Postcoloniality as a Chinese State of Exception

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(Post)coloniality as a Chinese state ofexceptionWai Kit ChoiPublished online: 02 Nov 2007.

To cite this article: Wai Kit Choi (2007) (Post)coloniality as a Chinese state of exception ,Postcolonial Studies, 10:4, 391-411

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(Post)coloniality as a Chinese stateof exception1

WAI KIT CHOI

One of the most commonly raised issues with regard to post-1997 Hong Kongis how the city can maintain its freedom while under the rule of a China thatcurtails its peoples political rights. However, I argue that a one-dimensionalpreoccupation with this issue conceals a much more fundamental source ofdomination that undermines the autonomy of not just Hong Kong but alsoChina*their economic and juridical subordinations to the forces of globalcapitalism. In the last decade in Hong Kong, there have been signs ofsinicization, such as the regular airing of the Chinese national anthem on TVstations, and the political power of those who are loyal to the ChineseCommunist Party (CCP) has also grown. But what has also become apparentis Chinas dependence on Hong Kong for the inflow and outflow of financecapital because of the latters role as a global city in the capitalist world-system. This implies that the pre-1997 colonial capitalist system must also bemaintained. The ex-colonial Administrative Officers remain the backbone ofthe Special Administrative Region (SAR) government and in the last tenyears they have, under the pretence of increasing Hong Kongs economiccompetitiveness as a global city, taken a neoliberal policy turn. Drawing onthe work of Giorgio Agamben,2 I will suggest that this specific form ofnational unification in which the local colonial power structure is allowed topersist reflects the normalization of Hong Kong as an exception within theChinese state system, an arrangement that appears expedient as Chinasuccumbs to the imperative of capital accumulation.

Background

About ten years ago a popular trope in the local and Western discourse onHong Kongs postcoloniality was, as Ackbar Abbas notes, the representationof the city as a disappearing metropolis.3 Rey Chows analysis of the USmedia coverage of the 1997 handover is instructive. A key featurecharacterizing the media portrayal was the postulation of China as a signifierof the Other, an alterity; it is a representational strategy that Chow succinctlyrefers to as King Kong syndrome. Communist China was cast as aspectacular primitive monster extending its despotic rule to a once freeHong Kong.4 The anxiety over the possibility that Hong Kongs Westerncapitalist heritage might become eradicated by the communist King Kongwas one of the factors that generated the discourse of disappearance.

ISSN 1368-8790 print/ISSN 1466-1888 online/07/04039121# 2007 The Institute of Postcolonial Studies

DOI: 10.1080/13688790701621409

Postcolonial Studies, Vol. 10, No. 4, pp. 391411, 2007

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While many in Hong Kong did welcome the transition of sovereignty fromBritain to China in 1997, no less prevalent was an internalized King Kongsyndrome. During the colonial era, treatment of post-1949 Chinese history inthe local media frequently evocated events that illustrated the monstrosity ofChinese communist rule*the Anti-rightist campaign, the Great LeapForward, the Cultural Revolution, etc. Ordinary mainland Chinese werealso not immune to skewed representations and they were often stereotypedin popular culture as churlish, unsophisticated and having been brain-washed by communist propaganda. There were reasons to be apprehensiveabout Hong Kongs future under Chinese sovereignty, but those who viewedthe Chinese communist regime through the lens of demonization wereespecially sceptical. Under the logic of this King Kong syndrome, thepromise that the pre-1997 way of life would remain the same under the onecountry, two systems arrangement could hardly be seen as genuine. The callfor democratic reform in Hong Kong has been popular, but for those who aremistrustful of the communist government, direct election in the politicalprocess is seen as the sine qua non in order to prevent the disappearance of thecitys long cherished freedom. In fact, the question of democratization hasbeen a major political issue in Hong Kong in the last ten years, after theestablishment of the city as Chinas SAR

Pierre Bourdieu notes that every established order tends to produce (tovery different degrees and with very different means) the naturalization of itsown arbitrariness.5 In traditional societies, the classification of gender andage could, for example, allow older males to receive a greater share in thedistribution of resources. Such a system of classification is arbitrary in thatthere is no inherently rational reason rendering its institutionalizationinevitable. However, to reproduce the hierarchy and power relation specificto a society, these historically contingent socio-political arrangements areadopted and they need to be legitimatized. What Bourdieu calls doxa are thenbeliefs that produce misrecognition of the social orders arbitrariness so thatit could be experienced as immediately self-evident. In his recent work onglobalization, the ideological construction of neoliberalism as a natural orobjective approach to organizing societies is also treated as an example ofdoxa.6

The call for direct election in Hong Kong is widely seen as a struggle for arightful autonomy that has been denied to its people by an authoritariancommunist China. In the Western media, local pro-democracy politicianssuch as Martin Lee and the former Chief Secretary for Administration AnsonChan are also glorified as freedom fighters. However, what has not beennoted, and this is where Bourdieu is especially relevant, is how the politics ofpro-democracy could become doxa when the demand for democratic reformis rooted in a discourse of disappearance that valorizes the free colonialcapitalist system but demonizes Chinese communism. In its doxa mode, thepro-democracy impulse reifies the limited political freedom that Hong Kongenjoys as a natural feature of the capitalism system and ignores all thehistorical events*the labour movements in the 1920s, the anti-colonialmovement in the 1960s, the anti-corruption campaign in the 1970s, etc.*that

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contributed to the making of Hong Kongs freedom despite the colonialregimes resistance. Similarly, political repression in China, though commonin non-communist countries, is essentialized as an intrinsic feature ofcommunism. The 1989 Beijing social movement is seen as motivated by aquest for an American-style democracy that is universally desirable, and thesubsequent crackdown on it by the government is treated as an example of aself-evident communist nefariousness.

The point here is not that violent repression is not deplorable. Nor is itbeing suggested that the call for direct election is only supported by anti-communist politicians. In fact, the movement for democratic reform is diverseand heterogeneous. In the annual First of July demonstration, which began in2003, one frequently sees gay and lesbian groups, local labour unions andeven sex-worker rights organizations expressing support for greater demo-cratization.

Rather, the point here is that when the call for democratization is re-appropriated by a Cold War doxa, the goal of which is to sanctify andpreserve the capitalist freedom of the colonial order in the face of acommunist takeover, the politics of pro-democracy become regressive.Here our ability to conceive of alternative democratic possibilities becomesimpaired as the naturalization of capitalist freedom functions as a limit onour political imagination. Worse still, when the institutions of the pre-1997social order are treated as a priori sacrosanct, it becomes difficult to critiquethose forms of social inequality and power relations that are specific to thecolonial capitalist system.

In the ensuing examination of Hong Kongs postcolonial era, rather thanembedding my analysis within a doxa that takes for granted a self-evidentuntouchability of capitalism, I will thematize and problematize the trajectoryof Hong Kongs capitalist development spanning the period from the 1990s tothe decade after the handover. The citys continuing deprivation in thematter of autonomy after 1997 is often seen as a result of communist Chinassuccession to Britain as a new overlord. A reflexive deployment of capitalismas an analytical category enables a different approach to the issue ofpostcolonial autonomy.

The current era of global capitalist expansion, Michael Hardt and AntonioNegri argue, is accompanied by the decline of the nation-states and the rise ofa deterritorialized Empire that has expanded its sovereignty beyondestablished borders.7 There has been a welter of criticisms against Hardtand Negri but their observation raises interesting questions about the powerrelation between states. How should we rethink Hong Kongs sovereignautonomy and the relationship between the colonized and the colonizer ifnation-states are no longer the ultimate arbiters of power and if China itself issubordinated to the forces of global capitalism? I will argue that the SARsgovernment strategy of making Hong Kong a global city necessitates a policythat adheres to the conventions and regulations of transnational governingbodies such as the WTO and the World Bank. The citys sovereign autonomyis compromised as it becomes further absorbed into the juridico-economicstructure of global capitalism.

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(POST)COLONIALITY AS A CHINESE STATE OF EXCEPTION

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In addition to treating the issue of postcolonial autonomy as being aboutsovereign self-rule, it could also be understood as a question of economic self-determination. To realize ones autonomy, economic resources are oftenrequired. Did the people in Hong Kong, especially the lower class, improvetheir living standards and have greater access to goods and services in the lastten years, so that they were more able to fully realize their autonomy? In mydiscussion of the SAR governments neoliberal turn, I will argue that therehas been an erosion of economy autonomy among the underprivileged in thelast ten years, as illustrated by the growth in economic inequality and thedecrease in median household income.

The threat to Hong Kongs post-1997 autonomy is often identified asChinas potential interference or even dismantling of Hong Kongs pre-existing capitalist system. In this narrative, it is assumed a priori that thepreservation of Hong Kongs capitalist system is desirable. I offer here analternative interpretation. Hong Kongs sovereign autonomy has becomecompromised as the SAR government deepens the citys subordination to thetransnational governing structure of global capitalism. The economicautonomy of those earning a low or moderate income has been eroded,too, as wealth has increasingly been redistributed to the upper class. The lossof autonomy examined here did not occur because Hong Kongs colonialcapitalist system has become enervated after 1997. Rather, the old colonialcapitalist power structure persisted into the post-1997 era and it is preciselythis ruling stratum of Hong Kongs capitalism that subverts the citysautonomy through its push for the global city development model and itsturn to neoliberal governance. The Chinese government also contributes tothis erosion of autonomy. Its contribution lies not in its intervention intoHong Kongs colonial capitalist social order but in its preservation andinstitutionalization of it as an exception within the Chinese state system.

Before explaining these arguments in more detail, one fundamental issuemust be addressed. The effects of the transition of sovereignty have beenapparent in Hong Kong. For example, there is the promotion of Chinese asthe language of instruction in secondary schools and a curriculum that paysmore attention to patriotism. How could these patently real changes bereconciled with the claim that the old colonial capitalist elite remains in powerin post-1997 Hong Kong? To answer this question, I will begin with aconceptual analysis of the notion of postcolonial.

Postcoloniality and entanglement

Rey Chow notes that the term postcoloniality is ambiguous because of theprefix post.8 It can either mean to be in a state after colonialism or havinggone through colonialism. These two meanings are not synonymous. Thefirst meaning refers simply to the end of colonial rule while the second impliesbeing in a state of complete rebirth where no trace of the past can be found,that colonialism in its entirety has been superseded. Achieving formalindependence from colonialism does not necessarily imply emancipationfrom other subtle but equally powerful forms of colonial control. It is thus

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possible to be postcolonial while remaining colonized. But if the formal orceremonial end of a colonial regime signifies a break, i.e. a discontinuity, whilethe persistence of colonial practices in an indirect form indicates thecontinuity of a power relation typical of that between the colonizer and thecolonized, then the postcolonial condition is, by implication, paradoxical.Postcoloniality is now a state in which discontinuity and continuity areintertwined, where there is a co-existence of opposites without sublation.

In his reflection on the history of sub-Saharan Africa,9 Achille Mbembeattacks the linear model of time and introduces the notion of entanglement.His arguments shed light on this paradox of discontinuity/continuity. Theconventional view on time is linear in so far as it conceptualizes time as acurrent that carries individuals and societies from a background to aforeground, with the future emerging necessarily from the past and followingthat past, itself irreversible.10 Time is then treated as a singular uni-directional movement. However, Mbembe argues that this conceptualizationdoes not bespeak the historical experience of postcolonial Africa where whathe calls the postcolony encloses a multiplicity of temporalities. From thetemporal logic of political rituals, postcolonial states in Africa have moved,after independence, into a new stage where elections are held, new politicalparties are formed, and new leadership has come into power. But from thetemporal logic of political power, the postcolonial state remained in thecolonial past. In the earlier era, the lack of justice of the means, and the lackof legitimacy of the ends, conspired to allow an arbitrariness and intrinsicunconditionality that may be said to have been the distinctive feature ofcolonial sovereignty. In the current era, [p]ostcolonial state forms haveinherited this unconditionality and the regime of impunity that was itscorollary.11 The colonial technique of subjection*commandement*con-tinues to infuse postcolonial governance despite the appearance of newpolitical rituals; there are then two sets of time, one stayed fixed while theother moved forward. Mbembe calls this phenomenon in the postcolony timeof entanglement,12 a condition where the past and future, discontinuity andreversals are interlinked and interwoven into one another.

Hong Kong as a postcolonial entanglement

Mbembe does not specify whether his analysis of African postcolonies isrepresentative of a common experience. I will, however, borrow his conceptand refer to any postcolony where discontinuity co-exists with continuity asan instance of entanglement. In the first ten years after the transition ofsovereignty, Hong Kong has been enmeshed in an entanglement. On onehand 1997 clearly indicated a dramatic historical disjunction*the end of anold era and the beginning of a new one. The change of sovereignty wasunmistakable and the British evacuation from Hong Kong was complete. Forexample, there are clear efforts by the SAR government to foster a sense ofnational identity among the public. Its policies, as the controversy overArticle 23 shows, are at times even perceived as leaning too close to China byallowing its meddling into Hong Kongs judiciary system. The Chinese

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government has certainly strengthened its political, ideological and economicinfluence in Hong Kong. However, its goal is not to turn the SAR intoanother Chinese city. The concurrence of Hong Kongs capitalist develop-mental success and colonial rule after World War II is viewed not as anhistorical contingency but as a causal nexus. The colonial past has becomehighly prized and valorized. The Chinese governments strategy of domina-tion is then to exert enough control while leaving enough of the pre-existingcolonial power structure intact so that it is able to maintain the smoothfunctioning of Hong Kongs capitalist system. For example, the real estatecapitalists and the Administrative Officers of the ex-colonial governmentremain key members of the ruling elite. The entanglement of discontinuitywith continuity in postcolonial Hong Kong is then tied to the coalescence ofmultiple temporalities. The temporal logic of nationalism requires disjunctionin the form of sovereignty change in 1997 to mark the closure of more than ahundred years of imperialist oppression. But the temporal logic of capitalaccumulation requires continuity through the perpetual reproduction of theclass relation between capital and wage labour as well as a stable institutionalenvironment for market exchange which is closely tied to the colonialinfrastructure.

Global city and sovereign autonomy

Both before and after 1997, Hong Kongs ruling elite promoted thetransformation of the city into a global city. I will first review the historyof this metamorphosis, then I will explain how this development is tied to thedecline of the citys sovereign autonomy.

Hong Kongs rise as a global city

In Manuel Castells analysis of Hong Kongs economic growth between the1950s and early 1980s, he argues that Hong Kong was far from being a free-market paradise as it is often portrayed in the imagination of neoliberaleconomists.13 Hong Kongs colonial state did not intervene in the realm ofproduction in the same way that other East Asian developmental (city) statesdid. Rather, it intervened in the realm of collective consumption throughprovision of public housing, education and health care, as well as subsidizedpublic transport, food and other social services. The welfare policies of thecolonial state then functioned as a subsidy to manufacturers who were able toemploy workers at a low wage level. In Castells analysis, Hong Kongsstrength during the export-led industrialization phase was a result of stateintervention in collective consumption.

However, when other newly industrialized states such as Taiwan, SouthKorea and Singapore were undergoing industrial upgrade beginning in the1980s, this colonial mode of economic governance prevented Hong Kongsmanufacturing segment from moving into the high-technology sector. In areport on the competitiveness of Hong Kongs industrial production, a groupof researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimate that

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Hong Kongs total spending on research and development as a percentage ofGDP in 1994 was 0.1 per cent. However, it was 1.18 per cent in Singapore,2.29 per cent in South Korea, 1.8 per cent in Taiwan and 0.5 per cent inChina. The colonial governments spending on technological innovation wasmarkedly lower than that in other comparable Asian economies.14

To upgrade manufacturing firms to the specialized knowledge-intensiveniche of the global division of labour requires huge capital investment.However, Hong Kong firms lacked the capital needed to upgrade, whilst thepolicy of intervention by consumption rather than by production/innovationimplied the colonial states abstention from actively promoting scientificresearch and technological development. As a result, as Stephen Chiu, K C Hoand Tai-Lok Lui argue, most manufacturing firms in Hong Kong have beenlocked into the low-technology and low value-added niche.15 To survivecompetition from the newer industrializing economies in Southeast Asia*forexample, Malaysia and Indonesia*many Hong Kong firms relocated theirproduction to China where labour cost is even lower. Since the early 1980s,Hong Kong has become deindustrialized and, since the 1990s, before thepostcolonial era, it has been transformed from an export-led manufacturingplatform to a global city facilitating the transnational flow of finance capital.

Hardt and Negris observation about late twentieth-century capitalisttransformation is relevant to understanding Hong Kongs role as a globalcity spanning the period from the 1990s to the postcolonial period. In todaysglobalizing world, Hardt and Negri argue that we see the decline of nation-states and the rise of an all-encompassing but deterritorialized sovereignty,the Empire. Accompanying this transition of power from national-states toEmpire is the passage of global capitalism from industrialization (moder-nization) to the current informatization (postmodernization) stage.16 Unlikethe earlier phase of capitalist production, informatization is characterized bythe growth of the service economy and the specific way global productionsystems are organized. The different components of a commodity, forexample an automobile, are not manufactured in the same locale but aremade in sites that are globally dispersed. Hardt and Negri call this a networkmodel of production, and the linkage among the different nodes in thenetwork is sustained by communication technology. Following Saskia Sassen,Hardt and Negri note that this globally dispersed network of production hasalso created a demand for increasingly centralized management andplanning, and also for a new centralization of specialized producer services,especially financial services.17 The places where these command, coordina-tion and financial services are concentrated are what Sassen calls globalcities.18 In each of these global cities*New York, London, Tokyo and HongKong*there is a specialized producer service complex composed of theregional headquarters of multinational corporations, investment banks, lawfirms, accounting firms and other transnational service providers.

Hong Kongs transformation into a global city economy is inextricably tiedto Chinas capitalist development. The citys relatively transparent and openfinancial regulation lowers barriers of entry into the financial market forinvestors and its stock market is among the most actively traded in the world.

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Since the early 1990s, Hong Kong has become mainland Chinese firms majorfunding conduit through which capital is raised. A common method thatChinese business enterprises employ to raise capital is to apply for an initialpublic offering (IPO) in Hong Kongs stock market; another method is toapply for syndicated loans. In the former case the Chinese firm is a seller andin the latter it is a borrower. In both cases, the participation of advancedproducer service firms such as investment banks, law and accounting firms isrequired. They serve as the intermediary between the seller and the buyer orbetween the borrower and the lender. Multinational corporations from theWest as well as China converge on Hong Kong to set up their regionalheadquarters since the citys legal and financial institutions enable it tobecome a servicing platform upon which business-to-business exchangesamong these multinational firms can be made. As one of the commandcentres in the global network of production, Hong Kong mediates not onlythe transnational flow of goods but also the flow of finance capital.

The erosion of Hong Kong sovereign autonomy

A key consequence following Hong Kongs transformation into a global city,which continues to characterize the citys socio-economic condition evenduring the current postcolonial era, is its dependency on the nexus ofmultinational financial and specialized service firms. Despite Hong Kongstransformation into a global city, Hong Kongs own local service firms do notplay a significant role in the lucrative business projects that coordinate theregional and transnational flow of capital. For example, the differentspecialized service providers that are involved in the IPOs of mainlandChinese corporations listed in Hong Kongs stock exchange are multinationalinvestment banks as well as law and accounting firms from the US andEurope. The law firm involved in Bank of Chinas IPO in Hong Kong in May2006 was the UK law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and theunderwriters were Goldman Sachs and UBS AG. Freshfields, along withanother UK law firm Herbert Smith, was again involved in the IPO ofIndustrial & Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) in Hong Kong in October2007, the biggest IPO in the world in terms of capital raised. The underwritersfor ICBC, besides the two mainland Chinese firms, one of which was ICBCsown investment unit, were Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch.19

The centrality of multinational firms in Hong Kongs global city economy isunderscored in a report by a government agency.

Most of the leading Hong Kong-based professionals [Note: they are, often,expatriates from the US and Europe] that package and integrate infrastructureprojects for the Asian region (putting together the financial, engineering, design,architecture, legal, and other required expertise) are employed by foreignheadquartered financial institutions . . . In financial services, Hong Kongs threenote-issuing banks (Hong Kong Bank, Bank of China, and Standard &Chartered) are all headquartered outside of Hong Kong. The leading managersof investment funds in Hong Kong are the major Western funds. In businessservices, the Big Six dominate the accounting field. All the major international

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management consultancy firms have a strong presence in the HKSAR as domany of the worlds leading international law firms.20

While there is a high concentration of transnational business deals conductedin Hong Kong, Hong Kongs domestic business firms are not involved incommanding and coordinating the flow of finance capital. Rather, HongKongs role is to provide the necessary physical infrastructure to accom-modate the needs of the professionals employed by the different multinationalfirms and to provide the institutional framework that makes these businesstransactions possible. The making of these business deals requires office andapartment space, a telecommunication network and a reliable power source.Hong Kongs real estate tycoons are then able to extract surplus from themultinational specialized service firms through their ownership of land*thevalue of which has skyrocketed over the years despite periodic setbacks*aswell as their control of the citys telecommunication and utility services.

It is often noted that one of Hong Kongs key attractions to multinationalcorporations is its Western legal system and its adoption of an internationalstandard of practice in business and social administration. The standard ofaccounting practice in Hong Kong is not different from that in the West andthis enables multinational accounting to operate and dominate the citysmarket for accounting services. Given Hong Kongs dependence on thepresence of a multinational specialized service complex, it cannot have a newinstitutional structure other than the one it has always had since the colonialdays, and it must continue to conform to the business and legal practices thatmultinational firms and Western nations adhere to. This raises interestingquestions about the sovereign power of the Hong Kong SAR government.

In Hardt and Negris work, a national-state no longer has the ultimatepower to legislate, arbitrate and rule in a bounded space over which it hassovereign claim. The final arbiter in contemporary global order is asupranational judiciary and political entity which they refer to as Empire.Unlike previous empires, Empire is deterritorialized in the sense that itspower to dominate is not dependent on having formal sovereignty over aterritory enclosed within fixed boundaries. Rather, global juridico-economicbodies such as GATT, the World Trade Organization and the World Bank21

serve as the supranational juridical infrastructure through which Empire isable to extend its administration to all corners of the world and override therules of territorially based national sovereigns. Hardt and Negris observationabout the usurpation of national sovereign powers by transnational governingagencies captures a key feature of Hong Kongs postcolonial governance.

In maintaining Hong Kongs status as a global city, the SAR governmenthas employed a mode of governance that entails undoing its own sovereignpower. It takes caution in not deviating from the international codes ofconduct that originate in the transnational regulatory organizations domi-nated by the US or associations of nation-states such as the G8, and it strivesto be absorbed into the juridico-economic infrastructure of the Empire. Thisself-erasure of sovereign rule intensifies as the race between Hong Kong andother Asian cities to be the regions top global city becomes heightened. In

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competing to provide multinational corporations with the best businessclimate, Hong Kong and other Asian cities are yielding to their demands inways that could risk contravening their local customary or even legalpractices.

China certainly contributes to Hong Kongs transformation into a globalcity and it has also benefited from this development. However, it is importantto note that China, though clearly not in the same way as Hong Kong hasdone, is also experiencing reduction in its sovereign power, as is exemplifiedby its entry into the WTO and its decision to float the value of the Chineseyuan due to pressure from the G8. In discussions on the limitation of HongKongs self-rule, the focus has always been on Chinas sovereign claim onHong Kong and its potential interference with the SARs judiciary system.Hardt and Negris work suggests an alternative analysis. The competitivepressure emanating from global capitalism is diminishing both Hong Kongsand Chinas power of self-governance, and they both have passed policies thatcater to the demands of multinational corporations and transnationalgoverning bodies over which US and other Western capitalist states wieldthe most influence.

In the decade after 1997, Hong Kong illustrates what Mbembe calls thetime of entanglement, i.e. the interpenetration of multiple temporalities. Onone hand there is discontinuity in the form of a break from formalcolonial rule. On the other hand, there is also a continuity of the colonialtechnique of urban management. Former colonial officials remain as thebackbone of the SAR government and they pursue a policy of global citydevelopment that involves compromising Hong Kongs sovereign power,however limited it already is. The maintenance of Hong Kongs colonialsystem after 1997 partly stems from the one country, two systemsarrangement. But a factor that is equally if not more crucial is thedeterritorialized penetration of the Empire through multinational corpora-tions and the transnational politico-juridico organizations. However, thestrategy that the SAR government deploys to manage Hong Kongs role asa global city is not limited to a passive relinquishment of its own judiciarypower. It is also conforming to international standards by pursuing a setof neoliberal policies that the UK, US and other countries have adoptedsince the late 1970s.

Neoliberal governance and economic autonomy

Besides its continual adherence to the global city development model,another feature of the SAR regime is its turn to neoliberal governance. First, Iwill define neoliberalism and give examples of how it has been implementedin postcolonial Hong Kong. Then I will show how neoliberal policies are tiedto a decline in economic autonomy among the lower and middle classes, asevidence on income distribution from the last decade will make clear.

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Hong Kongs turn to neoliberalism

Neoliberalism, as David Harveys and Aihwa Ongs writings show, can beconceptualized in different but compatible ways.22 The concept is often usedto refer to a set of political and economic policies which initially emerged inBritain and the USA in the late 1970s during the leaderships of MargaretThatcher and Ronald Reagan, and which have, since then, become widely butselectively adopted in many different countries. A key goal of these policieswas to reshape the way state power is exercised in the economic arena. Ratherthan maintaining its direct involvement in the economy, the state wouldwithdraw itself and focus on establishing ground rules that promoted freetrade as well as overseeing the institutional structure that protected privateproperty and freedom of exchange. Among the different policies that wereenacted were privatization of public goods/services, cutbacks on welfarespending, and deregulation of government controls on pricing and marketentries. The reduction in what the advocates of neoliberalism call stateintervention in the economy should, in accordance with their reasoning,restore competition and efficiency to the market at a time when manycapitalist economies in the West, the UK and USA in particular, wereexperiencing stagflation, fiscal crises and declining profitability amongcorporations.23

However, Harvey argues that the global diffusion of neoliberalism shouldnot be seen only as a result of the Norths imposition of its neoliberal agendaon the South. For example, in Hong Kong neoliberalism was partly adoptedas a strategy to maintain the citys competitiveness vis-a`-vis Shenzhen,Shanghai and Singapore. The Hong Kong governments commitment toneoliberal reform was made explicit in a policy speech on the 19992000budget delivered by then Finance Secretary Donald Tsang Yam-kuen. Tsangemphasized the centrality of rethinking the mode of delivering publicservices, with more private sector involvement and contracting-out and theimportance of privatization of public corporations.24 Since then, there hasbeen an increase in the outsourcing of work from different governmentdepartments to private firms. The SAR governments Efficiency Unitconducted four surveys on the pattern of government outsourcing from2000 to 2006 and they show an overall growth during that period.Government spending on outsourcing projects was HKD32 billion in 2000,HKD62 billion in 2002, HKD46 billion in 2004 and HKD44 billion in 2006.While the spending in 2004 and 2006 was lower than in 2002, it was stillsignificantly higher than in 2000.25 Among the different reasons explainingthe cost-effectiveness of outsourcing in the report is the lower level of wagesin the private sector.26

Privatization is another feature of Hong Kongs neoliberal turn. Theownership of Hong Kongs subway system was restructured and it becameincorporated in 2000 under a company called Mass Transit RailwayCorporation Limited (MTRCL). At the end of the year, shares of thecompany were divested to private investors through the companys listing inthe local and overseas stock exchanges. In 2005 there was also the listing of

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Link-REIT. The governments Housing Authority spun-off such amenities asshopping malls and parking facilities from the public housing projects into acompany called Link, which was in turn listed as a real estate investment fund(Link-REIT) in stock markets. Individual and institutional investors are ableto gain control of these properties through buying shares of Link-REIT. Thegovernment also has plans to partially privatize the Airport Authority and tomerge MTRCL with Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation, at present agovernment-owned company, but which is likely to become privatized as aresult of the merger.

Ong also examines neoliberalism in her more recent work.27 But unlikeHarvey who, influenced by Marx, treats neoliberalism as a strategy that oneclass uses to dominate another, Ong draws on the notion of governmentalityfrom the Foucauldian tradition and conceptualizes neoliberal practices astechniques of governing that can be selectively deployed as exception.

A key feature of neoliberal governance, Ong notes, is that it re-organizesconnections among the governing, the self-governed, and political spaces.28

The neoliberal rhetoric of eliminating big government through cutbacks onstate spending and infrastructural projects is misleading because it conveysthe impression that there is a reduction in sovereign power. On the contrary,just as there is a decline in the provision of public goods and other vitalservices, there is also a growth in techniques that aim at creating a new self-governing, self-enterprising citizen-subject. Discourses articulating theethos of individualism and self-responsibility proliferate. There are alsolifelong education and self-management programmes with the goal ofgiving citizens the requisite skills and knowledge to navigate the ever-changing global market-place. These different governing techniques result inthe demotion of citizens to subjects with minimum rights and entitlements,whilst the state is relieved of the responsibility of overseeing their well-being.29

In post-1997 Hong Kong, the SAR government deploys similar techniquesof self-governing. Accompanying the increase in outsourcing and privatiza-tion is the emergence of a state-sponsored discourse that aims at creating acompetitive self-entrepreneurial global city citizen-subject. The ideal citizensof a global city should be cosmopolitan and welcoming. To improve thepopulations English skills, the government has offered subsidies to those whoenrol in after-work English classes, and the number of exchange studentsfrom Western countries at local universities has grown significantly. Thegovernment has also invited famous actors and actresses to take part in TVcommercials to promote good manners in the retail sales sector.

The importance of lifelong education has also been emphasized by thefirst chief executive. In a speech made in 2001, Tung Chee Hwa noted that:

For a person to remain competitive in the labour market of a knowledgeeconomy, constant renewal of knowledge is imperative. In other words, peopleneed to invest in lifelong education. Now clearly, the government cannotundertake all such investment for all our citizens: they themselves will have to put

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in the time and the money. What the government can do is to provide somestimulus, some help.30

As is made clear here, from the government standpoint, surviving a volatileand constantly revolutionizing economy is a matter of individual responsi-bility. Engaging in lifelong education is then an investment that individualsmust make. Tungs vision is reflected in an education reform proposal whichthe SAR governments Education Commission refers to as Learning forLife.31 Other government departments have also promoted the ethos of self-management. The Social Welfare department, for example, introduced theSupport for Self-Reliance scheme in 1998. The programmes goal was todeter the able-bodied unemployed from continual dependence on Com-prehensive Social Security Assistance benefits.32

Consequences of neoliberalism: the decline of economic autonomy

The neoliberal policies that the SAR government is currently pursuing aremodelled after those in the Western capitalist countries that undertook theneoliberal turn in the late 1970s. Commenting on the consequences thatresulted from the implementation of neoliberal policies, Harvey argues thatthe track record of neoliberalism is dismay. Its major accomplishment is notimprovement in economic performance but the restoration of class power inthe West, or as China and Russia show, the formation of a new bureaucratic-capitalist class.33 In Margaret Thatchers UK and Ronald Reagans USA, theunemployment rate was allowed to increase so that inflation and interest ratescould be reduced. Along with high unemployment came growth in socialinequality, which was exacerbated by the elimination of many welfareprogrammes and government-sponsored public services.34 In fact, aggregategrowth rates in the world during the 1960s and the1970s were higher thanthose in the later periods when neoliberalization became a dominant economictrend.35 The neoliberal approach to economic management is then not aboutgenerating wealth. Rather, its main outcome is the redistribution of wealthto the rich.36 Unlike supporters of neoliberalism, Harvey conceptualizesneoliberal polices not primarily as strategies of economic development but asstrategies of surplus expropriation by the ruling elite. He classifies theseneoliberal strategies under the concept of accumulation by dispossession so asto underscore their similarity to the kind of surplus expropriation that KarlMarx refers to as primitive accumulation.37

In the decade between 1996 and 2006, the lower and middle classes in HongKong experienced a decline in economic autonomy. During that period therewas a redistribution of wealth to the upper class in Hong Kong. In 1996, 23.9per cent of domestic households earned less than HKD10,000, 61.9 per centearned between HKD10,000 and HKD40,000, and 15 per cent earned morethan HKD40,000. The pattern in 2006 was different: 27.9 per cent earned lessthan HKD10,000, 55 per cent earned between HKD10,000 and HKD40,000,while 17 per cent earned more than HKD40,000.38 During that ten-yearperiod, there was a rise in the number of low-income families as well as a

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growth in the number of those with a high income. However, there was adecline in the number of families in the middle income bracket*a decreasefrom 61.9 per cent to 55 per cent. The difference in the pattern of incomedistribution between 1996 and 2006 shows a growth in income inequality anda shrinking middle class. Moreover, there was also a decrease in medianhousehold income. In 1996, it was HKD17,500 and it went up to HKD18,705in 2001; but in 2006, it decreased to HKD17,250, even lower than the figurein 1996.

The growth in economic inequality in the last ten years is also reflected inthe changes in the Gini coefficient. When the coefficient is 0, it means there isperfect income equality, and when it is 1, there is perfect income inequality.Based on monthly household income, Hong Kongs Gini coefficient was0.451 in 1981, 0.453 in 1986, 0.476 in 1991, 0.518 in 1996, 0.525 in 2001 and0.533 in 2006.39 It is true that there is not just one reason why the polarizationbetween the poor and the rich has worsened. For example, Hong Kongstransformation from an industrial to a service-based economy is often citedas a major factor. Unlike an economy based on industrial production, wherethere is a traditional manufacturing sector with a large number of positionswell paid enough to maintain a stable middle class, the new financial andcorporate service economic complex has a polarized employment structure: atone end it generates high-paying jobs and at the other end low-paying ones,while jobs in the middle of the pay scale are not available. In Sassens analysis,income inequality in a global city is tied to the change in the employmentstructure, i.e. the disappearance of manufacturing jobs.40 However, whatneeds to be pointed out is that economic restructuring is not a naturalphenomenon. The transformation of Hong Kong into a global city ispromoted by the government and this suggests that the growth in inequalityis a consequence of policy making. Another important factor contributing tothe redistribution of wealth to the upper class is the SAR governmentsneoliberal policies. When government workers who were earning HKD12,000were laid off as a result of outsourcing and had to work for private firms thatpaid less, the number of low-income earners inevitably increased.

Hong Kong as a (post)colonial exception within China

I argue that the erosion of Hong Kongs autonomy results from thepersistence of an old colonial capitalist ruling elite which continues to havethe power to dominate the citys economic development. I then suggesttreating the institutionalization of this peculiar (ex)colonial capitalist socialorder within China as an exception, a concept that I will now explain ingreater detail.

Ong suggests that when neoliberal techniques travel from one place toanother and interact with regimes embedded in diverse historically andpolitically specific settings*especially those where neoliberalism itself is notthe general characteristic of technologies of governing*they are oftenemployed as acts of exception. Neoliberalism as exception41 refers to acondition in which neoliberalism is introduced in a social context*for

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example a postsocialist state*where governance by market rationality andcapitalist calculation has not been the norm.

To illustrate neoliberalism as exception, Ong offers as an example ChinasSpecial Economic Zones (SEZ). They are areas where the local governmentsare given the power to stimulate entrepreneurial activities and to create acondition where economic development is market- rather than politically-driven. Another example of a spatial exception to Chinas normal politicaland economic system is the Hong Kong SAR. Ong argues that Hong Konghas been maintaining its distinctive judiciary and market capitalist systemafter 1997 and it is in a state of exception to the economic and politicalnormalized order in China.42

There is an alternative way of conceptualizing Hong Kong as an exceptionwithin China. Drawing on Agambens recent work, I will extricate the notionof exception from a usage tied to neoliberalism and suggest treating HongKong as a (post)colonial rather than a neoliberal exception to the prevailingpolitical and economic norm in China.

In contrast to Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who postulatea state of nature upon which sovereign power is legitimatized, Agambenclaims that the original juridico-political relation is a state of exceptionconceptualized as a zone in which the distinction between inclusion andexclusion is collapsed.43 To illustrate this, Agamben refers to the inclusion ofbare life or homo sacer (sacred man) into the judiciary sovereign as anexception. Homo sacer is a life the killing of which is not punishable becausehomicide law does not apply, yet its killing is also not considered sacrificebecause it belongs to god and cannot be sacrificed.44 The originary juridico-political relation is then this ban by the sovereign as exemplified in the case ofhomo sacer.45 To be banned, as Agamben explains, means to be abandoned bythe law but without being outside it.46 Homo sacer is abandoned by thesovereign since, in its case, law does not apply. Yet, it is still included into thejudiciary sovereign in the form of being able to be killed.47 Homo sacer isthen included in the law by being an exception to it.

In his more recent work, Agamben further extends his investigation ofexception as a space where the distinction between being inside and outside ajudiciary order cannot be made.48 He examines the repeated creation of thestate of exception*which is variously referred to as stage of siege, martiallaw, emergency power, state of necessity*in several Western countries sincethe early twentieth century. In all these cases where the state of exception wascreated there was a suspension of law that resulted from a decree of law.Agamben argues that such a political practice has become the norm ofmodern Western governance from World War II to the current period. In theworld after 11 September 2001, he argues,

the state of exception has today reached its maximum worldwide deployment.The normative aspect of law can thus be obliterated and contradicted withimpunity by a government violence that*while ignoring international lawexternally and producing a permanent state of exception internally*neverthelessstill claims to be applying this law.49

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The notion of exception in Agamben pertains to a condition under which thedistinction between inclusion and exclusion by the sovereign becomes erased.It is a paradox that originates in a double structure, formed by twoheterogeneous yet coordinate elements.50 The double structure in the case ofbare life or homo sacer is constituted by being included into a judiciarysovereign as the object of killing but excluded from the laws applicability.Bare life is included as an exception since its killing is not a crime. But itsinclusion is also simultaneously an exclusion because what makes its killingunpunishable is precisely its exclusion from the laws protection. In thoseWestern nations where martial law or emergency power has periodically beencreated, the double structure is, on the one hand, composed of the judiciary,also referred to as potestas, and, on the other, the anomic, the conditiondevoid of law,51 also known as auctoritas.52 During the time of emergencypower, the judiciary is included into the sovereign as an exception underwhich the use of law is suspended. The judiciary then becomes, in beingineffectual, indistinguishable from the anomic. The inclusion of the judiciaryinto the sovereign is simultaneously an exclusion since in being suspendedwhat remains in the sovereign is no longer law but lawlessness, i.e. the anomic.

This double structure and the exception it generates is the major aporia ofWestern politics. As is demonstrated by Nazism*a regime that was initiallyelected into power but later usurped the democratic structures*the dynamicsof interaction between the elements constituting the double structure blurredthe boundary between so-called modern democracy and totalitarianism.53

The policies of the Bush administration in the post-9/11 era should then beunderstood in relation to this line of historical development.

Agambens writings allow us to re-conceptualize Hong Kongs status as anexception in the Chinese state system after 1997, and we can derive from hisanalysis two theses that are particularly relevant in this connection. The firstis the thesis that the state of exception is a condition under which inclusionand exclusion by the sovereign become indistinguishable. The second is theargument that the state of exception is tied to a double structure in thesovereign. Under the first thesis, Hong Kong should then be conceptualizedas an exception that is being both included and excluded by China. But whatis it about Hong Kong that is being included and excluded? Is Hong Kongbeing included as a neoliberal exception and excluded because of itsneoliberalism?

China undertook market reform about thirty years ago and two majorquestions continue to divide scholars positions on the radical changes thatthe country is going through. First, will China emerge as a superpowerthrough this developmental process? Giovanni Arrighi argues that China willreplace the US as the next hegemon in the capitalist world-system, whilepessimists such as Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett predict Chinawill remain stuck in capitalist semiperiphery.54 The second question iswhether China is becoming a capitalist power and if so what kind. Harveyrefers to Chinas market reform as neoliberalization with Chinese character-istics, while Chinas officials, however, call it socialism with Chinesecharacteristics. Also distinguishing China from neoliberal capitalism is the

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notion of Beijing Consensus from Joshua Cooper Ramo. In Ramosaccount, the Chinese approach rejects wholesale privatization and unrest-ricted free trade as advocated by the Washington Consensus, and stateintervention is still an important element of Chinas economic system.55

While China has clearly been integrating itself into the global capitalistsystem, the complexity of its developmental process does not allow itsexperience to be captured by any of these perspectives alone. It is then best toview Chinas capitalist development as a combination of these differentfeatures. State-owned enterprises still exist and are still important butprocesses of neoliberalization have also emerged. For example, Wang Huiargues that neoliberalization became rampant in China after the crackdownon the 1989 social movement.

In Wangs view, a much neglected feature of the 1989 movement was itsheterogeneity. There was on the one hand a populace who demandedpolitical reform for the purpose of guaranteeing social justice and thedemocratization of economic life56 and did not intend democracy tobe used for legitimatizing the usurpation of state assets by private hands.The popular wing of the movement showed how the ideology of traditionalsocialism was transformed into a force for the mobilization of socialcritique.57 On the other hand, there was also the segment that represented arange of interest groups made up of officials and entrepreneurs who hadaccumulated wealth from market reform. These interest groups presentedthemselves as radical reformers, and democracy was to be used forpromoting greater economic reform, i.e. radical privatization. The failure ofthe 1989 movement led to the downfall of individuals associated with theseinterest groups. But collectively, these people, whom Wang refers to asneoliberals, remained influential and they revised the radical politicalreform program of the 1980s into a movement for constitutional revisionthat focused on establishing the right to private property.58 Throughout the1990s, neoliberalism as both an economic phenomenon and an ideologybecame preponderant in China. Social problems associated with neoliberalreform emerged in full force during this period*the continuing growth ofincome inequality, layoffs of workers due to the privatization of stateenterprises, the erosion of medical and education benefits for rural residentsbecause of cutbacks on welfare spending, environmental problems, rampantcorruption, etc.

Given Wangs argument, Hong Kong should not be seen as a neoliberalexception when neoliberalization is one of the features characterizing Chinascurrent economic development. Though both Hong Kong and China havebecome neoliberal, this does not imply that there are no differences betweenthem. In fact, one key difference between them is precisely what constitutesthe logic of Hong Kongs inclusion/exclusion by China. In the postcolonialera, colonialism remains in Hong Kong in two different ways. First, althoughtraditional supporters of the Chinese government in Hong Kong increasedtheir political influence, the power structure has remained largely the same.The SAR government today is still dominated by the same ruling elitecomposed of the same capitalist class, with the addition of some newly rich

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from the mainland, and ex-colonial officials*local Chinese who worked forthe British but remained in the government after 1997. These ex-colonialofficials have adopted a mode of governance that is continuing the colonialmode of administration. If British colonial rule is defined by positive non-interventionism, a version of laissez-faire management, then the SARgovernment succeeds in being hypercolonial through its neoliberal reform,under which the state further withdraws itself from the provision of publicgoods and services.

However, there is a second way in which colonialism is persisting inpostcolonial Hong Kong and this is the one feature that renders Hong Kongan exception. Hong Kongs transformation into a global city that serves as acommand centre in the network of global production and exchange requiresmultinational corporations to set up their regional headquarters in the cityand conduct their business transactions there. This cannot happen unlessHong Kong has a judiciary-institutional environment in which multinationalcorporations can operate. To do that, the SAR has to undermine its ownsovereign power to legislate its own laws and to adopt practices and laws thatmeet international standards originating in transnational governing bodiesdominated by the USA and other core capitalist powers. The strategy that theSAR government adopts to consolidate Hong Kongs role as a global cityillustrates Hardt and Negris argument about the decline of nation-states andthe rise of Empire. In the popular discourse about Hong Kongs judiciaryautonomy, the cause of concern is always Chinas interference. But in the eraof Empire, Hong Kongs sovereign power is increasingly absorbed into thesupranational juridico-economic structure; a process that can be seen ascolonization by Empire.

China has gone neoliberal and has joined the WTO. As a result, itssovereign power has been compromised and that is likely to continue in thefuture. However, Chinas legal system and the business practices of firmsmaintain, relative to Hong Kong, a far higher degree of independence fromthe international standard. To be independent also means to deviate fromthe international standard and this impairs the ability of some Chineseurban centres to be global cities. Despite the recent hype about Shanghaireplacing Hong Kong as a global city, the number of multinationalcorporations with regional headquarters in Hong Kong in 2003 was 966while the number for Shanghai was 56. But the absence of global cities withinChina proper does not present too big a problem given that Chinesecorporations have been using Hong Kongs financial market to raise capital.The use of Hong Kong as a global city in lieu of having one within mainlandChina proper allows China to minimize the convergence of its judiciarysystem with that of the Empire. This is then what characterizes Hong Kongsinclusion/exclusion by China. Hong Kong is included as a (post)colonizedexception, a city colonized by multinational corporations and transnationalgoverning bodies dominated by the core capitalist states. The citys inclusionis also exclusion since it is excluded from Chinas legal system and has its ownjudiciary orders. Just as in Agambens analysis the states of exception are

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shown to have originated in a double structure, there is also a doublestructure at work in the China/Hong Kong case. This double structure isconstituted of, on the one hand, an attempt to develop the nation throughcapitalist modernization, and, on the other, the weakening of nationalsovereignty through capitalist modernization. When adopting this strategyof development, a nation must participate in and open up to globalcapitalism, and national sovereignty inevitably becomes compromised.However, the hope is that it is precisely through participation in globalcapitalism that the nation becomes developed. Hong Kongs incorporationinto the Chinese state system as a (post)colonial exception is closely tied tothis double structure.

Notes1 I am grateful to Sylvia J. Martin and Duy Nguyen for their suggestions during the early stages of

writing, and I thank Laikwan Pang and Kwai-Cheung Lo for their comments on an initial draft.2 See Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, D Heller-Roazen (trans.), Stanford,

CA: Stanford University Press, 1998, and his State of Exception, K Attell (trans.), Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 2005.3 See Ackbar Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance, Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press, 1997.4 Rey Chow, King Kong in Hong Kong Watching the Handover from the U.S.A., Social Text 55,

1998, p 94.5 Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, R Nice (trans.), Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1977, p 164.6 Pierre Bourdieu, Acts of Resistance: Against the New Myths of Our Time, R Nice (trans.), Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1998.7 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.8 Rey Chow, Between Colonizers: Hong Kongs Postcolonial Self-Writing in the 1990s, in Ethnic

after Idealism: Theory, Culture, Ethnicity, Reading, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998,

pp 150151.9 Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.

10 Mbembe, On the Postcolony, p 16.11 Mbembe, On the Postcolony, p 26.12 Mbembe, On the Postcolony, p 17.13 Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol 1: End of Millennium, 2nd edn,

Oxford: Blackwell, 2000, pp 270276.14 Made By Hong Kong Research Team, Challenges to Hong Kong Industry, in Suzanne Berger and

Richard K Lester (eds), Made By Hong Kong, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1997, p 77.15 Stephen Chiu, K C Ho and Tai-Lok Lui, City-States in the Global Economy, Boulder, CO: Westview,

1997.16 Hardt and Negri, Empire, pp 280303.17 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p 297.18 See Saskia Sassen, Cities in a World Economy, 2nd edn, Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 2000;

also The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo, 2nd edn, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.19 See William Foreman, Bank of Chinas IPO Hits Hong Kong Stock Market, Mail and Guardian Online,

1 June 2006, http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid273361&area/breaking_news/breaking_news__business/. Also Cathy Chan, ICBC Completes Record IPO as Demand Tops $500 Billion,

Bloomberg.Com, 20 October 2006, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid20601087&sidaOmbpID5H3HE&referhome

20 Hong Kong Trade Development Council, Research Development, Hong Kongs Competitiveness Beyond

the Asian Crisis: An Overview, 1999, p 21.

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21 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p 336.22 See Aihwa Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty, Durham, NC:

Duke University Press, 2006. Also David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, New York: Oxford

University Press, 2005; also his Spaces of Global Capitalism, London: Verso, 2006.23 For the history of capitalist development from this period, see Robert Brenner, The Economics of Global

Turbulence: The Advanced Capitalist Economies from Long Boom to Long Downturn, London: Verso,

2006.24 Original in Donald Tsang, The 19992000 Budget: Onward with New Strengths, speech by the Financial

Secretary moving the second reading of the Appropriations Bill 1999 at the Legislative Council, 3

March, Hong Kong, paras 7294. Quoted from Anthony Cheung and Rikka Yeung, Privatization andDivestment of Government-Owned Public Utilities in Hong Kong: Issues and Prospect, A SynergyNet

Policy Paper, June 2005, www.synergynet.org.hk, p 8.25 The data are from Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, Efficiency Unit, Survey on

Outsourcing of Government Activities, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006.26 HKSAR Efficiency Unit, Survey on Outsourcing of Government Activities, 2002, p 4.27 Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception.28 Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception, p 14.29 Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception, pp 1214.30 Tung Chee-hwa, Speech given at Joint Chambers Luncheon, 12 October 2001, http://www.info.gov.hk/

gia/general/200110/12/1012153.htm31 Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Education Commission, Framework for Education Reform:

Learning for Life, 1999.32 Agnes Ku and Ngai Pun, Introduction: Remaking Citizenship in Hong Kong, in Agnes Ku and Ngai

Pun (eds), Remaking Citizenship in Hong Kong: Community, Nation and the Global City, London:

RoutledgeCurzon, 2004, p 8.33 Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, p 19, p 156.34 Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, p 88.35 Harvey, Spaces of Global Capitalism, p 42.36 Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, p 159.37 Harvey, Spaces of Global Capitalism, pp 4350; also, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, pp 159165.38 Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Census and Statistics Department, 2006 Population

By-census: Results, 2007, p 62.39 Hong Kong Legislative Council, Secretariat, Information: Gini Index, FS 07/0405, http://www.legco.

gov.hk/yr04-05/chinese/sec/library/0405fs07c.pdf; Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Census

and Statistics Department, 18 June 2007, Press Release,http://www.censtatd.gov.hk/press_release/

other_press_releases/index.jsp?sID1927&sSUBID9033&displayModeD40 For an in-depth study of this phenomenon in Hong Kong, see Stephen W K Chiu and Lui Tai-lok,

Testing the Global City*Social Polarisation Thesis: Hong Kong Since the 1990s, Urban Studies41(10), 2004, pp 18631888.

41 Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception, p 3.42 Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception, pp 109113.43 Agamben, Homo Sacer, p 181.44 Agamben, Homo Sacer, p 73, p 82.45 Agamben, Homo Sacer, p 83, p 109.46 Agamben, Homo Sacer, p 28.47 Agamben, Homo Sacer, p 82.48 Agamben, State of Exception.49 Agamben, State of Exception, pp 8687.50 Agamben, State of Exception, pp 8586.51 Agamben, State of Exception, p 50.52 Agamben, State of Exception, p 86.53 Agamben, Homo Sacer, p 10.54 Giovanni Arrighi, P K Hui, Ho-fung Hung and Mark Selden, Historical Capitalism, East and West, in

Giovanni Arrighi, Takeshi Hamashita and Mark Selden (eds), The Resurgence of East Asia: 50, 150 and

500 Years Perspectives, London and New York: Routledge, 2003, pp 259333. Also Arrighis HegemonyUnravelling*1, New Left Review 32, 2005, pp 2380. Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett, Chinaand Socialism: Market Reforms and Class Struggle, New York: Monthly Review Press, 2005.

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55 Huang Ping and Cui Zhiyuan, China and Globalization: The Washington Consensus, the BeijingConsensus, or What? (in Chinese), Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2005.

56 Wang Hui, The 1989 Social Movement and the Historical Roots of Chinas Neoliberalism, TheodoreHuters (trans.), in Theodore Huters (ed.), Chinas New Order, Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress, 2003, p 61.

57 Wang Hui, The 1989 Social Movement, p 61.58 Wang Hui, The 1989 Social Movement, p 80.

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Documents

Postcoloniality as a Chinese State of Exception