semiotics’ claim that it “outfl anks” deconstruction in its project of inserting agency back into language, albeit an agency-in-process. Agency or subject-in-process is the mobile, unfi xed, subversive writing subject. It is the subject on trial which re-presents itself in texts. There is a fundamental difference between, on the one hand, semiology which only focuses on the static phase of language, positing it as a homogeneous structure, and semiotics, or semanalysis, on the other, which studies language as a fundamentally heterogeneous discourse enunciated by a speaking subject.

1.3. Colonialism, postcolonialism, and neocolonialism: Reconceptualizing context

The specifi c sociohistorical context of text and subject has also been expanded or relocated under the ubiquitous ideology of imperialism. Imperialism in our time is a theory-cum-practice engulfi ng cultural, political, economic and social life (Said 1978). Imperialism which involves settlement of colonies has largely ended but it thrives and lingers like a virus ever-mutating into various nuanced forms depending on the host country. Thus, we can only generalize and essen-tialize varying experiences of colonized peoples at the risk of glossing over sig-nifi cant differences. Orientalism is Said’s coinage for that Western style of dom-inating, restructuring, and having authority over the orient, based on a discur-sive construction of the Orient, invented by the West itself. Orientalism is thus a discourse in the Foucauldian sense (Foucault 1972), of discursive practice – a historically, socially and institutionally specifi c structure of statements, terms, categories and beliefs, which constructs its own object of knowledge, under the guise of discovery. For Foucault, the different disciplines actually construct or contribute to the construction of their objects of study. Thus, for example, there are diseases because there is the medical profession, there are neurotics and psy-chotics because of psychology, there are criminals because of the penal system,


and there are sinners because of confession, etc. These discourses acquire legiti-mation by projecting themselves as based on truths outside human invention, and thus are assigned the status of objective knowledge. This Foucauldian concept of discourse has inspired those in movements (women, identity politics) to refocus their resistance in the discursive realm.

Hence the necessity of contextualizing discourse analysis in colonialism, post-colonialism and neocolonialism. Western discourse and China-Hong Kong’s dis-courses on Hong Kong’s transition are best seen, not only against the broader, he-gemonic pattern of international communication, but also against a colonial-his-torical background. The term postcolonial is more elusive and overwhelmingly dissipated to pin down into a defi nition. However, the present book’s operation-alization of the concept indicates a general non-controversial understanding of postcoloniality, as “that form of social criticism that bears witness to those un-equal and uneven processes of representation, by which the historical experience of the once-colonized Third World comes to be framed in the West” (Bhaba in Mongia 1997: 1). The “post” should signal both a cessation, as well as a contin-uation. There were changes in personalities, maybe in power structures, but co-lonialism continues in its effects, particularly discursively. Thus the term refers to both a periodization, as well as a methodological revisionism. This distinc-tion allows for a wholesale critique of Western structures of knowledge and pow-er (Mongia 1997: 2).

1.4. The methodology of discourse analysis

The methodology5 of discourse analysis is necessarily multidisciplinary (from the different perspectives of different disciplines), as well as interdisciplinary (from an integrated view of the disciplines). However the book insists that this multi- or interdisciplinary perspective has to be set against the backdrop of mul-ticulturalism (Chapter 1). Just to make sure that Western culture universalized and naturalized as it is today, is not retained as the unexamined cultural back-drop. Ideally there is a fusion of the three knowledge divisions – humanities, so-cial sciences and natural sciences – at their respective horizons, where they have taken the linguistic or textual turn. There is a collaboration of fi elds – linguistics with literary studies, communication studies with social and historical studies, cultural studies with political science.

Hybrid fi elds and their interactions are encouraged – sociolinguistics with psycholinguistics, cultural anthropology, political sociology, political economy. This indicates that texts must not be studied in isolation but in the context of its functioning in society and culture. Relatedly, there is a move away from unidi-mensional models of communication towards the recognition of the double life

219 An epilogue

of discourse as text (form) and context. Texts examined are from different genres – political speeches, magazine articles, web diaries, literature and historical ac-counts, in different modes – spoken, written, the traditional way or through elec-tronic media, and in different languages so as to explore subtleties and complex-ities. Depending on the human interests of research, gender, class, race, ethnic-ity and other signifi cant axes of difference are also considered.

Above all, discourse analysis is exercised as a motivated and purposive en-terprise. Discourse analysis is not interested in empirical data, nor in descrip-tions per se. It does not aim to be representative. Unashamedly, it announces its knowledge interests and motivations. Its goal obviously is not merely to under-stand the world, but to change it. These mandates are achieved in many ways: 1) exposing collusions of power-knowledge, 2) revealing pretensions to truth in the guise of science or knowledge, 3) returning thought to their historical and libidi-nal embodiments, and 4) openly acknowledging the values that inspire or affect knowledge production. The volume followed all these requisites methodologi-cally. Taking issue with how cultural imperialism perniciously continues, and in fact has deepened, the editors insist that the present undertaking is a cultur-al and political intervention. They want to make a difference in a situation gone desperate, though not hopeless. They see the turn to non-Western discourse as a “timely” and “effective” strategy, letting non-Western repressed voices speak for themselves. Notwithstanding their cognizance of and sensitivity to the postmod-ern-postcolonial thesis, they provide the position from which the marginalized and silenced might speak (Spivak 1988, 1997). And they skillfully negotiate this bothersome concept into a discursive practice, by an eclecticism in methodolo-gies and theoretical frameworks, which are then adapted to Western as well as non-Western materials.

1.5. Dialogue

An interesting approach of the study is the confrontation of the grand narratives of Western discourse with a plurality of petits récits or little stories. This is a cru-cial feature of the critical approach to discourse analysis – resistance of the he-gemonic monolithic discourse with a plurality and variety of discourses. In place of the monologue is a heteroglot, so to speak, of a multitude of voices, sociolects, dialects, registers and styles. Heteroglossia, would be the right word. It is a term from Bakhtin (1981) referring to the multiplicity of voices interrelated and dia-loguing in a text. Here, every utterance represents coexistences and/or contradic-tions between spatial, temporal, cultural, and ideological differences. Each word is inextricably bound up in the dissemination of its social contexts.


Bakhtin’s emphasis on language as inherently dialogical and as inextricably bound up in the dissemination of its social contexts makes it a more effective approach to language than deconstruction. It thus lends itself as a succinct summary and affi rmation of the present volume’s motivated use of discourse and discourse anal-ysis. Especially instructive and resonant with the volume’s approach is Bakhtin’s recasting of intertextuality. Seminally indicated already in the structuralist no-tion of texts interacting and interdependent with other texts, and radicalized by Derrida in his notion of diffèrance, intertextuality was coined by Kristeva to re-fer to the disposition of a given text to contain other texts intersecting and neu-tralizing each other in its site. In this light, Kristeva makes clear that dialogue in Bakhtin is “not only language assumed by a subject”, but also “a writing where one reads the other ...”. Kristeva interprets this gesture as connected to Bakhtin’s having been born in a “revolutionary Russia preoccupied with social problems”. Bakhtin attempted to go beyond his fellow-formalists through a dynamic theori-zation accomplished in revolutionary society (Kristeva 1986: 34–61).

The structure and content of the book are conciliatory and dialogical. The very organization of the book is far from confrontational. It reconstructs what could have been if not for the “alarmingly huge imbalances” and “cultural repression” evident in both the quantity and quality of media coverage of Hong Kong’s his-torical transition.6 Taking our cue from Bakhtin, we can imagine a dialogue on Hong Kong’s transition with two participants – one, the proponent of a set of ideas represented by Western media discourses, and the other, the interlocutor repre-sented by China and Hong Kong’s media discourses. But something is not right – instead of a dialogue there is a monologue where only the proponent is speak-ing. The interlocutor is not allowed to talk, nor is her presence shown. However, despite this curtailment of the other to speak, in fact because of this, the general sense of the dialogue is recoverable from the deletions, ellipses, or reticence of the utterances made by the “only one who does speak”. We can actually engage in a game of fi lling the gaps or the blanks, so to speak. Why and how? Because each utterance can be seen as a response to a question, or an attempt to anticipate and even parry another’s position, which the utterance nonetheless tries hard to suppress or refuse to say.7

In this project of presenting the other side of Western discourses on Hong Kong’s transition, the editors have taken the circuitous route of judging “what the Western discourse community should know, by what they already know”. What the West already knows is from the one-sided and imbalanced treatment of the event by Western media. The two principles employed for selecting which Chi-nese or Hong Kong discourse to privilege – marginality and difference – also re-veal this dialogical orientation. Marginality was operationalized as discourse ei-ther absent from or meagerly engaged with or discredited by the corresponding Western media. On the other hand, difference was operationalized as those ver-

221 An epilogue

sions different from, or opposed to accounts in Western media (Shi-xu, Chap-ter 1).

To sum up so far, discourse and discourse analysis informed by Bakhtin’s di-alogism offers an alternative paradigm to the reigning binarism in Western com-munication and language. This is the fi rst paradigm shift encouraged by the vol-ume. It is best captured in the provocative improvisation: “I speak and you hear me, therefore we are” (Ponge in Kristeva 1986a: 45), in place of Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am”.

2. Uses and limits of deconstruction

Can the sub-altern speak? – Gayatri SpivakThe master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house – Audre Lourde

The authors in this volume have grappled with very real problems typically en-countered in projects involving the critical study of language. On the fi rst lev-el is the problem initially experienced by the precursors of the linguistic turn: how to critically analyze language through language. Otto Neurath of the Vien-na Circle compared this diffi culty to the dilemma of a sailor who has to rebuild his boat in the middle of the sea.8 But the dilemma facing the critical linguist and discourse analyst is even more confounding. Phillipson has warned against this when he wrote, “many of the basic terms used in analyses of language and im-perialism are ideologically loaded. They refl ect a European way of conceptual-izing the issues and tend to reinforce Eurocentric myths and stereotypes” (Phil-lipson 1992: 38).

2.1. Derrida’s intellectual universe

In the fi eld of philosophical liminology, this special diffi culty has been termed immanent critique – the tools used for critique belong to the very institution one is trying to undermine, as opposed to transcendental critique where the tools and standards come from a neutral outside. Liminology is an ongoing discourse in philosophy where prominent Western thinkers such as Hegel, Kierkegaard, Ni-etzsche, and recently, Heidegger, Rorty and Derrida confront philosophy’s lim-its, or closure, or its dissolution.9 It has to be within this intellectual background that Derrida’s grammatology and deconstruction are studied so that one becomes more circumspect in appropriating them for certain projects. Derrida’s most im-portant contribution to liminology is his perception that Western metaphysics has been logocentric from the very beginning. Logocentrism refers to how the Greek


logos (natural light of reason) has determined the development of a metaphysics of presence or the idea that reason, or any legitimated authority (the philosopher, the self, Being), is the judge that dictates and fi xes meaning and truth while it is in itself exempt from scrutiny. Logocentrism in Western thought has conceived of reality as structured by oppositions – logos/mythos, logic/rhetoric, intelligi-ble/sensible, speech/writing, literal/fi gurative, culture/nature, reason/emotion, signifi cation/intuition. These dualistic oppositions are rigid, fi xed and hierarchi-cal – the fi rst term is superior and thus favored at the price of repressing the oth-er resulting in paradoxes and contradictions.

However, there is no privileged terrain outside of the logos from which to dis-mantle Presence. The dismantling activity has to be done within, using against the edifi ce the instruments or stones available in the house (Derrida 1982). This is the reason why Derrida has contested the Levinasian project of philosophizing the Other outside of, and beyond the Greek logos.10 On the part of Levinas, phi-losophizing the Other outside of the Greek tradition (that is, within the Hebrew tradition), is necessary for his very urgent project, that the holocaust should not happen again. For Derrida (1982), “the simple practice of language ceaselessly reinstates the new terrain of the oldest ground” – hence the need for deconstruc-tion. Deconstruction is intended to undo hierarchical dualisms, not by a mere act of reversal, as this would leave them unquestioned and risk reinstating Being as presence which gave rise to them in the fi rst place. Western philosophy has reached a closure of its own making and if philosophers are to continue becoming useful they must engage in a deconstruction of philosophical texts.

This is the “intellectual universe”, which was the site of production of Derrid-ean textuality. Deconstruction was his response and contribution to philosophi-cal liminology, it is essentially a limit text – designed not only to explore but to valorize and glorify limits. His radicalization of structuralism necessarily led to the death of the subject or the author and to an effacement of a reality represent-ed in language. In his debates with Levinas he was the antagonist to the possi-bility of philosophizing outside of the Greek logos. He is suspicious of dualisms, grand narratives, nostalgia for lost origins, search for truth, for the real, autonomy and self-presence of the subject, the voice of experience, because all these reek of the Metaphysics of Presence. The dangers of uncritical appropriation of texts outside their fi eld of production cannot be over-emphasized. Richard Nice notes: “... much more besides the value set on the text is at stake when it circulates be-yond its fi eld of production ... Even the most autonomous work contains implic-it reference to an intellectual universe ... When these bearings are removed, the text becomes open to misreading” (in Bourdieu 1977: viii).

Without doubt, Derrida’s “limit ideas” and critique of logocentrism are useful in postcolonial projects aiming to expose Western imperialism’s having propa-gated its culture as the privileged one. Especially, it has done this in the guise of

223 An epilogue

universal truth, reason and knowledge, concealing desire for economic suprema-cy and political power. This is the value of the works of meticulous and rigorous postcolonial scholars relying on Derrida such as Spivak (1988). However, on the trail of Derrida, she tends to prohibit too much. In the case of the woman subal-tern she suggests that even the possibility of collectivity itself is persistently fore-closed inasmuch as female agency has already been predetermined and manip-ulated. She is pessimistic about the subaltern studies group’s project to rethink Indian colonial historiography, from the perspective of the discontinuous chain of peasant insurgencies during the colonial occupation. As to Ranajit Guha, who further developed the term subaltern from Gramsci in his politics of the people, Spivak says, “I cannot entirely endorse this insistence on determinate vigor and full autonomy, for practical historiographic exigencies will not allow such en-dorsements to privilege subaltern consciousness” (Spivak 1988: 284). Finally in response to her question, can the subaltern speak, she declares, “The subaltern cannot speak. There is no virtue in global laundry lists with ‘woman’ as a pious item” (Spivak 1988: 308).

Such excessive prohibitions of deconstructionists, to my mind, fail to remem-ber deconstruction’s limitations in constructive work, such as privileging the marginalized and letting her speak. Also it is forgetfulness that deconstruction’s prohibitions are directed at Western-contextualized items. The grand narratives are rationalism, humanism, liberalism, democracy, development, progress, while the lost origins are Presence, Being, the Greek logos. Lest we forget, in Eastern philosophies, returning to the original is an integral part of the common Eastern cyclical concept that both history and reality operate in cycles (Wing-tsit Chan 1963: 153). Lest we forget, grand narratives, even grander than Greek, in the sense that they were colossal and cosmic in orientation, were in place in the non-West, prior to their effacement by colonizers. World philosophies did not unanimously originate in Greece. It is crucial to remember that India and China already had philosophies when Greek philosophy was just starting to fl ourish in 600 B.C. with the pre-Socratics. But historians of Western philosophy, Frederick Copple-stone, and Bertrand Russell affi rm Hegel’s Eurocentric bias that eastern thought systems were not truly philosophical because they were pursued with a practical end in view – liberation from suffering. Both historians claim that knowledge sought for its own sake, leading to the birth of philosophy and science, was the distinct contribution of the Greeks.11

The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake led to Western thought’s penchant for overestimating the value of reason, language and logic (bivalent logic, that is), at the expense of denying a reality that is plural and dynamically changing. We fi nd this trend already in Zeno’s arguments, defending the Parmenidean po-sition that everything is One and permanent. Zeno came up with 40 dialectical arguments to prove that motion is impossible. Yet, he was able to do this only by


sleight of hand. Motion is impossible because he has so defi ned motion (motion must be the movement from one place to another within the same moment) that it no longer referred to anything. Thus, the impossibility here is not a real im-possibility but a logical impossibility.12 A similar metatheoretical analysis can be conducted on declarations like “the subaltern cannot speak”. Is the ‘cannot’ here perhaps a logical cannot? Perhaps, the subaltern has been so defi ned that a speak-ing subaltern would be a contradiction? Is subaltern in fact a logical term in the Aristotelian square of oppositions? Then if so, its truth is always dependent on the truth of the superaltern. And it is not real circumstances that make it so, it is logic. But if all we are talking about is logical impossibility, the good news is, the only impossibility that exists is logical impossibility (Wittgenstein 1961).

3. A nascent paradigm of analyzing non-Western discourse

From the authors’ dismay with existing, dominant methods of analysis which are often Anglo-American-Western in origin and orientation, a paradigm for study-ing non-Western discourse is born. They believe that non-Western discourses will require new concepts and approaches. Based on their analyses of Chinese and Hong Kong discourses they have noted some items that might constitute the differences of non-Western discourses: 1) they refl ect patterns, concerns and forms of life different from those of Western discourse. For instance identity is not a primary preoccupation. Instead, harmony, relation building or rebuilding are emphasized; 2) some form of strategic essentialism may be required as a re-search starting point, in order to valorize and empower the non-Western, non-white world, vis-à-vis the dominant white Western discourse. This nascent para-digm, I believe, constitutes the conceptual arsenal and methodologies of strategic essentialism, non-Western ways of knowing and being-becoming, and a philos-ophy of language distinctly different from the contemporary views on language espoused in the West.

3.1. Strategic essentialism

Essentialism is the habit of looking for or imposing a “true” or “inherent nature” in things, events or persons. It has been eschewed by reformists and political move-ments as the arch-enemy of change and transformation. However, recently it has been realized that summary scorn for essentialism is in itself an essentialism. Furthermore, it can be tactically employed as a consolidating force for women and marginalized groups as a rallying point, and so the issue is not essentialism per se, but where and how it is put to use. This is strategic essentialism.

225 An epilogue

Stuart Hall (1997) is an example of a cultural theorist who has argued for a strategic essentialism that might work for anti-colonial struggles as it has been effective in fi ghting colonialism in the past. Hall proposes two ways of thinking about cultural identity which must be worked out together for a balanced sense of identity. On one hand, cultural identity can be defi ned in terms of one shared culture, a sort of collective “one true self ”, beneath the many other, more su-perfi cial or artifi cially imposed ‘selves’. This type of common identity shared by people with a common history and ancestry has played a critical role in the emergence of many of the most important social movements of our time – femi-nist, anti-colonial and anti-racist. More important, it offers a way of imposing an imaginary coherence on the experience of dispersal and fragmentation, which is the history of all enforced diasporas. The second sense of cultural identity is a product of history. It is made up of critical points of deep and signifi cant dif-ference which constitute ‘what we really are’, or ‘what we have become’. This second sense of identity includes the sense constructed by the colonizer and the sense which through power and manipulations the colonized were made to be-lieve – the Other. This sense of identity is important to our understanding of the traumatic character of colonial experience.

Inasmuch as the second type of identity has already been discussed earlier in connection with orientalism and postcoloniality, we conclude this epilogue with an identifi cation, no matter how provisional, of what might constitute an exam-ple of a strategic essentialist base for non-Western discourses. Unearthing or re-claiming traditional ways of being and knowing as well as valuations of and atti-tudes to language, not to mention the actual revival of our non-Western languag-es would be a viable strategy. In each case the reclaimed heritage will vary from community to community but this is not foreclosing the idea that when we look and see carefully there might be family resemblances that compose a non-West-ern discourse distinct from Western discourse. But where there is obviously no resemblance we ought to respect particular differences. To the present concern of the book, let us explore how Taoism might serve as a philosophical context from which the observations and insights on Chinese and Hong Kong discourses might be interpreted.13 This is without prejudice against the other thought systems in China or in the non-Western world as a whole. Relatedly, our aim is to show that the prohibitions of deconstruction should not unduly be universalized.

3.2. Non-Western ways of knowing and being-becoming

In contrast to the Western linear accounts about the universe’s origin and end are the cyclical cosmologies found in Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism. Likewise in contrast to the Western logocentric privileging of reason as a mode of knowing,


non-rational modes of knowing – intuition, meditation, actual experience – are the privileged modes by which the ultimate knowledge is known. Radhakrishnan, for instance, informs us that while Indian philosophy makes unquestioned and extensive use of reason, intuition is accepted as the only method through which the ultimate can be known. Actual experience, rather than mere knowledge of re-ality is also given high epistemological value (Radhakrishnan and Moore 1957: xxv). In Taoism there is a practical urgency of knowing the Tao, or tzu jan (self-so-ness) of things. For not to know the eternal is to act blindly to result in disas-ter. (Tao Te Ching, poem #16). The incessant cycle of coming to be, waning, and dissolution of the universe is attributed to the interplay of two opposing princi-ples the yin-yang. Yin stands for passivity, weakness, darkness, and yang, for ac-tivity, strength, and brightness. But yin-yang is construed as non-hierarchical and always dynamic. This insight was drawn not from reason or abstraction, but from a very close observation of the transformations in nature, the changing of the sea-sons, day becoming night then day again. Particularly the terms yin and yang re-fer to the dark and bright side of a mountain which are not fi xed but changing, and relative to the sun’s movement. Each principle or force contains the other in itself thus whenever one force reaches a plenitude, it soon reverts back to its op-posite. This is the law of reversal.

Evidently, yin-yang logic is not bivalent consisting only of two values, 1–0 or true-false, but multivalent and correlational. This difference between yin-yang logic and Aristotle-based Western logic is clearly demonstrated when we com-pare the calculus or the truth table with the trigrams and hexagrams from I-Ch-ing. The categories in the former have fi xed meanings defi ned in an objective, systematic science, whereas the latter are supposed to be interpreted by a divin-er in relation to events in the world and in connection with a person’s life. Inci-dentally, Kristeva believes that yin-yang correlational logic is more effective in accounting for the operation of poetic language and, in general, the dialogical and polyphonic character of language (Kristeva 1986a: 40). She further notes that yin-yang logic is closely related to the Chinese language and its use of ideo-grams. Aristotelian logic, on the other hand, which is the base of scientifi c pro-cedures, is itself an outgrowth of the Greek (Indo-European) sentence, “such a sentence begins as subject-predicate and grows by identifi cation, determination and causality”.14

This observation of Kristeva jives with the unsettling revelations of Benveniste (1971), that the Aristotelian categories posited as universal are in fact categories of Greek grammar. The reduction of categories of thought to categories of lan-guage certainly exposes a thought’s pretension to truth and universality. But much more crucial for Western philosophy’s pretensions to magisterial authority is Ben-veniste’s insight that the concept “Being”, a close ally of Presence, might have been the offshoot of the Greek language’s ability to nominalize the verb ‘to be’

227 An epilogue

and the term’s special function as a copula. These capacities of the verb ‘to be’ in the Greek language are not found in other languages.15 With more empirical studies these theories will eventually be corroborated, but for the moment, they make the project of reviving non-Western languages more urgent. Such ventures, so to speak, expose into the open the particular embodiments of Western preten-sions to truth and universality thus pointing out their limitations.

But going back to non-Western ways of knowing, Taoist metaphysics, logic and epistemology immediately translate into injunctions that guide the conduct of human beings (ethics, political and social philosophy). After all that is the main reason why knowledge of the Tao was sought in the fi rst place – to serve as a practical guide in life. First, knowing that the universe has a rhythm of its own, it behooves a person well to know this rhythm and adjust to it, and that no action runs counter to it. Second, knowing that things eventually become their oppo-sites, there is no preference of one over the other. On the contrary, there is a para-doxical privileging of the yin side, the dark, the feminine, passivity, non-being if only to exaggerate their unappreciated value. Taoist texts, for instance, point out that cups and rooms are useful only because they are empty. Furthermore, opt-ing to start with them one invariably arrives at their opposites. Thus if one wants to be great one has to be small, if strong then one has to be weak, and so forth. Interestingly, unlike in deconstruction where knowledge of mutually producing opposites leads to paralysis, in Chinese culture, wu-wei does not mean non-ac-tion but only that no action contrary to the cosmic forces of nature is initiated. To those who remain skeptical about Taoism’s capacity for active involvement and even change, we point to the Art of War of Hsun Tzu, or Mao’s revolutionary strategies as basically inspired by yin-yang philosophy.16

Regarding self and agency, the observation on the non-preoccupation of Chi-nese and Hong Kong discourses with identity but rather with harmony might be-come more understandable when seen against a notion of self in Chinese thought. It has been observed that the idea of harmony pervades Chinese philosophy. In Confucianism, harmony with society or with others is the ideal, whereas in Tao-ism, it is harmony with nature. From Chuang Tzu we learn that: “To be in harmo-ny with men means human happiness, and to be in harmony with Nature means the happiness of Nature” (Wing-Tsit Chan 1963: 209). In Eastern systems, the self is also a logical construct or a logical fi ction but this realization is liberatory rather than problematic. Because it is the self that constrains oneness with Brah-man and for as long as one thinks s/he is a separate individual self, one is sub-jected to the karmic cycle of birth and death and rebirth. The Buddha also pin-pointed the self as the root cause of human suffering. In Taoism, the self impedes one from harmonious blending, and self-so-ness with the Tao.

The culprits in the creation of an illusory self are the mind, and language. The mind mistakenly believes that there is a self apart from walking, sleeping, or ex-


periencing sensations or a self separate from the activity of thinking. Also be-cause there are words like I, me, my name, then they must refer to something. It is when the mind is forgotten that a person has a sense of wholeness, acts smooth-ly and effortlessly, and achieves enlightenment. Tao te Ching and the writings of Chang tzu abound with anecdotes and aphorisms on the virtue of selfl essness and not feeling that important. Perhaps most liberating is that little story about Chuang tzu who dreamt that he was a butterfl y. He got so lost in being a butter-fl y that even when he awoke he couldn’t tell whether he was a butterfl y dreaming he was a man, or a man dreaming he was a butterfl y.17 Very similar is the case of the pre-refl exive centipede which could move smoothly in its self-so-ness, until it was asked how it could move with so many legs.18

Lest we forget, the self which is the target of decentering in deconstruction is the Western self – autonomous, separative, non-relational – which is another off-shoot of Greek logocentrism,19 because this illusory self appears only in the self-refl exive mode of consciousness, that is, when consciousness makes itself its own object. But not all selves are constituted in the same way as the humanist self or the self idealized in the enlightenment, as accounted for in traditional Western psychoanalysis. Here, self and identity constitution is conceived through Freud-ian drive theory and Oedipal confl ict. According to this account, self and identi-ty construction develop by means of the realization of otherness or separation of the individual from environment and relationships. Identity, henceforth, is rein-forced by gradual and continuing assertion of independence and self-suffi ciency which is further determined by the desire to separate from mother and enter the Law of the Father. To this narrow and obviously malecentric account of identity construction, feminist psychoanalysts are offering a different story (Chodorow 1978). Relying on object relations theory they posit that self and identity con-struction need not be a separative process, but rather that of relation and connec-tion. Likewise, the Oedipal narrative may be true for some males only (those be-longing to bourgeois and patriarchal families), and is upset or tipped off-balance in the identity formation of girls and other boys (those from the working class, and differently styled families such as the extended family, single-headed house-holds, women-headed families, same-sex partnerships).

In sum, Taoism, and perhaps, Buddhism and Hinduism, are expressive of dif-ferent forms of life, and different strategies of being-becoming and knowing. In general we fi nd forms of life that are biophillic (life-affi rming), in harmony with society and with nature, wholesome concept of the self, preoccupation not with identity, but on how the individual can achieve harmonious relations with oth-ers. For these, Taoism has been, and continues to be an invaluable resource for universal cultural transformation. Lorenzo Simpson (2001) offers some points of evaluating how a form of life or practice might be adopted for a universal cul-ture.20 First, the program is particularly edifying to members of society associat-

229 An epilogue

ed primarily or historically with the tradition from which that program emerged for example, it initiates, enables, and/or sustains processes of self-understanding; second, the program is edifying and transformative for all members of society, as are, the wisdom implicit in non-Western religious traditions, or non-Western assumptions about social life.

But closer home is Mao’s proposal on how to determine whether or not a cul-tural heritage should be continued. His guideline is: to select the quintessence of the past and throw away its dregs. The quintessential parts of a heritage are those that are “democratic, scientifi c and for the masses”, while the dregs are those that are “anti-democratic, anti-scientifi c, and anti-people or aristocratic”.21

Taoism, unlike Western logocentrism is a non-interventionist project. At the most, it is refl ected in one’s personal life and interrelationships with others and with the environment. It was a way of life from the margins. Fung Yu-lan reports that it fl ourished in the province of Ch’u a large state on the southern periphery of “civilized” China, inhabited by a people largely non-Chinese in origin, and who were comparatively “lacking in culture” (Fung Yu-lan 1952: 175–176). Its immense potentials for self-understanding and liberation has made it a recom-mended method in psychotherapy.22 Its intuitive insights more than two millen-nia ago have inspired, or coincided with, new paradigms in fi elds as diverse as arts, logic, epistemology and quantum physics.23

3.3. Non-Western philosophy of language

As already discussed in the previous section, there are epistemological and meta-physical reasons why Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism would pose the most hard-headed resistance to the textual turn. The very fi rst line of the fi rst poem of Lao Tzu warns: “The Tao that can be told of is not the Eternal Tao.” This indicates that language, like the mind is seen as a hindrance to knowledge of the Tao. A. C.Danto comments that the fact that Taoists would rather point to the Tao than talk about it is a signifi cant indication of a “certain distrust of verbalization.”24 One of the deepest metaphysical insights of all time is contained in poem #56 of Lao Tzu: “Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know.” Thus, we also fi nd a notion of discourse in the Asian thought systems. Language provides only a partial account of the whole. It cuts up reality into discrete pieces. Because just as we cannot play the notes all at once, so too language necessarily divides reality into segments (Fung Yu-lan 1952: 240). In Lao Tzu (poem #1), the in-vention of names (language) started the division of reality into the ten thousand things. But because it presents a false picture of reality, cutting it up into discrete segments, discourse must be transcended.

A whole attitude towards language is encouraged by this philosophy of lan-


guage. Words are mainly for symbolizing reality and should be treated as just that –symbols. The best forms of language then are brief, but very suggestive, not ar-ticulate, attempting to say everything – hence, the preference for metaphors, aph-orism, koans and haikus. These best perform the allotted job of language which is to directly point at reality. In fact, the less intelligible they are, the better, be-cause they aim not to bring us into words but outside of words. This is the ad-vantage of Chinese ideograms over a writing system of spelled words. The signs are closer to life in that they are pictures.25

But above all implicit in this view of language is a robust sense of reality that is the basis of all myticisms. Language just falls apart and is rendered useless in the face of the ultimate reality. This after all was Wittgenstein’s point in the Trac-tatus (1961). After laying down what can be said, and can be said clearly, he pro-ceeds to the mystical which can not be talked about.26 This sense of the mystical is pursued further in the Philosophical Investigations (1958) where we are en-couraged to understand things, words, and practices in their natural home which is their daily use in actual life. Russell, in his introduction to Tractatus complains that while the book is about what can be said, Wittgenstein somehow manages to talk about what cannot be said. Anticipating this comment, Wittgenstein propos-es in the penultimate section of Tractatus a way out of the double bind of criti-cal linguistics. His words should be taken like a ladder. After one has climbed up, it should be discarded.

Much earlier than Wittgenstein, less than three millennia ago, Chuang tzu taught us the proper role of words through a simple lesson from fi shing: the pur-pose of the fi sh trap is to catch fi sh – once the fi sh is caught, the trap is forgot-ten. The purpose of words is to convey ideas – once the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten.27

4. Conclusion: An invitation to jamming

The contributions to the volume are exemplary as both demonstrations and ex-amples on how to force fi ssures in the imperialistic closure of the single voice, thereby effectively jamming its monologue. Jamming here resonates Luce Iriga-ray’s witty pun on its two senses as blocking on one the hand and improvising on the other (Irigaray 1985: 78).28 To block is to subvert, to throw a spanner in the works, to stop or immobilize the machinery in its entire operations. To improvise is to innovate, to engage in a creative fusing of talents, usually associated with music. In addition, exemplary as in “exemplary punishment”, the volume effec-tively serves as warning and deterrent to any cultural imperialistic project that it will inevitably be “jammed”.

Consider this an invitation to jamming. Similar researches on cultural dis-

231 An epilogue

courses from the periphery are thereby encouraged: 1) voices traumatized, dis-torted and deformed, displaced voices and diasporic voices; 2) Hindu, Arabic, African, Latin, South East Asian, East European, Filipino and all the other here-tofore repressed voices; 3) voices denied mileage on CNN, BBC or Time. Urgent-ly needed is the irruption of an ensemble of polyphonic, heteroglossic discours-es so as to block the monopolized communication network. More constructive is the idea of improvisation after the blocking. Musical improvisation, as in jazz, is the paragon of creativity and spontaneity. But due to contemporary jazz’s appro-priation by white artists, we can also summon any musical improvisation from other cultures that are wont to be practiced in less structured musical genres such as reggae, Caribbean music, Indian sitar-playing, Chinese music, etc. The main features of improvisation or jamming which make it an excellent model for mul-ticultural creativity and harmony are: originality and daring to try out the new, communal creation without collapsing individual contribution, artful handling of harmonic dissonance and dialogical call and response (antiphony) which re-quires attentive listening.29

The privileging of sounds and therefore the sense of hearing in jamming or improvisation is also signifi cant as it evokes the current philosophical critique of the dominance of sight – the most violent of the senses – in traditional Western thought. Echoing the editors’ mantra, only in such an ambience can “the cultural Self hope to become so open and free as to include the cultural Other”.

Notes

1. The term “linguistic turn” was coined by Gustav Bergmann in Logic and Reality,Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964: 350. The linguistic turn is seen as the latest of the turns taken by philosophy as a result of the realization that it is not the world per se, nor ideas as such, but rather words that are the more appropriate objects of philosophical analysis and refl ection. The history of Western philoso-phy can roughly be viewed in terms of its main concerns at different periods. In ancient and medieval philosophy it was the way of the world – the fi rst philosophy then was metaphysics. This was supplanted by the “new way of ideas” during the modern period so the fi rst philosophy became epistemology. Which, in turn, was again supplanted with “the new way of words” making philosophy of language the fi rst philosophy, starting form the second half of the twentieth century. See Michael H. McCarthy, The Crisis of Philosophy, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990: 1–40, 140–166. The linguistic turn was initially associated only with Ana-lytic philosophy, but inasmuch as the other major philosophies today – phenome-nology, hermeneutics, structuralism, poststructuralism, postmodernism and semi-ology – take language as their primary concern, then we can say that they have all taken the linguistic turn, while some more radical ones, the textual turn.


2. As will be made clear in my subsequent discussion of Wittgenstein’s legacy in lan-guage studies, I am citing this Tractarian aphorism not in its narrow appropriation by positivist-empiricist philosophy, but in an interpretation resonant with the po-sition signaled in the last line (line 7.0) of the Tractatus – “what we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence” (1961).

3. This “apparently spectacular declaration” from Derrida has been interpreted to mean that there is no reality outside of language, which is clearly opposed to real-ism. Realism is the metaphysical view that there is a reality out there, independent of our interpretations and representations of it. J. R. Searle in his elaboration of his own theory of realism, cites Derrida as one example of an anti-realist (in the sense that for Derrida, there is no truth or reality referred to by words; rather words re-fer to other words in the network of language). Searle writes: “Derrida, as far as I can tell, does not have an argument. He simply declares that there is nothing out-side of texts (Il n’y a pas de “hors texte.” Searle reports, however, that Derrida in a polemical response to him, “takes it all back” saying that all he wanted to claim was “the banality” that “everything exists in some context”. See J. R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality, London: The Free Press, 1993: 159–60.

4. London: Sage, 1994: 249–253. 5. There is usually a careless interchanging of methods and methodology in some

writings. But as suggested by feminists, methodology signals an approach that has a whole set of epistemological justifi cations why knowledge achieved through it is reliable or valid. In contrast methods are simple techniques. See Barbara Di Bois, Passionate scholarship: Notes on values, knowing and method. In Theories of Wom-en’s Studies, Gloria Bowles and Renate Duelli Klein, eds. London and New York: Routledge, 1989: 105–116.

6. See Chapter 1: Introduction to the volume by Shi Xu. 7. Kathleen Wales (1991: 184) notes how Bakhtin does hint at a possible procedure

for analyzing dialogism in these words from Bakhtin’s ‘Discourse typology in prose’(1971:189) and Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (1973: 197):

Imagine a dialogue between two persons in which the statements of the second per-son are deleted, but in such a way that the general sense is not disrupted. The sec-ond speaker’s presence is not shown; his actual words are not given, but the deep impression of these words has a determining effect on all the utterances made by the only one who does speak.

8. W.V.O. Quine, Identity, ostension, and hypostasis. In From a Logical Point of View.New York and Evanston, Harper and Row Publishers, 1953: 78–79.

9. See David Wood, Philosophy at the Limit, London: Unwin Hyman, 1990. 10. The debate between Levinas and Derrida is a celebrated highlight in the history of

contemporary European philosophy. Derrida’s position is contained in “Violence and metaphysics: An essay on the thought of Emmanuel Levinas.” Levinas’ phi-losophizing of the Other is perhaps more helpful to projects of privileging the Oth-er. For Levinas’ position on the debate, see his God and philosophy in The Levinas Reader, Sean Hand, ed. Basil Blackwell.

11. See Frederick Copplestone, A History of Western Philosophy, Vol. I (1). New York: Doubleday and Co. Inc., 1946, and Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philos-ophy. London: Allen and Unwin, 1979.

12. This technique of critiquing Zeno’s paradoxes of motion was employed by Morris

233 An epilogue

Lazerowitz in his article, Zeno’s paradoxes of motion, in The Structure of Meta-physics, Morris Lazerowitz. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955: 163–180.

13 For this section I rely mostly on my essay, The Taoist concept of freedom, Cogito,1985. Unless otherwise noted, cited materials from Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu are found in Wing-tsit Chan, 1963.

14. Spivak complains that Kristeva’s approach is “not only cavalier but also sometimes condescending towards Chinese culture and society.” In introduction by Toril Moi to Kristeva’s “About Chinese Women.” (Kristeva 1986: 138).

15. These ideas of Benveniste are the foci of Derrida’s essay, The supplement of copu-la: Philosophy before linguistics (1982). Derrida defi nitely disagrees with these in-sights of Benveniste, and he gives as an example the case of Chinese thought which invented categories as the Tao, yin and yang, but is able to assimilate concepts from dialectical materialism or quantum mechanics without the structure of the Chinese language acting as a constraint (191). I do not think this Derridean objection holds. First of all, the Chinese language is not as structured and restrictive of thought as the Greek and English languages. Citations to this will be mentioned later in this paper. Secondly, the dynamism and multivalence found in either dialectical mate-rialism (dialectical logic) or quantum mechanics (though rendered mathematical-ly, its theoretical interpretation has led to insights of indeterminacy of knowledge and the interrelatedness of things in the universe), are very close to the notions of the Tao, and yin and yang. The latter Chinese notions, too, are not distinct catego-ries, but are rather loose terms that refer to otherwise nameless, fl uid, “realities” (Also, see Note 23.)

Likewise, Benveniste’s hypothesis seem applicable on two Filipino languages, Ilo-kano and Tagalog (better known now as Filipino). The word ay, the counterpart of ‘to be’ in Filipino has no nominalization; whereas in Ilokano, there is even no counterpart of ‘to be’. The other insights I derived from an examination of Ilokano, a native language in Northern Luzon, Philippines, are: Ilokano refl ects the every-day realities of the traditional Ilokano form of life, and a knowledge system that is empiricist, concrete, sensual and holistic. In addition, not all forms of commu-nication have become completely verbalized. See my Language, culture, and in-digenous knowledge: Refl ections on Ilokano. In Towards Understanding Peoples of the Cordillera, Vol. 2. University of the Philippines Baguio: Cordillera Studies Center, 2001: 186–198.

16. This is most evident in Mao’s “On Contradictions” where he discusses “dialectical ideas long discussed by Chinese philosophers throughout the ages such as the law of reversal, the unity of oppositions, and yin-yang principles. See Wing-tsit Chan (1963: 781).

17. In Wing-tsit Chan (1963: 190). 18. The rhyme about the centipede is as follows:

The centipede was happy, quite Until a toad in fun Said, ‘Pray, which leg goes after which?’ This worked his mind to such a pitch. He lay distracted in a ditch, Considering how to run. In Alan Watts, The Way of Zen, England, Penguin Books, 1978: 45. Incidentally,


in Sartre, it is the non-refl exive or pre-refl exive consciousness, ‘absolutely rid of ego’ that encounters others. In refl exive consciousness, the ego appears, negating all others because necessarily consciousness perceives things as not itself. Inter-view with Jean-Paul Sartre, in The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre, P.A. Schilpp, ed., La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1981.

19. I explored this in a paper, Bagi language and other alternative conceptions of self and identity: Implications for theorizing ethnicity, read during a roundtable discus-sion on ethnicity, University of the Philippines Baguio, 24–25 May 2002. I iden-tifi ed certain scenarios in the Philippines that would render the Oedipal narrative inapplicable, in cases such as the extended family system, the prevalence of fami-lies headed by fathers because mothers have to earn a living in overseas employ-ment, and indigenous child-rearing and socialization practices that are more com-munitarian rather than individualistic.

20. The Unfi nished Project: Towards a Postmetaphysical Humanism. New York and London: Routledge, 2001: 133.

21. From Mao tse Tung, On New Democracy, cited in Wing-tsit Chan (1963: 781). 22. Alan Watts, Psychotherapy East and West. New York: Random House, 1970. 23. Niels Bohr is an example of a quantum physicist who appreciates the parallelisms

between eastern thought, particularly yin-yang logic with the twin principles of complementarity and indeterminacy of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory which he co-formulated with Werner Heisenberg. Very signifi cantly, when he was knighted for his cultural and intellectual contributions to Danish society, he chose the t’ai chi tu as a motif for his coat of arms. Mentioned in Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics, Colorado, Shambala Press, 1963: 145–146. A very interesting selection of the mystical writings of modern physicists to include Eddington, Ein-stein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Scroedinger, de Broglie, Jeans, Planck and Pauli, is Ken Wilbur’s Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World’s Great Physicists,Boston: Shambala, 2001.

24. Arthur C. Danto. Mysticism and Morality. Basic Books, 1972: 104. 25. Alan Watts, The Way of Zen. Thames and Hudson, 1957: 29. 26. I explored Wittgenstein’s mysticism and its parallels with Eastern mysticisms in

the paper “The meaning of life” in Witgenstein’s Tractatus, read in the internation-al conference on Language Truth and Reality: Science, Religion, and Philosophy, Ramkrishna Institute, Calcutta, 1–4 August 2000.

27. See Thomas Merton, The Way of Chuang Tzu. New York: New Directions Publish-ing Corp., 1965. The complete poetic rendition of Merton is:The purpose of the fi sh trap is to catch fi sh, and when the fi sh is caught the trap is forgotten.

The purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch rabbits. When the rabbits are caught, the snare is forgotten.

The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten.

Where can I fi nd a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to.

28. The descriptions here are drawn from L. Simpson’s Musical interlude: Adorno and jazz, in his The Unfi nished Project, 2001: 42–60. Simpson tries to disprove Ador-no’s observation that jazz is pseudo-democratic, mechanical, repetitive and static.

235 An epilogue

29. Jamming is one of the strategies recommended by Irigaray to subvert phallogo-centrism – the collusion between phallus and logos in mastering the world through discourse. Her statement reads: “... the issue is not one of elaborating a new theory of which woman would be the subject or the object, but of jamming the theoretical machinery itself, of suspending its pretension to the production of a truth and of a meaning that are excessively univocal” (Irigaray 1985: 78).

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Contributors

Narcisa Paredes-Canilao is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of the Philippines Baguio. Her publications include: The Taoist concept of free-dom, Cogito III (9), 1985; Ecofeminism and the future of science and technology, St. Louis University Journal, XXVI (1), 1995; Language, culture, and indigenous knowledge, Daluyan, VII (3), 1996; Integration, counter-discourse, irruption. To-wards Understanding Peoples of the Cordillera, Vol. 2, UPBaguio: Cordillera Studies Center, 2001; Ethics in feminist research, Gender-Sensitive and Feminist Methodologies, Sylvia Guerrero, ed., Quezon City: UP Press, 2002. Her research interests are philosophy of language, epistemology and gender.

Hong Cheng is Associate Professor at the College of Communication at Ohio University, U.S.A. His research interests center on cross-social and cross-cultural studies of mass media, especially advertising. His publications include research on cultural values refl ected in advertising, gender portrayals in advertising, and the World Wide Web’s coverage of Hong Kong’s handover. He is a co-author of Media Savvy Students. He received his undergraduate and Master’s degrees in English and international journalism, respectively, in China, and holds a Ph.D. degree in mass communications from the Pennsylvania State University, U.S.A.

Junhao Hong received a Ph.D. in Communications from the University of Texas at Austin, U.S.A. Currently, he is Associate Professor at State University of New York at Buffalo. His research areas include international communication, inter-cultural communication, and media and social change, with a focus on Asia. He has published a book entitled, The Internationalization of China’s Television, and dozens of book chapters about media, culture and society. His research articles have appeared in various international journals, including Intercultural Commu-nication Studies; Media, Culture and Society; Asian Journal of Communication;Asian Survey and American Review of Chinese Studies.

Manfred Kienpointner is Associate Professor for General and Applied Linguis-tics, University of Innsbruck, Austria. Currently, he is doing research on rheto-ric and argumentation, politeness theory and contrastive linguistics. Recent pub-lications include “Reproduction of Culture through Argumentative Discourse: Studying the contested Nature of Hong Kong in the International Media” (with Shi-xu, Pragmatics, 2001, 11(3): 285–307), “Persuasive Paradoxes in Cicero’s Speeches” (Argumentation, 2003, 17(1): 47–63) and “Sprache und Rationalität”(In H. Schmidinger and C. Sedmak [eds.], 2004, Vernunft – Kognition – Intelli-genz. Darmstadt, 71–97).

240 Contributors

Lee Cher Leng received a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is currently Associate Professor at the Department of Chinese Studies at the National University of Singapore, where she teaches cours-es in language and culture, discourse analysis, pragmatics, and rhetoric, and so-ciolinguistics. Her current research interests include pronouns in discourse, met-aphors, and code-switching. Among her recent publications are “Motivations of code-switching in multilingual Singapore” published in Journal of Chinese Lin-guistics, 31(1) (January 2003) and “The implications of mismatched personal pro-nouns in Chinese”, published in Text, 1999, 19(3), 345–370.

Robert Maier is Professor and Senior Researcher at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. The general theme of his research is theory of argumentation and social dynamics. He has analyzed in particular the relevance of identity and of forms of power-constellations for communication and argumentation (articles in journals such as in the Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, and in books), with empirical studies on new forms of racism in Europe (book chapters and articles in journals), and on forms of exclusion and inclusion in multicultural schools (published in journals, such as the Revue Française de Pédagogie, and chapters in books).

Denis McQuail worked in the Television Research Unit at the University of Leeds before being appointed to the Sociology Department at the University of South-ampton. In 1977 he was appointed to the Chair of Mass Communication at the University of Amsterdam, from which he retired emeritus in 1998. He has held temporary appointments at other universities, including Pennsylvania, Colum-bia, Harvard and Moscow. He is currently Visiting Professor at the University of Southampton. His main research interests concerned audience research, me-dia theory, media policy and political communications. His publications include: Methuen 1961. Communication as a Social Process. London: Longman, 1975 and 1984. Media Performance. London: Sage, 1992. Mass Communication Theory: an Introduction. London, Sage, 1983, with new editions 1987, 1993 and 2000. Audience Analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997. Media Accountability and Freedom of Publication. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. “Transatlantic TV fl ow” in A. van Hemel (ed.) Trading Culture, Amsterdam, Boekman Foun-dation, 1996. “The consequences of European cultural policies for cultural diver-sity” in T. Bennett (ed.) Differing Diversities. Strasbourg, COE 2001.

Sankaran Ramanathan is former Associate Professor, University Teknologi MARA (Malaysia), and former Head, Special Projects, Asian Media Informa-tion and Communication Centre, Singapore. Currently, he is Chief Operating Of-fi cer of Media plus Consultants, a regional media consultancy. He has authored/

241Contributors

edited more than 150 publications, including seven books. He was principal re-searcher for the “Study on Asia Reporting Europe and Europe Reporting Asia”, commissioned by the Asia-Europe Foundation and tabled in October 1997. This study focused on how and to what extent the Hong Kong Handover of July 1997 was reported in fi fteen European and fi fteen Asian publications.

Jan Servaes received his Ph.D. in 1987 at the Catholic University of Leuven, Bel-gium. Currently, he is Professor and Chair of the School of Journalism and Com-munication at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and President of the European Consortium for Communications Research (ECCR). He has taught International Communication and Development Communication in Bel-gium (Brussels and Antwerp), the U.S.A. (Cornell), The Netherlands (Nijmegen) and Thailand (Thammasat, Bangkok). He is also Vice President of the Interna-tional Association of Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), in charge of Academic Publications and Research. He has undertaken research, develop-ment, and advisory work around the world and is known as the author of journal articles and books on such topics as international and development communica-tion; ICT and media policies; intercultural communication and language; social change; and human rights and confl ict management.

Shi-xu received his Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam and has been a re-search fellow at the University of Amsterdam, lecturer at the National Univer-sity of Singapore, and reader at the University of Ulster, UK. His research inter-ests include discourse studies, cultural studies, intercultural communication and cultural psychology. Among his numerous publications are two other books in English, Cultural Representations and A Cultural Approach to Discourse. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Multicultural Discourses. Currently he is Professor and Director of the Institute of Discourse and Cultural Studies, Zhejiang University, China.

Kwok-kan Tam is Professor in the Department of English at the Chinese Univer-sity of Hong Kong. He has held fellowships at the University of Illinois at Ur-bana-Champaign, the East-West Center and ASAHIL. Since 1995, he has been working on various projects on the politics and culture of globalization. His pub-lications on language and culture include the books, Shakespeare Global/Local: The Hong Kong Imaginary in Transcultural Production (co-edited, 2002), Sights of Contestation: Localism, Globalism and Cultural Production in Asia and the Pacifi c (co-edited, 2002), Anglophone Cultures in Southeast Asia (co-edited, 2003), and English and Globalization; Perspectives from Hong Kong and Main-land China (co-edited, 2005).

242 Contributors

Guofang Wan is Associate Professor of the College of Education at Ohio Uni-versity, U.S.A. Her research interests center on comparative and cross-cultural education and media literacy education. She has published journal articles and presented at national and international conferences in these fi elds. She is a co-author of Media Savvy Students. She received a Master’s degree in English from the Shanghai International Studies University in China, and another Master’s de-gree in modern British studies from the University of Warwick, UK. She holds a Ph.D. degree in curriculum and instruction from the Pennsylvania State Uni-versity, U.S.A.

Lawrence Wang-chi Wong received his Ph.D. from SOAS, University of Lon-don, in modern Chinese literature. At present, he is Professor at the Department of Translation, concurrently Director of the Research Institute for the Human-ities and Director of the Centre for Hong Kong Cultural Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is series editor of Hong Kong Cultural Studies.Apart from publishing on modern Chinese literature and translation studies, he has three books on Hong Kong cultural studies, including The Burden of Histo-ry: On the Hong Kong Histories Published in Mainland China (2000), Histori-cal Contingencies: A Study of Modern Chinese Literary Histories in Hong Kong (1997) and (co-author) Hong Kong Un-Imagined: History, Culture and the Fu-ture (1997). At present, he has a major collaboration project with scholars from Shanghai and Japan on Asian City Culture.

account, 124–125, 133, 134–137, 185argumentation, 90–91

categorization, 96colonialism, 96–100, 121, 165–166, 217–

218communication theory, 3–5, 21–22, 24–31,

37, 55–58, 74 critical, 27–28 early, 22–23

western bias, 25–27, 28–30, 103–104, 107–109

contrast, 122cultural studies, 5–7, 21–22, 27–28, 31, 33–

34, 37–39, 49–53, 211–231

discourse, 3–5, 37–39, 73–74, 90–91, 201–207

and cultural politics, 39–44, 89–90and culture, 33–34, 36, 37–39, 49–50,

61–65 Asian, 51–53, 59–61, 78–86, 166–167 ethics in, 63–64, 66 history of, 21–23, 197–201 identity as, 168, 170–173, 186 image as, 73, 74–75 knowledge of, 35 news as, 75–78, 100

non-Western, 3–7, 55–58, 89–90, 122–136

of difference, 9, 111–114, 119–120 political, 139–141 research strategies, 39–44, 221–230

theory, 3–7, 21–31, 33–39, 165–166, 182–183, 211–217, 219–221

TV as, 197 universalization, 1–5, 34–37, 119

Western discourse, 5–7, 8–9, 55–58, 73–74, 78–86, 89–90, 92–99, 119–120

World Wide Web as, 177–178, 180–182, 190–192

epithet, 129

Hong Kong, 10–11, 73–74, 78–84, 89–90, 103–104, 113–114, 142–143, 149–153, 165–166, 178–179, 180–182, 197–201discourse, 122–136, 168–174, 180–182,

183–190

journalism, 177

language games, 212–213literature, 166–167

marginalization, 9, 119–120, 220meaning, 127media, 23–24 as intercultural, 91–92

East-West relations, 24–25, 91–92, 105–107, 109–111

press, 103–104 theory, 21–22metaphor, 132, 139–141, 161methodology, 7–10, 120–122, 182–183,

218–219 qualitative, 84–86, 89 quantitative, 78–84multiculturalism, 33–34, 49–51, 61–66,

121

narration, 195–199national relativism, 5–7, 119–120, 136

Index

244 Index

Other, 65, 90–91, 92–99, 113, 122discourse of, 119–120, 122–136, 161–

162

paradigm, 211–212postcolonialism, 165–168, 173–174, 217–

218power, 34–37, 39–44, 65, 99–100pragmatics, 140, 142psychological, 131, 216

relativism, 61, 64

self, 51–53, 60social science, 21–22, 33, 39–40structuralism, 213subject, 216–217

thinking, 53 Asian, 53–55 Cartesian, 54 Western, 53–55topic, 183tradition, 59–61 modernization, 49–50, 59–61

value, 51–53, 60, 64, 104, 111–113

Documents

Read the Cultural Other Forms of Otherness in the Discourses of Hong Kong’s Decolonization