Negotiating sporting nationalism: debating fan behaviour in ‘China vs. Japan’ in the 2004 Asian Cup Final in Hong Kong

Abstract

Because of enduring cultural differences between Hong Kong and Mainland China, the development of Hong Kong peoples’ national identification since the handover has not been a straightforward process. Under this situation, sport becomes an important arena in which Hong Kong people negotiate their preferred understandings of nationalism and national identification. This essay argues that the values and ideals of modern sport constitute resources for Hong Kong people to construct normative conceptions of sporting nationalism, in which local values and general understandings of nationalism are embedded. Empirically, the essay examines an online discussion following a prominent soccer match between China and Japan in 2004. Online discussants constructed a vision of civilized sporting nationalism to critique the behaviour of the ‘nationalistic’ Chinese fans. But this vision was also contested by others. The implications of the findings on national identities in Hong Kong and the relationship between sports and nationalism are discussed.

Notes

1. Lee and Chan, ‘Political Attitudes’.

2. This has been most evident in debates surrounding the national security legislation and democratic reform since late 2002.

3. Ma, ‘Bottom‐up Nationalization’; Mathews, Ma and Lui, Learning to Belong.

4. Elias and Dunning, Quest for Excitement; Dunning, Sport Matters.

5. Bairner, Sport, Nationalism, and Globalization; Bairner, ‘Political Unionism’; Caldwell, ‘International Sport’; Heinrich, ‘The 1954 Soccer World Cup’; Porter, ‘Your Boys Took One Hell of a Beating’; Evans and Kelley, ‘National Pride’; Horak and Spitaler, ‘Sport Space’; Alabarces, Tomlinson and Young, ‘Argentina versus England’; Bruce and Hallinan, ‘Cathy Freeman’; Holmes and Storey, ‘Who Are the Boys in Green?’

6. Armstrong and Hognestad, ‘We’re not from Norway’; King, ‘Football Fandom’.

7. Polley, ‘Sport and National Identity’.

8. Maguire, Global Sport; Maguire, Poulton and Possamai, ‘The War of the Words?’

9. Bishop and Jaworski, ‘We beat ‘em’; Delgado, ‘The Fusing of Sport and Politics’; Alabarces, Tomlinson and Young, ‘Argentina versus England’; Maguire, Poulton and Possamai, ‘The War of the Words?’

10. Hunter, ‘Flying the Flag’.

11. For examples, see Brown, Fanatics!

12. Johnes, ‘Everyday When I Wake Up’.

13. Bairner, ‘Political Unionism’.

14. Bairner, Sport, Nationalism, and Globalization.

15. Armstrong, ‘Talking Up the Game’.

16. Billig, Banal Nationalism; Edensor, National Identity.

17. Tomlinson, ‘Olympic Spectacles’.

18. Schantz and Gilbert, ‘An Ideal Misconstrued’, 72.

19. Elias and Dunning, Quest for Excitement.

20. Andersson and Radmann, ‘Football Fans in Scandinavia’; Lee, ‘Spectacle and Fandom’; Kowalski, ‘“Cry for Us, Argentina”’.

21. Dunning et al., Fighting Fans; King, ‘The Postmodernity of Football Hooliganism’.

22. Bishop and Jaworski, ‘We beat ‘em’.

23. ‘Japan Protested Against the Behaviour of Fans in Beijing’, Hong Kong Economic Journal, August 9, 2004, 21.

24. Ma, Culture, Politics and Television; Chan, ‘Mass Media’.

25. Ma, Culture, Politics and Television; Chan, ‘Defining Fellow Compatriots as “Others”’. This trend was also reflected in the methodology in academic research. Since the mid‐1980s, a body of survey‐based literature on ‘Hong Kong identity’ has adopted a question in which survey respondents were asked to choose between identifying with Hong Kong, identifying with China, or a mix of the two. For examples, see Lau and Kuan, The Ethos of the Hong Kong Chinese; DeGolyer, ‘Political Culture’.

26. Mathews, ‘Heunggongyahn’. Also see Siu, ‘Cultural Identity’.

27. Chan, ‘Political Identity’.

28. Ma, ‘Bottom‐up Nationalization’; Bhattacharya, ‘Chinese Nationalism Contested’.

29. In the past few years, organizing visits of ‘national heroes’ in the cultural and social arenas have been a major tactic employed by the Chinese government to enhance Hong Kong people’s national identity. Besides sporting icons, the Chinese government has also organized visits to Hong Kong of Chinese astronauts who successfully completed their space missions.

30. As a practical matter, the discussion on Ming Pao’s website is also one of the very few online discussions addressing the topic that was archived and thus available for analysis. At the time of the analysis, the online messages could be retrieved from Ming Pao’s archive at: http://www.mpinews.com/redirect.cfm?file=forum/ViewOpinion.cfm?TopicID=335.

31. For example, van Dijk, News as Discourse; Fairclough, Media Discourse.

32. The online discussion was conducted bilingually. Nevertheless, the English of some posters was highly problematic. To facilitate a more efficient analysis, when online messages were quoted in the following analysis, Chinese messages were translated and English messages were also ‘cleaned up’ by correcting the grammatical and typographical errors involved and by replacing the inappropriate phrases with more appropriate ones.

33. Following each block quote, the pseudonym used by the poster and the date of the posting were included in the bracket.

34. Rowe, Sport, Culture and the Media.

35. MacIntyre, After Virtue.

36. Lui Tai‐lok, ‘Two Linkages Between Soccer and Nationalism’, Ming Pao, August 9, 2004, A27.

37. Jarvie, ‘Internationalism and Sport’.

38. Anderson, Imagined Communities; Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood; Hobsbawm and Rangers, The Invention of Traditions.

39. Abbas, Hong Kong; Lau and Kuan, The Ethos of Hong Kong Chinese.

40. Lee and Chan, ‘Making Sense of Large‐scale Demonstrations’.

41. Ku, ‘Postcolonial Cultural Trends’.