Political repression in a sub-national hybrid regime: the PRC’s governing strategies in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

Existing literature has long recognised that the Beijing government has utilised different strategies to suppress the opposition in Hong Kong. However, with the rise of localism against the Chinese government, the implications of such political repression require new exploration and insight. This article adopts Hale’s analytical framework on political repression and argues that the Beijing government can comparatively tolerate an opposition fighting for democratisation, but the localists who advocate self-determination or separatism are harshly condemned and suppressed. In Beijing’s approach, this ‘red line’ was adopted to place national security, territory integration and sovereignty as the top considerations. Theoretically, this paper contributes to distinguishing between two types of opposition groups within sub-national hybrid regimes and analyzes different responses from the sovereign state. Empirically, the case of Hong Kong will help enrich the existing literature by comparing Beijing’s strategies of repression in regard to the democratic opposition and localists.

KEYWORDS:

• Sub-national hybrid regime
• political repression
• democratic opposition
• localism
• Hong Kong
• China

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the insightful comments from two anonymous peer reviewers. I am also grateful to Ms. Wing-yung Lai for providing research assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Ying-ho Kwong is a Ph.D. Candidate of Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong. His research interests cover social movements, democratisation and autonomies in peripheral territories.