– An event of the China Time Hamburg 2016 –
17 years after China claimed sovereignty over Hong Kong, the Umbrella Movement in 2014, led by students and democratic sympathizers, challenged government authority, questioned the legitimacy of its China patrons, and laid open intense power struggles among the leadership in Beijing. The protests strive to raise public awareness of the changing nature of the constitutional principle of “One Country, Two Systems” and the growing threat to the freedom of Hong Kong’s legal system, media and education. As China’s hardliners move to exert fuller control over Hong Kong, a new generation of political activists emerged and new cultural identities as well as social cleavages are crystalized. What can be expected as Hong Kong is approaching the election of a new Governor in 2017? Who will come out on top, China’s hardliners or the political protesters in Hong Kong? The jury is still out.
Helen F. Siu, PhD Stanford, is Professor of Anthropology at Yale University. Since the 1970s, she has conducted fieldwork in South China and lately explores the rural-urban divide in China and cross-border dynamics in Hong Kong. In 2001, she established the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong with an inter-disciplinary and inter-regional research agenda.
The lecture will be held in English and is followed by a reception with “Brezeln & Wein”.
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