Memories of Tiananmen: Politics and Processes of Collective Remembering in Hong Kong, 1989-2019 9789048553044

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Memories of Tiananmen

China: From Revolution to Reform The China: From Revolution to Reform Series was launched by AUP to meet the rising influence of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as an economic, military, and political power in the world arena. Forty years after the Chinese Communist Party kicked off the reform, the PRC is now poised to surpass the United States as the world’s greatest economy. A more confident and powerful PRC coupled with increasingly rich primary sources have drawn tremendous interest from scholars around the world. The primary focus of this series will be the PRC in the new era with somewhat dual attention to previous periods such as the Republic of China (1912-1949) and the late Qing (1644-1911), both of which are not only intertwined with and inseparable from the PRC but also crucial to our better understanding of the PRC. This series invites studies from a wide variety of disciplines and topics in politics, law, history, diplomacy, gender, and the like. Researches in earlier periods of 20th century China, Taiwan, or Hong Kong are also welcome. Series Editor Qiang Fang, University of Minnesota Duluth Editorial Board Xiaobing Li, University of Central Oklahoma Chen Linghai, East University of Political Science and Law, Shanghai Aminda Smith, Michigan State University Harold Tanner, University of Northern Texas Xiaoping Cong, University of Houston

Memories of Tiananmen Politics and Processes of Collective Remembering in Hong Kong, 1989-2019

Francis L.F. Lee and Joseph M. Chan

Amsterdam University Press

Cover photo: Joseph M. Chan Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6372 844 7 978 90 4855 304 4 (pdf) e-isbn doi 10.5117/9789463728447 nur 692 © Francis L.F. Lee & Joseph M. Chan / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2021 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.



Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 11 List of Abbreviations

14

1 Introduction Defining Collective Memory Processes of Collective Memory Remarks on Collective Memory and Social Movement Chapter Outline and Methodological Notes

15 23 27 32 35

2 Memory Formation and the Valorization of Commemoration The Elements of Memory Formation The 1989 Student Movement in Beijing and Emotional Imprinting The Survival and Valorization of Memory, 1991-1997 Defending Collective Memory The Second Valorization of Collective Remembering, 2009-2014 The Accumulation of Moral Weight

47 49 53 61 68 74 80

3 Memory Mobilization The Annual Memory Mobilization Cycle The Basic Pattern of Memory Mobilization The temporalities of memory mobilization Engaging the established institutions Memory contestation as memory mobilization Column pages and personalized mobilization and memories Creating the atmosphere of remembering Examining the Impact of Memory Mobilization Recalling Tiananmen by oneself and others Predicting recall of Tiananmen The Power of Memory Mobilization

85 92 95 98 100 101 103 105 106 108 113 117

4 Intergenerational Memory Transmission The Process of Intergenerational Memory Transmission Discovering the Tiananmen Incident Essentializing the Tiananmen Incident Defending the June 4 commemoration

123 125 129 132 136

Generational Differences Evaluating generational differences in the society Generational differences within institutions Searching for Sustainability 5 The Struggle for Memory Institutionalization Teaching Tiananmen in Secondary Schools The Tiananmen Incident in Chinese history The politics of Liberal Studies Extracurricular activities and the school environment Sites of Memory: Monuments and Museum From the Pillar of Shame to the Statue of the Goddess of ­Democracy The June 4th Museum A brief note on June 4 in the News Expo Institutionalization as a Dynamic Struggle

139 142 146 151 155 158 158 162 167 171 171 174 180 182

6 The Challenge of Localism and Memory Repair A Brief History of Hong Kong Identity and Localism The Emergence of the Localist Challenge to Commemoration, 2013-2014 The localists’ arguments Limits and responses Tiananmen as an Analogy in the Umbrella Movement The Prelude: Tiananmen as context and movement symbol Tiananmen as analogy in times of uncertainty Contesting the June 4 Analogy Transcending the June 4 Analogy The Intensification of Contestation, 2015-2017 The radicalization of criticism Searching for new common ground Rearticulating the Rationale for Commemoration

193 194 197 201 203 204 206 208 210 211 214 217

7 Changing Attitudes toward Tiananmen? Citizens’ Political Attitudes, 2014 vs. 2018 Changing Profiles of the Candlelight Vigil Participants The Perspectives of the Localist Youth The Perspectives of the Young Vigil Participants Concluding Remarks

223 226 233 237 244 249

187 188

8 Digital Media and Memory Balkanization Digital Media in Mobilization for Commemoration Building the Memory Archive Social Media and Memory Balkanization Changing Strategy of the Pro-government Media and its Impact The Empire Struck Back

253 255 261 268 277 282

9 Conclusion On the Persistence of Collective Memory On Generation On Time, Emotion, and Memory Collective Remembering in the Changing Public Arena Collective Remembering for China and the World

289 290 294 298 301 305

Epilogue 313 From the Anti-ELAB Movement to National Security Law 314 Revisiting the Processual Model of Collective Memory 320 New Trajectories for Collective Remembering of June 4? 328 Appendix 333 List of interviewees and their names (real or pseudonym) 333 References 335 Index 357 List of Figures and Tables Figures Figure 2.1 The public contestation model for memory formation Figure 2.2 Net support for rehabilitating June 4, 1997-2018 Figure 2.3 Hong Kong people’s “net trust” toward the Chinese government, 1997-2018 Figure 3.1 June 4 candlelight vigil in Victoria Park Figure 3.2 The 2016 Victoria Park vigil Figure 3.3 Amount of coverage, number of vigil participants, and amount of funds raised by year Figure 3.4 Average number of articles mentioning June 4 published per day from April 1 to June 13

50 69 75 90 91 96 97

Figure 3.5 Percentages of respondents recalling Tiananmen at different time points Figure 5.1 Hong Kong University students holding a ritual in front of the Pillar of Shame in 2018 Figure 5.2 The Statue of the Goddess of Democracy during the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement in 2019 Figure 5.3 Showing of a documentary inside the June 4th Museum Figure 7.1 Political efficacy among Hong Kong citizens Tables Table 1.1 Table 3.1 Table 3.2 Table 3.3 Table 3.4 Table 3.5 Table 3.6 Table 4.1 Table 4.2 Table 4.3 Table 4.4 Table 6.1 Table 7.1 Table 7.2 Table 7.3 Table 7.4

111 172 175 178 230

Number of participants in the June 4 candlelight vigils, 1990-2019 19 Programs of the June 4 vigils in 1995, 2004, and 2014 87 Time of participation decision of the June 4 vigil participants, 2004 to 2014 92 Hong Kong people’s recall of significant historical events (year 2014) 109 Hong Kong people’s attitudes and perceptions ­regarding Tiananmen (year 2014) 112 Predictors of recalling Tiananmen in different time periods 115 Predictors of recalling Tiananmen in different time periods and for different age cohorts 116 Vigil participants’ perceptions of the impact of June 4 on themselves (year 2010)  141 Vigil participants’ emotional responses to the ­Tiananmen Incident (year 2013 and 2014) 142 Recall of significant historical events by different age groups (year 2014) 143 Concern about and attitude toward Tiananmen by different age groups (year 2014) 145 Number of newspaper articles mentioning both June 4 and “local,” 2010-2017 194 Changing levels of recall and attitudes toward June 4, 2014 vs. 2018 227 Changing identity and trust toward the government, 2014 vs. 2018 229 Differences between participants and non-participants in the Umbrella Movement 232 Over time changes in vigil participants’ background, attitudes and beliefs 234

Table 7.5 Between-age-group differences in vigils in various years  238 Table 8.1 Vigil participants’ digital media use and online ­political communication activities 258 Table 8.2 Predictors of online political communication and participation leadership 260 Table 8.3 Month and year of uploading of June-4-related YouTube videos 264 Table 8.4 Contents of and symbols in videos 266 Table 8.5 Predicting views and engagement obtained by the YouTube videos 268 Table 8.6 Information about the posts from six Facebook pages included in the analysis 271 Table 8.7 Prevalence of themes in the Facebook posts 275 Table 8.8 Opinion polarization on the Tiananmen Incident, 2014 vs. 2018 281 Table A1 Vigil participant-interviewees 333 Table A2 Movement activists, journalists, and school teachers  334 ***

Part of Chapter 2 was derived from materials previously published in: Chan, J. M., & Lee, F. L. F. (2010). The puzzle of why Hong Kong cannot forget about June 4: Media, social organizations, nation-state, and collective memory. Mass Communication Research, 103, 215-259 [in Chinese]. Part of Chapter 3 was derived from materials previously published in: Lee, F. L. F., & Chan, J. M. (2016). News media, movement organization, and collective memory mobilization in Tiananmen commemoration in Hong Kong. Media, Culture & Society, 38(7), 997-1014. Doi: 10.1177/0163443716635864 Lee, F. L. F., & Chan, J. M. (2018). Memory mobilization, generational differences, and communication effects on collective memory about Tiananmen in Hong Kong. Asian Journal of Communication, 28(4), 397-415. Doi: 10.1080/01292986.2018.1425465 Part of Chapter 4 was derived from materials previously published in: Lee, F. L. F., & Chan, J. M. (2013). Generational transmission of collective memory about Tiananmen in Hong Kong: How young rally participants learn about and understand June 4. Journal of Contemporary China, 22(84), 966-983. Doi: 10.1080/10670564.2013.795311

Part of Chapter 6 was derived from materials previously published in: Lee, F. L. F., Chan, J. M., & Leung, D. K. K. (2019). When a historical analogy fails: Current political events and collective memory contestation in the news. Memory Studies, 12(2), 130-145. Doi: 10.1177/175069817703809 Part of Chapter 8 was derived from materials previously published in: Lee, F. L. F. & Chan, J. M. (2015). Digital media use and participation leadership in social protests: The case of Tiananmen commemoration in Hong Kong. Telematics and Informatics, 32(4), 879-899. Doi: 10.1016/j. tele.2015.04.013

Acknowledgments This is the third book the two authors publish as a team. The first one was Media, Social Mobilization and Mass Protests in Post-Colonial Hong Kong, which focuses on the July 1, 2003 protest as a critical event that spurred social mobilization and altered the trajectories of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong in subsequent years. In the process of studying the annual July 1 protests, we also conducted our first on-site survey of the June 4 Victoria Park vigil in 2004. After finishing that book manuscript on the July 1 protests in early 2009, it seemed natural to us to turn our attention to the June 4 commemoration, the other series of ritualistic protests in Hong Kong, and study it systematically. That was a little over a decade ago. When we began our study of the June 4 commemoration, our overarching question, put rhetorically, was: Why couldn’t Hong Kong people forget about June 4? Indeed, in 2009, Hong Kong remembered the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown, and Hong Kong citizens were hailed as “China’s conscience.” But within a few years, collective remembering of Tiananmen was questioned and critiqued not only by the state, but also by a new generation of young people who felt alienated from China. Our own research was distracted by the Umbrella Movement in 2014, and we published our second co-authored book Media and Protest Logics in the Digital Era: The Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong in 2018. When we returned to the topic of collective remembering of Tiananmen, the memory landscape had changed tremendously. We conducted some follow-up research, updated our analysis of intergenerational memory transfer, and examined what we came to call the processes of memory repair and memory balkanization. Around mid-2019, we finished the first draft of the present book. However, social and political changes in the city have only accelerated since then. Hong Kong witnessed the biggest protest movement in its history in the second half of 2019. By the time we had to finalize this manuscript in late 2020, the June 4 vigil of the year had been banned and the National Security Law was established. It is everyone’s guess what may have happened by the time the book comes out. Nevertheless, looking at it in another way, all the changes and transformations in the past decade only affirmed the significance of the Tiananmen commemoration. For three decades, the commemoration had been one of the most important “difference markers” signifying the distinctiveness of Hong Kong from mainland China under “one country, two systems.” Hong Kong was a place where citizens could openly call for the end of one-party

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rule; it was a place where people insisted on remembering what the state wanted people to forget. This, of course, was not due to the state’s leniency; it was a result of a set of complex processes driven by the agency of actors in various institutional contexts, as this book will explain. The story told by this book, therefore, is at one level a story about how collective remembering of Tiananmen persisted in Hong Kong. And at a more general level it is a story about how Hong Kong people exercised – and by doing so attempted to defend – their freedom to resist state power. At a more personal level, in 1989, the first author was in his second year in secondary school. He has only some bits and pieces of memories about those days, such as classmates talking about going to the protest march together (but ultimately did not because of the typhoon), seeing off his grandmother to Macau before returning home to watch live broadcast of the protests in Tiananmen Square, watching TV news about the tanks’ movement in Beijing in the immediate days after June 4, etc. Fragments of media images mixed and meshed with the trivialities of everyday life. He cannot even remember exactly when and how he knew about the crackdown. After 1989, he went to the June 4 vigil only once throughout the entire 1990s. He became a more frequent participant of the vigil only after becoming a researcher studying social movements. This personal trajectory nonetheless highlights the point that the relationship between a historical event and an individual’s life trajectory often does not develop in a simple and linear manner, and many individuals have their unique ways of entering or relating to the mnemonic community of the Tiananmen Incident. The second author was an assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong then. He engulfed himself in following the Tiananmen tragedy as it unfolded in various news media. Deeply touched, he joined the massive protests that shook Hong Kong to its core. The images of Beijing students hunger-striking, the bloody crackdown, and the huge local rallies still linger in his mind to this day. He found it hard to turn away from this critical event as its repercussions were strongly felt in the daily politics of the city in the ensuing decades. While he at times regretted having missed the opportunity to conduct an on-site study in Beijing in 1989, he was intrigued by the apparent resilience of the June 4 collective memory in withstanding the erosion of time many years later. If he could have his will, he would rather that this tragedy had not happened even though there would then be nothing left for us to study. Yet it did happen and the resulting collective memory is facing a severe threat as it draws to a natural temporary closure with the firewall between China and Hong Kong melting. Back in 1989, he

Acknowledgments

13

had no idea that the event would one day make a perfect case for the study of social remembering, as it seems today. Throughout the past 10 years, our research has received support from many people. We want first and foremost to thank all the interviewees in this project, including ordinary citizens who participated in the vigils, student activists, key members of the Alliance, journalists, secondary school teachers, and so on. We would like to thank various graduate students who helped us at different stages of the project. We also want to thank the numerous reviewers of our work on the topic over the years, who have provided us with precious feedback and suggestions. We thank the media companies and the individual journalists who allowed us to use their materials and photos for this book. We own Dr. Robert Chung, formerly of Hong Kong University’s Public Opinion Programme, special thanks for his collaboration in conducting on-site surveys at the candlelight vigils. Finally, we thank the editors at Amsterdam University Press for their professional help on getting this book published in the best shape possible. Francis L. F. Lee Joseph M. Chan



List of Abbreviations

Anti-ELAB ATV CCP CUHK DAB

Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Asia Television Ltd. Chinese Communist Party Chinese University of Hong Kong Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong Economics and Public Affairs EPA Hong Kong Federation of Students HKFS Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union HKPTU Legislative Council LegCo National security law NSL Occupy Central for Love and Peace OCLP People’s Liberation Army PLA Radio Television Hong Kong RTHK Special Administrative Region SAR Severe acute respiratory syndrome SARS The Alliance Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China

1 Introduction Abstract Chapter 1 articulates the core research questions underlying the book’s analysis and highlights the theoretical and social signif icance of the case of collective remembering of the Tiananmen crackdown by Hong Kong society. It discusses the conceptualization of and perspective on collective memory adopted by the book. The processual approach and the six memory processes to be examined are explicated. The chapter also provides information about the methods utilized. Keywords: collective memory, counter-memory, memory processes

How people remember the past is a crucial factor shaping their identity, perceptions of present reality, and ideas about a desired future. In the political arena, actors with varying interests thus have the incentives to construct and promote certain versions of the past and undermine others. Representations and narratives of the past are therefore often subject to contestation. Such contestation has a substantial impact on public opinion, policymaking, and the long-term political development of society. These arguments are now well-established in the study of collective or social memory. An important strand of analysis in the literature has focused on how counter-memories – a concept often attributed to Foucault (1977) – can be developed to challenge a society’s dominant collective memory (e.g., Gutman, 2017; Verberg & Davis, 2011; Walkowitz & Knauer, 2011; Whitlinger, 2015). In such analyses, a representation of the past is dominant in two senses simultaneously: it is the most widely circulated, accepted, or even canonized version of the past in the public arena, and it serves the interests of the dominant social group or the state. Beyond the dominant collective memory, there can be “an unarticulated system of communicative and cultural references to the past and common experiences” shared by members of subordinated groups (Molden, 2016: 136). These references and experiences are the materials for the production of counter-memories. In multicultural

Lee, Francis L.F., and Joseph M. Chan, Memories of Tiananmen: Politics and Processes of Collective Remembering in Hong Kong, 1989-2019. Amsterdam University Press 2021 doi: 10.5117/9789463728447_ch01

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societies, counter-memories “offer socially excluded groups a sense of ownership […] [and also] transform dominant narratives and help produce a more nuanced and just understanding of the past” (Weedon & Jordan, 2012: 150). In the context of Gramscian hegemonic struggles, counter-memories are crucial weapons for challenging ideological domination (Misztal, 2003). There are theoretical reasons to argue that the publicly dominant ideas and narratives are often those of the power holders. In one sense, this is just a version of the Marxist dictum that the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas in every epoch. But in reality, there can be cases in which the socially dominant collective memory is not the one favoring the power holders. In the latter case, the core questions become: How did the socially dominant collective memory come to be established in the first place? How does it constrain the actions of the power holders? How can it withstand the power holders’ attempt to suppress or rewrite the memory? What factors influence the sustainability of the collective memory in the long run? Under what conditions will the socially dominant collective memory start to fade? This book examines such a case: Hong Kong society’s continual commemoration of the 1989 Tiananmen student movement in China. Our analysis covers the 30-year period between 1989 and 2019, when this book manuscript was finalized. In 2020, the June 4 commemoration was banned for the first time in Hong Kong. The decision was made in the name of a ban on public gatherings due to the COVID-19 outbreak, but it was also clearly driven by substantial changes in the political dynamics in Hong Kong after the onset of the huge protest movement in the second half of 2019. While we will discuss the developments after 2019 in the Epilogue, the main content of this book focuses on commemoration during the three decades in which the June 4 commemoration was a major annual event in the city. Chapter 2 will contain a brief narration of the original events in Beijing in 1989 and Hong Kong people’s participation in it. Here, suffice to say that the Tiananmen Incident 1 is one of the most significant political events in 1 Over time, various labels have been used in public discourse in Hong Kong to refer to the events in 1989, including the “89 democracy movement,” “June 4 Incident,” “June 4 massacre,” and the “Tiananmen Incident.” “June 4 Incident” is arguably the most commonly used label, though some activists may criticize the term for its failure to foreground the cruelty of the CCP’s actions. We primarily use the terms June 4 Incident, Tiananmen Incident, or sometimes simply Tiananmen in this book. The terms are interchangeable and are employed to avoid verbosity. The word “incident” is used partly because it is indeed the more commonly used phrase in English in Hong Kong’s public discourse, and partly because it can cover a broader range of happenings over the months in 1989. Yet we also do not refrain from using other terms such as “crackdown” when appropriate.

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contemporary Chinese history. It is also a transformative event (Lee & Sing, 2019; Sewell, 1996) for Hong Kong, i.e., the event changed political actors’ perceptions of reality and strategic calculations, leading to new interactional dynamics and setting political developments onto new paths. Before 1989, Britain adopted a convergence policy toward China. Although it had the incentive to institutionalize democracy in order to salvage its own legitimacy (Scott, 1989) and plan for a “glorious retreat” (Lee, Chan, Pan & So, 2002), Britain was willing to collaborate with China and make concessions regarding the pace of political reform. The Tiananmen crackdown, however, created a huge confidence crisis locally and uproars against the Chinese government internationally. Britain adjusted its policy and pushed for quicker democratization in Hong Kong (Baum, 1999). The local business sector, for a period of time, also stood on the opposite side of Beijing. Even after the emotional impact of the event started to subside, a certain part of the business sector remained less opposed to democratization than before (So, 1999). Besides elite interactions and strategies, the Tiananmen Incident ignited local public support for democratization. As Sing (2000) summarized, public support for democratization among Hong Kong people in the 1980s was limited by a sense of political powerlessness and a lack of knowledge about and commitment to a democratic system. Yet Tiananmen led many Hong Kong people to see democratization as a means to protect the city’s future, a sentiment captured by the phrase man-zyu kong-gung2, which means resisting the Communists through democracy (Law, 2017). The protest activities in Hong Kong during the movement also gave the local protest leaders, such as Martin Lee and Szeto Wah, a significant degree of public visibility, credibility, and legitimacy. The Tiananmen Incident allowed these local protest leaders, who were mostly middle-class service professionals, to gain the support and recognition from the grassroots (So, 1999). The protest leaders would later become the leaders of the major pro-democracy political parties, which dominated the direct elections of the legislature in 1991 and 1995 (Ma, 2017). Moreover, the Tiananmen Incident led to the rise of “democracy” as a condensation symbol that groups on opposite sides of the political divide appealed to and appropriated. As So (1999) put it, the Tiananmen Incident 2 Throughout the book, transliteration follows Cantonese pronunciation when Chinese phrases used primarily in public discourses in Hong Kong are concerned. As far as Chinese phrases belonging to mainland political discourses are concerned, Mandarin pronunciation is followed.

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imposed a democratic discourse onto Hong Kong society. The clearest indication of the symbolic dominance of “democracy” is the fact that even pro-establishment political parties appropriated the label in their names.3 Across the border, the Chinese government “was very angry at and resentful of the support the people of Hong Kong had given the student protesters” (Tsang, 1997: 172). Although China recognized the need to rebuild Hong Kong people’s confidence about the future, it was unwilling to collaborate with Britain on quickening the pace of democratization of the city. Instead, the Chinese government engaged in new efforts to coopt social and business leaders in Hong Kong, expelled the pro-democracy movement leaders from bodies such as the Basic Law Drafting Committee, and rhetorically warned Hong Kong society not to engage in subversive activities (Lee & Chu, 1998). Wary of Hong Kong becoming an anti-communist base, the Chinese leaders introduced Article 23 into the Basic Law, requesting the future Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) government to enact laws protecting national security. For more than two decades after the handover, Article 23 had been one of the most sensitive and controversial issues in Hong Kong politics. Nevertheless, this book is not about how the Tiananmen Incident shaped Hong Kong politics or Hong Kong-China relationship through its power of contingency. Rather, this book addresses the power of collective memory (Schudson, 1997) of the Tiananmen Incident. During the 1989 student movement, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China (the Alliance) was formed. The Alliance engaged in a range of actions immediately after the Tiananmen crackdown, including the “Yellow Bird Action” – the coordinated effort to help Chinese dissidents to flee the country (Lo, 2013). The Alliance later became the main organizers of the Tiananmen commemoration activities. It organized the first June 4 candlelight vigil in 1990, in which 150,000 citizens participated according to the Alliance, or 80,000 according to the police. The June 4 candlelight vigil became an annual event. Table 1.1 shows the numbers of participants of the vigils over the years. Several points are worth noting. From 1990 to 1995, the number of participants went down substantially. Part of the decline might be attributable to the subsiding of the emotional impact of the event. In addition, many Hong Kong citizens had a strong sense of frustration and powerlessness after 1989 (Wong, 2000). 3 Two examples are the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, which is the largest pro-government political party in the Hong Kong legislature in the 2010s, and the Liberal Democratic Federation, a more pro-business and pro-Beijing party founded in 1990.

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Table 1.1  Number of participants in the June 4 candlelight vigils, 1990-2019 Figures from Figures from the Alliance the Police 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

150,000 100,000 80,000 40,000 40,000 35,000 45,000 55,000 40,000 70,000 45,000 48,000 45,000 50,000 82,000

80,000 60,000 28,000 12,000 12,000 16,000 16,000 (no figure) 16,000 (no figure) (no figure) (no figure) (no figure) (no figure) 48,000

Figures from Figures from the Alliance the Police 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

45,000 44,000 55,000 48,000 150,000 150,000 150,000 180,000 150,000 180,000 135,000 125,000 110,000 115,000 180,000

22,000 19,000 27,000 18,000 62,800 113,000 77,000 85,000 54,000 99,500 46,600 21,800 18,000 17,000 37,000

Note: Figures were originally derived from Lo (2013) and a Wikipedia entry about the candlelight vigil. They were then double-checked with the figures reported in the news in various years.

Many middle-class citizens migrated to other countries. Others focused their attention on the local scene and strived for democratization in Hong Kong. Pro-democracy politicians and activists also turned their attention and resources to political party formation and electioneering. However, the dwindling of the size of the vigil stopped in 1995. Between 1996 and 2008, around 50,000 citizens joined the vigil each year. The exceptions were the vigils in 1999 and 2004, which attracted more participants than in the other years. This is consistent with the common observation that rounded-number anniversaries are more capable of drawing attention and participation (Forrest, 1993). Numbers of participants jumped to 150,000 in 2009, the 20th anniversary of the Incident. Yet the number of participants stayed high between 2010 and 2013, no matter whether the Alliance’s or the police’s figures are used. These figures suggest that Hong Kong people’s urge to remember Tiananmen had not been weakened by time. Rather, there were signs that the urge to remember had become stronger between 2003 and 2014. Nevertheless, not including the 30th anniversary, which carried the significance of a “rounded number anniversary” and was on the eve of the outburst of the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement later in the month (Lee, Yuen, Tang & Cheng, 2019), the size of the vigil went down rather substantially

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between 2014 and 2018. Observers of Hong Kong politics may immediately point toward the rise of “localism” in the 2010s (Kaeding, 2017; So, 2017; Veg, 2017) as an important factor associated with this decline of the Tiananmen commemoration participation. Localism can be understood as a set of ideas and claims about the local distinctiveness of Hong Kong as opposed to mainland China, with Hong Kong independence being its most radical manifestation (Lee, 2018a; Lo, 2018). Some localist groups and politicians contended that democratic reforms in Hong Kong were doomed to fail “so long as the moderate democrats dominating the political scene in Hong Kong refused to sever their emotional ties with China” (Law, 2017: 802). Tiananmen commemoration is arguably the most conspicuous public manifestation of such emotional ties. Some localist groups thus called for abandoning the commemoration. Collective remembering of Tiananmen was seemingly undermined not so much by the state’s efforts to suppress the memory as by new forces in contentious politics that questioned its relevance. Certainly, Hong Kong society remembered Tiananmen not only through the candlelight vigils. Memories about the events in 1989 were sustained and contested through regular retellings of the events in 1989 via various media, journalists’ employment of June 4 as a news icon (Bennett & Lawrence, 1995; Lee, Li & Lee, 2011), controversies aroused by the state’s or other political actors’ attempts to challenge the dominant representation of the events, the passing on of knowledge and stories to the younger generation in classrooms and families, the circulation of related images and videos in cyberspace, and so on. Nonetheless, Table 1.1 has helped us to sketch a basic storyline of the stabilization, strengthening, and weakening of collective remembering of Tiananmen in Hong Kong between 1990 and 2019. This book is an attempt to understand the processes that led to the above-mentioned stabilization, strengthening and weakening of collective remembering over time. Analyzing the politics of Tiananmen memory is a way to examine the resilience of the civil society in Hong Kong in the face of state pressure, as well as the limits of such resilience. It also informs our understanding of related issues such as the transformation of contentious politics and the evolution of national and local identities in the city. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had insisted on its verdict of the 1989 student movement as a riot. Media references to the events had been censored within the mainland (Lim, 2015; Roberts, 2018). Non-remembering of Tiananmen in China is the result of state-induced amnesia among the younger generation and a culture of public secrecy among those who “know what not to know” (Hillenbrand, 2020). Hong Kong used to be the only place under CCP’s control where Tiananmen could be publicly commemorated. In

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one sense, Hong Kong society has been preserving the memory of Tiananmen for China. Although this preservation work is not welcomed by the CCP regime, there were signs that some mainland citizens appreciated Hong Kong people’s persistence on remembering June 4. There were mainland tourists observing or even participating in the vigil every year (Huang, 2015; Lo, 2013). What this book addresses is therefore also an interesting case of a collective memory being conserved primarily by an offshore civil society (Hung & Ip, 2012). For the study of the politics of collective memory, three characteristics of this case can be highlighted. First, as noted at the beginning, Tiananmen memory in Hong Kong is not a typical case of counter-memories challenging a dominant collective memory. More precisely speaking, when put within the context of China at large, Tiananmen commemoration in the SAR of Hong Kong might indeed be treated as a counter-memory. But when we focus on the dynamics of collective remembering within Hong Kong, it would be more accurate to see Tiananmen commemoration as a socially dominant collective memory challenging state power. This character means that the case is likely to illustrate not so much the malleability as the persistence of the past, not so much how collective memory serves the interests of the powerful as how it defends the subordinate. The key question is what explains the persistence and defensive function of collective memory. Second, the development and transformation of collective memory of Tiananmen in Hong Kong has not been a linear process. As Table 1.1 suggests, an initial decline was followed by a period of stabilization, which was then followed by a period of strengthening, and yet further by another period of decline. If this book was written in the early 2000s, we might have focused entirely on the factors explaining the growth and persistence of collective remembering of Tiananmen. But writing at the end of the 2010s, we are compelled not only to explain the decline of collective memory since 2014, but also to re-evaluate the period immediately before 2014 as one in which the seeds for the decline of collective memory might have already been sown. The case thus allows us to develop a more nuanced account of the factors and processes shaping the persistence and/or change of collective memory. Third, Tiananmen commemoration in Hong Kong is not only a case of a people remembering a tragedy; it is also about making contentious claims against the Chinese and Hong Kong governments. The five founding principles of the Alliance are “rehabilitating June 4,” “ascertaining the responsibility of the massacre,” “releasing all dissidents,” “ending one-party rule,” and “developing a democratic China.” Some of these are strong claims putting the legitimacy of the CCP regime under question. This study is

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therefore also one about a particular social movement. The analysis will shed light on how collective memory and social movement dynamics intersect. The specificities of the Tiananmen commemoration in Hong Kong can also be illustrated by comparing it to remembrance of state violence in other Asian countries. In other major cases of historic state violence in the region, such as Taiwan’s 228 Incident, Korea’s Kwangju Uprising, and Indonesia’s 1965 Killings, the regime typically propagated official versions of the events which portrayed the resistance as unruly rebellion and omitted the severe state violence. Memories about the state violence were typically suppressed, even though they survived through the presence of physical sites that reminded people about the events, sharing of stories at the interpersonal level, and efforts by activists living abroad (Eickhoff et al., 2017; Lewis, 2002; Stolojan, 2017). Open discussions of the historical events were made possible only as a result of a regime change, i.e., democratization of Korea and Taiwan in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the end of the Suharto regime in Indonesia in 1998 (Kuddus, 2017; Leong, 2019; Rowen & Rowen, 2017). In comparison, what happened within mainland China regarding the (non)remembrance of Tiananmen is highly similar to what happened in these other East Asian cases before political transition. But the Tiananmen commemoration in Hong Kong stands out as a case in which memories about state violence were heavily publicized and socially dominant even though the regime perpetrating the violence remained firmly in power. On the surface, Hong Kong people’s commemoration of Tiananmen features a discrepancy between local level commemoration and national level (non)commemoration. Yet it also differs from other cases of national vs. subnational level collective memory. Hook (2017) has examined how subnational level collective memory of Okinawans about the Second World War differed from the national level collective memory in Japan. How people in Kwangju remembered the Kwangju Uprising could differ from how other Koreans remembered the events (Lewis, 2002). However, in Okinawa and Kwangju, the contrast between the subnational and national level collective memories was rooted first and foremost in the actual experiences of the locals – Okinawans during and after the war and people in Kwangju during the uprising. The collective memories are subnational not only because they are held mainly by the people in the localities, but also because the contents of the subnational level collective memories are indeed mainly about what happened at the subnational level. In contrast, although collective remembering of Tiananmen in Hong Kong was also partly driven by Hong Kong people’s “local experiences” in 1989 (i.e., how people participated in activities in Hong Kong supporting the Beijing student movement), the

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main object of commemoration remained the crackdown in Beijing. The local public had been building a memory about and for the nation. While the above put forward the central research questions and clarified the background, significance, and specificities of the case, the remaining parts of this chapter will explicate certain theoretical and conceptual bases of the study. We will first discuss how we define collective memory and delimit the scope of our analysis. This is followed by an explication of our emphasis on the processes of collective memory. We will then discuss issues in analyzing the collective-memory-social-movement nexus. The final section provides an outline of the subsequent chapters and briefly introduces the methodologies and data employed.

Defining Collective Memory In the vast literature of “memory studies,” besides collective memory, notions such as public memory (e.g., Dickinson, Blair & Ott, 2010), social memory (e.g., Climo & Cattell, 2002), and cultural memory (e.g., Assmann, 2012) are also employed by researchers. There are nuanced differences among them. For instance, the term social or cultural memory does not emphasize the presence of a “collective” as the agent. But the various notions also overlap and are sometimes used interchangeably (Schudson, 2014). This book primarily uses the term collective memory because the emphasis is on how Tiananmen commemoration in Hong Kong is a collective act that many citizens engage in. Many scholars have questioned the validity and usefulness of the concept of collective memory as relevant studies proliferated in the 1980s and 1990s. Some argued that the term is too closely tied to the problematic notion of a group mind or a collective consciousness dissociated with individuals’ thoughts (Fentress & Wickham, 1992). Others argued that the term is used in too many different ways to refer to too many different things, including myths, tradition, rituals, history, etc. It is better for scholars to just use the more specific terms (Berliner, 2005; Gedi & Elam, 1996). Proponents of the concept, in response, argued that a unifying label is needed to point to the multifarious ways through which societies selectively remember and forget. The concept of collective memory does cover a lot of ground, but it is only because societies and people do remember the past through a wide range of mnemonic practices and objects. Hence collective memory can be considered a sensitizing concept alerting us to the means through which societies remember. Empirically, collective memory is not a singular thing.

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There are sets of mnemonic objects, institutions, practices, and processes intertwined with each other to carry out the task of remembering (Olick & Robbins, 1998). While Olick and Robbins’s (1998) approach is useful to demarcate the boundary of a field of research, few studies can actually examine a full array of mnemonic objects and practices. Numerous more specific definitions were therefore developed by various scholars, partly based on their disciplinary and theoretical allegiance, and partly on the need of the study at hand. Most directly pertinent to this book, communication researchers tend to treat mediated representations or narratives of the past as the main empirical referent of collective memory (Orenstein, 2002; Zelizer, 1992). Edy (2006: 3), for instance, defined collective memory as: the stories that everyone knows about the past, even if not everyone believes the story. Such memories become a kind of common cultural currency – the shared language that one must be able to speak if one wishes to communicate with others about a shared past, even if one’s goal is to challenge that shared memory.

This way to define collective memory locates it in the public arena. Collective memory does not necessarily correspond to what individuals in the society remember. In fact, the above passage explicitly highlights the possibility that the publicly available stories may not reflect what individuals remember or regard as true. In contrast, some researchers defined collective memory in terms of what people actually think. Schwartz (2014: 212) treated the concept as a variant of public opinion and defined it as “the distribution through society of what individuals know, believe and felt about past events.” This definition facilitates the use of surveys to examine collective memory. But survey researchers are not the only ones who locate collective memory inside people’s heads. Studying collective remembering of the former USSR in Russia, Wertsch (2002) focused on the role of narratives in history textbooks. Yet he saw the narratives only as the tools used by agents to do memory work. Collective memory is still understood as distributed across individuals. The contrast between the individualist and collectivist approach was the subject of Olick’s (1999a) classic discussion of the “two cultures” of collective memory studies. He argued that certain scholars emphasize memory as essentially an individualistic phenomenon because, if memory is understood literally, only individuals do the remembering. Those scholars thus see collective memory as the aggregated individual memories of the

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members of a group. They may acknowledge that individuals remember within a social context and that memories are shaped by shared cultural frameworks, publicly available symbols, and collective representations. But those frameworks, symbols, and representations are seen not as “memories”; they are tools, resources, or influences shaping how people remember. Olick (1999a) noted that the individualist approach has several advantages, e.g., it facilitates the incorporation of psychological processes into the study of social memory, and it avoids the problematic notion of a group mind. However, he preferred to use “collected memory” to refer to the individualists’ object of analysis. In contrast, “genuinely collective memory” refers to “public discourses about the past as wholes or to narratives and images of the past that speak in the name of collectivities” (p. 345). He argued that collective memory cannot be reduced to individuals’ thoughts because the collective representations and rituals indeed contain a group’s “memory” about its past. The construction and negotiation of such collective representations and symbols have their own institutional, structural, and technological bases. That is, there are social, political, and institutional processes shaping these collective memories through employing the technologies of memory available in a society. Depending on the characteristics of the case, individuals in a society or group may have rather little influence on the collective memory processes. Over time, many scholars agreed that one should try to incorporate both individualist and collective perspectives instead of choosing between the two. There are different ways to articulate the relationship between collective representations and individual memories. Schuman, Corning and Schwartz (2012) stated that collective memory cannot be reduced to, but is realized through, individual understanding and memory. Hirst and Manier (2008) argued that collective memory should be located in the interaction between what is out there in the world and what is in people’s heads. Studies have to examine the design of mnemonic or social resources, practices, and tools relevant to collective memory, as well as the effectiveness of these practices and tools in shaping people’s memories. Public representations of the past and individuals’ understanding of the past thus form two sides of the same collective memory coin. Our examination of Hong Kong society’s collective memory about the Tiananmen Incident will also look into both representations of the past in the public arena and how individuals understood the Incident and its associated issues. We examine both sides of the collective memory coin not only for the sake of comprehensiveness itself. How individuals think and act is particularly important in the present case. As discussed above,

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the size of the annual June 4 vigil constituted one of the most important symbols regarding the strength of collective memory about Tiananmen in Hong Kong. That is, a core aspect of the public representation of collective remembering was constituted by and grounded in the actions of individuals. More broadly speaking, individual citizens’ views on the Tiananmen Incident were regularly publicly expressed and/or represented through protest activities, media forums, and opinion polls. A collective representation of the Tiananmen Incident could hardly have been dominant and sustainable in the public arena if too many people did not regard it as legitimate. Moreover, individual actions and expressions not only serve to confirm the validity of collective representations; they also embellish the collective representations. As van Dijck (2007) argued, while personal memories take up cultural frameworks, the sustaining of collective cultural memories requires accounts from individuals to provide them with authority, richness, and authenticity. Individual accounts may be included in mediated representations such as news reports and commentary articles. They may be shared among friends and acquaintances in relatively private settings. Social psychologists have noted the role of ordinary conversations in the shaping of social memory (Hirst & Echterhoff, 2012). As parts of this book will illustrate, the sharing of personalized memories about the Tiananmen Incident can indeed play a crucial role in certain collective memory processes. Therefore, the analysis will miss a great deal if individual attitudes and beliefs are not addressed. Nevertheless, public representation of the past retains a degree of theoretical primacy in our analysis. That is, theoretically speaking, we are closer to Olick (1999a) than to Hirst and Manier (2008) in privileging the “collectivist side” of the collective memory coin. The original collective representations of a past event may be grounded in individual memories. But once the collective representations are formed, their impact on the memories and thoughts of individuals is usually stronger than the impact of individual memories on the collective representations. While the collective representations can be changed over time, contestation and negotiation of collective memory typically occur in the public arena, especially in the cluster of institutional spaces that constitute “the media.” Social, political, and professional groups and organizations are the primary players in the contestation and negotiation. Even within mainland China, the Beijing government could not completely erase ordinary citizens’ personal memories about Tiananmen (Hillenbrand, 2020); what it did is to undermine public representations of the events in 1989. The most important aim of censorship is arguably not so much to stop people from holding certain views as to prevent the expressions of

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views that can become the bases of new collective actions (King, Pan & Roberts, 2013). In the politics of memory, collective representations of the past constitute the primary object of struggle.

Processes of Collective Memory The extent to which collective memory is stable and enduring constitutes another key issue in the literature. Many scholars in the 1990s contrasted the presentist perspective with a persistence perspective (Olick, 1999b). Hobsbawm and Ranger’s (1983) Invention of Tradition was often cited as the representative work in the presentist camp. The presentists see the past as subject to the manipulation by powerful elites to serve their present interests. They treat traditions as having very weak grounds in historical reality, and they emphasize the substantial over-time shifts in how people remember historical events or figures (Schwartz, 1982, 2000). In contrast, some scholars emphasized that collective memories can be resistant to change. For Schudson (1997), there are limits of what available pasts people can draw upon, there are norms regarding how certain stories need to be told, and there are people who would defend an existing version of collective memory. In journalism studies, some scholars have argued that the past constitutes resources that journalists can draw upon to constrain and resist the influence of political elites (Bennett & Lawrence, 1995; Berkowitz, 2011). Certainly, a simplistic contrast can hide a number of nuanced yet important points. First, to claim that collective memory is likely to be shaped by present circumstances does not entail that the retelling of the past necessarily serves the interests of the present power holders. Numerous studies have continued to show how “the present” shapes collective memories, but “the present” can refer to factors other than elite manipulation. Schwartz, Zerubavel, and Barnett (1986), for instance, examined the recovery of the siege of Masada in Jewish history by Palestinian Jews in the 1920s. They argued that the rediscovery had to be understood in terms of how the historical event matched the conditions facing the Palestinian Jews in the 1920s. At stake was the congruence between the past event and the present condition. Cunningham, Nugent and Slodden (2010) analyzed the changing narrative structure surrounding the Greensboro massacre in the U.S. They argued that the changes are the result of a cluster of factors not reducible to the interests of the powerful. The factors include the emergence of new information, the changing institutional contexts of the retelling, and the changing mix of speakers doing the retelling.

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Second, we can differentiate between two meanings of persistence. One refers to the content of the collective memory; the other refers to the strength of the collective memory. The former is concerned with whether the representations and narratives about a historical event remain largely unchanged over time, whereas the latter is concerned with whether people of a society continue to attach special significance to the historical event so that remembering is seen as central to a group’s collective identity or even a moral duty. In fact, in this study, when we talk about the persistence, strengthening, and weakening of collective memory about Tiananmen in Hong Kong, we refer primarily to the issue of strength, i.e., the extent to which Hong Kong people continue to see remembering Tiananmen as a moral imperative. Third, given the distinction between constancy in content and persistence in strength, one can see that adjusting a narrative or collective representation according to the present context does not entail the lack of persistence. In fact, it is difficult to imagine the total absence of adjustments or changes in collective representations of a past event over time. This is similar to individuals telling their personal stories: people naturally tell the same personal stories somewhat differently when facing different audiences in different contexts (Hirst & Echterhoff, 2012). It does not entail a significant shift in the core content or the main thrust of the stories. It does not mean people are “manipulating” the stories, or that the stories have become less important to the storytellers. Analogously, in the case of collective representations or historical narratives, changes may occur over time because of the need to incorporate new information, the need for the retelling to be pegged to ongoing events, or the need to adjust for a changing audience. Such adjustments of the collective representations can actually be needed for the perpetuation of collective remembering. What our analysis will do is examine the changing content of collective memory about Tiananmen in Hong Kong and how it relates to the strength of the collective memory. More specifically, we will adopt the dynamics of memory approach to examine the processes that shape the path along which collective memory moves. The approach sees collective memory as under constant negotiation and contestation through the interactions among social and political actors (Misztal, 2003). The past and the present constantly influence each other (Olick & Levy, 1997). While recognizing the possibility of transformations of collective memory, such transformations are not always driven by strategic concerns. There can be cultural and inertial reasons for both stability and change (Olick & Robbins, 1998; Wertsch, 2012). Collective memory is therefore an active process of sense-making through time. In this approach, “[the] role of agency and the temporal dimension

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of memory as well as the historicity of social identities are stressed and analyzed” (Misztal, 2003: 69). Dynamics is a broad and general term, though. To study it in a more conceptually meaningful manner, it would be useful to adopt the insights from McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly (2001) on the role of mechanisms and processes in constituting the dynamics of contentious politics. They defined mechanisms as “a delimited class of events that alter relations among specified sets of elements in identical or closely similar ways over a variety of situations,” while processes are “regular sequences of such mechanisms that produce similar (generally more complex and contingent) transformations of those elements” (McAdam et al., 2001: 24). Self-fulfilling prophecy and bandwagon effects are classic examples of mechanisms in sociology. They point to recurring phenomena that unfold over time with identif iable patterns and lead to specific outcomes. Yet their onset can be contingent or even accidental. How mechanisms combine together to form complex processes can also be contingent. The mechanism and process approach, therefore, is a way for social scientists to deal with both contingency and generalizability simultaneously (Hedstrom & Swedberg, 1998). As McAdam et al. (2001) acknowledged, processes and mechanisms form a continuum. Sometimes, whether to call a certain sequence a process or a mechanism can be arbitrary. McAdam et al. (2001) prioritized the term mechanism because they wanted to emphasize the point that the same mechanisms recurred across different cases of political contention. The present book is not a comparative study of multiple cases, however. Instead, examining the dynamics of collective remembering of Tiananmen over a period of nearly three decades, it should be advisable not to focus on the micro-level mechanisms. It should be more appropriate and effective to organize the analysis through pinpointing the more general processes that constitute the three-decade dynamics. We therefore minimize the use of the term mechanism in this book and focus more on the notion of process. More specifically, in line with the idea that collective memory about the Tiananmen Incident in Hong Kong has gone through periods of sustenance, strengthening and then decline, six processes constitute the conceptual focuses of our analysis. While each of the processes will be discussed more elaborately in subsequent chapters, we can briefly introduce them here. The first process is memory formation, simply referring to the process through which a collective memory of an event came into being and acquired the status of something that people should remember. Not all important historical events become the object of commemoration (e.g., Armstrong & Crage, 2006; Cunningham et al., 2010; Pennebaker & Banasik, 1997; Whitlinger,

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2015). For instance, the 1967 urban riots, another transformative event in Hong Kong history, have not been the object for society-wide collective remembering.4 Meanwhile, as mentioned earlier, the size of the June 4 vigil actually declined in the early 1990s. Why Tiananmen commemoration did not simply die down and how Tiananmen came to be seen as what Hong Kong people should not forget are questions to be answered. Once the collective memory is formed, its maintenance requires the work done through other processes. This study focuses on three of them. The first is memory mobilization, defined as the organized efforts to bring the collective memory about the past to the fore for the purposes of social mobilization. Memory mobilization is significant in the present case because the commemoration of Tiananmen is an annual event held at a designated time point in the year. Citizens are unlikely to have the events in 1989 at the top of their heads every day. But they need to be able to recall the memory at the right time. The notion of memory mobilization directs our attention to how memories about Tiananmen are foregrounded throughout the society in the period preceding the annual June 4 commemoration. Besides mobilization, generation is another key concern in studies of the perpetuation of collective memories over the long haul. Because of differences in life experiences, people of different age cohorts tend to see different historical events as significant (Schuman & Scott, 1989; Corning & Schuman, 2015). The sustainability of a collective memory thus depends on whether and how the new generation would take it up. This process is often dubbed intergenerational memory transmission (e.g., Azarian-Ceccato, 2010; Ros, 2012; Svob & Brown, 2012). In the present case, the participation of a large proportion of young people in the June 4 vigils in the 2000s and early 2010s can be seen as signifying the success of memory transmission. However, the minds of young people are not empty vessels to be filled. The younger generation may consciously or unconsciously adjust the narratives of the past. They may even proactively re-evaluate the relevance of the elder generation’s memory. This phenomenon might become particularly salient under certain social and political conditions. To maintain consistency with the extant literature, we keep using the term intergenerational memory transmission to describe the process, though we need to keep in mind the

4 However, in the most recent years, debates surrounding historical representations of the 1967 urban riots arose in association with the publication of media materials related to the event. Such debates are arguably fueled by perceived attempts on the part of the pro-government forces to “re-evaluate” the deeds of the pro-Communist groups during the 1967 riots.

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agency of the younger generation. Intergenerational memory transmission is in practice a process of intergenerational memory negotiation. The third process pertinent to the sustainability of collective memory is memory institutionalization, by which we mean the extent to which collective memory of an event became inscribed into enduring institutional forms, either through the establishment of mnemonic institutions (e.g., museums or monuments) devoted to the event or through the embedding of collective memory into existing social institutions (e.g., becoming the subjects addressed in textbooks). The relationship between the sustenance of collective memory and memory institutionalization can be complicated. It is a well-known argument in collective memory studies that the proliferation of museums and monuments in modern societies is the consequence of modernity’s tendency to forget (Connerton, 2009; Nora, 1989). But it cannot be denied that certain forms of institutionalization could provide collective memory of an event a “permanent base,” thereby facilitating the continuation of collective remembering in the long run (Eickhoff et al., 2017; Pelak, 2015). To say that memory mobilization, intergenerational memory transmission, and memory institutionalization are instrumental to the sustainability of collective memory is also to say that the failure, limits, or weakening of these processes would help explain the weakening of collective remembering. In addition, we highlight two interrelated processes that are pertinent to the challenges faced by collective remembering of Tiananmen in Hong Kong after 2014. The first is memory repair. The need for repair arises when the hitherto dominant collective memory appears to lose its appeal. This can be the result of changes in the social and political environment or the emergence of new social groups with a different set of goals and interests. In this situation, proponents of the original collective memory may need to rearticulate their discourses and representations to keep the collective memory relevant to the current situation and acceptable to new groups. This is similar to how social movements sometimes need to adjust movement frames and narratives to broaden the movement’s appeal and align with other social groups (Benford & Snow, 2000; Snow, Rochford, Worden, & Benford, 1986). Lastly, contemporary studies of collective memory cannot completely ignore the substantial transformation of the media and communication environment brought about by digitalization (e.g., Neiger, Meyers & Zandberg, 2011). Some scholars have argued that digital media have led to a “connective turn” such that digital and social media networks become the bases for the articulation and perpetuation of collective memory (Hoskins, 2011; van Dijck, 2011). However, digital media have also led to the problem of fragmentation and cyberbalkanization (Sunstein, 2009, 2017): people holding

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different views form into exclusionary groups and stop communicating with each other. This may lead to the formation of “memory silos,” i.e., “distinct groups of people within a social system come to share a collective memory unique to them and are unaware that this memory is not typical beyond the boundaries of their group” (Edy, 2014: 73-74). Along this line of thinking, this study identifies memory balkanization as a process. It refers to how a fragmented communicative space may facilitate the formation of distinctive and competing mnemonic and counter-mnemonic communities. The fragmentation of communicative space may then weaken the capability of a version of the past to achieve dominant status in the public sphere. The above paragraphs only briefly introduce the six processes. Each of them will be further explicated in the corresponding chapters. Here, let us end with some remarks on how we identified these processes and on their generalizability. We did not have these processes in mind when we started the research. They came to our attention as particularly significant through our observations and analysis. Hence the identification of these processes was partly inductive. But at the same time, as the previous paragraphs should illustrate, the processes were not arbitrarily labeled and identified. All of them are related to concepts and phenomena that have been examined either in collective memory studies or in other related literatures such as social movement studies and media and communication research. Therefore, overall speaking, there are both generalizable and particularistic elements in the analytical account offered by this book. The generalizable elements reside in the fact that each of the processes occurs across many cases. We believe that our analysis of the various processes can generate insights that are potentially applicable to how those processes operate in other cases. However, we do not claim that all cases of the dynamic evolution of collective memories can be analyzed in terms of these (and only these) six processes. How these processes relate to or concatenate (McAdam et al., 2001) with each other may also vary across cases. The evolution of collective remembering of Tiananmen in Hong Kong is after all a unique story resulting from the specific ways these processes operated and related to each other.

Remarks on Collective Memory and Social Movement It is not difficult to see the possible connection and overlapping between collective memory and social movements. In fact, two of the six processes identified in the previous section – memory mobilization and memory

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repair – are directly borrowed from or closely related to social movement studies. This is not the place to provide a comprehensive review or theoretical articulation of the two interdisciplinary fields. What we attempt is to offer some additional remarks about the collective-memory-social-movement nexus so as to further highlight certain characteristics of our analysis. Following Tilly (2004), we define a social movement as an ongoing campaign that makes collective and contentious claims on target authorities and involves an array of claim-making performances and public representations of the worthiness of the cause and the unity, numbers, and commitments of the participants and supporters. With this definition, the first point of connection between social movement and collective memory resides in the fact that both are grounded in a collective identity. That is, social movement formation and participation are premised on the definition of the collective for which the movement speaks, and people’s participation in collective actions is conditioned by the extent to which they identify with the collective (Klandermans, 1997; van Zomeren, Postmes, & Spears, 2008). Collective memories, then, can be the crucial resources used by social movements to articulate a conception of collective identity for the purpose of mobilization (Issa, 2007). Second, collective memory can be utilized in movement framing. Social movements make claims on issues. Yet no social and political issues exist in a historical vacuum. An issue may appear differently and certain courses of actions may seem to be more or less justifiable depending on how the history of the issue is narrated and/or how historical events are utilized as templates, analogies, or metaphors to understand the current issue (Edy, 1999; Kitzinger, 2000; Schudson, 1992). Besides, some issues are by their nature tied to specific past events. For instance, Verberg and Davis (2011) discussed how family groups of the victims of a mine disaster in Canada engaged in narrative work and “transformative commemoration” – defined as commemorative work aiming at social change – in their search for justice. To the extent that a collective memory is closely tied to a social movement, the evolution of the movement can be expected to influence the dynamics of collective memory. If a narrative of the past is central to the collective identity underlying a social movement, the narrative may be challenged when the collective identity shifts. Tiananmen commemoration, in particular, has long been supported by a “Hong Kong Chinese” identity (Lee & Chan, 2005), i.e., the willingness of Hong Kong people to consider themselves as both Hong Kongers and Chinese. Therefore, when young people in Hong Kong started to reject their Chinese identity, they also started to question the relevance of the Tiananmen commemoration to them and to Hong Kong.

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Similarly, the pertinence of a collective memory to a social movement may also undergo negotiation and change when the core issue is redefined. Notably, the f ive principles of the Alliance include claims of different temporal orientations. There are past-oriented claims linking only to the Tiananmen Incident in 1989 (i.e., rehabilitating June 4 and ascertaining the responsibility of the massacre), and there are future-oriented claims pointing to issues much broader than the 1989 student movement itself (i.e., ending one-party rule and establishing a democratic China). The bundling of the five claims is not the result of logical necessity. Besides, the claims of “ending one-party rule” and “establishing a democratic China” are pertinent to the democracy movement in Hong Kong only to the extent that people treat democratization in China and democratization in Hong Kong as indissociable. On the whole, although the transformation of a social movement is not in itself a collective memory process, it can be an external process having a substantial influence on collective remembering. Given the significance of collective memory to social movements, activists and movement groups should have the incentives to strategically articulate and foreground memories for the purpose of mobilization (Farthing & Kohl, 2013; Gutman, 2017). Nevertheless, just as collective memory can be resistant to the manipulation by the state, social movement actors cannot manipulate and appropriate collective memory as they wish. For instance, on the feminist movement in East Germany, Guenther (2012) found that memories about a relatively egalitarian past during the socialist era were not developed and evoked by feminist activists in their search for gender equality despite the fact that many new German policies regarding gender equality in the 2010s had their predecessors in the German Democratic Republic era. This is due to the hostile political climate in which East Germany’s past was generally viewed negatively, the difficulty of invoking the memory of relative gender equality without invoking other more negatively valenced memories about the socialist state, and the lack of a powerful and obvious commemorative vehicle for crystallizing and sustaining the collective memory. Similarly, Avenell (2012) noted that there is a “nuclear blind spot” in the environmental movement in contemporary Japan despite Japan being hitherto the only country in the world that has suffered from the atomic bomb. Part of the reason for such a blind spot is the Japanese’s tendency to distinguish between nuclear power and the military use of nuclear technology. Here, one might wonder if the environmental activists’ reluctance to evoke memories of the atomic bombs is due to the inappropriateness of evoking memories of a trauma that people would rather forget. In any

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case, social movement actors have to face the same variety of instrumental, cultural, and inertial constraints (Olick & Robbins, 1998) that everyone has to face in their employment of collective memory. Interpreting the opportunities and constraints different actors had to face is an aspect of the analysis to come.

Chapter Outline and Methodological Notes To recapitulate, this book aims at explicating the formation and transformation of Hong Kong society’s collective memory about the 1989 Beijing student movement and the Tiananmen crackdown. We are particularly interested in how a socially dominant collective memory can persist in spite of pressures from the state. We see collective memory as referring primarily to public representations of the past, but collective memory is unlikely to be sustainable without the endorsement by individual citizens. Our empirical analysis thus involves the examination of both media discourses and individual opinions and beliefs. We adopt a process approach to make sense of a three-decade evolution involving periods of formation, stabilization, strengthening, and weakening of collective remembering. We identify memory formation, memory mobilization, intergenerational memory transmission, memory institutionalization, memory repair, and memory balkanization as the six processes central to the present case. Meanwhile, since Tiananmen commemoration is closely tied to the democracy movement in Hong Kong, the dynamics of the democracy movement in the 2010s, most notably an identity shift and the discursive dissociation between Hong Kong and China, have had a substantial impact on collective remembering. Given the aim, scope and approach of the study, there are two possible ways to organize the analysis and discussions. One is to offer a historical narrative describing the dynamics from the early 1990s to the late 2010s. Roughly speaking, one might differentiate Hong Kong politics in the 30 years between 1989 and 2019 into five periods: 1 Between 1989 and the handover in 1997; 2 Between the handover and 2003, which marked the beginning of more proactive intervention into Hong Kong affairs by the Chinese state after the July 1, 2003 protest against national security legislation; 3 Between 2003 and 2008, a period when Hong Kong people’s national identification and trust in the Chinese Central Government continued to grow, reaching a peak in the year of the Beijing Olympics;

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4 Between 2008 and 2014, marked by a quick decline in national identification among young people and the initial growth of localism, ending with the Umbrella Movement; 5 Between 2014 and 2019, a period when localism intensified and presented a direct challenge to Tiananmen commemoration. There were important correspondences between the five periods and the formation, stabilization, strengthening, and then weakening of collective remembering of Tiananmen in Hong Kong. However, recounting the evolution of collective remembering of Tiananmen in Hong Kong chronologically could make it difficult to adequately and systematically explicate and illustrate the memory processes identified in this study. As social scientists instead of historians, we choose to organize the book according to the memory processes. Nevertheless, the various memory processes were more or less prominent in different periods within the 30-year time span. Memory formation, for instance, referred mainly to what happened in the early 1990s (period 1 above), whereas the further valorization of Tiananmen memory would occur mainly in the latter half of the 1990s and the 2000s (that is, periods 2 and 3). Memory mobilization is distinctive in the sense that it is presumed to be a recurrent process emerging every year. Hence it occurred throughout the three decades. Memory institutionalization and intergenerational memory transmission were becoming more prominent beginning in the 2000s and continued into the 2010s (that is, periods 3 and 4). Memory repair and memory balkanization were prominent issues in the 2010s (periods 4 and 5). Therefore, although the chapters are organized by the memory processes, there is a rough timeline underlying the flow from one chapter to the next. Specifically, Chapter 2 focuses on collective memory formation. It will first offer a narrative of the happenings in both Beijing and Hong Kong during the 1989 student movement in order to shed light on the production of an emotional imprint on Hong Kong people’s mind. It will then analyze the characteristics of media representations of not only the Tiananmen crackdown but also the commemoration activities in Hong Kong. It will highlight the role of discursive valorization and scandalization of counter-commemoration discourses in the emergence, consolidation, and strengthening of collective memory of Tiananmen from the 1990s to the early 2010s. Chapter 3 focuses on memory mobilization. It analyzes the annual mobilization cycle, led by the Alliance and supported by the news media, surrounding the annual candlelight vigil on June 4. It illustrates how movement strategies and media discourses generate an atmosphere of remembering in the society. The chapter also draws upon population survey data to

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illustrate to what extent the Tiananmen Incident was indeed regarded as an important historical event by Hong Kong citizens, and how media and communication activities during memory mobilization led people to recall the Incident. Chapters 4 and 5 discuss intergenerational memory transmission and institutionalization respectively. Chapter 4 focuses on the former. It analyzes how young people in the 2000s and early 2010s took up knowledge and developed understandings of the events in 1989 through a web of institutions including family, school, and the media. Nevertheless, the limitation of intergenerational transmission in the period will also be illustrated through comparing different generations’ attitudes and affects toward June 4, as well as through evidence of generational differences from in-depth interviews. Chapter 5 then discusses the struggle for institutionalization. Given the role of the schools in intergenerational memory transmission, part of the empirical analysis of institutionalization focuses on the controversies surrounding the place of June 4 in secondary school curriculum. Besides, the chapter examines efforts by the Alliance and other activist groups to establish enduring “sites of memory” for Tiananmen. The struggles surrounding the placement of June 4-related monuments in university campuses and the project of a permanent June 4th Museum will be examined. While Chapters 2 to 5 focus on the formation and sustenance of collective memory of Tiananmen, Chapter 6 discusses how Tiananmen commemoration was challenged from within the broadly defined prodemocracy movement in Hong Kong as a result of the rise of localism in the early to mid-2010s. The analysis will reconstruct how the challenge of localism entered the mainstream media, and how the Umbrella Movement constituted a critical event strengthening the challenge of localism. It will also discuss how memory entrepreneurs responded to the challenge by reframing the significance of the Tiananmen commemoration. Given the centrality of the debates about localism to Hong Kong politics in the late 2010s, Chapter 7 discusses the impact of young people’s identity shift on collective remembering of Tiananmen. It re-examines intergenerational memory transmission, but in an altered social and political context. It illustrates the extent and characteristics of generational differences on the issue of Tiananmen. Besides, drawing upon Mannheim’s (1972) distinction among generation of location, generation in actuality, and generation unit, the chapter examines why and how some young people came to abandon the Tiananmen commemoration, yet others were still recruited into the mnemonic community surrounding Tiananmen.

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Chapter 8 discusses the implications of digital media for collective memory. The chapter examines both the positive and negative impact of digital and social media. On the one hand, the analysis will note how digital media provided the channels for memory mobilization and the archives for memory transmission. On the other hand, the analysis will examine the problem of memory balkanization. It will explicate how political forces have shaped the development of digital and social media in Hong Kong and examine how competing representations of the Tiananmen Incident and commemoration activities are articulated and reinforced within distinctive memory silos. Chapter 9 concludes the book by further highlighting some of the core findings in the study. It discusses what the analysis has taught us about the collective memory processes and the development of society and politics in Hong Kong. Finally, the Epilogue discusses the events and developments between 2019 and 2020, which are found to have critical impact on the trajectory of the June 4 collective memory. We employed multiple methods over the years to generate the data needed for the account offered in this book. Given the conceptual emphasis on public representations, qualitative analysis of media texts constitutes one of the most important methods. However, it is impossible for the authors to go over nearly 30 years of all media materials related to the Tiananmen Incident. The media materials actually analyzed are therefore tied to the need of specific chapters. For instance, when analyzing the first wave of discursive valorization of the Tiananmen commemoration in Hong Kong in Chapter 2, we focus on a textual analysis of a series of documentary programs produced by the public broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) and newspaper coverage of and commentaries on the June 4 vigils between 1995 and 1997. The analysis of memory mobilization in Chapter 3, for another example, was based on an analysis of newspaper coverage related to Tiananmen commemoration from March to June each year between 2000 and 2013. The analysis of memory repair was based mainly on analysis of newspaper coverage before, during, and after the Umbrella Movement in 2014. Newspaper coverage and commentaries constituted the primary media texts we examined, partly because of the fact that many other media materials, such as TV news, are not readily available (there is no established TV news archives in the city), and partly because newspapers do provide rich and voluminous materials for examination. Yet, as already noted above, there will be supplementary analyses of other media materials, such as television documentaries, in specific parts of the book. Of course, the analysis of the

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impact of digital and social media in Chapter 8 will involve the examination of digital media content. Beyond the analysis of media materials, data about how people think about the Tiananmen Incident and commemoration is needed for the analysis of the impact of memory mobilization in Chapter 3, intergenerational memory transmission and its limits in Chapter 4, and the impact of identity shift in Chapter 6. Such data comes from three sources. The first are two representative telephone surveys conducted in January to June 2014, and January 2018 respectively. The second are seven on-site surveys of the candlelight vigil participants conducted in 2004, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2018 respectively. The third are two rounds of in-depth interviews with candlelight vigil participants conducted in 2010 and 2014, respectively, as well as another round of in-depth interviews of young student leaders and activists in 2018. Some of the methodological details of these methods will be provided in the footnotes of the following chapters or referenced to existing publications when the specific data sources are introduced for the first time. Finally, over the years we have conducted more than 15 occasional interviews with core members of the Alliance, other social movement activists, secondary school teachers, and veteran journalists. These interviews are aimed at deriving more background information and getting access to certain insider perspectives regarding the development and operation of the Alliance, specific controversies surrounding Tiananmen commemoration, special endeavors and issues such as the attempt to establish a June 4th Museum in Hong Kong, how June 4 was discussed (or not discussed) in secondary schools, and the producers’ perspectives on certain key media texts or images. The wide range of materials and data should allow us to reconstruct a rich and well-substantiated account of the dynamics of collective remembering of Tiananmen in Hong Kong. We are aware of the fact that, by conducting research and writing on the topic, we are also engaging in the construction and negotiation of the collective memory concerned. We do not claim to be completely neutral on the matter. We believe in the significance of the event to Chinese and Hong Kong history. We also believe in the value of commemorating the event. However, as in all research, our ideas, beliefs, and perspectives are “disciplined” by facts and methods, and the aim of the book remains an academic one: it is to enhance our theoretical understanding of collective memory dynamics as well as our understanding of the past, present, and future of Hong Kong society and politics.

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van Dijck, J. (2011). Flickr and the culture of connectivity: Sharing views, experiences, memories. Memory Studies, 4(4), 401-415. van Zomeren, M., Postmes, T., & Spears, R. (2008). Toward an integrative social identity model of collective action: A quantitative research synthesis of three socio-psychological perspectives. Psychological Bulletin, 134(4), 504-535. Veg, S. (2017). The rise of “localism” and civic identity in post-handover Hong Kong: Questioning the Chinese nation-state. China Quarterly, 230, 323-347. Verberg, N., & Davis, C. G. (2011). Counter-memory activism in the aftermath of tragedy: A case study of the Westray families group. Canadian Review of Sociology, 48(1), 23-45. Walkowitz, D., & Knauer, L. (2011). Contested histories in public space. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Weedon, C. & Jordan, G. (2012). Collective memory: Theory and politics. Social Semiotics, 22(2), 143-153. Wertsch, J. V. (2002). Voices of collective remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wertsch, J. V. (2012). Deep memory and narrative templates: Conservative forces in collective memory. In A. Assmann & L. Shortt (eds.), Memory and political change (pp. 173-185). Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Whitlinger, C. (2015). From countermemory to collective memory: Acknowledging the “Mississippi Burning” murders. Sociological Forum, 30(1), 648-670. Wong, P. W. (2000). The pro-Chinese democracy movement in Hong Kong. In T. L. Lui & S. W. K. Chiu (eds.), The dynamics of social movement in Hong Kong (pp. 55-90). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

Zelizer, B. (1992). Covering the body. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Memory Formation and the Valorization of Commemoration Abstract Chapter 2 focuses on collective memory formation. It first offers a narrative of the events in both Beijing and Hong Kong during the 1989 student movement in order to shed light on the production of an emotional imprint on Hong Kong people’s mind. It then analyzes the characteristics of media representations of not only the Tiananmen crackdown but also the commemoration activities in Hong Kong. The analysis highlights the role of discursive valorization and scandalization of counter-commemoration discourses in the emergence, consolidation, and strengthening of collective memory of Tiananmen from the 1990s to the early 2010s. Keywords: memory formation, emotional imprint, memory valorization, scandalization

We pointed out in Chapter 1 that collective remembering of the Tiananmen crackdown in Hong Kong is a case of a socially dominant collective memory that is critical toward the political power holders. The formation and persistence of the collective memory cannot be understood in terms of a straightforward presentist perspective that emphasizes the capability of those in power to manipulate the society’s understandings of the past to serve their present interests. Rather, the case can illustrate why and how a collective memory closely associated with the forces of political resistance can arise and persist. Hong Kong itself boosts certain conditions that allowed the formation of collective memory of Tiananmen in the first place. To point out the most obvious one: Hong Kong had for a long period of time the freedom to publicly remember events that the state might prefer the society to forget. The 1989 student movement occurred in the middle of the “transition period” for Hong Kong, i.e., the period between the signing of the Sino-British declaration in

Lee, Francis L.F., and Joseph M. Chan, Memories of Tiananmen: Politics and Processes of Collective Remembering in Hong Kong, 1989-2019. Amsterdam University Press 2021 doi: 10.5117/9789463728447_ch02

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1984 and the eventual handover of sovereignty in 1997. In the last 15 years of the colonial era, the British government promoted democratization in the city in order to savor its legitimacy and plan for a “glorious retreat.” A political society came into being (Kuan, 1998). The society enjoyed high degrees of civil liberties, and values such as democracy and freedom acquired a dominant status in public discourses (Sum, 1995). The news media were professionalized, and journalists began to take up the liberal conception of the press as their normative self-understanding (So & Chan, 2007). A significant degree of freedom – of speech, of the press, of association, and of political action – was therefore one of the most fundamental conditions allowing the commemoration of the Tiananmen crackdown in the 1990s in Hong Kong. The situation did not change abruptly after China resumed sovereignty. Ong (2006) has examined how China practiced a politics of exception when it attempted to engage the global neoliberal economy and retain authoritarian control of the domestic society simultaneously. In the process, spaces of exception were created to facilitate global exchange. People in such spaces often enjoyed a degree of rights and freedom unavailable to people in other parts of the country. Hong Kong, as a colony in the country’s front door and then an SAR, has long been such a space of exception. Even after the handover, China needed Hong Kong to remain stable and prosperous because of the city’s importance to the country’s economic development and engagement with the global economy. China also needed Hong Kong to demonstrate the operation of the “one country, two systems” formula to Taiwan and the international community. This explains why China, for a long period of time, tolerated the presence of groups and actions that were banned on the mainland. One example is the continual operation of the religious sect Falun Gong in Hong Kong. The presence of the Alliance, an association having “ending one-party rule” as one of its professed goals, is another example. However, the contextual conditions did not lead mechanically to the formation and persistence of collective memory of Tiananmen. The conditions allow, facilitate, or are conducive to remembering. But freedom to remember by itself does not explain the special value Hong Kong people attach to the memory of Tiananmen. Hong Kong citizens were also free to remember many other historical events, such as the Japanese occupation during World War II or the 1967 riots, but none of these other historical events were taken as seriously by Hong Kong people. None of these other historical events were associated with the slogan “Don’t want to remember; dare not forget” (bat-soeng wui-jik, mei-gam mong-gei).

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How did the Tiananmen Incident become the object of a collective memory recognized by the majority of Hong Kong citizens? How did the society come to see Tiananmen as having its moral weight? How did the collective memory withstand the state’s attempt to undermine it? This chapter tackles such questions. It reconstructs the happenings and dynamics that led to the formation and consolidation of collective memory about Tiananmen in Hong Kong from the early 1990s to the early 2010s. Nonetheless, we need to begin with some further conceptual discussions of the process of memory formation.

The Elements of Memory Formation In 2010, we published an article titled “why Hong Kong people cannot forget about June 4” (Chan & Lee, 2010). That was our first attempt to examine the rise and consolidation of collective remembering of Tiananmen in Hong Kong following the dynamics of memory approach (Misztal, 2003). We proposed a public contestation model to explain the memory formation and contestation processes. Although our further research has led us to go beyond the original model, it remains a pertinent starting point for the present chapter. Figure 2.1 schematically presents the core ideas of a slightly revised version of the model. We identified the media, social organizations, and the state as the three main categories of actors in the contestation. Collective memories are often based on people’s collective experiences. Yet in modern societies, experiences are often mediated. This is especially the case for Hong Kong people during the Beijing student movement in 1989. While some journalists, activists, and student leaders flew to Beijing to report on or participate in the movement, most Hong Kong citizens experienced the events through the news media. In addition, over the long haul, the media are both platforms on which collective representations of the past are negotiated and actors participating in the construction of the collective representations. The media thus constitute a main category of actors in the model. However, the news media may not be the most fervent proponents of specific versions of the event in the memory formation and contestation process. Constrained by professionalism, journalists cannot always present their own views. They have to rely on views and information provided by sources, including the state and various social organizations. In this model, social organizations refer to the full range of organizations and groups in the civil society. They may hold homogeneous or heterogeneous

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Figure 2.1 The public contestation model for memory formation

views regarding an event, and they may have varying interests in how an event is represented. Some organizations can be the main sponsors of memories. In the present case, certain movement organizations, most notably the Alliance, were also important for providing the participation opportunities for Hong Kong people both during and after the 1989 student movement. The state, meanwhile, may have its own interests in promoting a certain version of the past. It may prefer a past event to be represented in certain ways, or to be forgotten altogether. It can employ a distinctive set of strategies and tactics to achieve its goal. In any case, the state has a special role to play in the public contestation of collective memory. As a process unfolding temporally, the public contestation model begins with the event itself, i.e., the 1989 student movement and the crackdown. Collective representations about a past event are not created out of nothing. Characteristics of an event constrain, though they do not determine, how the event would be understood and whether it would be remembered over time. Scholars of collective memory have argued that the commemorability of an event is a crucial factor shaping whether an event would become the object of commemoration (Armstrong & Crage, 2007; Irwin-Zarecka, 1994; Wagner-Pacifici, 1996). Whitlinger (2015: 651) defined commemorability as “a particular event’s ability to be constructed as worthy of commemoration.”

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Just as not all social events are deemed newsworthy by journalists, not all events are deemed remembrance-worthy by social actors. Nevertheless, the notion of commemorability can become tautological if we simply treat all commemorated events as commemorable and retrospectively identify the commemorable elements in them. Here, when compared to studies of news values (Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Meissner, 2015) or the analyses of the factors shaping the newsworthiness of specific types of events such as social protests (e.g., McCarthy, McPhail, & Smith, 1996; Oliver & Maney, 2000), the collective memory literature has yet to offer a systematic account of the factors that make some events more commemorable than others. With this caveat in mind, we emphasize the notion of emotional imprinting as central to the commemorability of the Tiananmen Incident for Hong Kong people. That is, the Tiananmen crackdown has left a deep and long-lasting emotional impact on the people who experienced it. This emotional impact was part of the foundation of Hong Kong people’s concern of Tiananmen. An emotional imprint is similar to the notion of cultural trauma in that it refers not to an individual psychological phenomenon, but to a collective phenomenon that is socially mediated (Alexander, 2012). It can impinge on people’s collective identities and shape the core cultural meanings of a group (Eyerman, 2002). However, one hallmark of a prototypical cultural trauma is the extreme difficulty or even impossibility for people to represent and/or talk about it (Hirsch, 2012; Zelizer, 1998). This does not apply to Hong Kong people’s experiences of the Tiananmen Incident. Although it would not be far off the mark to say that many Hong Kong people were traumatized in 1989, we opt for the term emotional imprint/imprinting to represent the analytical category. We believe the notion of emotional imprinting can capture a core aspect of Hong Kong people’s experiences at the time. For instance, the fact of a significant number of civilian deaths in the Tiananmen crackdown1 may be considered an objective characteristic of the event that made it more commemorable than other events. But the fact of civilian deaths itself may have had much less impact if Hong Kong people were not already glued to the media for almost two months and participating in various activities to support the movement. In other words, it was a combination of objective characteristics of the event, how media and social organizations 1 There is no consensus on the number of deaths in the Tiananmen crackdown. Estimations range from a few hundred to more than 10,000. In an early account of the 1989 student movement, Brook (1992) opined that the estimation given by Red Cross right after the crackdown – 2,600 civilian deaths – was the most probable.

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represented the event, people’s active consumption of media images, and people’s participation in related activities that produced a huge emotional impact. In Figure 2.1, emotional imprinting is located in the circle of “initial memory.” The initial memory is not collective memory in its full sense. Many events can produce powerful initial memories without becoming the objects of collective remembering for a long period of time. For example, the Nanjing massacre committed by the Japanese army in Shanghai during World War II must have created strong initial memories among the Chinese people. But after the post-war trials of war crimes in 1946 to 1948, the Nanjing massacre faded from public view for more than three decades. It became the subject of collective remembering again only in 1982, partly in response to the rise of right-wing nationalism in Japan at that time and partly as the CCP turned to nationalism as its legitimating ideology (Hillenbrand, 2020; Li & Huang, 2017; Zhao, 1998). Collective remembering of the Nanjing massacre in China really began in the 1980s. Conceptually, we see a collective memory of a past event as having been formed only when certain public commemoration activities and/or collective representations of the event appear regularly and prominently at a time sufficiently removed from the original event and there is public recognition of the value, significance, or even necessity of remembrance. Here, the term collective memory is understood in a stronger and more restrictive sense than that exists in many other studies. When understood in the broadest sense, all representations of the past can be treated as collective memories. However, while all historical events may be invoked once in a while in news coverage, and representations of the past can fill the pages of textbooks and other media spaces, many of them do not constitute the kind of events to which a moral imperative to remember is attached. Many historical events, even as they are recalled, do not really have what Schudson (1992) labeled the power of collective memory. To explain the formation of collective memory about Tiananmen, therefore, is to explain how the moral imperative to remember was established and the value of commemoration was articulated. While collective memory occupies the box on the right-hand side of Figure 2.1, its formation is the beginning rather than the end of the story. Once a collective memory is formed, it is subject to further and continual negotiation through the interactions among the state, social organizations, and the media. In this dynamics, the collective memory in the present constrains the collective memory in the future (Olick & Robbins, 1998). While it is possible for facts and elements omitted in the current representation to be retrieved or rediscovered in the future, facts and elements included

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in the current representation are more salient and available. People cannot simply dismiss known and publicized facts without justification. In addition, people and groups may remember not only the original event but also how they have remembered that event. When the Hong Kong people and society commemorated the 15th, 20th, and 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Incident, what they commemorated was not only what happened in 1989 but also the fact that the event had been commemorated 14, 19, and 24 times in the past. Commemoration itself can become the subject of commemoration. It adds to the difficulty of people radically altering previously circulated narratives and representations of the past. It also means that collective remembering in the present can add weight and value to collective remembering in the future. Nonetheless, the formation and contestation of collective memories occurs within larger social and political contexts. Context shapes the power relationships among the actors, the political needs driving the commemoration (and efforts to suppress it), and the discursive opportunities (Ferree, Gamson, Gerhards & Rucht, 2002) for invoking or undermining the past. Mnemonic actors are reacting not only to each other but also to the changing context. Hence the constancy of the content of collective memory and the persistence of collective remembering cannot be taken for granted. Now that we have outlined the major conceptual arguments concerning memory formation and contestation, we will substantiate these arguments. We will begin with the happenings in 1989 and the production of the emotional imprint. The analysis will then turn to the valorization of collective remembering in the mid to late 1990s. We will then see how, throughout the late 1990s and 2000s, the state’s attempt to undermine collective remembering of Tiananmen was often dismissed through scandalization in and by the media. This is followed by a discussion of the further valorization of the Tiananmen commemoration in 2009.

The 1989 Student Movement in Beijing and Emotional Imprinting Some book-length treatises on collective memory of a specific historical event begin with a very detailed narrative account of the original event. We do not attempt to provide the same lengthy narrative account here. This is partly because the 1989 student movement in Beijing and the eventual crackdown are already very well-documented and were examined in a range of scholarly works (e.g., Brook, 1992; Calhoun, 1994; Wasserstrom & Perry, 1994; Zhao, 2001). This book, after all, largely focuses on what happened in

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Hong Kong after the events in 1989. Nevertheless, our analysis still needs to begin with a discussion of how the events in Beijing and Hong Kong between April and June 1989 produced the emotional imprinting among Hong Kong people. As Calhoun (1994) pointed out, as China entered the year 1989, a succession problem within the CCP, a crisis surrounding the perceived backwardness of Chinese culture, renewed prominence of intellectuals, and the continual limits of economic development had provided the conditions for protest movements to arise. What was needed was a trigger event, which was provided by the death of reform-minded leader Hu Yaobang, who was removed from his position as CCP General Secretary in 1987 due to his sympathy toward student protesters at the time. On April 15, 1989, news about the death of Hu led to the immediate appearance of large-character posters across many university campuses in Beijing. Two days later, students of Peking University marched to Tiananmen Square, demanding the government to rehabilitate Hu. The students then gathered in front of Zhong Nanhai, the Central Government’s office, and requested to have a dialogue with Premier Li Peng. Conflicts between the students and security forces ensued, which led to the further proliferation of large-character posters criticizing the security forces and the state media for distorting facts. Demonstrations started to spread to other major cities in the country. Even at this early stage, the happenings in Beijing had already captured the close attention of the Hong Kong media. On April 22, Hong Kong people saw the juxtaposing of images of the official commemoration of Hu Yaobang with images from Tiananmen Square, where an estimated total of 200,000 students commemorated Hu. The wreaths, banners with anti-corruption slogans, huge crowds, and several flag-waving students on the Monument to the People’s Heroes combined to form one of the iconic images of the student movement. The CCP did not issue positive responses to the students’ demands. When the movement started, CCP General Secretary Zhao Ziyang was visiting North Korea. The students in Beijing escalated the action to an indefinite class strike. More students came out to the street. On April 26, the People’s Daily published the infamous “426 editorial.” The article pointed fingers toward “an extremely small number of people” whose goal was to “create turmoil throughout the country.” The protests were “a planned conspiracy, a riot, whose real nature was to fundamentally negate the leadership” of the CCP (Calhoun, 1994: 48). The state’s hardline rhetoric only galvanized the students. On April 27, hundreds of thousands of students and citizens marched on the street, cheered by reportedly more than one million citizens.

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All of these events were shown to Hong Kong people through the media’s “marathon coverage.” University students in Beijing formed the Beijing University Students’ Autonomous Federation on April 28, and the student leaders issued the public letter “To Compatriots in Hong Kong” on May 1. The letter explained the students’ intention and why the events in Beijing transpired as they did. It then wrote: Compatriots from Hong Kong, we are all descendants of yan-huang, we wish our nation to become prosperous and strong. The movement we are conducting is aimed at speeding up democratization in China. It is part of a complete socialist institution, as well as part of the realization of the great mission of unification of the motherland. We hope that the development of democracy and the reform of economic institutions on the mainland can have certain progress before Hong Kong returns to the motherland in 1997. This would allow us to join hands and strive for the great mission of zhen-xing zhong-hua […]. Let’s unite and push forward the democracy movement thoroughly.

Hong Kong people were addressed as patriotic members of the nation, and part of the letter appealed to the nationalistic sentiments among Hong Kong citizens. The letter also emphasized democratization, though Hong Kong people might not understand democracy as “part of a complete socialist institution.” The letter was signed in the name of “university students in the capital who are fighting for democracy.” The letter also stated why the student movement was good for the city which was due to return to China in less than a decade. Events continued to evolve in Beijing. On May 4, Beijing students conducted large-scale protests to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the May 4 Movement. On the same day, CCP General Secretary Zhao Ziyang publicly acknowledged the patriotism of the students and called for a dialogue between the government and the students. After Zhao sent out the reconciliatory signal, the majority of colleges resumed classes on May 5. Journalists also started organizing among themselves and requested dialogues with leaders in the propaganda departments. However, the dialogues did not quickly materialize. There were internal power struggles between hardliners and more liberal-minded leaders within the CCP, and there were also tensions among student leaders who preferred to take a step back and those who preferred to escalate the action. On May 13, more than 2,000 students started a hunger strike. The dynamics of the movement led to a shift of power toward the more “radical” student

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leaders, such as Chai Ling and Li Lu. On May 15, more than 600,000 students, teachers, and intellectuals went to Tiananmen Square to support the hunger strikers, whose number had grown to 3,000. Twenty Hong Kong students also started a hunger strike in front of the main office of Xinhua News Agency in Hong Kong. By May 17, the striking students in Beijing had been sent to hospitals for more than 2,000 times. On May 18, Zhao Ziyang publicly acknowledged the student movement’s good intentions and called upon the students to stop the hunger strike. Nevertheless, the dialogue between Premier Li Peng and student leaders, including Wang Dan and Wu’er Kaixi, remained fruitless. In the early morning hours of May 19, Zhao visited Tiananmen Square and told the students tearfully that he “arrived late.” Li Peng accompanied Zhao to Tiananmen Square, but did not stay long or speak to the students. In retrospect, Zhao had already lost his power by that time. For the students and movement supporters, hopes of a turnaround on the part of the Chinese government were shattered in the evening of May 19 when Li Peng formally announced in a Party meeting that the student protests were a riot, and parts of Beijing would initiate martial law. President Yang Shangkun announced simultaneously that troops of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) were to be sent into Beijing. As a coincidence, Hong Kong was struck by a severe typhoon on May 19. Many people stayed home and watched the live broadcast of Yang’s announcement. The media and society reacted strongly. Here, it is important to note several characteristics of Hong Kong media’s coverage at the time. First, the media spent an extraordinary amount of resources following the events in Beijing. Television stations offered news bulletins throughout the day and live broadcast at important moments. The student movement thus disrupted the broadcasting routines. The Tiananmen coverage might not fit into the restrictive definition of media events by Dayan and Katz (1993), but it certainly qualified as what they called “the live broadcasting of history.” Second, Hong Kong media, especially the printing press, had a tradition of having a significant degree of party-press parallelism (Blumler & Gurevitch, 1995; Hallin & Mancini, 2004). Some newspapers supported the Communist Party in China, while others supported the Nationalist regime in Taiwan. As the Sino-British declaration was signed in 1984, Hong Kong media started to accommodate to the shifting power structure. However, during the 1989 student movement, all media organizations – including the Communistsponsored press – converged to support the students (Chan & Lee, 1991). Third, what the media provided was not so much the typical “professional and objective reporting” of ongoing events. At key moments, the Hong

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Kong media had few qualms to express their own views on the matter. One of the strongest and symbolically most powerful expressions of a media organization’s anger at the Chinese government came on May 21. In response to the Chinese government’s announcement of martial law, the Communistsponsored newspaper Wen Wei Po famously adopted the practice of “opening the skylight” by publishing only four words as its editorial: tung-sam zat-sau, which may be translated as “wrenching heart and resentful soul.” Corresponding to the strong reactions from the press, the declaration of martial law also led to the emergence of large-scale and widespread participation by the Hong Kong public. On May 20, even when Hong Kong was still under the influence of the typhoon, 40,000 people gathered in the Victoria Park and marched to the Xinhua News Agency to protest. On May 21, one million citizens joined a large-scale demonstration, during which the formation of the Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China was announced. Other notable actions in Hong Kong included a Concert for Democracy in China held on May 27. More than 30 of the most popular singers in the city participated in the fund-raiser in Happy Valley. The singers performed on a stage with a huge banner stating, “The Whole Sector of the Performing Arts in Support of the Student Movement.” The concert lasted for 12 hours. Reportedly more than 1 million citizens watched some parts of the concert in the venue, while television stations broadcast the event live in the afternoon. Thirteen million Hong Kong dollars (about 170,000 US dollars) were raised. On May 28, responding to the call by the Beijing students to organize demonstrations around the world, 1.5 million citizens joined what was at the time the largest protest march in the history of the city.2 Beyond organized collective actions, citizens conducted various self-initiated small-group-based actions to support the movement. For example, some citizens sent news updates into mainland China through fax machines to keep mainlanders informed about the happenings and the world’s reactions.3 But most illustrative of the pervasiveness of self-initiated actions was the range of statements published in the form of newspaper advertisements in support of the student movement. On May 24, for instance, Ming Pao alone published 64 such “statement-ads,” occupying about 16 pages of the newspaper issue. While the front page was not covered by ads, page two published an ad by “university teachers and staffs in Hong Kong.” The 2 The record was broken only on June 16, 2019, when two million people joined a protest march against a proposed extradition law amendment bill by the Hong Kong SAR government. 3 Based on personal interviews with June 4 vigil participants conducted in 2014.

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statement said that the signers consensually recognize the Beijing student movement as “patriotic.” The statement demanded “the immediate retraction of martial law,” “ending news censorship,” and the “conducting of a National People’s Congress meeting” to “resolve the national crisis peacefully.” Under the statement were the names of about 370 academics. The contents of other statement-ads were similar. What is remarkable was the range of people involved in publishing such ads. Page 9 of May 24’s Ming Pao had a full-page statement-ad by “people from various sectors of Hong Kong.” The ad was signed by prominent figures including, among others, business tycoons Li Ka-shing, Stanley Ho, and James Tien (the latter would become chairperson of the pro-government Liberal Party after the handover), Jasper Tsang (long-time supporter of CCP and founding chairperson of the pro-government party Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong), and C. Y. Leung (Chief Executive of the Hong Kong SAR between 2012 and 2017). Another ad signed by luminaries in the movie sector included figures such as Jackie Chan, John Woo, and Ann Hui, among many others. Meanwhile, many statement-ads were sponsored by ordinary citizens in the names of employees belonging to certain companies, specific civic associations, and sometimes simply “a group of teachers caring about China,” “a group of patriotic Christians,” “a group of electronic and information engineers,” etc. The placement of statement-ads and other citizen-initiated activities throughout the society constituted the outburst of “connective actions” (Bennett & Segerberg, 2013) – individualized, small-group based, and networked participation – in the pre-Internet era. The statement-ads, in particular, were actions undertaken by people as well as contents consumed by readers. They combined to create an image of a “total mobilization” of society. Despite support from Chinese people around the world, there was no sign of a U-turn on the part of the Chinese government. On May 19, military troops attempted to enter Beijing, but they failed because of citizens’ resistance and blockage. Citizens and students attempted to reason with the soldiers and explained to them what was happening. Despite the setback, military actions and plans continued to be carried out to prepare for the eventual takeover of Tiananmen Square (Brook, 1992: 78-107). The atmosphere in Tiananmen Square became increasingly tense and depressed. Internal dissension among the students deepened, and there were debates on the issue of whether and when to retreat from the square. Student leader Wang Dan announced a 10-point program in a press conference on May 27. The program included a call for withdrawal from Tiananmen Square after a rally on May 30. The withdrawal did not materialize, however,

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partly because of the determination of students from outside Beijing to continue the occupation. Many of these students joined the occupation late and would not want the protest to end too soon. On May 29, four core members of the command center at Tiananmen Square – including Chai Ling and Wang Dan – resigned, signifying the impossibility of some kind of central leadership or coordination. The originally planned date of retreat was postponed to June 20. The mood in the occupied Square was uplifted temporarily by the arrival of the Statue of the Goddess of Democracy on May 30. “The statue gave the protest a focal point and drew a continuous flow of ordinary people and other visitors into the Square. Everyone wanted their picture taken in front of it” (Calhoun, 1994: 109). On June 2, four prominent intellectuals, including future Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo, started a new hunger strike. But these would be the last major “events” on the side of the protesters. In the night of June 3 and the early morning hours of June 4, the army forced itself into Beijing and finally entered Tiananmen Square. Gunfire started between 10:00 and 11:00 pm in Muxidi. While Brook (1992: 108-169) offered a highly detailed account of military actions on June 3 and 4, it would be appropriate for this book to highlight how Hong Kong journalists summarized the happenings that night. In People Will Not Forget (Hong Kong journalists, 2009), a book first published in September 1989 by Hong Kong reporters who had covered the events in Beijing, 10 journalists spent a total of 40 pages describing the happenings between June 3 and 7. In the chronology published at the end of the book, the entry of June 3 read: Military and police officers shot tear gas in the western part of the Square, beat and dispersed the crowd, and retook the weapons previously taken by the people in Liubukou. They broadcast at night, warning people not to go to the streets. In late night, armored vehicles cleared up roadblocks, preparing the routes for soldiers and tanks. Soldiers fired at citizens who tried to block. (p. 410)

The entry of June 4 uses only four words to sum up what happened in the Square in the early morning hours: hyut-seng zan-ngaat (i.e., “bloody crackdown”). The extreme brevity of the entry conveys the strong feelings of speechlessness, sorrow, and quiet anger shared by the journalists and arguably Hong Kong people at large. As a matter of fact, Hong Kong media and society unified to condemn the Chinese government. On the front page of the June 5 issue of Wen Wei Po, a brief statement was printed in white characters against black background

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beside the masthead of the newspaper. It read “strongly condemning the Fascist bloody and violent acts, sending condolences to the patriotic compatriots in Beijing.” Numerous social and civic organizations publicly called upon the Chinese government to stop its crackdown and arrest of student protesters and other movement leaders. Another wave of “statement-ads” criticizing the CCP appeared. One such ad on Ming Pao on June 8, which claimed to have been signed by more than 10,000 Hong Kong citizens by the afternoon of June 7, read: I firmly reject recognizing the legitimacy of the current Chinese government, headed by Li Peng, which made the people its enemies and killed citizens. [We] strongly demand the current violent government to step down in order to reorganize a government according to the will of the people.

These statement-ads reflected the strong emotions of Hong Kong citizens at the time. They also served as representations that mediated the formation of the collective emotional imprint. It is impossible for us to go back in time to register the individual-level emotional responses of citizens in 1989. Yet we can still have a glimpse at the emotional imprint on many Hong Kong citizens more than two decades later. In our in-depth interviews with June 4 vigil participants conducted in 2014, at least two of the 19 “mature interviewees” – those who have experienced the events in 1989 – cried at some points during the interview. One of them, a middle-aged man Mr. An, 4 said that he cried because he could remember how he and his girlfriend at the time participated in numerous protests side-by-side. About the night of June 3 he recalled: Seems to be typhoon no. 8 that day, so I didn’t need to drive. And I heard from the radio – I forget if it’s radio or television – about the news. Then I went to the street. Er, so on June 3 or the previous night, I was working and getting many news updates from the radio. [sobbing] Sorry, I didn’t think I would be like this. [apologizing for his emotions]

This account given by Mr. An shows that some Hong Kong citizens are more capable of recalling and even re-experiencing the embodied emotions 4 The in-depth interviews were conducted with a semi-structured protocol. Each interview lasted for on average 90 minutes. Except for movement organizers and activists, pseudonyms are used for interviewees in the research project. A full list of interviewees can be found in the Appendix.

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than providing a coherent narrative of the happenings in 1989. Notably, Mr. An’s mentioning of the media is typical of how many of our interviewees recounted their experiences on June 3 and 4 and during the whole student movement. In another example, interviewee Ms. Hung recalled: I was at home in the late night hours of June 3. Like many other people, I was watching TV. I was living with my father at the time. He might have slept, might be watching TV in his room. And then it showed, that is, the crackdown, that kind of things. I had a very strong sense of powerlessness. [Interviewer: Powerlessness] What powerlessness means is that you were watching people who wanted the country to be more democratic and less corrupt, but they could not win […]. There were different news reports at the time, but certainly there were tanks, real bullets, so there must be people dying. I could only watch it on TV, couldn’t do anything. The sense of powerlessness was so strong. I was only watching; my hands were shaking.

The account involved not only how the interviewee herself experienced the day; it included references to other individuals – her father and the reference to “many other people.” Ms. Hung narrated her personal experiences in such a way that it was implicitly posited as typical of the collective reactions of Hong Kong people. Certainly, these accounts are themselves reconstructed memories that have probably taken up the social and cultural frameworks provided to them through various sources over the years. Although these accounts cannot be treated as objective representations of people’s original reactions, they are indirect evidences of Hong Kong people’s collective emotional imprint.

The Survival and Valorization of Memory, 1991-1997 An emotional imprint is not a sufficient condition for the initiation and persistence of collective remembering. No matter how strong and deep the emotional response at the moment was, time may heal, and people may forget (Schudson, 1997). In fact, while more than 150,000 citizens participated in the June 4 vigil in 1990, the number of vigil participants went down year after year to the lowest point of 35,000 in 1995, or 12,000 in 1994 according to the police. If the decline in the number of participants had continued, the vigil would have become a very small-scale event or even ceased to exist by the end of the century.

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Of course, this does not mean that Hong Kong society could easily completely forget the Tiananmen crackdown. In late May 1994, Asia Television Ltd. (ATV), one of the two free-to-air broadcasters in Hong Kong in the early 1990s, tried to withdraw the decision to air parts of a documentary produced by a Spanish television station about the 1989 student movement. Six midlevel journalists collectively resigned. They were dubbed “ATV’s Noble Six” (luk-kwan-ji) in public discourse, signifying the respect they gained from the public. It is one of the few instances in Hong Kong’s journalism history in which journalists publicly and collectively protested against their organization’s decision. The event illustrated the emerging trend of media self-censorship in the 1990s (Lee, 1998; Sciutto, 1996). It also illustrated how people stood up against attempts of memory erasure. Nevertheless, there were other social and cultural forces at play in the early 1990s that worked against collective remembering of Tiananmen. The comedy Her Fatal Way, one of the highest grossing films in Hong Kong in 1990, is illustrative. The film was released in cinema on June 28, 1990, about three weeks after the first anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown. The story was about a mainland police officer coming to Hong Kong to hand over a criminal to the Hong Kong police. The criminal escaped, and the mainland police officer and the Hong Kong police had to cooperate to recapture the criminal. In the film, a set of binary oppositions was established between the mainland and the Hong Kong police officers. The mainland officer is stubborn, disregards rules, treats suspects violently, takes ideological issues to heart, and is ignorant about various aspects of modern society. The Hong Kong officer is the opposite of all these characteristics. This contrasting image of mainlanders and Hong Kongers was well-established in local popular culture by the 1990s (Ma, 1999). But in Her Fatal Way, the two sides overcame the friction and arrested the criminal gang. The film’s commercial success led to the production of sequels in 1991, 1992, and 1994. The whole Her Fatal Way series is illustrative of a certain cultural response to the overarching question Hong Kong people faced at the time: how can Hong Kong come to terms with the inevitable handover in a few years? Notably, by the mid-1990s, China had reconfirmed its determination to continue economic reform. Virtually all foreign countries had normalized their relationships with China. The Chinese government had even released several leaders of the 1989 movement. It is understandable that some Hong Kong people started to develop more “constructive,” if only imaginary, solutions to their future. One such imaginary solution was what some scholars called “northbound colonialism” (Hung, 1997; Shi, 1997), the core of which is the imagination

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that Hong Kong can influence China politically and culturally based on its more advanced and mature social and economic systems. Under this imagination, Hong Kong people do not need to fear the handover too much because, instead of Hong Kong being turned into mainland China, mainland China will be turned into Hong Kong. In fact, in Her Fatal Way, the mainland police officer would appear and act more and more like a Hong Konger as the series went on. Northbound colonialism was not the only imaginary solution to the problem of the handover in the 1990s. Without going too much into detail about the city’s public culture at that time, suffice to note that there was a complex configuration of sentiments toward China in the 1990s. A sense of powerlessness (Tsang, 1997) and a fear of disappearance (Abbas, 1997) coexisted with more optimistic or even wishful thinking about the future. In any case, anger and hatred were no longer the overwhelmingly dominant affects. This could partly explain the dampening of people’s insistence on remembering Tiananmen. What then explains the survival of the commemoration and the formation of collective memory about Tiananmen in the mid to late 1990s? We can answer this question by analyzing Hong Kong Connection, a documentary series produced by the public broadcaster RTHK. Airing once a week during the period, Hong Kong Connection produced a total of five episodes on the 1989 student movement between 1990 and 1997.5 All five episodes were aired just before or after June 4 of a particular year. The first two episodes were in 1990 and 1991 respectively. The program did not produce Tiananmenrelated episodes between 1992 and 1994, but the topic returned in 1995. In 1997, one month before the handover, Hong Kong Connection aired two Tiananmen-related episodes. The temporal spread of these episodes is consistent with the argument that collective remembering of Tiananmen declined in the early 1990s but was later stabilized. Content-wise, the 1990 episode was titled Men at the End of the World.6 It focuses on the lives of the student leaders who had fled to Hong Kong and other foreign countries. The program began with footage 5 RTHK did not have its own television channel before the early 2010s. The government required the major free-to-air broadcasters to allocate part of the prime-time slots to carry RTHK programs. There was a 6th episode focusing on student movements in Hong Kong, which was aired on June 2, 1996. The episode also used footage of the 1989 student movement in Beijing for the beginning and end of the episode. However, for simplicity, we focus on the five episodes that focused more squarely on the Tiananmen Incident. 6 The English titles of the episodes are the present authors’ own translation from the Chinese titles.

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of prominent student leaders Wu’er Kaixi and Chai Ling. The main content consisted of interviews with several student leaders. Since some of the leaders were still wanted in China, their faces had to be blurred by mosaic effects. The interviewees narrated their experiences in 1989, explained why they left the country, and described how they came to Hong Kong. Footage of the student movement was used, but “remembering” is not a theme in the episode. The past is evoked merely as background. What is emphasized is not so much commemoration as the resolve to fight for democracy. The sentiment is summed up by the ending monologue: “I am not a hero. This is an era without heroes. But I will not fall down to make the butcher look tall and block the wind of freedom.” The evoking of history as background or context is a major way for journalists to make use of the past, and such evoking is certainly relevant to the perpetuation of collective memory (Edy, 1999; Schudson, 2014). But there is still an important difference between commemorative and noncommemorative use of the past. Non-commemorative use of the past does not include a self-conscious claim that the past should be remembered. In the 1991 episode, titled Slash to No Avail, Untangle into Snarl, remembering – or more precisely forgetting – became the theme. The program began with images of the “sea of candlelight” in the Victoria Park in the 1990 June 4 vigil. The main contents of the episode consisted of interviews with five individuals who were interviewed by RTHK back in 1989. In other words, it was designed deliberately as a contrast between then and now. The first interviewee, Mrs. Au, an ordinary citizen, said in 1989 that she and her husband had absolutely no confidence in Communist China and the future of Hong Kong, and they were preparing for emigration. But the Au couple was still in Hong Kong in 1991 and had shelved their emigration plan. Mrs. Au said in 1991: “What we saw in these past two years is that there is no progress in human rights and the rule of law. But for us Buddhists, the calm of our hearts is the most important. It’s the same everywhere.” In other words, Mrs. Au remained highly critical toward the CCP but adopted a more stoic approach in facing the political reality. The other four interviewees, which included Jimmy Lai, who would later found the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily and become an important figure in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, were similar in that all of them remained critical toward China and still believed that the Chinese government did a huge wrong in 1989. Yet all of them had experienced changes in their personal lives and re-evaluated the political reality. Hence not all were in the frontline in the Tiananmen commemoration and the Chinese democracy movement. The end of the program noted that, among

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the five interviewees, only two joined the protest march organized by the Alliance on the Sunday before June 4, 1991. The 1991 episode did not contain any criticism against people who seemingly became less concerned about Tiananmen and democracy in China. What the episode conveyed was a sense of the “inevitability of normalization”: May and June 1989 were extraordinary times, and it is understandable that the passion could not stay at the same level forever. The 1995 episode, titled This Day in June, discussed the same issue of whether Hong Kong people had started to abandon the Tiananmen commemoration because of the political reality. Alliance chairperson Szeto Wah was quoted for saying: Not much sadness. Things are always like this, right? In a long run, those who started the journey together might not all arrive at the destination together. In the middle, some people take a U-turn, some take the wrong path, and there are people who fall down.

Nevertheless, in the mid-1990s, the decline of participation in June 4 commemoration was not an urgent question. The overwhelming concern was whether the Chinese government would outlaw the Alliance after 1997. In this context, the decline of citizen participation became the background against which the persistence of the few could be highlighted. In the 1995 episode, the voiceover pointed out that the number of volunteers working for the Alliance had dropped over the years, but this was followed by quotations from two volunteers: [Volunteer 1] To volunteer for the Alliance, I already have the preparation that I might need to sacrifice myself, might go to jail or might die. But that’s no problem. I don’t have any guilt in my heart. [Volunteer 2] If we think that, after 1997, [China] might take revenge, might outlaw the Alliance, or we might be branded as subversives and thrown in jail, then what do you do? Either you don’t participate in this movement, or once you started you continue.

Here, we see that the uncertain future of the Alliance and Tiananmen commemoration provided the discursive opportunity for the articulation and expression of the moral quality of persistence and remembrance. In contrast to the majority’s tendency to forget, the persistence of the few was implicitly praised. The episode took up a pro-commemoration stance at the end and even called upon the audience to join the remembering of

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Tiananmen. The journalist-voiceover said: “Emit a bit of light, pay a bit of effort, the struggle for freedom and democracy relies on every one of us […].” The pro-commemoration stance and the emphasis on the morality of remembering were even stronger in the two episodes in 1997, titled Holding Hands and Can’t Wave Away respectively. The titles of the episodes were two short phrases taken from the lyrics of the song produced by Hong Kong popular music artists in 1989 to support the Beijing student movement. Patrick, the producer of the program, explained that the difference between the episodes in the early 1990s and those he made in 1997 was partly a matter of a “generational difference” among documentarians. He noted that his seniors were trained in a tradition emphasizing objectivity and neutrality. In contrast, documentarians of his generation believed in the necessity to include the documentarian’s voice.7 In fact, the two 1997 episodes even abandoned the journalist voiceover. In Holding Hands, Alliance chairperson Szeto Wah effectively became the narrator. The episode began by Szeto Wah saying that he had done three meaningful things in his life: establishing the Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union, establishing the United Democrats,8 and establishing the Alliance. He then reiterated the view that the decline in the number of participants in Alliance activities was inevitable, “but we believe the right and wrong of the June 4 Incident is clear in the hearts and minds of people.” Szeto Wah then narrated the protests in Hong Kong in 1989, i.e., what was remembered was not the events in Beijing but the protests in Hong Kong. Toward the end of the first half of the episode, prominent democrat Martin Lee, former Alliance vice-chairperson, stated that the Chinese officials often asked them to forget about June 4. “But if you look at what they did, they haven’t forgotten. They kept on the persecution […]. If you really want to forget, then you should not pick on the Alliance.” Later in the episode, Szeto Wah also recounted a dialogue between him and Hong Kong pro-business politician Li Peng Fei: In 1990, about a year after the June 4 Incident, Li Peng Fei called me. He persuaded me to disband the Alliance. His first sentence was: “Many people bet on the wrong side at the time.” I said, “I never gamble. I was not making a bet. If I bet, I bet my life on it.” 7 Personal interview conducted in February 2018. 8 The Professional Teachers’ Union is a teachers’ union in Hong Kong active in the prodemocracy movement. United Democrats was the first major pro-democracy political party in Hong Kong established in 1991.

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The program did not ask Li to confirm the conversation. The central issue was not whether Li indeed said such things. Li was just a symbol of the pragmatic business sector. Through pitting the pragmatic against the principled, the moral integrity of the Alliance was foregrounded. The episode ended with Szeto Wah’s personal philosophy: “The journey of life is one of no return. When time’s gone, you can’t get it back. The question is, the way you spent your time, you lived your life, are they meaningful, are they consistent with your ideal?” This would also be the tone underlying the second episode in 1997, which focused on the Alliance’s volunteers. The volunteers were not necessarily less compelling than prominent leaders such as Szeto Wah. They were non-public figures without a political career. For the audience, it would be even clearer that these volunteers gained nothing tangible for themselves. The beginning of the episode quoted three volunteers saying that the declining number of volunteers over the years is understandable, but they also reasserted their wish and determination to continue. However, in the second half of the episode, a volunteer said: The June 4 rally every year is when the emotion of the Alliance’s volunteers reached the highest point. Because the rally on June 4 would allow us to see, today, if people have forgotten about June 4. We have done so much, would people forget about June 4?

The quote deviated from the sense of the inevitability of normalization. From the volunteers’ perspective, there was still the hope, if not necessarily expectation, that people would demonstrate their conscience and resolve through attending the June 4 vigil. By 1997, Tiananmen commemoration had been valorized into a morally driven act that can showcase the conscience of the participants. Lower levels of concern and participation by individuals were accepted as understandable, but the persistence of commemoration at the collective level was seen as a test of the society’s resolve. The discursive opportunity offered by the handover and the Chinese state’s attempt to suppress commemoration facilitated the valorization of commemoration. Of course, it was important that the Alliance was able to seize the discursive opportunity, and that the media provided the platforms for the circulation or even promotion of the pro-commemoration discourses. Consistent with the arguments presented earlier in this chapter, it was the interaction between the state, media, and social organizations within changing contexts that drove the dynamics of collective memory.

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Defending Collective Memory While the valorization of the Tiananmen commemoration helped to establish the moral significance of collective memory about June 4, it did not resolve the challenge of sustaining the collective memory once and for all. As a matter of fact, not all Hong Kong citizens held the same attitude toward the events in 1989. The Public Opinion Programme of the University of Hong Kong had conducted opinion polls about the Tiananmen Incident since 1992. The percentage of Hong Kong citizens who believed that the Alliance should not be disbanded stood at 53.4% in 1997, while 12.9% thought the Alliance should be disbanded. From 1997 onward, the poll asked the respondents whether they supported a reversion of the official verdict on the 1989 student movement. In 1997, 49.9% of the respondents supported rehabilitation, whereas 18.9% opposed it. Subtracting one figure by the other, the “net support” for rehabilitating June 4 stood at 31.0% in 1997. As Figure 2.2 shows, between 1997 and 2018, net support was always positive, i.e., the percentage of citizens supporting rehabilitation always surpassed the percentage of citizens opposing rehabilitation. Yet there were fluctuations. Net support declined after 1997 to merely 12.5% in 2002. It rose again only in 2003 and surpassed 30% in 2004. The percentage rose further to more than 40% in 2012 and 2013. Despite a drop afterward, net support for rehabilitating June 4 still stood at around 30% in 2017 and 2018. The rise or fall of net support in specific years may be partly explained by the events in those years. For instance, the rise of net support for rehabilitating June 4 in 2003 can be understood in relation to the national security legislation debate. The Hong Kong government’s attempt to put forward the legislation despite strong public opposition led to the half-million strong July 1 protest, which forced the suspension of the legislation. The further increase in net support for rehabilitating June 4 in 2004 can also be understood in relation to the growth of conflicts between Hong Kong and China due to a “patriotism debate”9 (Chow & Ma, 2005) and the National People’s Congress decision to rule out direct elections of the Chief Executive of Hong Kong in 2007. In 2008, the drop in net support might be attributed to the Sichuan earthquake in May and the Beijing Olympics in August, two events that generated national pride and compassion among many Hong Kong citizens (but as to be explicated later, the same events also arguably led to increased negativity toward China in later years). 9 It refers to a public controversy stirred by the republication of a speech by the late Deng Xiaoping, in which Deng emphasized that only patriots can govern Hong Kong.

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Figure 2.2 Net support for rehabilitating June 4, 1997-2018

Information derived from the Public Opinion Programme of the University of Hong Kong

However, beyond the impact of specif ic events, we may contend that 1997 to 2008 was a period when collective memory about the Tiananmen Incident had to be continually defended against various memory-blurring discourses. Meanwhile, 2003 to 2014 was a period of “strengthening” of collective memory. While the next section will discuss the dynamics of collective memory in 2009 and the early 2010s, this section discusses how collective memory was defended between 1997 and 2008. One central discursive practice for defending collective remembering of Tiananmen was the drawing of the discursive and moral bottom lines that cannot be crossed. This was already evident in the documentary program analyzed in the previous section. The Alliance and its main supporters understood that they could not blame ordinary citizens for their loss of passion when political reality changed and pragmatism set in, but they believed people still knew that the Chinese government was gravely wrong in 1989. The latter claim can be understood as the bottom line that any individual with moral integrity cannot cross: one can stop participating in commemoration, but one cannot confuse the distinction between right and wrong in the event. The same act of bottom-line-drawing can be discerned in many other media materials. For instance, Ming Pao’s editorial on June 4, 1999, the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen Incident, was titled “Not Forgetting June 4; Saying Goodbye to Sorrow.” The editorial quoted an ancient Chinese story in which the protagonist argued that one should not stand still and look at a broken water tank. “As it is already broken, what’s the point of looking back?” But instead of preaching the merits of forgetting, the editorial wrote that “a nation without memory would not make any progress.” The concluding paragraph stated: It’s ten years already. If we want people to say goodbye to the sorrow of “June 4,” political leaders should take action. Even without acknowledging

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the mistakes of the crackdown, one should at least reverse the verdict of the cases related to “June 4” […]. History is moving forward, the Chinese economy has made quick progress in the past decade. People’s livelihood has been improved, but progress on political reform is lagging behind. The political leaders should take the step, move quickly, and catch up.

The editorial could be read as an attempt to reconcile a pragmatic stance toward China with the moral urge to remember. It acknowledged that China has made progress and the lives of ordinary Chinese have been improved. But instead of calling upon people to simply look into the future, the “bottom line” is that “history cannot be forgotten,” and it is the responsibility of political leaders to take the proper steps to lay the ghost of Tiananmen to rest. In another example, in 1999 RTHK’s Hong Kong Connection produced an episode titled The Tiananmen Generation. It consisted mainly of interviews with five student leaders of the movement. Two interviewees expressed a sense of regret regarding the outcome of the movement. They believed they were on the right side but felt guilty for the suffering and deaths of others. Two other interviewees, including Wang Dan, even reflected on the mistakes or inadequacies of the student leaders in 1989. But the program ended by Wang Dan saying: “We can say students made mistakes, but the government committed an evil act. This must be clearly distinguished.” Here, Wang Dan and the program were responding to an emerging discourse at the time which tried to shift part of the blame of the crackdown to the immaturity and strategic mistakes of the students. The bottom line being drawn at the end of the episode is that the students’ mistakes could not be compared to the evil acts committed by the government. By drawing such bottom lines, the proponents of collective remembering defended the gist of the memory and made only very limited concession to the memory-blurring discourses. The bottom lines set up the boundary within which reflective and critical discussions of the student movement, which were already taking place in academic works on the movement in the early 1990s (e.g., Calhoun, 1994), can take place in the public arena. Most important for the present analysis, when public figures crossed the bottom lines, scandalization ensued. We can illustrate this phenomenon of scandalization by a brief case study of the controversy surrounding the inappropriate remarks made by a pro-government politician in May 2007.10 On May 15 of the year, Ma Lik, then chairperson of the pro-government 10 The following is based on a textual analysis of 229 newspaper articles from five newspapers – Apple Daily, Ming Pao, Sing Tao Daily, Wen Wei Po, and Oriental Daily. The articles were derived

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political party Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), held an informal tea gathering with journalists. During the gathering, Ma Lik reportedly said that “June 4 massacre” is a misnomer. The remarks became front-page headline news on several newspapers on May 16. The lead paragraph of the main article on the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily wrote: On the eve of the 18th anniversary of June 4, Chairman of DAB Ma Lik suddenly […] denied that the June 4 massacre occurred, “otherwise those four thousand people (students) should have all died.” He said he did not believe there was burning of corpses in Tiananmen on that day, and denied that there were tanks rolling over people and turning people into meat pie. He even asked people “to take a pig and try if that would turn it into a meat pie!”11

The headline of the article criticized Ma Lik for being “cold-blooded.” Apple Daily also published an editorial on the day headlined “No massacre on June 4, no riots in 1967.” It criticized the pro-government parties for consistently denying historical wrongs committed by the CCP and the pro-China forces. The newspaper thus treated Ma Lik’s remarks as constituting a “talk scandal” (Ekstrom & Johansson, 2008; Lee, 2012a). As scholars of political scandals have argued, a scandal by definition involves the transgression of a moral and/or political norm. But what constitutes a transgression can be contested (Thompson, 2000; Tumber & Waisbord, 2004). A scandal is therefore not so much a moral transgression as a communicative event following the publication of the transgression (Esser & Hartung, 2004). From this perspective, it is noteworthy that not all newspapers immediately treated Ma’s remarks as scandalous. Ming Pao’s news report on May 16 was headlined “Ma Lik: teachers should not talk in terms of the June 4 massacre; urging the government to set the verdict; Szeto Wah criticized [Ma] for being shameless.” Ming Pao highlighted the controversial character of Ma’s remarks, but the headline maintained “balance” by quoting both Ma Lik and Szeto Wah. The pro-government Sing Tao Daily reported Ma Lik’s remarks in a matter-of-fact manner. It did not use any other source to comment on Ma’s remarks. The relevant article on the from the news archive Wise News through using the name of the protagonist in the event (Ma Lik) and “June 4” as the keyword set. 11 “Cold-blooded Ma Lik denied that there were tanks rolling over people, asked people ‘to try with a pig,’” Apple Daily, May 16, 2007: A01.

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Communist-sponsored Wen Wei Po focused on Ma’s other remarks made in the gathering with journalists. The article was titled “The inadequacy of national education slowed down democratization.” On the Tiananmenrelated remarks, the article gave a straightforward quote without giving any hints that Ma’s words could be taken as problematic. In other words, there was no immediate consensual condemnation of Ma’s remarks. But this did not prevent newspaper discourses from turning more strongly against him the next day. Several factors played a role in this development. First, Apple Daily and Ming Pao continued to lead the effort to frame the remarks as scandalous. Various news articles by the two newspapers on May 17 quoted a range of sources condemning the remarks. The sources included core members of the Alliance, other democrats in Hong Kong, prominent figures of the Tiananmen Mothers (a group in China formed by parents of students who died in the crackdown), student leaders of the 1989 movement such as Wang Dan, and Hong Kong journalists and ex-student leaders who were in Beijing in 1989. These sources criticized Ma for “selling his conscience,” “losing his humanness,” and “insulting the dead.” Denying the Tiananmen crackdown was compared to denying the existence of the Nanjing massacre. Second, the two newspapers quoted opinions of citizens expressed through radio phone-in talk shows to support their scandal frame. Talk radio constituted an influential platform of public opinion expression in Hong Kong in the 1990s and 2000s, and quoting radio callers’ opinions was a method often used by the mainstream press to represent public opinion (Lee, 2014). In the morning of May 16, when several newspapers first reported the news about Ma’s remarks, the news already attracted many comments from radio callers. These critical comments were then reported by newspapers on May 17. One caller claimed to be a DAB member and stated that Ma’s view cannot represent the view of other party members, many of whom – according to the caller – believed that “if people died, people died; if blood was shed, blood was shed; one has to respect the facts.”12 Third, beyond the news pages, Ma’s remarks also became a “hot topic” for editorial and commentary writers. Free from the constraints of professionalism, the rhetoric employed in the commentary pages can be stronger and more hyperbolic. For instance, Apple Daily’s editorial on May 17 described Ma Lik as a person who “rapes corpses.” Besides, relatively free from the 12 “Distorting blood-stained facts, refusing to apologize after arousing public uproar; Ma’s a jerk,” Apple Daily, May 17, 2007: A01.

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constraints of timeliness, authors could continue to comment on the matter even when there was no new information. In fact, Ma’s remarks were discussed in the commentary pages for weeks, forming a continual stream of criticism against the memory-blurring discourse. Facing the outcry, even pro-government politicians refrained from supporting Ma. A DAB vice-chairperson said that the Tiananmen Incident was “controversial,” and “history will have a fair judgment.” He said the DAB could apologize if Ma’s statements hurt people’s feelings. He stated that “we will never forget June 4, and it is right to put [the event] into textbooks.”13 James Tien, chairperson of the pro-business Liberal Party, said “he was surprised by Ma’s slip of the tongue.” He opined that “June 4 was a very unfortunate event in which many people were injured or died, yet whether to call it a massacre is a personal choice.”14 The pro-government politicians employed several discursive themes or devices to carefully position themselves. The Tiananmen Incident was described as “controversial” and “unfortunate,” words that do not convey moral judgments. By using phrases such as “history will have a fair judgment,” “history” was evoked as a mythical authority, and the conservative politicians refrained from criticizing the CCP while also not challenging the society’s dominant view on the matter. As the pro-government politicians themselves did not stand by Ma Lik, the pro-government newspapers also found it hard to construct countercriticisms against the Alliance. About a week after the news broke, and as the pro-democracy camp continued to criticize the DAB, a few outspoken pro-government politicians started claiming that the pro-democracy faction was trying to take political advantage by making a fuss out of something a person said innocuously in a casual setting. Nevertheless, on the whole, the pro-government camp was on the defensive throughout the controversy. Scandalization arguably had two effects. First, in political scandals, the moral order of a society or certain moral and political values are typically reconfirmed through the condemnation of the transgression (Kantola & Vesa, 2013; Thompson, 2000). The moral imperative of remembering was thus reconf irmed through the condemnation of Ma’s remarks. Second, in news articles as well as commentary pages, memories about 1989 were reiterated through people responding to Ma’s remarks. In the name of 13 “Ma Lik admitted to be careless but refused to retract his viewpoint,” Ming Pao, May 17, 2007: A02. 14 “Ma Lik created a crisis, DAB tried putting out the fire,” Oriental Daily, May 17, 2007: A31.

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setting the record straight, veteran journalists recalled who they saw in Tiananmen Square in 1989; radio callers recalled their personal experiences of watching the crackdown on television; commentators recited the basic moral principle of not distorting the truth in order to appease the political power. The scandalization of Ma’s remarks, in other words, provided additional discursive opportunities for the recitations of collective memory.

The Second Valorization of Collective Remembering, 2009-2014 Scandalization can be considered a defensive act on the part of the memory entrepreneurs. However, both the poll findings shown in Figure 2.3 and the changing numbers of participants in the June 4 vigil suggested that, from 2009 to 2014, Hong Kong society’s collective memory about June 4 did not only stabilize; it became apparently stronger. We need to look beyond scandalization for an explanation of the trend. The strengthening of collective remembering can be understood in relation to the changing political contexts and the path-dependent development of collective memory about Tiananmen in Hong Kong. As far as the political context is concerned, 2008 constituted a turning point in Hong Kong people’s attitude toward China. Figure 2.3 shows Hong Kong citizens’ level of trust toward the Chinese government from 1997 to 2018 (based on data from the Public Opinion Programme of the University of Hong Kong). In the second half of 1997, 32.4% of the public trusted the Chinese government, whereas 29.8% distrusted the Chinese government. People’s “net trust” toward the Chinese government was 2.6%. Net trust toward the Chinese government rose to a substantially positive figure in 2001. It reached nearly 30% in the first half of 2002. The figure dropped in late 2002 and early 2003, probably due to the aforementioned debate on national security legislation. But even in 2003, net trust remained positive. The figure then grew again as the political controversies in 2003 and 2004 subsided. It reached a historic peak of 41.4% in the first half of 2008. However, net trust started to drop afterward. The figure became negative (-0.5%) in 2012 and stayed below zero between then and 2018. According to sociologist Stephen Chiu, analyzing other data about Hong Kong people’s Chinese identification or satisfaction toward China’s policy vis-à-vis Hong Kong could similarly show that 2008 constituted a turning point in public opinion. Yet further analysis of survey data could find that the decline of positive attitudes toward China occurred mainly among young

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Figure 2.3 Hong Kong people’s “net trust” toward the Chinese government, 19972018

Information derived from the Public Opinion Programme of the University of Hong Kong. The score represents the percentage of respondents “trusting” the Chinese government minus those “not trusting” the Chinese government.

people. Chiu explained the phenomenon by how young people looked at the “real China” for the first time in 2008: In [the early 2000s], society unfortunately only promoted the bright side of China one-sidedly; it didn’t provide young people with an analytical framework that could help them know about, understand, and accept the other aspects of China […], when they saw “the other side” of China [in 2008], their disappointment was as huge as their former hope. Besides a sense of being cheated, they also felt confused and didn’t know how to interpret the conflicting information in front of them.15

The “conflicting information” refers to the positive and negative signals sent by several important news events in 2008. On the positive side, the Beijing Olympics showcased a powerful and modernized China integrated into the international society. On the negative side, while the Sichuan earthquake initially aroused the compassion of Hong Kong people, subsequent news stories about insecure school buildings led people to realize that the deaths in 15 Stephen Chiu, “2008 in Hong Kong, no significance or the turning point of people’s heart?” The Initium, May 17, 2016. https://theinitium.com/article/20160517-opinion-stephenchiu-2008

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the earthquake were caused as much by corruption as by a natural disaster. Then, the Sanlu milk scandal in late 2008 – which severely affected the health of small children – further enhanced Hong Kong people’s recognition of how corrupt the Chinese polity and society were. Underlying the explanation is the idea of an “identification bubble” in Hong Kong before 2008. The rise of positive feelings toward China among young people in the first decade after the handover was only a result of the lack of direct intervention into Hong Kong affairs by the Chinese government together with young people’s lack of understanding of the dark sides of contemporary China. Once the young generation started to take their Chinese identity seriously, they paradoxically came to know more about the “real China” and thus turned against it. In the few years after 2008, Hong Kong people’s attitude toward China would become, overall speaking, more and more critical as China’s intervention into Hong Kong affairs continued to grow and the influx of mainland tourists and capital led to the rise of various social and economic problems in Hong Kong (So, 2017). As Chiu argued, these events combined with the growth of social movement and the arrival of social media to generate the trend of de-identification with China, especially among youngsters.16 The intensification of conflicts between Hong Kong and China since 2008 precipitated the rise of localism in Hong Kong in the early 2010s. We will discuss how localism presented a challenge to Tiananmen commemoration in Chapter 6. For the present discussion, the most important point is that the strengthening of Tiananmen memory between 2009 and 2014 was associated with the general decline of positive feelings toward China since 2008 due to the changing social context and ongoing political events. The changing context does not by itself fully explain the resurgence of the Tiananmen commemoration. Figure 2.3 shows only a relatively small drop in Hong Kong people’s trust toward China in 2009. The significant drop came in 2010 and 2011. In contrast, the size of the commemoration surged in 2009 and stayed at more or less the same level in 2010 and 2011. The latter, of course, was tied to the special significance attributed to the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown. For example, while Hong Kong Connection did not produce Tiananmen-related programs between 2005 and 2008, it produced four episodes in 2009. The first three episodes, titled Returning Home, Disentangling the Knot, and Extension, addressed the situation of mainland China. Returning Home focused on the 1989 movement leaders and sympathizers living abroad who were still waiting for the chance to return to the mainland. Disentangling the Knot focused on 16 Stephen Chiu, “2008 in Hong Kong.”

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several mainland Chinese citizens and civil society actors who insisted on the necessity for the Chinese government to stop evading the Tiananmen Incident. The interviewees emphasized that China could move forward properly only when “truth and reconciliation” regarding Tiananmen were achieved. Extension focused on a few young movement participants who had become, in 2009, important civil society actors. The program thus treated the works of these actors, ranging from organizing labor movements to using legal knowledge to fight for citizens’ rights, as the extension of the movement in 1989. The episodes did not contain an explicit and detailed reconstruction of the happenings between April and June 1989. The Beijing student movement was remembered through the use of footage, the interviewees’ narration of their experiences, and the reconstruction of the broader social and political context of the student movement. The episodes centered on establishing the contemporary significance of Tiananmen. That is, Tiananmen was constructed not merely as a past event but also a contemporary issue: some people still could not return home because of it; some people were still haunted by the experience and seeking reconciliation; some people were continuing the spirit of the movement in different ways. Only in the last episode, titled Looking After, did the program focus on Hong Kong. The themes covered in the episode were similar to those in the Tiananmen-related episodes by Hong Kong Connection in earlier years. Szeto Wah reiterated how, in the 1990s, government officials and pro-government politicians tried to persuade him to stop the commemoration activities. Other interviewees reiterated the moral significance of continuing the commemoration. The second half of the episode focused on a group of young people born in the 1980s who had nonetheless become active in promoting Tiananmen commemoration, as well as a secondary school teacher who had the habit of talking to his students about June 4 every year. The theme here was the transmission of memories to a new generation. But even this was a theme that had already appeared in a June 4-related episode of Hong Kong Connection in 2004. Despite the apparent lack of novelty, when considered together with the first three episodes, the persistence and prominence of public commemoration of the Tiananmen Incident in Hong Kong was pitted against the difficulty or even impossibility of commemoration in mainland China. Hong Kong was therefore posited as the custodians of the collective memory of the Tiananmen Incident for all Chinese. It also means that, consistent with the founding ideology of the Alliance, commemorating the Tiananmen Incident was seen as a patriotic act.

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Similar articulations were evident in how newspapers covered the 2009 vigil. Most importantly, several articles used the phrase “China’s conscience” to describe the role of Hong Kong in remembering Tiananmen. One major proponent of this characterization was veteran journalist Ching Cheong. A news article on May 25 quoted him saying that Hong Kong had been working “quietly and diligently” for China’s progress, and the city “has played the role of China’s conscience in the past 20 years.”17 Then, on June 4, Ching himself wrote a commentary piece on Ming Pao: Throughout the past 20 years, the candlelight commemorating “June 4” can persist only in Hong Kong […]. As the CCP systematically and forcefully implement the policy of “national collective amnesia,” the quiet and down-to-earth insistence of millions of Hong Kong people inadvertently turned Hong Kong into China’s conscience.18

Compared to the Hong Kong Connection episodes, Ching’s article even more explicitly contrasted state-enforced amnesia on the mainland to persistent commemoration in Hong Kong. As 150,000 people participated in the vigil in 2009, the idea of Hong Kong being the conscience of China was seemingly conf irmed. Notably, the phrase “China’s conscience” did appear in the Hong Kong media before 2009. Through a search in Wise News using the keyword set “China’s conscience AND June 4,” the phrase could be found to appear occasionally in the mid-2000s. But in many instances, “China’s conscience” was used to describe mainland figures such as ex-Party Secretary Zhao Ziyang and famous liberal-oriented journalist Liu Binyan.19 Student leader Wang Dan was the first to use “China’s conscience” to describe the role of Hong Kong in a news article of Apple Daily in 2003. Wang used the phrase again in an article in 2007, but the phrase was not picked up by local political actors until 2009. Three interrelated factors arguably allowed local political actors to put forward a claim about Hong Kong as China’s conscience. The first is the aforementioned point that the phrase originated by a respected ex-student movement leader. The second is the sharp contrast between mainland 17 “Ching Cheong: Hong Kong is China’s conscience,” Hong Kong Economic Times, May 25, 2009: A26. 18 Ching Cheong, “Hong Kong: China’s conscience – commemorating the 20th anniversary of ‘June 4 incident,’” Ming Pao, June 4, 2009: B14. 19 Liu was a visiting scholar in the U.S. in 1989. After the Tiananmen Incident, Liu publicly criticized the PLA for the crackdown. He was forbidden to return to China by the Chinese government.

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and Hong Kong on the Tiananmen commemoration. The third factor is the symbolic meaning of “20 years.” In a wide range of newspaper articles, “20 years” was emphasized and used to signify “a very long period of time.” The editorial of Apple Daily on June 5, 2009, for example, started with the following passage: 20 years have passed, the scenes of the Beijing democracy movement are still vivid; 20 years have passed, the family members of those who died are still living under oppression; 20 years have passed, Hong Kong people’s passion for truth and justice is still burning; 20 years have passed, the candlelights in Victoria Park are still dazzling.

Just like media discourses in 1997, persistence was hailed. On the eve of the handover, Tiananmen commemoration was portrayed as persistent in spite of political pressure and uncertainty. In 2009, Tiananmen commemoration was portrayed as persistent in spite of the power of time. The editorial of the Hong Kong Economic Journal on June 5 wrote: The meaning of the number of participants does not reside entirely in whether it is large or small. It is about how, after 20 years, Hong Kong people’s insistence and perseverance has remained the same; they haven’t been washed away by time. The CCP might think that, as time goes by, people will gradually lose their memories. But it turns out not to be the case. If June 4 is not rehabilitated, we believe that there will still be the sea-like candlelight and the wave-like crowd in any round-number commemoration in the future.

On the whole, throughout the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Incident, collective remembering was further valorized. In 1997, the moral significance of commemoration was highlighted. In 2009, the idea of the Tiananmen commemoration as the manifestation of Hong Kong people’s collective conscience was reconfirmed. After 2009, the word “conscience” would become more frequently mentioned in discussions of Tiananmen. A search in Wise News derived a total of 942 articles from eight newspapers20 that contained the keywords “June 4” and were published on June 4 or 5 between 2001 and 2008. Among these 942 articles, only 70 (7.4%) contained the word leong-sam or leong-zi (both refer to conscience). In 2009, the corresponding percentage 20 The eight newspapers are Apple Daily, Oriental Daily, Sing Tao Daily, Ming Pao, Hong Kong Economic Journal, Hong Kong Economic Times, Wen Wei Po, and Ta Kung Pao.

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rose to 13.5%. Between 2010 and 2014, among 1,151 June 4-related articles published by the eight newspapers on June 4 or 5, 155 (13.5%) contained either leong-sam or leong-zi. The strengthened connection between the concept of conscience and the June 4 commemoration was therefore not a one-off phenomenon. Through the 20th anniversary, the June 4 commemoration and a specific moral vocabulary became more closely entwined.

The Accumulation of Moral Weight This chapter has mapped the development of collective memory about Tiananmen in Hong Kong. We argued that the intensive mediated experiences between April and June 1989 produced a deep emotional imprint in many Hong Kong people’s hearts and minds. Having a strong initial memory, however, does not entail sustainable collective remembering. The formation and consolidation of collective memory about the Tiananmen Incident in the late 1990s occurred because of how the state, social organizations, and the media interacted within the context of the impending transfer of sovereignty. Over time, the development of collective memory of Tiananmen was influenced by how the social and political contexts continued to evolve. In a stable political context in which conflicts between mainland China and Hong Kong were not prominent, there was a tendency for memory to fade. Yet collective memory could be revived and strengthened in times of increasing prominence of Hong Kong-China conflicts, including the two years before the handover, 2003 and 2004, and the years since 2009. Nevertheless, the strength and characteristics of collective memory about Tiananmen were not merely “effects” determined mechanically by “the context.” Rather, social and political actors needed to devise strategies to work with the opportunities and constraints offered by the changing contexts. Besides, collective memory has its own dynamics and path dependency (Olick & Robbins, 1998). Past commemoration influences commemoration at present, which in turn influences commemoration in the future. Therefore, it was important that, during the periods when political conflicts were not prominent and collective memory was seemingly fading, the memory entrepreneurs effectively defended the collective memory of Tiananmen against efforts of memory-blurring or dismissal. We have argued that the proponents of collective remembering had drawn and maintained certain bottom lines that cannot be crossed. Scandalization arose when certain political actors crossed those bottom lines, and the moral significance of the Tiananmen commemoration was reconfirmed.

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Equally important, at two key moments in the three-decade period, political actors seized upon the discursive opportunities at the time to valorize the act of remembering. In 1997, media discourses focused on the imminent handover and thus the uncertainty regarding the future legality of commemoration. Within this context, continuing the commemoration became an act driven by one’s passion, ideals, and moral values. The moral significance of remembering was established in the public arena. In 2009, media discourses focused on Hong Kong people’s persistence over a long period of time in contrast to the fading of memories in mainland China and other parts of the world. Tiananmen commemoration was further elevated to become the manifestation of Hong Kong people’s moral conscience. Here, we see that past commemoration becomes the source of value of further commemoration. Each additional year of remembering adds further moral weight to the collective memory. Certainly, persistence is valuable only to the extent that it is difficult to persist. Hong Kong people’s persistence in remembering June 4 is valuable because, as articulated in the public discourses, it worked against the power of time, the attempts by the state to suppress the memory, and the presumed pragmatism of the Hong Kong society. Cultural theorist Abbas (1997: 5) once commented that “June 1989 in Hong Kong was a rare moment when economic self-interest could so easily misrecognize itself as political idealism.” For Abbas, Hong Kong people’s fervent support for the student movement in 1989 was largely grounded in how a democratized China could serve their economic self-interest. “There was certainly genuine emotion and outrage, which does not preclude the possibility that many of the marchers were moved by how much they were moved” (p. 5). No matter whether Abbas’s (1997) interpretation of the protests in 1989 in Hong Kong was fair or not, it would be hard pressed for anyone to argue that continual commemoration constituted a “misrecognized form of economic self-interest.” Interestingly, by the early 2010s, public discourses exhibited a strong sense that Hong Kong society was moved by how much it was still moved by Tiananmen. Hong Kong people were commemorating their own commemoration over the years in addition to the happenings in 1989.

Bibliography Abbas, A. (1997). Hong Kong: Culture and the politics of disappearance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Alexander, J. (2012). Trauma: A social theory. Cambridge: Polity Press.

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Armstrong, Elizabeth, A., and Crage, Suzanna M. (2006). Movements and memory: The making of the Stonewall myth. American Sociological Review, 71, 724-751. Bennett, W. L., & Segerberg, A. (2013). The logic of connective action. New York: Cambridge University Press. Blumler, J., & Gurevitch, M. (1995). The crisis of public communication. London: Routledge. Brook, T. (1992). Quelling the people. New York: Oxford University Press. Calhoun, C. (1994). Neither gods nor emperors. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chan, J. M., & Lee, C. C. (1991). Mass media and political transition. New York: Guilford. Chan, J. M., & Lee, F. L. F. (2010). The puzzle of why Hong Kong cannot forget about June 4: Media, social organizations, nation-state, and collective memory. Mass Communication Research, 103, 215-259. [in Chinese] Chow, C. P., & Ma, E. K. W. (2006). Patriotism political censorship. Hong Kong: Sub-cultural Hall. [in Chinese] Dayan, D., & Katz, E. (1993). Media events. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Edy, J. A. (1999). Journalistic uses of collective memory. Journal of Communication, 49(2), 71-85. Ekstrom, M., & Johansson, B. (2008). Talk scandals. Media, Culture & Society, 30(1), 61-80. Esser, F., & Hartung, U. (2004). Nazis, pollution, and no sex: Political scandals as a reflection of political culture in Germany. American Behavioral Scientist, 47(8), 1040-1071. Eyerman, R. (2002). Cultural trauma. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ferree, M. M., Gamson, W. A., Gerhards, J., & Rucht, D. (2002). Shaping abortion discourse. New York: Cambridge University Press. Galtung, J., & Ruge, M. H. (1965). The structure of foreign news: The presentation of the Congo, Cuba and Cyprus crises in four Norwegian newspapers. Journal of Peace Research, 2(1), 64-90. Hallin, D., & Mancini, P. (2004). Comparing media systems. New York: Cambridge University Press. Hillenbrand, M. (2020). Negative exposures. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Hirsch, M. (2012). The generation of postmemory. New York: Columbia University Press. Hong Kong journalists (2009). People will not forget (20th anniversary reprint). Hong Kong: Hong Kong Journalists Association. [in Chinese] Hung, H. F. (1997). Exploring northbound colonialism: Examining the “Hong Kong in a crevice” discourse through the Leung Fung Yee phenomenon. In S. Chan (ed.), Cultural imagination and ideology (pp. 53-88). Hong Kong: Oxford University Press. [in Chinese]

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Irwin-Zarecka, I. (1994). Frames of remembrance: The dynamics of collective memory. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Kantola, A., & Vesa, J. (2013). Mediated scandals as social dramas: Transforming the moral order in Finland. Acta Sociologica, 56(4), 295-308. Kuan, H. C. (1998). Escape from politics: Hong Kong’s predicament of political development? International Journal of Public Administration, 21(10), 1423-1448. Lee, C. C. (1998). Press self-censorship and political transition in Hong Kong. Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 3(2), 55-73. Lee, F. L. F. (2012a). The life cycle of iconic sound bites: Politicians’ transgressive utterances in media discourses. Media, Culture & Society, 34(3), 343-358. Lee, F. L. F. (2014). Talk radio, the mainstream press, and public opinion in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Li, H. T., & Huang, S. M. (2017). The texture of memory: Media, trauma and the Nanjing Massacre. Beijing: Renmin University Press. [in Chinese] Ma, E. K. W. (1999). Culture, politics, and television in Hong Kong. London: Routledge. McCarthy, J. D., McPhail, C., & Smith, J. (1996). Images of protest: Dimensions of selection bias in media coverage of Washington demonstrations, 1982 and 1991. American Sociological Review, 61(3), 478-499. Misztal, B. A. (2003). Theories of social remembering. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Olick, J. K., & Robbins, J. (1998). Social memory studies: From “collective memory” to the historical sociology of mnemonic practices. Annual Review of Sociology, 24, 105-40. Oliver, P. E., & Maney, G. M. (2000). Political processes and local newspaper coverage of protest events: From selection bias to triadic interactions. American Journal of Sociology, 106(2), 463-505. Ong, A. (2006). Neoliberalism as exception. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Schudson, M. (1992). Watergate in American memory. New York: Basic Books. Schudson, M. (1997). Lives, laws and language: commemorative versus noncommemorative forms of effective public memory. The Communication Review, 2(1), 3-17. Schudson, M. (2014). Journalism as a vehical of non-commemorative cultural memory. In B. Zelizer & K. Tenenboim-Weinblatt (eds.), Journalism and memory (pp. 85-96). Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Sciutto, J. E. (1996). China’s muffling of the Hong Kong media. In M. J. Skidmore (ed.), Hong Kong & China pursuing a new destiny (pp. 131-143). Singapore: Toppan. Shi, S. M. (1997). The question of “northbound colonialism”: Identity politics in Hong Kong. In S. Chan (ed.), Cultural imagination and ideology (pp. 151-158). Hong Kong: Oxford University Press. [in Chinese]

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So, A. Y. (2017). A new wave of anti-mainland protests since 2012: Characteristics, socio-political origins, and political implications. Asian Education and Development Studies, 6(4), 333-342. So, C. Y. K., & Chan, J. M. (2007). Professionalism, politics, and market force: Survey studies of Hong Kong journalists 1996-2006. Asian Journal of Communication, 17(2), 148-158. Sum, N. L. (1995). More than a “war of words”: identity, politics and the struggle for dominance during the recent “political reform” period in Hong Kong. Economy and Society, 24(1), 67-100. Thompson, J. B. (2000). Political scandal. Cambridge: Polity. Tsang, S. Y. S. (1997). Hong Kong: Appointment with China. London: I. B. Tauris. Tumber, H., & Waisbord, S. R. (2004). Introduction: Political scandals and media across democracies, volume I. American Behavioral Scientist, 47(8), 1031-1039. Wagner-Pacifici, R. (1996). Memories in the making: The shapes of things that went. Qualitative Sociology, 19(3), 301-321. Wasserstrom, J. N., & Perry, E. J. (eds.) (1994). Popular protest and political culture in modern China. Boulder: Westview. Whitlinger, C. (2015). From countermemory to collective memory: Acknowledging the “Mississippi Burning” murders. Sociological Forum, 30(1), 648-670. Zelizer, B. (1998). Remembering to forget. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Zhao, D. X. (2001). The power of Tiananmen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Zhao, S. S. (1998). A state-led nationalism: The patriotic education campaign in post-Tiananmen China. Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 31(3), 287-302.

3

Memory Mobilization Abstract Chapter 3 analyzes the annual memory mobilization cycle, led by the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China and supported by the news media, surrounding the annual candlelight vigil on June 4. It illustrates how movement strategies and media discourses generate an atmosphere of remembering in the society. The chapter also draws upon population survey data to illustrate to what extent the Tiananmen Incident was indeed regarded as an important historical event by Hong Kong citizens, and how media and communication activities during memory mobilization led people to recall the Incident. Keywords: memory mobilization cycle, atmosphere of remembering, communication effects on event recall

In reconstructing how collective remembering of Tiananmen in Hong Kong was valorized, stabilized, and defended over a period of two decades, Chapter 2 adopted a linear conception of time. Although the process of collective memory formation and contestation was by no means straightforward, time flowed from the 1990s to the 2010s. However, communication, mobilization, and commemoration activities related to Tiananmen were also embedded in the cyclical temporal structure of the yearly calendar. Other than the occasional unexpected news stories related to the Tiananmen Incident, such as the publication of the Tiananmen Papers1 in January 2001 and the death of Zhao Ziyang in January 2005, other Tiananmen Incident-related news stories and activities typically appeared in the weeks before the June 4 vigil each year.

1 The Tiananmen Papers is a collection of what is alleged to be Chinese government documents about the Tiananmen student movement. The book was published in both English and Chinese in 2001 under the pseudonym Zhang Liang.

Lee, Francis L.F., and Joseph M. Chan, Memories of Tiananmen: Politics and Processes of Collective Remembering in Hong Kong, 1989-2019. Amsterdam University Press 2021 doi: 10.5117/9789463728447_ch03

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The June 4 candlelight vigil itself is undoubtedly one of the most important political rituals in Hong Kong. Following Kertzer (1986), ritual can be understood broadly as symbolic behavior that is socially standardized and repetitive. It carves out a sacred realm that is differentiated from mundane reality. It employs symbols that condense meanings and produce multivocality and ambiguity. It allows people to experience a sense of community and reconfirm their social identity (Abeles, 1988; Papadakis, 2003). The repetitiveness or even redundancy of ritual is central to its capability of “channeling emotion, guiding cognition, and organizing social groups” (Kertzer, 1986: 9). In fact, the “program” of the June 4 vigil in Hong Kong has taken up its basic shape in the mid-1990s. Table 3.1 shows the programs of the vigils in 1995, 2004, and 2014 based on the pamphlets the Alliance distributed during the rallies of those years. The way the vigil began and ended has remained largely constant in the two decades. It began with a series of actions – presentation of flowers, eulogy, and the observation of silence – taken from the rites of commemorating the dead. It ended with the more forward-looking acts of making a declaration, the burning of the book of condolences, and the singing of songs. As time went on, the program was enriched through the addition of elements such as witness accounts by leaders in the 1989 student movement and the accumulation of “items” (e.g., “theme songs”) that the organizers could employ. The program of the annual vigil thus involves the use of elements and symbols aiming at creating an affective and quasi-religious experience for the participants. The organizers themselves were aware of the affective atmosphere that needs to be created. Lit Ming-Wai, a long-time volunteer for the Alliance who had served as the emcee of the vigil several times, explained: In the beginning, when flowers are presented, the mood is more about sadness; it is to commemorate the dead. Into the middle, when speeches are made, there are variations. Some speeches bring people back to 1989, and then they talk about the fight for democracy in China nowadays. At this point, the mood cannot be down; it has to go up. It leads to the ending part which is about looking into the future.2

Nevertheless, the Alliance also tried to introduce new elements into the vigil to make the experience more powerful, to deepen people’s understanding of 2 This and other quotes from Lit Ming-Wai below were derived from an interview conducted in October 2014.

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Table 3.1  Programs of the June 4 vigils in 1995, 2004, and 2014 1995

2004

2014

1

Dirge

Video: June 4, 15

2

Presentation of flowers

Presentation of flowers

Video: Not Forgetting June 4; Fighting to the End Dirge

3 4 5 6

Lighting up the torch Eulogy Silent tribute Singing “Tributes to the hero” and “Flowers of Freedom” Introducing Quotes about the Democracy Movement

Lighting up the torch Eulogy Silent tribute Musical: The answer is in the heart

Presentation of flowers Lighting up the torch Eulogy Silent tribute

Singing “The dream of freedom”

MTV “The sensitive season”: a tribute to the Tiananmen Mothers Singing “Paying tribute to the hero”

7

8

Reflection in silence

9

Declaration of the vigil

10

Burning the condolence booklet Shouting slogans and singing

11

Ding Zilin’s letter to HK people at the 15th anniversary Singing “The call of the Tiananmen Mothers” Speech by Wang Dan Speech by Wang Juntao

12

Singing “Flower of freedom”

13

Time for the youth section of the Alliance Speech: June 4 in the eyes of university students Speech: From June 4 to July 1 Singing “The China dream” Declaration of the vigil Burning the condolence booklet Singing “Paying tribute to the hero” Shouting slogans and singing

14

15 16 17 18 19 20

Speeches by the 1989 student leaders Speech by civil society activities in China Singing “Flower of freedom” Speech by representatives of Hong Kong Federation of Students Singing “Democracy will Return in Triumph” Declaration of the vigil

Burning the condolence booklet Singing “Blood-stained glory” Appeals and promotion

Note: Based on the vigil pamphlets produced by the Alliance in the respective years.

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the past and of contemporary China, to respond to ongoing political reality, and to attract newcomers. The musical performance in 2004 and the music video tribute to the Tiananmen Mothers to 2014 were examples of such attempts. As Alliance staff Fung Oi Ling explained in an interview in 2014: In recent years we started to read out a list of people who died in the crackdown; we would edit some short videos to review [the movement]; so it’s not just remembering; we hope they get more information and understand the current situation […] but, well, what can a commemoration rally do?3

Fung expressed a sense of ambivalence resulting from the dilemma between the need to keep the standardized elements so as to retain the power of ritual and the need to breathe fresh air into the rally. After all, a range of basic elements cannot be removed, and there is a limit to what a single rally can include. In addition, people’s reactions toward the new elements were unpredictable. Hence the incorporation of new elements into the “standard program” was largely a matter of trial and error. This can be illustrated in the range of songs being performed in the vigil. Flowers of Freedom, for instance, was based on the melody of a Taiwanese pop song. Its lyrics were written specifically for the purpose of the June 4 commemoration in 1993. It remained part of the vigil in the 2010s. Some other songs were appropriated from local popular culture, but according to Lit, the use of existing Cantopop songs can be problematic because the songs might be associated with other meanings. In 2010, a group of young people formed the VIIV Band with the aim of producing music directly tied to the June 4 commemoration and the democracy movement. Their Democracy will Return in Triumph was well received and became a mainstay of the vigil in the 2010s. However, not every song produced by the VIIV Band was successful. Some might be performed in the vigil only once and then dropped. Interestingly, in our in-depth interviews, many mature citizens who had participated in the vigils multiple times claimed that they did not care about the contents of the program: “In fact, I just want to express myself. I didn’t pay much attention to what people said on the stage” (Mr. Miao, interviewed in 2014); “The content of the vigil is not important to me. I think the meaning of attendance itself is more important than the content” (Mr. An, interviewed in 2014); “I am not going there to listen to their speeches. In fact, we gather together, light the candle, and we know what we are doing” 3

From an interview conducted in October 2014.

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(Ms. Dong, interviewed in 2014). Regarding whether the program was too standardized, Ms. Hung (interviewed in 2014) said: I don’t look at it as a program, where the climax is, I don’t care about that. Many people said, “It’s so old-fashioned, always the same, shouldn’t we do something new?” Hey guys, this is not [TV variety show] Enjoy Yourself Tonight! You are commemorating, so there must be the rites of commemoration. What’s the point of having something new?

Ms. Hung’s response to the call for new elements suggested that the mature interviewees did not necessarily dismiss the ritual elements. Rather, the commemoration program had seemingly become “naturalized” so that the frequent participants might not be conscious about how the commemorative atmosphere was crafted. In contrast, some of the young participants who did not have personal memories and experiences of 1989 might perceive the ritual elements as more important. For example, several young interviewees mentioned the reading of the names of the students who died as particularly touching. Lisa (interviewed in 2014) said: You listen to them reading out the names of those who died, what they did on that day, then you had the feeling that it was real. So I was in the vigil for the first time last year. There was this session when we took a bow, and then they read out the names, and you wanted to cry at that moment. A person next to me was crying throughout […]. I didn’t have that feeling before when I studied June 4.

Other elements mentioned by the young interviewees as touching included the lighting of candles, collective singing, and the observation of silence. Nonetheless, regardless of how the participants themselves articulated the meanings of specific parts of the program, the organizers were more cognizant of the value of the ritualistic elements in the vigil, sometimes because of the feedback they received. Lit Ming-wai stated: There are people who come to join the rally every year, and this is because they would want to join some rituals to commemorate the event. They come here because they want to sing the songs that they have been singing for years. There was a year when we could not sing one of the songs because of weather issues, and people emailed and phoned us and said that we must sing the song next year.

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Figure 3.1 June 4 candlelight vigil in Victoria Park

Photo by Paul Yeung

The significance of the ritual of the vigil goes beyond how it might influence the participants. It also contributed to the powerful representation of the mnemonic community surrounding the Tiananmen Incident in the news media. Specifically, the “sea of candlelight” in Victoria Park constituted arguably the most iconic image of the Tiananmen commemoration in Hong Kong. Figures 3.1 and 3.2 show pictures portraying “a sea of candlelight” from different angles taken by photojournalists at the candlelight vigils. These pictures are very commonly circulated in the media on June 4 and 5 every year. Experienced photojournalist Nelson 4 explained that his newspaper sent several journalists to cover the commemoration every year. One photojournalist had to stay in a designated place – this can be a room in a nearby hotel or the multiple-story car park of a nearby building, etc. – for the whole evening to take the “sea of candlelight” photo. This is because the sea of candlelight could be most clearly seen only when the emcees asked the participants to raise the candlelight. That could happen only once throughout the rally, and the exact moment varied from year to year. On the symbolic meanings of the candlelight, Nelson opined: 4

Pseudonym is used here. The interview was conducted in May 2014.

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Figure 3.2 The 2016 Victoria Park vigil

Photo by W. H. Ng of The Initium. Originally published at: https://twitter.com/initiumnews/ status/739421094742917120

This is very important. It represents the persistence of Hong Kong people. I am touched every time I see the scene, just tearful […]. After so many years, people still insist on coming out and using the candlelight to express their wish to rehabilitate June 4, to seek justice for the students who died.

Meanwhile, Marcus,5 another photojournalist, regarded the sea of candlelight and the lighting of the torch on the stage as the two most representative pictures of the rally: It’s beautiful. The rally is called a candlelight vigil […] and the lighting of the torch is also representative […]. You might say the rally is the same every year, but these two are the most representative. You look at the other photos and you might not know that they are from the rally. But you know these two are about the June 4 rally in Victoria Park.

The sea of candlelight could not appear every year unless tens of thousands of citizens continued to participate every year. Here, the vigil is also ritualistic in the sense that it is held at a designated date regardless of weather and other 5

Pseudonym is used here. The interview was conducted in May 2015.

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Table 3.2  Time of participation decision of the June 4 vigil participants, 2004 to 2014

Today Yesterday A few days ago but within a week About a week ago About two weeks ago About three weeks ago One month ago or earlier

2004

2010

2011

2013

2014

14.2 8.6 10.5 11.1 2.7 1.0 42.0

10.6 9.9 13.2 11.7 4.2 2.4 46.1

10.1 8.7 9.4 8.7 7.3 3.0 49.7

6.0 8.7 10.0 11.8 4.0 1.3 53.6

8.6 8.3 7.0 13.1 2.9 0.5 58.3

Note: The percentages do not add up to 100% because of “don’t knows” and missing answers.

external conditions, and many people participate in it almost habitually. As Table 3.2 shows, in our on-site surveys of the vigil participants,6 when asked when they made the decision to participate, between 42.0% and 58.3% claimed that they made the decision “one month ago or earlier (including participating every year).” The proportion of early deciders has gone up over the years, suggesting that more and more participants joined the vigil habitually. Nonetheless, the figures also meant that about half of the respondents were not entirely “habitual participants.” In the on-site surveys, between 16.9% and 22.8% of the respondents claimed that they made the decision on the day of or the day before the vigil, and 18.1% to 24.9% claimed that they made the decision within or about a week before the vigil. Therefore, similar to all kinds of contentious collective actions, people need to be mobilized to join the vigil. As the June 4 vigil is commemorative, the mobilization process can be called memory mobilization. This chapter is devoted to examine this annual process. The following will first reconstruct the process of memory mobilization through examining news materials. The chapter will then illustrate the impact of memory mobilization through analyzing a population survey conducted in 2014.

The Annual Memory Mobilization Cycle Before presenting the analysis, it should be useful to further explicate the notion of memory mobilization conceptually. Memory mobilization can be 6 The vigil on-site surveys were all conducted by the Public Opinion Programme at the University of Hong Kong. Interviewees were stationed at the various entrances of Victoria Park and followed a protocol of interviewee selection so that interviewer bias was minimized.

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defined as the organized efforts to bring the collective memory about the past to the fore for the purposes of social mobilization. Two considerations underlie the concept. First, just as an individual cannot recall all items in one’s memory at the same time, the collective memory shared by a group of people may also be “stored” but not “recalled.” For example, people in many societies share some versions of collective memory about World War II. But memories about World War II are seldom at the top of people’s minds or in the news headlines. Such memories are recalled mainly during anniversaries (Keith, 2012), when it is deemed relevant to current events (Edy, 1999; Schudson, 2014), or when there are new information and details about the past that are worth reporting (Neiger, Zandberg & Meyers, 2014). Second, bringing a society’s collective memory to the fore can be a conscious and strategic endeavor. The Chinese government, for instance, has constantly reminded the Chinese public about the country’s humiliation in the 19th and 20th centuries in order to promote nationalism (Wang, 2012). The significance and legitimacy of the causes of many social movements are also tied to specific understandings of past events. Memory about Chernobyl is an important facet of the anti-nuclear movement in Europe (Koopmans & Duyvendak, 1995). Anti-American protests in Korea are rooted in Koreans’ memories about U.S.-Korea relationship (Kern, 2005). Anti-Japanese protests in China can hardly be dissociated from Chinese people’s collective memory of World War II (Ching, 2012). Therefore, social movements often have to activate people’s memories to generate support for their causes and actions. Memory mobilization necessitates the retelling of already known stories, but there is no guarantee that the stories will be told in exactly the same way. A social movement’s attempt to mobilize people’s memory of a past event may lead other social organizations – especially the opponents of the movement – to put forward alternative representations of the event. In other words, a struggle between social mobilization and demobilization can take the form of memory contestation. Nevertheless, memory mobilization remains conceptually distinctive from memory construction and contestation. It is an empirical possibility that a well-developed and widely accepted understanding of a past event is mobilized without much contestation in the process. The concept of memory mobilization thus calls our attention to certain distinctive kinds of memory work done by social organizations and the news media. The definition of memory mobilization offered above pinpoints social and political organizations as the main mobilizing agents. “Social and political organizations” are not restricted to movement groups. Regardless of the identity of the primary mobilizing agent, the news media could play a

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crucial role in the process. Scholars have long recognized the importance of the media to movement groups for communicating messages to the public, achieving the status of legitimate speakers, and generating support from third parties (Gamson & Wolfsfeld, 1993; Koopmans, 2004). Even in the digital era when movements can more easily communicate with supporters directly, the mainstream media have retained a significant degree of their amplification, agenda-setting, and status conferral functions (Chadwick, 2011). A task for social organizations attempting to mobilize collective memory, therefore, is to engage the news media. Sociologists have shown that movement messages and actions are more likely to receive coverage if they fit into the news-making cycle and routines and match the conventional news values of journalism (e.g., Myers & Caniglia, 2004). Movement organizations can also adopt specific strategies to gain media access, such as providing information subsidies (Griffin & Dunwoody, 1995) or cultivating long-term relationships with journalists (Ryan, Anastario & Jeffreys, 2005). We can expect successful memory mobilization to also require appropriate media strategies on the part of social organizations. One issue that deserves special attention in memory mobilization is how social organizations deal with the multiple temporalities involved in the process. Mobilization for a collective action is a process unfolding over time, with the date of the action being the predefined end point. Factors such as available resources and perceived attention span of the public may affect movement organizations’ decisions of when to start the mobilization and how to schedule the actions. Besides, as far as memory mobilization is concerned, the memorized event itself also has its own temporality. Moreover, the time gap between the past event and the present constitutes another distinctive temporality. As Tenenboim-Weinblatt (2014) demonstrated, time-counting can be a powerful discursive practice. Finally, social life has its own temporality – its festivals, holidays, the yearly schedules of its major institutions, etc. Memory mobilization may involve a strategic maneuvering of these temporalities in its attempt to arouse media and public interest. While the news media constitute a platform for social organizations to communicate their messages, they are not merely passive players. Journalists need to judge the newsworthiness of the past event and the contemporary messages and actions of the mobilizing agents. Different types of news media may have distinctive needs and values. Commercial media, for instance, are more likely to search for new angles and content when commemorating past events (Zandberg, 2010). The mobilizing agents may therefore need to face the challenge of generating novelty out of the past.

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Moreover, specific news organizations may act as mobilizing agents. In media systems with high levels of political parallelism (Hallin & Mancini, 2004), media outlets may proactively promote memories about past events that are in line with their own political predilection. News coverage about past events can be planned and initiated by media organizations. Certainly, it can be difficult to clearly distinguish when a news outlet is covering a past event prominently based on professional judgment and when it is done due to political considerations. The point here is just that journalism’s role in memory mobilization is not necessarily restricted to its actions and decisions based on professional considerations. Given the above conceptual premises, the following analysis attempts to reconstruct how collective memory about the Tiananmen Incident was mobilized through the media before June 4 every year. We adopted a primarily text-based approach. Although a text-based approach does not allow us to examine movement-journalist interaction and register all activities that went unreported, the textual materials are useful for deriving the overall pattern of memory mobilization through the media. More importantly, the news texts register a more comprehensive range of actors engaging in and/ or responding to memory mobilization. We derived from the electronic archive Wise News all news reports, editorials, and column or commentary articles published by seven newspapers7 that mentioned “June 4” between April 1 and June 13 from 2000 to 2013.8 The following provides an analytical account of the memory mobilization process based on iterative readings of the texts, supplemented with information from in-depth interviews with movement organizers.

The Basic Pattern of Memory Mobilization We can begin the analysis by examining the changing amount of news coverage of Tiananmen in various years. Figure 3.3 shows the total number of newspaper articles derived from the search between 2000 and 2013. It 7 The seven newspapers are Ming Pao, Apple Daily, Sing Tao Daily, Oriental Daily, Hong Kong Economic Times, Hong Kong Economic Journal, and AM730. They include two mass-oriented newspapers, two middle-class-oriented newspapers, two financial newspapers, and one free newspaper. 8 Wise News has collected newspaper articles comprehensively only since around 1999. This part of the project was originally conducted in 2014. Since the dynamics of collective remembering of Tiananmen has taken an important turn after the Umbrella Movement, it makes sense to keep the period of analysis in this chapter as such.

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Figure 3.3 Amount of coverage, number of vigil participants, and amount of funds raised by year

also shows the number of participants in and the amount of funds raised by the Alliance9 through the candlelight vigils for comparison. The three lines fluctuate together. In fact, number of articles published is strongly correlated with number of participants (r = 0.78, p < .001) and amount of funds raised (r = 0.88, p < .001).10 Amount of coverage was relatively small in the early 2000s. There was a small peak in 2004, the 15th anniversary. Amount of coverage fell afterward before a sharp rise in 2009, partly because of the special significance of a rounded-year anniversary (Forrest, 1993) and partly because of a prominent controversy, which will be discussed later. After 2009, number of published articles declined, but remained at a higher level than even 2004. Figure 3.3 thus shows that, at least between 2000 and 2013, Tiananmen commemoration in Hong Kong has defied the intuitive notion that memory fades over time. Figure 3.4 shows the number of articles, including news reports, editorials, commentaries and column articles, published between April 1 and June 13. The numerical values represent the average number of articles published on a specific day. 2004 and 2009 were treated separately to see if the pattern 9 Information about amount of funds raised was derived from an online Wikipedia entry, which in turn was based on newspaper reports. 10 Since the three lines in Figure 3.3 represent three time-series, we conducted further analysis by regressing number of participants / amounts of funds raised by amount of news coverage, while controlling for number of participants / amounts of funds raised in the previous year. In this lagged model, amount of news coverage retains a significant relationship with both number of participants (β = .58, p < .01) and amounts of funds raised (β = .83, p < .01).

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Figure 3.4 Average number of articles mentioning June 4 published per day from April 1 to June 13

differed in years of round-number anniversaries. In a typical year, there were only intermittent coverage and discussions from early April to around mid-May. Number of articles started to rise more clearly on May 27, a week before June 4, and peaked on June 5, the day after the vigil. It dropped immediately afterward, though there were typically some follow-up coverage and discussions in the 10 days after the rally. The pattern is not vastly different for 2004 and 2009, which were combined to form the other line in Figure 3.4. A small peak of coverage appeared on May 14, and a discernible increase in amount of coverage began around May 20. However, there is also a sharp peak on June 5, and number of articles subsided quickly afterward. Despite the general pattern, in each year, amount of coverage related to Tiananmen may rise suddenly on any day when controversies or important news events occur. Most of the events and controversies capable of arousing high levels of media coverage occurred in Hong Kong instead of the mainland. Certainly, Hong Kong newspapers paid close attention to happenings on the mainland in the period before June 4 every year. But to the extent that the Tiananmen commemoration was suppressed within China, there were not many events for the media to report on. China’s tendency to put human rights activists and Tiananmen-related personas under retention or close monitoring was noted by the Hong Kong media. But the actions seldom resulted in huge amount of coverage partly because of the difficulty to follow up on the stories and partly because of their rather “routinized” and predictable character. On the whole, Figure 3.4 visualizes the prominence of Tiananmen in the news between April and June each year. The next few sections will attempt

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to further characterize the process of memory mobilization and the roles of the mobilizing agents. The temporalities of memory mobilization Our analysis tracks the amount of Tiananmen-related coverage since early April partly because the Alliance had some of its annual activities organized around the time. But as far as attracting media attention is concerned, timeliness can be a problem when the activities are carried out weeks before June 4. One way to enhance the news values of the activities, then, is to schedule the activities so that they are mapped onto other temporalities. For instance, the Alliance conducted the activities “A Message for Easter” and the Ching Ming wreath-laying ceremony annually. There is no articulation of how Easter may relate to Tiananmen, whereas the Ching Ming wreath-laying ceremony involves a more obvious partaking of the social meanings of the festival. In Chinese culture, Ching Ming is an occasion for remembering one’s ancestors. Visiting the ancestors’ graves and presenting flowers is a traditional practice that Hong Kong Chinese have carried on. The wreath-laying ceremony thus involves an adaptation of the cultural practice. The action posits the people who died in Tiananmen as the “ancestors” of the pro-democracy movement in China deserving remembrance and respect. Neither the Easter action nor the Ching Ming ceremony attracted regular coverage though, partly because the “untimeliness” of June 4-related actions in early April cannot be completely eliminated. Comparatively, Tiananmen had a better chance to make the news around Mother’s Day. The Alliance and sometimes other social groups would organize activities drawing upon the social meanings of Mother’s Day. The news often helped to convey the framing of the activity. For instance, the lead paragraph of Ming Pao’s report of the Alliance’s Mother’s Day activity in 2005 read: “While the blessed mothers can enjoy the accompaniment of their children and celebrate Mother’s Day, the Tiananmen Mothers in Beijing could only miss their children who lost their lives in the June 4 Incident.” As the Ming Pao report illustrates, the connection between Mother’s Day and Tiananmen is articulated mainly through the Tiananmen Mothers. In several years in the early 2000s, the Alliance publicly issued a letter of consolation to the Tiananmen Mothers. In later years, Ding Zilin, the iconic leader of the group, would issue a letter to the Hong Kong public on Mother’s Day. The letters occasionally received prominent coverage. At times, Apple Daily even published Ding’s letter in full and issued editorials in response.

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The Alliance could also schedule activities to map onto the events in 1989. To briefly recapitulate, the 1989 student movement began when students gathered in Tiananmen Square on April 15 to commemorate the death of national leader Hu Yaobang. On May 4, more than 100,000 students and large numbers of citizens marched to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the May 4 student movement. When the Chinese government declared martial law on May 20, Hong Kong responded with a protest participated by one million citizens and the establishment of the Alliance on May 21. On May 28, 1.5 million Hong Kong people joined one of the biggest protest marches in the city’s history. The Alliance did not organize activities on all these dates, but three annual activities were seemingly scheduled in connection with the events in 1989. First, every year on May 4, the Alliance washed the Pillar of Shame, a concrete sculpture created by Danish artist Jens Galschiot and used by the Alliance to symbolize June 4 as a shameful event in Chinese history. Second, the Alliance conducted a kite-flying action, which signifies the transmission of the voice of democracy into China, around May 21, the date of the Alliance’s establishment. Third, the Alliance organized an annual protest march on the Sunday about one week before June 4, which means that the protest march was organized typically around May 28. News reports of these activities did not always mention the temporally associated happenings in 1989. Hence, the significance of matching current activities with past events should not be exaggerated. As Keith (2012) noted, the media often tended to produce a more reductionist representation of the past in “off-year commemoration.” Nevertheless, the recounting of the past could become more elaborate during round-year anniversaries. For instance, Apple Daily published a front-page article on April 15, 2009, titled “Everything began on this day 20 years ago.” Then, from April 17 onward, it published a daily series of articles under the theme of “20 Years Ago Today.” In 2014, the 25th anniversary of Tiananmen, both Apple Daily and Ming Pao produced a similar daily series. This kind of planned coverage in which the newspapers elaborately re-narrated the events in 1989 constituted the clearest example of the media taking up the role of memory mobilizers. In their analysis of American media coverage of the anniversaries of Tiananmen and the fall of the Berlin Wall, Li and Lee (2013: 841) observed that the coverage tended to “compress a sequence of complex events into a single, dramatic historical moment” in order to heighten the newsworthiness of the anniversary day. The above analysis, in contrast, suggests that time tends to be “decompressed” when social organizations and the media engaged in memory mobilization in the case of the Tiananmen commemoration in

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Hong Kong. The stronger the urge of memory mobilization was, the more elaborate the recounting of the events was. Engaging the established institutions A well-established conventional wisdom in journalism research is that the news tends to focus on the established institutions (Bennett, 1990; Fishman, 1980; Hallin, 1986; Tuchman, 1978). In memory mobilization for Tiananmen, a set of news coverage was also constituted by the actions of or within the established political institutions. For instance, Hong Kong laws require protest organizers to apply for a letter of no objection from the police before the action. In 2002, the police rejected the request from the Alliance to end their protest march at the Government Headquarters based on “internal threat assessments.” The government’s decision was met with fierce criticism and produced a controversy that pushed Tiananmen commemoration up on the news agenda. The police’s decision in 2002 was a surprise to the Alliance because their annual protest had always ended at the Government Headquarters, and the police had not objected before. The Alliance was only following a routine when they made the request. Besides, from the government’s perspective, given its interest in undermining collective memory about Tiananmen, the advisable strategy should be to do as little as possible and to prevent controversies. Nonetheless, the Alliance and the pro-democracy politicians could proactively bring the issue of Tiananmen into the formal political arena and try to force a response from both the conservatives and the government. Specifically, beginning in 1998, the pro-democracy legislators proposed a motion in the legislature calling upon the Chinese government to rehabilitate June 4. The motion was usually raised in late May. The government and the conservative politicians could not ban the raising of the motion. They typically reacted by remaining disinterested and refraining from debating seriously with the pro-democracy legislators on the topic. The motion would then be invariably voted down because a motion raised by a legislator needs the support from half of the directly elected members of the legislature as well as half of the members from the functional constituencies. Since the conservatives dominated the functional constituencies, any motion challenging or embarrassing the government would invariably be rejected. Without a realistic chance of passing the motion, the pro-democracy legislators nonetheless repeated the action every year. The motion made news even when it was voted down. The pro-democracy legislators and the Alliance could then have the opportunities to criticize the government

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and call upon citizens to participate in the vigil. Apple Daily, in particular, often emphasized in its reports the number of years the motion had been voted down consecutively. For instance, the headline of the news report in 2009 reads “Rehabilitation motion rejected for the 11th year.” The headline in 2010 reads “The legislature rejected the motion to rehabilitate June 4 for the 12th time.” The counts foregrounded the persistence of the pro-democracy politicians and the stubbornness of political power. Besides working through the legislature, another means for the Alliance to arouse a news-making institutional response is by inviting high profile leaders of or figures associated with the 1989 movement to visit Hong Kong and participate in the candlelight vigil. Such invitation could effectively pass a political hot potato into the hands of the government – the question is whether the government would allow the visitors to enter the city. It would be misleading to state that “testing the government” was the only aim for the Alliance to invite such figures to Hong Kong. In fact, the organizers argued that they did not intend to create controversies through inviting those who obviously could not enter Hong Kong to join the vigil.11 However, there were indeed controversies surrounding the right to enter the city by people closely associated with the movement, and it was impossible for the Alliance not to be aware of the possibility that people associated with June 4 could be barred. The Alliance could be considered to be in a no-lose position, though. If the government allowed the visitors to enter the city, the leaders could then participate in the rally. If the government barred the visitors from entrance, the decision would become controversial, providing yet more opportunities for the Alliance to level criticism against the power holders. Notably, the border entrance question could become news even if the sensitive figures did not actually travel to Hong Kong. A case in point is Jens Galschiot, sculptor of the Pillar of Shame. He had been refused entrance twice in the 2000s. In 2010, the Alliance publicized on May 23 Galschiot’s intention to travel to Hong Kong again. Both Ming Pao and Apple Daily interviewed him in the days afterward. Although he announced on May 31 that he would not travel to the city after all, his case had already been discussed in the news media for a week. Memory contestation as memory mobilization As noted in Chapter 2, despite the presence of a strong mnemonic community on the June 4 Incident in Hong Kong, alternative views on the matter existed 11 Interview with Choi Yiu-cheong in October 2014.

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and were occasionally expressed by conservative politicians or government officials. Memory contestation ensued, and the controversial statements were sometimes treated as transgressive. When considered within the context of memory mobilization, such controversies or “talk scandals” (Ekstrom & Johansson, 2008) often contributed to memory mobilization ultimately. We may illustrate how memory contestation was tied to memory mobilization through a case in 2009. As noted earlier, the pro-democracy politicians brought the issue of Tiananmen into the legislature annually. While conservative politicians could refrain from speaking, top government leaders needed to be accountable to legislators’ questions. In the legislature’s Q&A session on May 14, Donald Tsang, then Chief Executive of the Hong Kong government, responded to a legislator’s question about June 4 by claiming that “China had achieved great development in various areas,” “people should look at the past more objectively,” and “my view can represent Hong Kong people’s view.” The pro-democracy legislators immediately left the meeting hall and called a press conference. Recognizing the severity of the situation, Tsang issued a statement in late afternoon and acknowledged that he had used inappropriate wordings. Tsang’s controversial response was largely framed as transgressive by the press. AM730 titled its news report “June 4 speech caused a storm; Donald Tsang criticized for losing conscience.” Hong Kong Economic Journal titled its report “The Pan-democrats left the hall collectively; Donald Tsang apologized for verbal blunder.” It also published an editorial titled “No need to represent Hong Kong people; good enough to represent conscience.” The press also interpreted Tsang’s blunder as a failed attempt of “counter-attack.” As the headline of a commentary article in the Hong Kong Economic Times put it, Tsang’s “big plan to strike back dashed into pieces.” In other words, if Tsang’s speech brought about a contestation of collective memory, he was seen as losing the contest immediately. A process of memory contestation in which different representations of the past compete with each other on more or less equal footing did not arise. Media and public discourses were highly one-sided. Tsang’s blunder provided a news peg for follow-up stories. Journalists could produce news simply by asking public figures for comments. For instance, Ming Pao interviewed Tiananmen Mothers’ Ding Zilin, who predictably lambasted Tsang. Journalists also put forward the question to conservative politicians, who typically reverted to strategies of evasion. For example, Rita Fan, a Hong Kong representative in China’s National

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People’s Congress, stated that “the incident was a tragedy and [she] hoped that everyone had learned the lesson.”12 Moreover, Tsang’s case became the materials for interpretations and discussions in the commentary pages. As Lee (2012a) illustrated, politicians’ verbal mistakes can lead to the formation of an iconic sound-bite recirculating in public discourses. After the initial wave of coverage ends, there can be a period of intensive interpretations in commentary articles. Media discourses surrounding Tsang’s verbal blunder in 2009 exhibited the same pattern. On the whole, Tsang’s attempt to contest the memory of June 4 resulted in the proliferation of discourses reconfirming the dominant understanding of Tiananmen. In this sense, Tsang had “contributed” to memory mobilization. Indeed, commentators recognized the possible mobilizing effect of Tsang’s words. Political scientist Ma Ngok, for instance, said in the news that the pan-democrats should thank Tsang. More broadly, some movement organizers even argued that controversies originated from memory contestation mattered more than the Alliance’s own activities. Core members of the Alliance Choi Yiu-Cheong said: Very frankly, when we are talking about an action participated by tens of thousands of people, that is not something up to you to mobilize […]. To a certain extent, it is about whether there are political events at the time that lead more people to take action.

While the self-dismissal of the Alliance’s own capability of mobilizing people may not be entirely valid, Choi’s opinion illustrated the perception that mistakes made by the opponents are even more powerful mobilizing forces. Column pages and personalized mobilization and memories Besides news articles, many Hong Kong newspapers published daily opinion pieces and feature sections filled by short column articles. Many Alliance leaders, pro-democracy politicians, and liberal-oriented academics and commentators were columnists. They were often the ones who began writing about Tiananmen in the early stages of the mobilization cycle. Interestingly, Tiananmen-related tropes were occasionally taken up by authors ranging from popular novelists to stock commentators. For example, a stock commentator talked about his own wrongful decision to sell a 12 “Mrs. Fan: Everyone should learn the tragic lesson,” Ming Pao, May 17, 2009: A03.

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high-performing stock by saying: “Alas, I can only borrow [the Alliance]’s stance on the June 4 Incident […]. Don’t want to remember; dare not forget.”13 This type of appropriation helps Tiananmen-related symbols to diffuse into various social arenas and reach people who are not frequent political news consumers. The column and commentary articles extend memory mobilization in several ways. First, the column pages are where authors engage in collective interpretations of current controversies. In cases of questionable government decisions or officials’ blunders, writers often elaborate on the criticism leveled against the government already existing in the news. The opinionated and personalized nature of column pieces allows the authors to employ strong rhetoric. For instance, Claudia Mo, a pro-democracy legislator, called Donald Tsang “psycho-the-rapist” during the controversy discussed in the previous section.14 Hence, the column articles often effectively convey the emotional intensity behind the criticism. Second, the column and commentary articles can take up the function of “news reporting.” While the Alliance’s annual activities did not always make the news, members of the Alliance could report on the activities in their own columns. Moreover, a wide range of social organizations also had activities addressing or touching on June 4, and these events and activities typically went unnoticed in the news pages. Columnists, then, might help publicize these activities. In the corpus being analyzed, examples of activities “reported” in column pieces included a concert held by the VIIV Band, an art workshop on “This Generation’s June 4,” and the publication of a book by veteran journalists on the student movement. Third, writers can directly mobilize people to join upcoming events. For instance, a veteran activist proclaimed in his column article on May 25, 2002, that he would join the Alliance’s protest “tomorrow” by carrying a fake coffin to “highlight the Chinese Communist Government’s bloody suppression of the 1989 movement.”15 The next day, another columnist simply titled his column article “Go to the street to demonstrate today.”16 Tenenboim-Weinblatt (2013, 2014) has borrowed from psychology the notion of prospective memory – memory of actions that need to be carried out at specific times in the future – to examine news discourse. The columnists’ 13 Mr. Energetic, “Crying out loud,” Hong Kong Economic Times, April 4, 2006: C13. 14 Claudia Mo, “Donald Tsang does not represent us,” Hong Kong Economic Journal, May 18, 2009: 10. 15 Leung Kwok-Hung, “We keep silent; China loses its voice,” Apple Daily, May 25, 2002: E08. 16 Wong On-yin, “Go to the street to demonstrate today,” Apple Daily, May 26, 2002: E10.

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direct mobilization can be considered prospective reminders urging people to remember not only the past but also the imminent action. Finally, many columnists talked about their personal memories about Tiananmen or other ordinary citizens’ connections with June 4. For example, the famous writer Eunice Lam wrote in one article in 2009: “I remember that – a bit sad – several pairs of lovers who were nearing the point of breaking up, due to their same passion about the student movement, decided to continue to hold hands and shout.”17 Another author wrote on June 3, 2005: Sixteen years ago today, I was young […]. I was watching TV with my family that day, until midnight. The news pictures show the dark night of Tiananmen, the crowd beneath the street lamps, the tense atmosphere. Then I joined the protest with my classmates. I went, because I thought I should.18

These writings linked the historical event of Tiananmen to the lifeworld of ordinary people. Such discourses highlighted the point that Tiananmen has both broad political significance and personal significance, and they may mobilize the readers’ personal memories. In this and other ways noted above, commentary and column articles enriched public discourses surrounding Tiananmen and reinforced the social atmosphere of remembering. Creating the atmosphere of remembering Three qualifications of the analysis in the previous subsections should be noted. First, the Alliance did not conduct activities only between April and June. They had a booth every year at the flower market during the Chinese New Year. They had tried to conduct activities during the Mid-Autumn Festival in September in the past.19 But no matter whether it was consciously planned or not, there were more activities in April to June, and in this period, the activities and the topic of June 4 had a better chance of getting into the news. Second, while the analysis focused on the news media because the information available from the news media could best allow us to reconstruct the process of memory mobilization, the role of communications and actions occurring in various social arenas should not be ignored. Interpersonal and digital media communications, in particular, also constituted part of the process of memory mobilization. Our analysis focuses on mainstream journalism 17 Eunice Lam, “Desolate June 4,” Ming Pao, May 19, 2009: D07. 18 Helen, “16 Years,” Ming Pao, June 3, 2005: D08. 19 Interview with Mak Hoi Wah conducted in September 2014.

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because mainstream journalism has the access to public institutions, connections with key political figures, and other resources required to generate substantial reporting. Interpersonal and digital media communications are therefore also likely to be reliant on news media materials. Conceptually, mass media institutions and digital media platforms can be considered as forming an integrated media environment or information cycle (Chadwick, 2011; Lee & Chan, 2018). But in the end, communications among the citizens themselves are also crucial in generating the social atmosphere of remembering. Third, memory mobilization also occurred through the work done by social groups in specific institutional or social contexts. One example is what student unions might do in the weeks before June 4. As Lai Yan Ho, chairperson of the Chinese University’s student union in 2010, explained, in his days as a student leader, June 4 was a matter that must be discussed in the process of committee formation before the student union election.20 Then, there was a more or less standardized set of activities to hold from April to June each year: “That’s actually the easy part […]. There would be some seminars and films showing, some displays, beginning in April.” There might also be some year-specific themes, such as a focus on labor movement in China in the year when Lai served as the chair, and “that was determined when we wrote our platform.” Overall speaking, movement activities, news coverage, commentary discourses, political controversies, and the actions and communications by people in a wide range of contexts combined to generate a social atmosphere of remembering. The significance of having a social atmosphere of remembering in Hong Kong was articulated by an academic in a column article by way of contrasting the experience of living in Beijing: In Beijing […] before June 4, every day was the same. One cannot smell any traces of the earth-shattering suppression of that year. The media are cleansed […]. If I didn’t travel back to Hong Kong, memory of June 4 would have been lost in the busyness of everyday life.21

Examining the Impact of Memory Mobilization After reconstructing the process of memory mobilization, this section attempts to provide evidence on the impact of the mobilization process. 20 Interview conducted in October 2014. 21 Ma Kit-wai, “Inventing memory,” Ming Pao, June 6, 2007: D05.

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Doing so requires us to move away from media discourses and focus on individual attitudes and beliefs. While collective memory refers primarily to collective representations in the public arena, what individuals think and feel is pertinent for several reasons. First, individuals do the remembering after all. Second, psychologists have emphasized that individual-level processes, such as conversations, can sustain and even generate collective memory (e.g., Hirst & Echterhoff, 2008). Third and most pertinent to this book, a dominant version of collective memory can hardly be sustainable in the long run if it is privately rejected by the majority of the members of a society. Schuman and Scott’s (1989) seminal study drew upon Mannheim’s (1972) theory of generation and examined the national or world events that Americans would recall as especially important. They focused on the critical years hypothesis: people tend to recall events during their adolescence and early adulthood, the time when they meaningfully encounter social and political events for the first time. The critical years hypothesis will be addressed in Chapter 4 when we discuss the issues of generational differences and intergenerational memory transmission. Other than the impact of age cohorts, studies have shown that the recall of historical events and objects that are political in character could be expected to relate to political attitudes (Griffin & Bollen, 2009; Larson & Lizardo, 2007). Schuman and Rieger (1992) found that Americans’ support for the 1991 Gulf War was related to whether they preferred to compare the Gulf War to World War II or the Vietnam War. Interestingly, Schuman and Corning (2012) noted that, consistent with the “rally around the flag” phenomenon (Lee, 1977), Americans of all age cohorts moved toward selecting the Hitler analogy after the Gulf War started. These studies suggested that multiple events exist in people’s mind, yet the relative salience of the events varies across time, depending on current issues, commemoration activities, and media coverage (Corning & Schuman, 2013). Drawing upon the notion of media agenda-setting, Kligler-Vilenchik, Tsfati, and Meyers (2014) showed that the Israeli media’s and the public’s “memory agendas” were significantly correlated with each other, especially in times of intensive commemoration coverage. At the individual level, exposure to TV content on the 60th anniversary of Israel’s establishment was related to the recall of it as the most important event in the nation’s history. Kligler-Vilenchik et al. (2014) captured an important aspect of the impact of communications. Yet we are not interested in “agenda-setting” per se. Media agenda-setting is a part of the broader social process of memory mobilization.

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Specifically, we put forward three general expectations regarding how memory mobilization impinges on remembering at the individual level. First, we expect the atmosphere of remembering to lead more people to recall Tiananmen during the period of memory mobilization. We also expect people to recognize that other members in the society are also remembering the event. Second, because memory mobilization involves communication activities through various platforms, communication activities may have a stronger impact on the recall of the historical event during memory mobilization. Third, because different age cohorts relate to the historical event differently and thus vary in their likelihood of recalling the event, the effects of media and communication may vary across age cohorts. The following pages examine these expectations one by one. Recalling Tiananmen by oneself and others The analysis in this section is based on a survey conducted in the first half of 2014. To map the possible pattern of changing attitudes and recall within the period, the fieldwork was conducted over 20 days from January to June 3.22 We can begin the analysis by looking into the extent to which Hong Kong people recall the Tiananmen Incident as an important historical event. Following Schuman and Scott (1989), the event recall variables were derived from an open-ended question: “There have been many influential political and social events in Hong Kong, China, and the world at large. Can you name an event within the past 50 years that is particularly significant to Hong Kong or Hong Kong people?” 22 The 20 days were: January 18, 28-29; February 13-14, 26-27; March 13, 24-25; April 7, 22-23; May 2, 8, 14, 20, 26-27, and June 3. The survey was conducted by the Center for Communication and Public Opinion Survey at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The target respondents were Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong residents aged between 18 and 70. To derive the sample, phone numbers from the 2005, 2007, and 2009 residential directories were collected. The last two digits of the numbers were replaced by the full set of 100 figures from 00 to 99. Specific numbers were randomly selected by computer during the fieldwork. The procedure means that the sample is constituted by residential phone numbers only. Admittedly, the reliance on residential phone lines constitutes a limitation in terms of the coverage of the study, but a study conducted in 2017 has shown that sampling based on cell phones in Hong Kong would derive samples that are even less demographically representative than samples based on residential phone lines are (Chiu & Jiang, 2017). The respondent from a household was chosen by the next birthday procedure. The total sample size was 1,537. The response rate was 37.2% following American Association of Public Opinion Research’s formula RR3. Compared to the population, people with higher levels of education and family income were oversampled. The data was weighted according to educational level when conducting the analysis.

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Table 3.3  Hong Kong people’s recall of significant historical events (year 2014)

Hong Kong handover (1997) Tiananmen Incident (1989) a SARS outbreak (2003) Manila hostage crisis (2010) Political reform (ongoing) Election of CY Leung (2012) Individual traveling scheme (ongoing) a July 1 demonstration (2003) 2008 financial crisis (2008) Article 23 debate (2003 / ongoing) 1967 urban riots (1967) 1997 financial crisis (1997) Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) Anti-national education movement (2012)

Whole sample

January to March

April to June

42.7 23.9 13.4 8.9 7.2 5.0 5.0 3.2 2.8 2.7 2.7 2.4 1.1 1.1

40.6 20.1 14.8 9.9 6.9 4.6 3.3 3.3 3.1 1.7 2.4 2.8 1.6 0.6

44.2 26.6 12.4 7.7 7.4 5.4 6.3 3.1 2.5 3.4 3.0 2.0 0.7 1.5

Notes: Entries are percentages of respondents naming the event. The bracketed number refers to the year of occurrence of the event, but it would be indicated as “ongoing” if the item refers not to an event but an ongoing issue. N = 1,530 for the whole sample, 636 for January to March, and 894 for April to June. Items marked with superscript “a” are recalled to statistically significantly different extents in the two time periods in a Chi-Square test (p < .05).

The phrasing of the question took into account the peculiarity of the local context and language. The respondents were probed to name up to three events. A set of dichotomous variables was created based on the answers. Different labels for the same event were grouped together in the coding. For instance, “1989 pro-democracy movement” and “June 4 Incident” were treated as referring to the same event. In other cases, however, what might be interrelated items were kept separate. One example is “Article 23” and the July 1 demonstration. While the July 1 demonstration in 2003 was driven by the debate on national security legislation (i.e., Article 23 of the Basic Law), Article 23 is also an ongoing debate instead of just one historical event. Hence the two were not combined. Table 3.3 summarizes the findings. The Hong Kong handover in 1997 was named by the largest number of respondents (42.7%). Tiananmen was the second most frequently named event (23.9%). The outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003, which led to hundreds of deaths in the city, was a distant third (13.4%). No other events were named by more than 10% of the respondents. The events mentioned by more than 5% of the respondents included “political reform” (8.6%) and the Philippines

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hostage crisis in 2010 (8.5%). The hostage crisis refers to the hijacking of a tourist bus in Manila on August 23, 2010, in which eight Hong Kong tourists died. During the hostage crisis, television stations in Hong Kong directly broadcast the event. Many Hong Kong citizens witnessed the tragedy as it happened. The fact that the hostage crisis entered the top five suggests that an event might be recalled significantly by many citizens if it is relatively recent and has generated a strong emotional response when it occurred. All other events were mentioned by 5% or fewer of the respondents. Even if we combine the Article 23 debate with the July 1 demonstration, the percentage of respondents recalling it would only be 5.8%. The temporally distant events of the 1967 urban riots and China’s Cultural Revolution were mentioned by only 2.7% and 1.1% respectively. On the whole, the findings show the important place of the Tiananmen Incident in Hong Kong people’s memories. The second and third columns of Table 3.3 show the extent of recall of the various events in two different periods. Consistent with our analysis in the previous section, we treat April to June as the period of memory mobilization. The result shows that extent of recall of the Tiananmen Incident was indeed significantly higher in the memory mobilization period (26.6% and 20.1%). Remarkably, only two events show a significant difference in extent of recall in the two periods. The other event is the individual traveling scheme, which refers to the Chinese government’s decision, since 2003, to allow mainland citizens from specific parts of the country to travel to Hong Kong on an individual basis. Originally a policy aiming to stimulate the Hong Kong economy, it grew into a controversial policy as the number of mainland tourists proliferated to the extent that caused various problems and inconveniences to citizens’ everyday life. Nonetheless, in the context of the present discussion, it can be noted that “individual traveling scheme” is an ongoing policy issue. Its prominence is likely to be associated with the presence or absence of current news events tied to the issue. The Tiananmen Incident remained the only historical event that exhibited different levels of recall in the two periods. However, by separating the half year into only two periods, Table 3.3 has simplified the changes in levels of recall of the Tiananmen Incident. Figure 3.5 shows the percentages of respondents recalling Tiananmen according to the exact dates of the survey interviews. Some of the fluctuations, such as the relatively high level of recall in January and the dip on May 8, appeared to be idiosyncratic and the result of sampling errors. Put aside such idiosyncrasies, the basic pattern showed that the levels of recall were low in February and March. Level of recall began to increase in April when

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Figure 3.5 Percentages of respondents recalling Tiananmen at different time points

the yearly mobilization cycle began. The percentages stayed above 25% in mid-to-late May, and then jumped substantially to 43.4% on June 3. Again, the recall of two other important events – the 1997 handover and the SARS outbreak in 2003 – did not show the same temporal variation. There was no significant variation in levels of recall of the handover over the six-month period. Regarding the SARS outbreak, levels of recall were the highest in January and early February. Before we conduct a more formal analysis of the predictors of recall of Tiananmen, it is useful to look at a set of survey items that tapped into Hong Kong citizens’ attitudes and perceptions regarding the Tiananmen Incident. Table 3.4 summarizes the findings. It shows that citizens’ attitude toward rehabilitating June 4 and support for continual commemoration had remained largely the same across the two periods. This is not surprising, however, because people should have formed rather crystallized opinions about a prominent event such as the Tiananmen Incident, and the memory mobilization in a single year is unlikely to lead to a major attitude shift. Meanwhile, concerns with June 4 and the intention to join the vigil did not change in the memory mobilization period either. These latter findings may seem to put the efficacy of memory mobilization into question. We will return to this point at the end of this chapter. However, what is notable in Table 3.4 is that Hong Kong citizens’ perceptions of three memory-blurring discourses did vary across the two periods. Among the nine items listed in the bottom half of Table 3.4, the mean scores

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Table 3.4 Hong Kong people’s attitudes and perceptions regarding Tiananmen (year 2014) January to March

April to June

Concern with June 4 Support rehabilitation Support continual commemoration Intention to join the vigil

3.46 3.44 3.63 2.02

3.38 3.53 3.67 2.01

Memory-blurring discourses  Students made mistakes, so can’t just blame the government  Self  Family/friends  Hong Kong citizens

3.00 2.93 3.03

2.90 2.87 2.97

 Without the crackdown in 1989, the economy would not be as good  Self  Family/friends  Hong Kong citizens a

2.72 2.86 2.77

2.62 2.74 2.56

 June 4 is China’s affairs, not HK’s; HK people don’t need to commemorate  Self a  Family/friends a  Hong Kong citizens a

2.57 2.73 2.50

2.39 2.59 2.41

Notes: Entries are mean scores on a five-point scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree / very unconcerned / absolutely not / very uncommon to 5 = strongly agree / very concerned / definitely / very common. N = 1,530 for the whole sample, 636 for January to March, and 894 for April to June. Items marked with superscript “a” have their mean scores in the two periods differing from each other significantly in an independent samples t-test (p < .05).

of the items in the memory mobilization period are all lower than the mean scores of the items in January to March. The consistency of the pattern is remarkable, even though only four of the nine items exhibited statistically significant differences in the two periods. Memory mobilization seems to have influenced not so much whether the respondents themselves subscribed to the memory-blurring discourses. Rather, changes were more apparent in whether the respondents regarded the memory-blurring discourses as accepted by their family, friends, and people in the society. This pattern of findings points toward the unique significance of memory mobilization – it did not seem to be able to change how individuals think about the Tiananmen Incident, but by creating an atmosphere of remembering, it changed how people perceive the views of others.

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Predicting recall of Tiananmen After discussing citizens’ levels of recall of and attitudes toward Tiananmen, we can now examine the predictors of recall. Logistic regression was conducted. The independent variables included dummy variables for three age cohorts and the other demographics. Following similar studies of public opinion in Hong Kong, interest in politics, internal efficacy, and collective efficacy (i.e., a belief in people’s capability to effect social change when acting as a collective actor, see Lee, 2006) were also controlled. Since Tiananmen is a political event, recall of Tiananmen is likely to be related to people’s political attitudes (Lee, 2012b). Therefore, external efficacy and support for democratization were included into the regression model. Since April to June is the period of memory mobilization, a dichotomous variable, January to March vs. April to June, was created. However, based on Figure 3.5, one might question if early June – the immediate days before the annual vigil – is distinctive. One may also question if there is a difference between January and February/March. Therefore, the data was also analyzed using a set of three dummy variables: 1) January (n = 175) vs. others; 2) April/ May (n = 789) vs. others; 3) June 3 (n = 105) vs. others.23 The two sets of timeperiod variables were used to ascertain the robustness of the conclusions. Lastly, the model included a series of media and communication variables. News attention is the average of level of attention paid to political news, expressed on a five-point scale (1 = absolutely not attentive to 5 = very attentive), when: 1) reading newspapers, and 2) watching TV news. Interpersonal political discussion is the average of frequencies of discussing with “friends or family members, expressed on a five-point scale (1 = no, 5 = very frequently) about: 1) elections or political figures, and 2) government and policies. Social media communication is represented by two variables. Time spent on social media was measured by an item about the amount of time the respondents spent daily on “Facebook or other social networking sites” (answers range from 1 = not using at all to 5 = more than 180 minutes per day, M = 1.68, SD = 0.89). However, sheer time spent on social media may reflect both political and non-political uses (Gil de Zúñiga, Jung & Valenzuela, 2012; 23 February/March (n = 461) was used as the reference category. It can be noted that the demographics of the respondents interviewed in January, February and March, April and May, and June 3 did not differ in gender, age, and education. There was a significant difference in income. The respondents interviewed on June 3 had on average higher levels of income, though the difference was small.

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Tang & Lee, 2013). Hence a second variable “political communication via social media” was constructed. It is the average of two separate indices. The first is the average of how frequently the respondents 1) obtained information on political and public affairs, 2) expressed views on politics and public affairs, 3) paid attention to the actions of parties, activists, and news commentators, and 4) joined groups about public affairs on social media, in addition to 5) how many of their social media “friends” are political party members, activists, or news commentators (answers range from 1 = not at all to 5 = very frequently / very large number). The second is the average of respondents’ usage of two alternative media sites (Leung & Lee, 2014): 1) Inmedia Hong Kong and 2) The House News (answers range from 1 = never heard of the site, 4 = visiting the site frequently). The two indices were strongly correlated (r = 0.63) and were combined. The first column of Table 3.5 summarizes the results of the first regression model. More educated people and supporters of democratization were more likely to recall Tiananmen, whereas 18-to-29-year-olds and people who saw the government as less responsive (i.e., lower levels of external efficacy) were less likely to recall Tiananmen. The dichotomous time-period variable obtained a significant positive coefficient, i.e., after controlling for other factors, respondents in the memory mobilization period were still more likely to recall Tiananmen. The second column shows the regression results when a different group of time-period variables was used. Both the “April to May” variable and the “June 3” variable obtained significant coefficients. The findings suggest that recall of Tiananmen did become more likely even at the earlier stages of memory mobilization. Among the media and communication variables, only political communication via social media was significantly related to the recall of the Tiananmen Incident. However, what we may actually expect is that media and communication activities should influence recall of Tiananmen mainly in the period of memory mobilization because media coverage and interpersonal discussions may turn more frequently to June 4 in this period. Several interaction terms were created to test these hypotheses.24 For simplicity, the interaction terms were created based on the dichotomous-period variable. As the third column shows, two interaction effects were significant. Both were consistent with the expectation: interpersonal discussion and amount

24 The interaction terms were centered around means to alleviate the problem of multicollinearity.

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Table 3.5  Predictors of recalling Tiananmen in different time periods

Sex Age 18-29 Age 30-39 Age 50-70 Education Income Political interest Internal efficacy Collective efficacy External efficacy Support for democratization News attention Political discussion Social media: time spent Social media: political comm. Time: April to June Time: January Time: April/May Time: June 3 Time: April to June X  News attention   Political discussion  Social media: time spent  Social media: political comm. χ² Nagelkerke R²

Model 1

Model 2

Model 3

-.01 -1.80*** -.33 -.03 .12* .01 .15 .04 .06 -.33*** .24*** .03 .10 .12 .28** .37**

-.02 -1.81*** -.31 .01 .12* .01 .14 .03 .06 -.34*** .24*** .03 .10 .13 .28**

-.00 -1.83*** -.27 -.02 .12** .01 .15 .03 .06 -.33*** .25*** .06 .09 .06 .30** .35*

.28 .34* 1.23***

188.19*** 18.1%

202.78*** 19.4%

-.16 .51** .52** -.29 202.39*** 19.4%

Notes: Entries are unstandardized logistic regression coefficients. Entries sharing the same subscript differ from each other significantly at p < .05. * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001. N = 1,469.

of time spent on social media related to the recall of Tiananmen more strongly in the period of memory mobilization. To further understand the findings, the same regression was conducted for two time periods separately. The results show that interpersonal discussion and time spent using social media have significant positive effects on the dependent variable only in April to June (β = 0.32 and 0.28 respectively, p < .05 in both cases). The two variables did not predict recall of the Tiananmen Incident from January to March. In other words, some communication activities had a significant effect on recall of Tiananmen only during memory mobilization. In addition, we also asked if the impact of communication activities would vary according to time periods and age cohorts simultaneously. Given the

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Table 3.6 Predictors of recalling Tiananmen in different time periods and for different age cohorts January to March 18-29 Sex Education Income Political interest Internal efficacy Collective efficacy External efficacy Support for democratization News attention Political discussion Social media: time spent Social media: political com. χ² Nagelkerke R² N

.13 .55 .04 .83 -.39 .17 -.51 .31 -.72def -.11 -.22 .10 8.78 16.3% 100

April to June

30 or above

18-29

30 or above

.54*a .09 -.02 .05 .21 -.02 -.37** .42***b .24e -.27g -.33h .57** 79.56*** 22.0% 510

.64 -.17 .06 .08 -.53 .22 .41 1.20*c 1.43**def -.13 .09 -.04 28.83** 31.6% 147

-.31a .10 .05 .26* -.07 .05 -.33** .14bc -.13f .37**g .34**h .20 93.83*** 17.9% 696

Notes: Entries are unstandardized logistic regression coefficients. Coefficients on the same row sharing the same subscript differ from each other significantly at p < .05. N = 1464. * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001.

focus on people with or without personal experiences of the event in 1989, the respondents were differentiated into those who were between 18 and 29 years old and all others. Logistic regression analysis (without the age cohort and time-period variables) was conducted separately in four subgroups. This split-sample approach was adopted partly for presentational reasons and partly to avoid the simultaneous inclusion of an excessive number of interaction terms. Based on the results of the split-sample analysis, further analysis using interaction terms was conducted post hoc. Table 3.6 summarizes the results. Without going into the details, suffice to highlight two major findings. First, the stronger effects of interpersonal political discussion and time spent on social media during memory mobilization remained applicable, but only to people aged 30 or above. Among 18-to-29-year-olds, neither social media communication nor interpersonal political discussion was related to recall of Tiananmen. Nevertheless, further analysis using interaction terms showed that the two three-way interactions (i.e., age cohort X time-period X discussion, and age cohort X time-period X time spent on social media) were both statistically insignificant. The interaction effects were not robust.

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Second, among the 18-to-29-year-olds, news attention related significantly to recall of Tiananmen in the period of memory mobilization. The coefficient of the news attention variable in the third column of Table 3 was significant. It also significantly differed from the corresponding coefficients in the three other columns. Further analysis showed that the three-way interaction among age cohort, time-period, and news attention was statistically significant (β = 1.298, p < .02). The interaction effect was therefore robust. Combined together, the results in Tables 3.5 and 3.6 suggest that communication activities during memory mobilization did affect whether the respondents recalled the Tiananmen Incident, but the mechanisms varied across age cohorts. In times of memory mobilization, citizens with personal memories of the event might talk about Tiananmen more frequently than usual in their everyday social interactions. Hence communication activities involving interpersonal exchanges, such as face-to-face or social media-based discussions, were related to the probability of recalling Tiananmen. In contrast, without personal memories of Tiananmen, the Incident might not feature in young people’s interpersonal conversations even during memory mobilization. Nevertheless, news coverage of Tiananmen-related issues is capable of leading some young people to “remember” Tiananmen as an important historical event.

The Power of Memory Mobilization This chapter has put forward memory mobilization as a process that has played a crucial role in the perpetuation of collective remembering of the Tiananmen Incident in Hong Kong. While the past decade has seen fast growing interest in the memory work of journalism and social movements (e.g., Muzaini, 2013; Zelizer, 2008; Zelizer & Tenenboim-Weinblatt, 2014), examining memory mobilization is a way for scholars to tie the study of collective memory more closely to other important social processes – mobilization for collective actions in this case. For journalism studies, the notion of memory mobilization may also help linking the concerns of collective memory to long-established issues in the field, such as agenda-setting. In addition, the analysis has shown that a concern with mobilization can lead to our appreciation of additional complexities and nuances in the multiple temporalities involved in collective remembering. In fact, the term memory mobilization itself juxtaposes a word that points to the past (memory) with a word that points to the future (mobilization). Hence memory mobilization can be a concept that can help capture a specific

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way retrospective and prospective memories (Tenenboim-Weinblatt, 2013) are articulated with each other. And since mobilization itself unfolds over time, different temporalities can be intricately intertwined, in the process creating additional and new meanings to the collective memory concerned. The survey analysis shows how multiple factors could work together to shape people’s recall of a historical event. The results showed that recall of Tiananmen was indeed more widespread in the two-month period before the candlelight vigil. This finding may not be surprising, but it provides empirical evidence that memories of historical events can vary across time depending on the efforts and strategies of social and political actors. Strictly speaking, the survey analysis does not show the direct effects of memory mobilization on individuals; what it shows is the influence of communication activities in the context of memory mobilization. Identifying memory mobilization as the broader context allows researchers to go beyond the conventional idea of media agenda-setting (Kligler-Vilenchik et al., 2014). Memory mobilization is a process that involves communication activities by a wide range of social actors taking place through an array of platforms. Therefore, various kinds of political communication activities are expected to be capable of enhancing the accessibility of Tiananmen in the minds of people during memory mobilization. The empirical findings provide some support for this general expectation, but there are also nuances. Mainstream news attention does not affect the recall of all citizens combined. One plausible reason is that, even with the efforts of social groups, media coverage of Tiananmen and the upcoming rally might not reach the level of intensity needed to have a direct effect on the public. Memory mobilization, therefore, did not seem to work primarily through direct media agenda-setting effects in the case of the Tiananmen commemoration in Hong Kong. In contrast, the two communication variables that had significant effects on the recall of Tiananmen in the period of memory mobilization both involved interpersonal interactions. It is interesting that time spent on social media had a significant effect on recall during memory mobilization. Political communication research typically f inds that political communication via social media, instead of frequencies of use, can influence political attitudes and behavior (Gil de Zúñiga, 2012; Tang & Lee, 2013). However, some researchers have emphasized that people may encounter political information incidentally in the online arena when they were engaging in other activities (Kim, Chen, & Gil de Zúñiga, 2013). Incidental exposure is particularly likely during periods of heightened political activities in society. In the present case, Tiananmen-related content should become highly prominent in the social

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media environment during memory mobilization. Hence people can easily “bump into the related contents” when they use social media for a variety of purposes. This can explain why amount of time spent on social media could affect the recall of Tiananmen. One limitation of the power of memory mobilization should be noted. The analysis shows that people’s levels of intention to participate in the vigil did not register a significant increase in the memory mobilization period. What the survey analysis shows is the capability of the memory mobilization process to shape individuals’ recall and perceptions of the opinion climate. Nonetheless, this capability is highly significant to the perpetuation of collective memory. Both what people believe and what people believe others believe are pertinent to collective remembering. The capability of memory mobilization to create the perception of a social consensus on Tiananmen commemoration is as important as whether it can boost individual-level vigil participation.

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4

Intergenerational Memory Transmission Abstract Chapter 4 discusses the process of intergenerational memory transmission. It analyzes how young people in the 2000s and early 2010s took up knowledge and developed understandings of the events in 1989 through a web of institutions including the family, the school, and the media. Nevertheless, the limitation of intergenerational transmission in the period is also illustrated through comparing different generations’ attitudes and affects toward June 4. Moreover, in-depth interviews shed light on the challenge of intergenerational memory transmission within specific social institutions and professions. Keywords: intergenerational memory transmission, generational differences, memories within organizations and institutions

When social organizations and civic groups in Hong Kong joined hands in 1989 to protest against the Chinese government during the Beijing student movement, they were following a long-established “coalition model” of social movement resource mobilization in the city. That is, when an important issue occurs, numerous social groups and associations would form an informal coalition to address the issue. Coalitions of this kind were often disbanded once the issue was resolved, or they might remain an informal alliance to facilitate continual work on the matter when needed.1 They rarely became formal organizations. Against this background, the establishment of the Alliance in 1989 was an exception to the norm. As a veteran activist recalled, protest leaders at the time understood that promoting democratization in China is likely to 1 One example of such an informal alliance is the Civil Human Rights Front established in 2002 during the controversy surrounding national security legislation.

Lee, Francis L.F., and Joseph M. Chan, Memories of Tiananmen: Politics and Processes of Collective Remembering in Hong Kong, 1989-2019. Amsterdam University Press 2021 doi: 10.5117/9789463728447_ch04

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be a long-term struggle. There were, in addition, concerns about the political risks involved in working on the topic. Movement leaders thus regarded a formal organization as necessary (Lee & Chan, 2011: 129). As time went on, it became clear to the core members of the Alliance that collective remembering of Tiananmen cannot be sustained in the long run if memories about the event are not passed onto subsequent generations. If young people born in the late 1980s and afterward are not successfully recruited into the mnemonic community of Tiananmen, collective memory can quickly fade away once the original generation steps down. Therefore, the Alliance has deliberately emphasized the need to “pass on the baton” since the early 2000s. The Hong Kong Alliance Youth Group was formed in 2001. But even before that, since the 1990s, the annual vigils almost invariably included sessions for members of the Youth Group or representatives of university student unions to give speeches. Media coverage and documentaries also paid regular attention to the question of how young people took up the memories of 1989. Photos of parents together with their children in the candlelight vigil are among the most frequently utilized visuals in the news. By the early 2010s, it seemed that the transmission of the collective memory of Tiananmen to young people was quite successful. In our vigil on-site survey in 2011, 34.4% of the participants were between 20 and 29 years old, whereas 23.7% were between 9 and 19 years old. In other words, 58.1% of the participants were not yet born or at most seven years old in 1989. In the 2014 vigil survey, 29.3% of the respondents were between 20 and 29 years old, and 20.0% were between 9 and 19. That is, 49.3% of the participants were not yet born or at most four years old in 1989. These figures point to the effective recruitment of a substantial number of young people into the mnemonic community. Part of the aim of this chapter is to explicate the process of intergenerational memory transmission. This chapter thus begins with an analysis of how young vigil participants in the early 2010s came to know about the Tiananmen Incident and became interested in it. It also examines the characteristics of these young people’s understanding of the Tiananmen Incident in order to see what version of collective memory about June 4 they have taken up. However, once we go beyond the candlelight vigil, there are notable limitations in the extent to which and the ways in which collective memories about Tiananmen were taken up by young people in the society. Part of this chapter will point to these limitations through data coming from various surveys and in-depth interviews. These limitations of intergenerational memory transmission might not have prevented the mobilization of young

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people from joining the candlelight vigil when the broader social context was conducive to continual commemoration, but they may become part of the basis for the weakening of collective remembering once the context changes. Therefore, in addition to explaining the process of intergenerational memory transmission, this chapter will also highlight the “seeds” for the challenges that collective remembering of Tiananmen would face since the mid-2010s.

The Process of Intergenerational Memory Transmission In collective memory studies, concerns with the question of intergenerational transmission of memories go back to the seminal work of Maurice Halbwachs (1992/1952). Successful intergenerational transmission of memories can influence young people’s social attitudes and political identities (Azarian-Ceccato, 2010; Svob, Brown, & Taksic, 2016). On the process of intergenerational memory transmission, Halbwachs emphasized the family context, which serves as the “living link between generations which ensures that the past is handed on via parents and grandparents and goes beyond the limits of individual experience” (Misztal, 2003: 84). Through interacting with parents and grandparents, children can learn about the basic facts of historical events and their elders’ personal experiences related to them (Winter, 2010). More broadly, children learn within family “the socially appropriate narrative forms for recounting the past as well as the tacit rules of remembrance that help separate the conventionally memorable from that which can […] be relegated to oblivion” (Zerubavel, 2000: 5). The family can therefore be an important site for mnemonic socialization. Certainly, the work of mnemonic socialization is also done by or within other institutional contexts such as schools, museums, courts, libraries, and the media. For the following analysis, schools and the media are particularly important. Similar to family, schools constitute contexts for interpersonal interactions and hence the transmission of “communicative memory,” i.e., memories shared and sustained through social interactions and communication (Assmann, 2010). Notably, within schools, students do not only pick up knowledge from teachers; they can also communicate among themselves and thus develop a common understanding of the past that belongs to the peer group. As Pickering and Keightley (2013) emphasized, intergenerational transmission of memory should be understood as involving a dynamics between both vertical transmission of memory from one generation to the next and horizontal transmission through which people of a generation

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come to share the memory. The schools are particularly likely to be the places where the latter occurs. The mass media, meanwhile, constitute the main platform for the construction and contestation of collective memory about historical events in the wider society (Edy, 2006). Through practices ranging from coverage of commemorative rituals to invoking historical events in news coverage, from the production of historical drama to reruns of old media materials, the media constitute a signif icant source of knowledge about the past (Edgerton & Rollins, 2003; Lee, Li & Lee, 2011; Volkmer, 2006; Weispfenning, 2003). Young people can pick up knowledge about a past event inadvertently through their habitual media consumption, and those who have gained an initial interest in an event can proactively look for relevant media materials. The latter practice, in particular, was facilitated by the archiving of media materials in places such as libraries and, most recently, online websites. It should be noted that we do not treat the school, the family, and the media simply as three institutions working separately. Some studies have shown that various mnemonic socializing agents can serve as “substitutes” for each other (Coopmans, van der Lippe, & Lubbers, 2017). But the present analysis emphasizes the fact that individual youngsters are embedded in the institutions simultaneously. Hence the school, the family, and the media are conceptualized as forming a web of institutions within which the life histories of individual youngsters unfold. The crucial question is not to compare the relative power and influence of the family, the media, and the school; it is how the roles played by the three institutions may complement each other. In other words, we are particularly interested in illustrating how social communications within the family, within the school, and through the media are interrelated, forming a dynamic process of mnemonic socialization through which some young people took up the society’s collective memory about Tiananmen. Successful intergenerational transmission of memories does not entail the sameness of the meanings of an event to different generations. For Tiananmen commemoration in Hong Kong, the question of memory transmission is not only whether the young generation knows about the events in 1989 but also whether they would take up the “duty” to remember. Merely knowing about the existence of a historical event is very different from partaking in the collective memory of an event held by the society. Of course, a person cannot partake in collective remembering if s/he does not even know that the event existed. But one can know about a historical event without having the urge to commemorate it. In fact, even opponents of collective remembering of Tiananmen know about the original event.

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On the other hand, it is possible for the young generation to acknowledge the duty to remember without understanding the original events in exactly the same way as the older generations do. People can also feel the urge to commemorate an event without detailed knowledge about it. In fact, many studies in the collective memory literature have shown that people of different generations told stories about the same past event in different ways (Aguilar & Ramirez-Barat, 2019; Muller, Bermejo, & Hirst, 2016; Zittoun, 2017). Tschuggnall and Welzer (2002), for instance, found that the stories told about the Third Reich by family members of different generations in Germany are often different from each other. They argued that past experiences are recounted by older people in light of present circumstances, and members of the younger generations “do not only listen to the stories and ‘store’ them, but ‘negotiate’ and ‘rewrite’ them against the background of their own experiences, interests, and cultural frameworks” (pp. 132-133). Conceptually, Pickering and Keightley (2013: 121) used the term “mnemonic imagination” to refer “to the ways in which we continuously qualify, adapt, refine and re-synthesize past experience, our own and that of others, into qualitatively new understandings of ourselves and other people.” Memory transmission involves young people exercising an act of imagination constrained by the concern of truthfulness. Nonetheless, the extent to which the younger generation would rearticulate the extant collective memory is likely to depend on their formative experiences. Here, it should be pointed out that the term “generation” has two distinctive meanings in the collective memory literature. Many studies on intergenerational memory transmission, including the original work of Halbwachs (1922/1952), implicitly treated generation in biological and relational terms. That is, the difference between the “older” and “younger” generations resides merely in the time gap between their births. Given the significance of the family in social life, the time gap between two successive generations is often presumed to be about 20 to 30 years. In contrast to the idea of biological and relational generation, Mannheim (1952) offered a sociological theory of generation and social change. He defined a generation as a group of people sharing the same “location” defined socially and temporally. A generation is therefore marked by what they commonly experience as they grow up. In this process, what the young people experience during their adolescent years is particularly important. This is because adolescents are intellectually mature enough to understand relatively complex public affairs. But at the same time, they are newcomers to the public world. Their lack of prior experience makes them particularly easy to be impressed. Therefore, the major social and political happenings

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during a person’s adolescent years can shape the person’s worldview. It follows that a younger age cohort may take up a worldview that is very similar to or very different from that of the older age cohort depending on the similarity of the formative experiences of the two cohorts. But generally speaking, young people living in a society with rapid social and political changes are likely to constitute a generation with their own character. Mannheim has also noted that the time gap between generations having substantively different characters will become shorter when social changes become quicker (Pilcher, 1994). For the study of collective memory, one important implication of Mannheim’s perspective is that people of different generations are likely to see different events as particularly significant to themselves and to the world. We will revisit this critical years hypothesis in the second part of this chapter. Meanwhile, another important implication of Mannheim’s perspective is that the extent of selectivity and rearticulation exercised by the younger generation when they take up the collective memory of the older generation should be influenced by the younger generation’s formative experiences. The question is whether the younger generation has the kind of formative experiences that compel them to re-evaluate the collective memory concerned. In the case of collective remembering of the Tiananmen crackdown in Hong Kong, young people had started vocally questioning the relevance of the Tiananmen crackdown to Hong Kong since the mid-2010s, and this phenomenon can be understood in terms of how a “new generation” found the need to re-evaluate a society’s collective memory in light of their own formative experiences. This issue will be addressed in Chapter 7. However, the present chapter focuses on the period from the early 2000s to the early 2010s, a period in which a relatively non-conflictive process of memory transmission and uptake occurred. This chapter thus begins with an analysis of how intergenerational memory transmission was achieved. The analysis is based on in-depth interviews with vigil participants conducted in 2010 and 2014. A total of 30 interviews were conducted in 2010; 15 interviewees aged between 15 and 29 (i.e., not yet born or younger than eight years old in 1989); another 15 interviewees were 35 or above (i.e., 14 years old or above in 1989). In 2014, 34 interviews were conducted, with 18 young interviewees and 16 mature interviewees. All the interviews were semi-structured. They lasted for above an hour on average. The following utilizes mainly the data from the young interviewees. Data from the mature interviewees is employed when between-generations comparisons are made.

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Discovering the Tiananmen Incident One main question asked in the interviews with young vigil participants was how they learned about the Tiananmen Incident. Specif ically, we asked them to recall the first time they heard of “June 4.” Understandably, the young interviewees found it difficult to pin down the exact occasion. David, who was born in 1986 and was a research assistant at a university when interviewed in 2010, said: “I knew there was such an event all along […]. Watched the news. At the beginning, I was small and did not know what the event was, and I wouldn’t think too much about it.” Betty, a university student studying kindergarten education when interviewed in 2010, similarly recounted, “In fact, I knew that there was this event all along, because mom and dad talked about it, the news talked about it, every year.” Remarkably, both interviewees emphasized that they “knew all along” largely because references to June 4 were pervasive in the mediated environment. The above quotes point to the role played by the news media and the family in the intergenerational transmission of collective memory, but the importance of the media and the family does not necessarily reside in teaching young people about the “contents” of the Tiananmen Incident. As Felix, born in 1994, put it, “So first there was television news, and it appeared every year in TV programs. But it was only a matter of knowing that this thing existed; I didn’t understand what it was.” Regarding family, while there are variations in the extent to which parents would talk to the children in detail about June 4, the majority of our young interviewees remarked that their parents did not elaborate much. Aaron, born in January 1990, said, “[my parents] mentioned June 4, that is, they said June 4 this, June 4 that, but they didn’t go deep, just mentioned the term.” This is the case even for interviewees who were brought by their parents to the vigil when they were small. For example, Irene, who was studying journalism in college when interviewed in 2010, said that she did not have any specific feelings when her mother brought her to the vigil when she was nine years old. Her mother did not explain what the people in Victoria Park were doing. Richard, born in 1988, said: It is difficult to pinpoint a time [when I knew about the Incident] […], because for many families in Hong Kong, including mine, the Incident exists like a shadow. So since I was small there was the acknowledgment that the event occurred, but my family members seldom talked about it.

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Interestingly, Richard recalled that “whenever there was news that mentioned June 4, my parents would automatically come out and sit in front of the television.” Richard felt curious because he thought his parents did not pay close attention to the news all the time, “so why would they come out and watch this?” That is, Richard got a sense of the “specialness” of June 4 through observing his parents’ behavior. Yet the family and the media still constituted only an environment within which a vague sense of “June 4 being an important event” was acquired. Then, how did young people derive a more substantive understanding of the Tiananmen Incident? Here, a finding that stands out is the importance of the secondary school. Jessica recalled how she first learned about the details of the Tiananmen Incident through a video and a talk offered by the school at the weekly congregation. More typically, many young interviewees had clear memories about how specific teachers, usually in junior high school, taught them about the Tiananmen Incident in class. In one case, the memory was about a “fifty-something vice principal” in a literature class. In another case, it was about a teacher talking about the Incident in a “national education” lesson. Notably, what many young interviewees remembered from these “first lessons” is not only what the teachers said but also how their teachers talked. Irene recalled, “[the teacher] kept quiet for a moment before [he talked]. Maybe he knew we didn’t know about the event, and didn’t know how to explain to us in simple terms. Then he finished quickly, the students also sat quietly after listening.” Irene recalled that she could feel the “gravity” of the matter. Other interviewees remarked that their teachers were particularly solemn and serious when talking about the event. Aaron remembered his history teacher as a humorous person who used jokes to help students understand historical events, but the teacher did not joke at all when talking about June 4. In other words, what the teachers conveyed were not merely their cognitive memories about the events, but also part of their emotional imprint. In a few cases, information about June 4 might come from multiple teachers more or less simultaneously. Bernard recalled: It was form 3. The f irst year that teacher taught me Chinese. He was peculiar in that he did not like teaching the textbook stuff. He liked to talk about public affairs […]. When he talked about June 4, I could see tears in his eyes; he was agitated when talking […]. And beside that Chinese teacher, my history teacher in form 3 also talked about it. And others, there was a mathematics teacher who would talk about the event.

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I remembered that when he talked, he was not as agitated as the Chinese teacher, but he was very serious.

Of course, the teachers and the lessons did not influence all students. But at least some students were impressed, and they might then find other ways to deepen their understanding of June 4. Schools continue to serve as an important context for “further learning.” First, students could engage in related school activities. For example, Henry organized an exhibition related to Tiananmen when he served as a student association leader in school. Jessica participated in a stage drama about the student movement when she was in secondary five. She recalled: I just finished [public examination] at that time. So there was some free time, and teachers asked me to go back and help out, organizing some talks about June 4 […]. Then I remember I joined a drama, very short, just a performance for schoolmates during the weekly congregation […]. I don’t remember very well, I was probably playing one of the movement leaders […]. And I remember the song “Mother, I did not do anything wrong.” The lyrics were very impressive. Although I didn’t experience the event, my understanding was deepened after the drama performance.

Second, schools facilitated young people to learn about June 4 with their peers. The exhibition and stage drama mentioned above were essentially group activities. Co-learning also occurred in more informal settings. Amy said, “There were discussions among classmates, because sometimes we watched related video clips, or when it came to the time [around June 4], we would talk.” More interestingly, Eric, who studied journalism at university when interviewed in 2010, came to understand June 4 much better in secondary five, because “one or two of my friends also studied history.” There was an informal competition among the friends regarding who was more knowledgeable. “[If you] want to beat them you have to look up more information, so I came to know a bit more.” Various information sources were drawn upon in the process of learning. Many young interviewees mentioned the Internet as a source of further information. The news media continued to play a role, whereas some mentioned books and libraries. What is important to note is that media consumption and interpersonal communication were closely intertwined. Learning at school, for some interviewees, fed back into family interactions. Aaron even said that, while his parents gave him a simple introduction to June 4 when he was small, later it was him who explained to his parents

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about what happened. More typically, media use and discussions among peers were interlinked. For instance, when asked if she would look for relevant information on the Internet, Amy said: Yes, sometimes my classmates watched something and then I would watch it, or sometimes I just went online to look at it, especially this year since I had participated in the vigil […]. You watched more and you found out different voices saying different things. But I found the video clips and audio clips to be more trustworthy because there were the records. If you just say it or write about it, it could be made up […]. And I would try to figure out why there are different views and voices. So I would go to find it out or discuss with classmates.

This quote illustrates the point that learning about June 4 is not necessarily a straightforward matter. Young people could encounter a range of views. Some of them would proactively resolve the puzzle by themselves. Although schools do seem to be particularly important for the young interviewees, the different institutions and agents can better be understood as working complementarily in the process of mnemonic socialization. The news media and the family constituted the social environment in which even small children could derive a sense of the significance of the event. Teachers then more formally introduced the event to students. Young people then drew upon a range of sources as they continued to learn about the event together with their peers. Combined together, what our young interviewees went through was a dynamic process of gradual discovery and incremental learning. Essentializing the Tiananmen Incident What are the characteristics of young people’s understanding of June 4 derived from the process of gradual discovery? In the interviews, we asked the interviewees how they would introduce “June 4” to a person who does not know about the event. The following quotes from two interviewees are illustrative of several aspects of young people’s understanding of June 4: So there was a large group of university students; maybe Zhao Zhiyang passed away that year, and he was a symbol; he represented incorruptibility and justice. So the students wanted to protect his legacy, and they organized rallies. But the Central Government thought they were opposing the government, or the university students were supposed to be the future,

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but the students put up resistance; it was kind of embarrassing to the government. So the government dispatched the army to crack down on the movement, and used tanks to handle a group of unarmed university students. (Irene, interviewed in 2010) I think I can name some of the people, such as commemorating Zhao Ziyang […]. Oh I actually am not so sure. Just in my impression there were several names, there was Zhao Ziyang, there was Deng Xiaoping, and then there was that one who advocated crackdown […]. I don’t remember very clearly, and then there was a person, the president of the country, who said the students’ actions should be commended; there should not be suppression, but he was overthrown. (Bernard, interviewed in 2014)

A few points can be noted. First, the interviewees did not always get the basic facts right. Both Irene and Bernard confused Hu Yaobang with Zhao Zhiyang and misnamed the latter as the person who passed away in 1989. Of course, it does not mean that they knew nothing – at least they knew that the students were reacting to the death of a leader, and Bernard had the vague idea that there were internal power struggles among the Chinese leaders. He just could not provide an account with accurate details. Second, the accounts did not put the happenings in 1989 into a broader historical context. They focused exclusively on what happened in the months of 1989. Third, the moral evaluation embedded in the narratives, especially the one offered by Irene, focused almost exclusively on the Chinese government’s use of violence against students who were “unarmed.” Not all young interviewees’ narratives shared the above characteristics. Aaron put the Tiananmen Incident into a historical context beginning with the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 and the subsequent economic reform. Obviously, interviewees who spent more efforts on learning about June 4 could produce more detailed narratives. Gordon, who was 17 years old when interviewed in 2010, had actively participated in many public affairs related events organized by a local non-governmental organization (NGO). He offered a detailed account of the Tiananmen Incident from the death of Hu Yaobang to the violence on June 4. Eric, who competed with his peers on historical knowledge, explained the students’ commemoration of Hu Yaobang in terms of Hu being a reform-minded leader. Commemoration of Hu, in his narrative, led to discussions among the students, who concluded that economic reform should be accompanied by political reform. This led to the student movement and the later confrontations with the government.

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However, the point here is that generational transmission of collective memory does not require the younger generation to take up all the details associated with the original events. Some interviewees had better knowledge about the happenings in 1989 when compared to the others, but it does not entail that the transmission of collective memory is less successful in the latter cases. Going back to Irene, the first interviewee quoted in this subsection – while her narrative was simplistic and included factual errors, she had definitely taken up a certain definition of the essence of the Tiananmen Incident. For her, June 4 was essentialized into a moral matter of a government using violence to suppress innocent civilians. Notably, some mature interviewees would also highlight the killing of innocent people as the essence of the event. Here, the June 4 narrative by one mature interviewee is illustrative. Mr. Guo was a 35-year-old editor at a leisure magazine when he was interviewed in 2010. He began his June 4 narrative by highlighting the nature of China’s political system: “China is a place governed by a single party, there is only one party, and this regime controls all the power, does not share its power with other parties.” But then he very briefly summarized the happenings in May and June. Then he said, To put it simply, for [the leaders] it was a power struggle; they could not allow others to challenge their authority. In the end they killed those people who put forward the requests such that they could maintain power. Too simple? I actually don’t like talking about the details of the event with other people. I prefer summarizing an event. I feel that this is the essence of the event, and I will tell people [the essence].

Although Mr. Guo explicitly began by putting the student movement within a political context, similar to many of the young interviewees, he ultimately defined the essence of June 4 as a government killing its people. The main difference is that he deliberately simplified the narrative despite his better knowledge about details and contexts, whereas many young interviewees were indeed unfamiliar with the details. Therefore, one may argue that many young interviewees were successful in taking up the society’s collective memory about June 4 in the sense that they had taken up an essentialized version of it. This argument can be supported by the fact that, while some young interviewees were uncertain about the details of the event, they were not uncertain about its essence. When asked to narrate June 4, Frank mentioned a few pieces of facts in a rather unorganized manner. But then he stressed: “I would tell my friends that guns were really fired and people got killed, and many people were

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killed. I think this is the fact, firing guns.” The repetition of “guns being fired” served to highlight his certainty about this particular piece of fact, and he regarded it as “the point.” In addition, this understanding of the essence may shape the youngsters’ narratives in specific ways. Take the following passage from Andy: In fact, what the students wanted was very simple. They only wanted things like democracy and free speech. They did not use violent methods; they only sat down in front of Tiananmen, had hunger strikes, and handed in petition letters. They even talked to the leadership. In fact, what they did was completely not aggressive, not influencing public order, but the Chinese government’s ultimate method was to suppress with violence. And it was not just beating them; it was the use of guns, the use of tanks to roll over them, to shoot them, to stop them from speaking.

Rhetorically, Andy emphasized the modesty of the students’ demands and the peacefulness of their actions, and then used it to contrast the severity of the state’s response. The disproportionality of the state’s response was thereby highlighted. For many young interviewees, June 4 is not only essentialized; it is essentialized as a moral more than a political matter. This can be discerned from the June 4 narratives quoted above and from the fact that most of the young interviewees objected to the mixing of June 4 with other political matters. Historically, the Tiananmen Incident was articulated with democratization in Hong Kong. In the late 2000s and early 2010s, the pro-democracy activists often used the June 4 vigil as a platform to promote the July 1 protest – the annual pro-democracy protest in the city since the early 2000s (Lee & Chan, 2011: 184-197). Yet most of our young interviewees, especially those interviewed in 2010, were against the activists putting the two together. Gordon emphasized that he joined the vigil to commemorate the dead, so “why do you talk about such distant matters?” Jessica even argued that the vigil was supposed to be all about commemorating the dead. Hence criticizing the Chinese government – e.g., on matters of contemporary human rights in China – should not be a part of the vigil. In contrast, the mature interviewees generally agreed that it is legitimate to talk about contemporary human rights issues in China in the candlelight vigil. While many of them also opined that the June 4 candlelight vigil and the July 1 protest dealt with different matters, they did not object to people promoting the July 1 protest during the vigil. Some mature interviewees stated that they “understood” the strategic concern behind the activists.

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Although they might not be wholeheartedly supportive of how the activists linked the two actions, they did not have strong feelings against it. Defending the June 4 commemoration As discussed in previous chapters, collective memory about June 4 has been subject to negotiation and contestation in Hong Kong society over the years. For instance, the CCP continued to insist upon the argument that the Central Government’s correct and decisive handling of the event in 1989 has contributed to the economic development and stability of the country since then. Although public proclamation of such arguments might lead to condemnation, such discourses could have circulated in the society through interpersonal talks among private citizens. We labeled this kind of claims “memory-blurring discourses,” i.e., discourses which attempt to challenge and blur people’s memory and moral judgment about the event. An important question is how the young participants responded to such discourses. In our in-depth interviews conducted in 2010 and 2014, we deliberately asked our interviewees to respond to two widely circulated memory-blurring discourses: 1) the students in 1989 were too radical and hence partly responsible for the tragic ending (the wrongful student thesis), and 2) China has experienced huge economic development since 1989, so people should look at the event from a more “objective” perspective (the economic development thesis). Interestingly, when compared to the mature interviewees, the young interviewees in 2010 and in 2014 seemed to be even more capable of denouncing the memory-blurring discourses straightforwardly. On the wrongful student thesis, many young interviewees simply pointed out that, no matter what mistakes the students have made, killing people is a much greater moral wrong. As Eric put it, “the students definitely made mistakes, but their mistakes can’t be compared to the government’s.” Henry opined that the wrongfulness of the government’s actions should be “the premise”: Accept the premise, then you can talk about what the students did at the time […]. Those issues can be analyzed […]. But those secondary issues cannot be used to justify the repression. This is unacceptable.

On the economic development thesis, most of the young interviewees in 2010 simply pointed out that morality and economics should not be mixed up. They were capable of using simple examples and analogies to challenge the thesis. For instance, Aaron used an everyday life analogy, stating that a

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father cannot treat a mother violently simply because he is the breadwinner. Eric used historical analogy, pointing out that Germany and Japan should not forget their Nazi or imperialist past simply because they are now economically developed. Interestingly, in the in-depth interviews conducted in 2014, many young interviewees provided more elaborate arguments against the economic development thesis. Dickson said: [Despite its quick growth] I would tell them that there are many problems behind the economic development, such as factories with extremely bad working conditions, the serious violation of rights, collusion between government officials and business people, or many large-scale developments are actually damaging the natural environment.

Gigi, another interviewee in 2014, emphasized the persistent problem of economic inequalities in the country: “You can’t produce the trickle-down effect; the money up there does not reach ordinary people. The system is exploitative and you don’t have the means to guarantee people’s livelihood.” Yet another interviewee, Richard, emphasized the significance of other values beyond economic development: “So these numbers or monies are not the most important things in life. If everything is driven by the economy, where is our life?” Richard went on to talk about not so much the situation in mainland China as the life of Hong Kong people: “Going to work, going home, going to work, going home, going to work, going home, that’s my impression of Hong Kong people.” He then concluded by saying: “I am more concerned with cultural satisfaction than economic satisfaction.” One way to understand these responses from the 2014 interviewees is to see them as related to the growth of postmaterialist ideas and discourses in Hong Kong since the early 2010s. Survey studies have illustrated the turn toward postmaterial values among young people. They saw non-material values such as freedom and self-expression as more important than materialistic values such as economic development and security (Lee, 2018b; Wong & Wan, 2009). Postmaterialistic ideas and arguments, such as the injustices behind rapid economic development, the possible relationship between economic development and inequalities, and the presence of values other than material well-being, were widely circulated in the public arena (Lee, 2018b). Although it is beyond the analysis here to directly establish the linkage, the responses offered by our young interviewees in 2014 had seemingly drawn upon such claims. In any case, when compared to the young interviewees, the mature interviewees were relatively less dismissive when responding to the

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memory-blurring discourses. For instance, when discussing the economic development thesis, Mr. Fu said: “I subjectively disagree. Objectively, if you ask me why, I can’t give you evidence.” Mr. Fu went on and argued that, based on his own experiences in mainland China, the system was unfair, and there were many people with privileges. The substantive counterargument is therefore not different from that offered by some of the young interviewees. But what is notable is that Mr. Fu prefaced his counterargument with the concession that he lacked “objective evidence” for it. In another example, Mr. Hui voluntarily mentioned the presence of people who held the economic development thesis. When asked what he thought of it, he said: “Sometimes I am tired of arguing with them. They have their arguments and reasons, but at least I don’t agree. And in fact it’s hypothetical. It’s difficult to judge who’s right and who’s wrong.” Mr. Hui did argue against the economic development thesis after the above opening. But he acknowledged that different people have different reasons. In fact, although both Mr. Fu and Mr. Hui insisted that they disagreed with the economic development thesis, they fell short of dismissing the argument out of hand. Certainly, there were mature interviewees who exhibited higher levels of certainty when arguing against the memory-blurring discourses. Mr. Chan, for example, said that he definitely disagreed with the economic development thesis. He used the examples of several Eastern European countries to make the case that democratization and social development can happen together. He remarked that the developments in Hungary and the Czech Republic are not bad. Although he recognized that China’s economy may indeed be better than that of Eastern Europe taken as a whole, he argued that economic development is only one aspect of social development. Nevertheless, despite individual variations, the mature interviewees were more likely to exhibit uncertainties when asked to respond to the memory-blurring discourses. Why do such between-generations differences exist? Two reasons can be suggested. First, it is plausible that the simplified and essentialized understanding of June 4 upheld by many young interviewees has allowed them to respond to the memory-blurring discourses more straightforwardly. That is, as June 4 is essentialized into a matter of a government killing its people, it is not difficult for the young interviewees to see the students’ mistakes as trivial and China’s subsequent economic development as irrelevant. In contrast, the more detailed understanding of the Tiananmen Incident by the mature interviewees may paradoxically prevent them from dismissing the memory-blurring discourses out of hand.

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Second, the social contexts in which the mature and young interviewees encountered the memory-blurring discourses differed. Many mature interviewees said they had friends and family members upholding the wrongful student thesis and the economic development thesis. Mr. Ji, for instance, opined that people around him used to be predominantly supportive toward the student protesters. But some had started to change their views, saying that China would not have today’s development if there had been no crackdown at that time. He said he was surprised that people around him would think about the matter using that logic. In this situation, the difficulty of arguing against the memory-blurring discourses thus resided partly in the difficulty in handling disagreement among friends and acquaintances. Another interviewee, Ms. Hung, even said that she had lost a few friends in the past due to their different opinions on June 4. Since then she refrained from arguing with others on the matter. In comparison, the young interviewees typically encountered the memory-blurring discourses as statements made either by strangers or by politicians and government officials in the news. Hence the statements can be dismissed without repercussions to their social relationships. Besides, as Chapter 2 has illustrated, the memory-blurring discourses were often criticized or even scandalized by the media. In the case of government officials making the statements, the lack of credibility of the officials can even provide an additional reason for dismissing the statements made. As Gordon recalled his own reaction when hearing about Chief Executive Donald Tsang’s version of the economic development thesis in 2009: “The moment I heard of it I thought Donald Tsang went crazy.”

Generational Differences The previous section shows that, without personally experiencing the event, the young vigil participants’ grasp of the details of the 1989 student movement was predictably weaker than the elder generation’s. But having a simplified understanding does not mean that their judgment regarding Tiananmen would be more ambiguous or uncertain. On the contrary, their essentialized understanding has seemingly allowed them to dismiss certain memory-blurring discourses even more straightforwardly when compared to some of the mature interviewees. However, one might still question if the simplistic and essentialized understanding of the Tiananmen Incident is conducive to the sustaining of collective remembering in the long run. This sentiment was expressed by

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Chow Man Fong, who served as the chairperson of the Hong Kong Alliance Youth Group from 2013 to 2014: As I said earlier, from 2002 to now, you see some effects of what [we] did. So many young people appear [in the vigil] every year, but whether this really helps the heritage transmission is another question […]. What do they know? Other than the commemoration spirit of the rally, their respect for and identification with it, do they really know what happened on June 4? […]. I have an impression about today’s young people, though not everyone is like this. So there was a person stopping the tank, Li Peng was the bad guy, Zhao Ziyang was the good guy, and it started on April 15, and there was the massacre on June 4. As I said, it missed a lot, is it right to have such shallow transmission?2

What Chow put forward is an open question that cannot be easily answered. From a more optimistic perspective, young people can continue to learn and deepen their understanding of the Tiananmen Incident once they started joining the mnemonic community. After all, participating in the candlelight vigil is not the endpoint of mnemonic socialization. Nevertheless, beyond how young people understand the Tiananmen Incident, existing data does point to certain limitations in the intergenerational memory transmission process even if we focus only on the vigil participants. First, young participants were relatively less likely to regard the Tiananmen Incident as having had a huge impact on themselves. In the vigil on-site survey in 2010, we asked the respondents whether they saw the Incident as having led them to value freedom more, support democracy more, care more about China, and fear the CCP more. Since the survey in 2010 interviewed people aged 15 or above, we differentiated the respondents into those between 15 and 29 (i.e., not yet born or up to 8 years old in 1989), those between 30 and 49 (i.e., 9 to 28 years old in 1989), and those who were 50 years old or above (i.e., 29 years old or above in 1989). The answers were registered using a five-point scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Table 4.1 shows the percentages of respondents from each age group indicating “strongly agree.”3 While more than 80% of the respondents aged 50 or above strongly agreed that the Tiananmen 2 Personal interview conducted in October 2014. 3 We focus on “strongly agree” only because most vigil participants would tend to agree with such impact anyway. Percentages indicating “strongly agree” constitute a better indicator of the extent of perceived impact for the respondents belonging to the different age groups.

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Table 4.1 Vigil participants’ perceptions of the impact of June 4 on themselves (year 2010)

The June 4 incident led me to…   care about China more*   value freedom more*   support democracy more*   fear CCP*

15 to 29 years old

30 to 49 years old

50 years old or above

33.7 54.9 50.5 13.8

46.9 72.2 69.1 21.7

63.0 85.2 82.7 23.5

Note: Entries are percentages of respondents within each group who “strongly agreed” with the statement. * indicates that there is a significant difference (p < .05) among the age groups on the variable in a Chi-Square test following a cross-tabulation exercise.

Incident made them value freedom and democracy more, only slightly more than half of those between 15 and 29 chose the answer. More than 60% of respondents aged 50 or above strongly agreed that Tiananmen led them to care about China more, whereas only about one-third of the youngest respondents did so. The youngest respondents were also relatively less likely to agree that Tiananmen led them to fear CCP more. Second, while it might be relatively easy to let young people know about the basic facts of the Tiananmen Incident, it was more difficult to pass on the emotional imprint. The vigil on-site surveys in 2013 and 2014 asked the respondents whether they experience a number of emotions when thinking about June 4. Answers were registered on a scale ranging from “absolutely no” to “very strong.” As Table 4.2 shows, the vigil participants were particularly likely to experience the emotion of anger when thinking about June 4, followed by the emotions of sadness and sorrow. The relative significance of the five emotions was the same for respondents of different age groups. However, the youngest respondents were the least likely to report having very strong emotional reactions when thinking about June 4. Certainly, the differences between Tables 4.1 and 4.2 are neither surprising nor extreme. Based on Table 4.2 one might argue that the younger generation had actually taken up the emotional imprint to a certain extent. The presence of some generational differences by no means implies that intergenerational memory transmission was a failure. Yet a closer look at such differences should allow us to see more clearly the power and limitations of memory transmission. Beyond the vigil participants, the following will illustrate the characteristics of generational differences in attitudes toward Tiananmen that exist in the society at large as well as the presence of generational differences

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Table 4.2 Vigil participants’ emotional responses to the Tiananmen Incident (year 2013 and 2014) 9 to 29 years old

30 to 49 years old

50 years old or above

Year 2013  Fear*  Sadness*  Anger*  Sorrow*  Anxiety*

4.1 26.4 39.4 21.1 3.7

6.9 43.6 53.5 35.6 7.9

15.6 45.5 57.1 29.9 9.1

Year 2014  Fear*  Sadness  Anger*  Sorrow*  Anxiety*

6.4 26.4 29.8 17.8 4.3

8.7 31.5 37.7 24.1 6.2

17.2 37.4 50.3 30.3 5.5

Notes: Entries are percentages reporting “very strong” on a five-point scale ranging from not at all to very strong. * indicates that there is a significant difference (p < .05) among the age groups on the variable in a Chi-Square test following a cross-tabulation exercise.

within certain social institutions that play crucial roles in the collective memory process. Evaluating generational differences in the society Many survey-based studies on collective memory of historical events have focused on the critical years hypothesis (sometimes called the impressionable years hypothesis) (Osborne, Sears & Valentino, 2011; Schuman & Scott, 1989). The core idea is that adolescents are intellectually mature enough to understand social and political affairs, yet they are naïve about such affairs and hence are particularly impressionable. As a result, when asked to name historical events important to one’s society, people tend to name events happening during their adolescent years. 4 Numerous studies have supported this critical years hypothesis (e.g., Corning, 2010; Jennings & Zhang, 2005), though some studies have shown that the impact of age cohort may interact with other factors (Griffin, 2004) and depend on the characteristics of the events (Corning & Schuman, 2015). Corning, Gaidys and Schuman 4 In addition, some psychologists argued that people’s tendency to recall events from their youth is partly rooted in an underlying cultural script about a person’s life course (Koppel & Berntsen, 2014).

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Table 4.3  Recall of significant historical events by different age groups (year 2014)

Hong Kong handover (1997) a Tiananmen Incident (1989) a SARS outbreak (2003) a Manila hostage crisis (2010) a Political reform (ongoing) a Election of CY Leung (2012) a Individual traveling scheme (ongoing) a July 1 demonstration (2003) 2008 financial crisis (2008) a Article 23 debate (2003 / ongoing) a 1967urban riots (1967) a 1997 financial crisis (1997) a Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) Anti-national education movement (2012) a

18-29

30-39

40-49

50 or above

39.1 11.8 16.7 10.6 14.8 9.4 7.3 4.5 5.2 6.7 0.3 3.6 0.3 3.9

45.1 27.4 10.7 11.0 3.2 6.0 6.3 2.8 2.5 4.1 0.0 1.9 0.3 1.3

42.9 28.0 16.4 11.8 11.0 9.2 2.6 2.3 1.2 2.3 0.9 4.6 0.9 1.2

37.1 22.3 9.3 6.6 4.5 2.6 3.6 2.6 2.6 1.3 4.9 0.8 1.1 0.0

Notes: Entries are percentages of respondents belonging to the age group that named the event. The bracketed number refers to the year of occurrence of the event, but it would be indicated as “ongoing” if the item refers not to an event but an ongoing issue. N = 1,530 for the whole sample, 330 for 18 to 29 years old, 317 for 30 to 39 years old, 347 for 40 to 49 years old, and 529 for 50 years old or above. Items marked with superscript “a” are recalled to statistically significantly different extents among the age groups in a Chi-square test (p < .05).

(2013), in particular, found that period effects tend to prevail on recalls of transformative events, i.e., historical events that led to fundamental social and political transformation of a society tend to be recalled by people who experienced the events regardless of their age when the events occurred. For the analysis here, the difference between the critical years hypothesis and period effects is unimportant. Both notions point to the expectation that people not having experienced a historical event would be less likely to recall it as important. Table 4.3 shows the results of age cohort differences in event recall among Hong Kong people derived from the population survey in 2014 (total percentages of respondents recalling the various events were reported in Chapter 3). Although the survey was not designed to test the critical years hypothesis, many findings in the table are consistent with the idea that different generations tend to remember events of their own time. The 1967 urban riots, for instance, was recalled almost exclusively by people aged 50 or above. In contrast, the youngest cohort was the most likely to recall a number of events that occurred in the 2000s and beyond, including the July 1 demonstration in 2003, the SARS outbreak in 2003, the global financial crisis in 2008, and the anti-national education movement in 2012.

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The Hong Kong handover was the most frequently recalled event by people in all four age groups, but respondents between 30 and 39 years old – who were between 13 and 22 years old in 1997 – were the most likely to name the handover. More importantly, the Tiananmen Incident was indeed least likely to be recalled by respondents aged 18 to 29 in 2014, i.e., those who were not yet born or at most 4 years old in 1989. For these respondents, the percentage naming Tiananmen was even lower than the percentages naming the SARS outbreak and political reform – two more recent events that were personally experienced by this group. Meanwhile, the critical years hypothesis would predict respondents between 40 and 49 in 2014 – who were between 15 and 24 in 1989 – to recall Tiananmen the most frequently. Yet the findings show that people aged between 30 and 39 and those between 40 and 49 in 2014 were virtually equally likely to recall Tiananmen, and the percentage of respondents over 50 years old who recalled Tiananmen is also much higher than the percentage of the youngest respondents recalling Tiananmen. The overall pattern seems to be closer to one of a period effect. To derive a better understanding of how the respondents relate to the events, the survey included a few questions asking the respondents how they felt about the first historical event they named.5 One of the two questions asked if they were deeply impressed by the named event. Among respondents who were 50 years old or above and named Tiananmen as the first important historical event, 52.6% said that they were “very impressed” (on a five-point scale ranging from 1 = completely unimpressed to 5 = very impressed). The percentages are 37.8% and 36.8% for respondents between 40 and 49 years old and those between 30 and 39 years old, respectively. For the youngest respondents, the percentage went down to 23.1%. Similarly, when asked if they held any personal views on the named event, among respondents who were at or above 50 years old and named Tiananmen as the first important event, 26.5% said they had very strong personal views on the matter. The corresponding percentages are 12.9% and 11.5% for respondents between 40 and 49 years old and those between 30 and 39 years old, respectively. For the youngest respondents, 15.4% of those who named Tiananmen as the first important historical event said they held very strong views about it. The oldest group stood out as the cohort with the strongest personal attitudes toward Tiananmen.

5 To recapitulate, respondents were asked to name up to three important historical events. The follow-up questions addressed only the f irst named event due to concern of length of questionnaire.

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Table 4.4 Concern about and attitude toward Tiananmen by different age groups (year 2014)

a

Concern about June 4 Support rehabilitation a Support continuing commemoration a “Can’t blame the government only because students were responsible too” a “China’s economy would not have the same development if there was no crackdown during June 4” a “June 4 is a matter in China, irrelevant to Hong Kong, so Hong Kong people don’t need to commemorate” a Intention to participate a

18-29

30-39

40-49

50 or above

38.3 55.8 68.9 12.6

36.3 37.6 54.2 14.6

47.6 39.2 54.5 29.3

38.1 38.7 42.8 35.1

15.4

8.7

23.0

25.3

9.9

8.3

15.3

21.1

20.3

11.5

10.3

10.0

Notes: Entries are percentages scoring 4 or 5 on the five-point scale (i.e., agreeing with the item or indicating “should participate / definitely participate” on the intention to participation question). Variables marked with superscript “a” means that significant differences at p < .05 exist among the age groups (tested through cross-tabulation and one way ANOVA).

In other words, the generational differences reside in both likelihood of recall and intensity of attitudes. Nevertheless, intensity and valence are two separate dimensions of an attitude. Having a less intense attitude does not mean having a more or less positive attitude toward an issue. In fact, when we compare different age groups regarding their attitudes toward the Tiananmen Incident, the youngest group is actually the most pro-commemoration. As Table 4.4 shows, only about 37% to 40% of respondents aged 30 or above indicated support for rehabilitating June 4,6 but more than 55% of respondents between 18 and 29 years old supported rehabilitation. Between 42% and 55% of respondents aged 30 or above supported continuing commemoration of Tiananmen, while the percentage among 18 to 29 years old was close to 70%. Similarly, the youngest age group, together with respondents aged between 30 and 39, were less likely to agree with several memory-blurring discourses when compared to the two older groups. Moreover, when asked if they intended to participate in the June 4 vigil, 20% of the youngest cohort indicated a high probability, whereas only about 10% of the respondents in the other three age groups did so. 6 The answers were registered by a five-point Likert scale, and a substantial percentage of respondents in each of these age groups selected the midpoint of the scale as their answer. Only between 9% and 15% of respondents in these age groups opposed to rehabilitating June 4.

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These findings are not difficult to understand. In the survey, age correlates significantly positively with trust in the Hong Kong government and trust in the Chinese government. Age also correlates significantly negatively with support for democratization.7 That is, young people were more supportive of democratization and trusted the Hong Kong and Chinese governments less. Their higher levels of support for rehabilitating and commemorating June 4, therefore, are simply part of their more critical and pro-democracy outlook. Nevertheless, even in Table 4.4, if the youngest group was the most supportive toward commemorating June 4, they were not the most concerned about the issue. In Table 4.4, the 40-to-49-year-old group expressed the strongest concern with Tiananmen. In a multiple regression using three dichotomous age cohort variables (30 to 39, 40 to 49, and 50 or above, with 18 to 29 as the reference category), gender, education, family income, support for democracy, interest in politics, external efficacy, and trust in the Hong Kong and Chinese governments as the independent variables to predict “concern about June 4,” the 40 to 49 years old variable as well as the 50 or above variable obtained a significant coefficient (β = .08 and .15 respectively, p < .02 in both cases), whereas the 30 to 39 years old variable also has a positive, though statistically insignificant, coefficient (β = .05, p = .12). It means that, when political attitudes were controlled, respondents aged between 18 and 29 were indeed significantly less concerned about June 4 when compared to at least the two oldest age cohorts. Overall speaking, the survey findings illustrate that young people were attitudinally supportive toward rehabilitating and commemorating June 4, but they were less affectively invested into the matter. Generational differences within institutions The previous section has illustrated the characteristics of generational differences in attitudes toward Tiananmen among the Hong Kong population. But to link the analysis of generational differences back to the concern with intergenerational memory transmission more closely, it is worth noting that generational differences may also have their manifestation and implications within the social institutions central to the process of memory transmission. We can draw upon mainly two in-depth interviews, plus some supplementary materials derived from past research, to illustrate this point 7 The correlation coefficients are 0.12 (p < .001) between age and trust in Hong Kong government, 0.19 (p < .001) between age and trust in the Chinese government, and -0.09 (p < .001) between age and support for democratization.

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in the case of secondary schools and the news media. The first interview was conducted with Terry,8 a core member of the Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union (HKPTU). The HKPTU was established in 1973 by Szeto Wah, who would become the founder of the Alliance in 1989. For decades, the HKPTU constituted an important resource base for the progressive movement sector in Hong Kong. Its core members were typically active in the pro-China democracy movement. However, born in the late 1980s, Terry did not experience 1989. He said that his parents were rather politically apathetic. He became more concerned about public affairs due to the Star Ferry Pier protests in 2005,9 when he was a high school student. Since then, Terry became more and more involved in social movements, driven partly by ongoing protest events and partly by his study at university. He had once joined a political party as a member, and his earliest experience of working at the June 4 vigil was on donation-seeking for the political party. Therefore, his participation in the Tiananmen commemoration was largely a by-product of his broader involvement in the progressive social movement sector. He admitted that he did not have very strong feelings about June 4 itself. After graduation, he acquired a certificate for education and became a secondary school teacher on the subject of Liberal Studies. He talked about the Tiananmen Incident in his first year of teaching, treating it as related to the topic of “identity” under the Liberal Studies curriculum. But he saw the linkage between the Liberal Studies curriculum and June 4 as somewhat weak. He did not talk about Tiananmen again formally in class in subsequent years, even though in 2017, he brought his students to attend an exhibition at the temporary June 4th Museum. He stated that he often felt sam heoi when talking about June 4 in front of his students. Sam heoi, when used in everyday life, can be roughly understood as a sense of a lack of confidence plus a fear of being “found out.” The lack of confidence did not come from whether he felt he was knowledgeable about the events in 1989. It was more about a conflict between one’s political stance and the professional requirement of encouraging students to think about a matter from multiple perspectives. Terry noted that this feeling of unease would be particularly strong on certain prominent political topics such as June 4 and the Umbrella Movement, and he was self-aware of the 8 Pseudonym is used here. The interview was conducted in February 2018. 9 The protest was conducted by a group of young activists trying to stop the government dismantling the Star Ferry Pier, which was considered to be a historical building worth preserving by the activists. See Ku (2012) for an analysis of the movement.

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need to “package” the issue properly. For instance, after he brought his students to the temporary June 4th Museum, he would “wrap up” the visit by telling students that there are actually different views on the matter and urging them to think further. “When packaged in this way I feel a bit more comfortable.” Interestingly, on the matter of June 4, he felt uneasy if he simply criticized the Chinese government and urged the students to commemorate the event, yet he would also feel uneasy about taking a completely neutral stance and presenting multiple perspectives without conveying any judgment. Tiananmen is a matter about which he felt uncertain about what an appropriate presentation should be. Notably, Terry was working in a school environment that is, according to his own judgment, relatively liberal. In fact, his school would invite the group Stage 6410 to have a performance for the students every year. However, he also opined that many of his colleagues are not very concerned with political affairs. There were some colleagues who cared about June 4, but they seldom talked about the matter at school. As discussed earlier, many young vigil participants we interviewed in 2010 and 2014 became interested in June 4 because of an emotional sharing by a secondary school teacher. Yet these vigil interviewees attended high school mainly in the 2000s. It was a time when many frontline teachers had personally experienced the events in 1989 and therefore shared the emotional imprint of the Tiananmen Incident. What the story of Terry illustrates is that teachers of the younger generation who did not experience June 4 personally might find it more difficult to talk about the event to students, even though Terry is already highly active in social movements and teaching a subject closely tied to public affairs. Certainly, Terry might not be representative of all young teachers, but the senior secondary school teachers we interviewed also acknowledged that some generational differences among teachers are inevitable. While there is no available survey data about how Hong Kong secondary school teachers think about Tiananmen, data about journalists’ attitudes toward June 4 is available. In a survey of Hong Kong journalists conducted in 2011,11 the respondents were asked about their personal attitude toward rehabilitating June 4. On a scale ranging from 1 (not support at all) to 10 (strongly support), the respondents had a mean score of 7.95. The overall level of support for rehabilitation was therefore very high among professional 10 Stage 64 is an art group conducting performances related to June 4 aimed primarily at secondary school students. 11 See Leung and Lee (2015) for methodological information.

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journalists. When differentiated into age groups, journalists who were 24 years old or younger (i.e., born in or after 1987) had a mean score of 8.08, whereas all other more senior journalists had a mean score of 7.92. The difference is not significant, and the mean score for the youngest journalists was even slightly higher. This is, however, in line with the findings presented in the previous subsection regarding the Hong Kong population. Young people in Hong Kong could actually be even more supportive of rehabilitating June 4 because of their stronger support for democracy. Nevertheless, when asked if the news media should remain neutral or be supportive of one side when covering June 4, 51.7% of journalists aged 24 or below replied that the media should support rehabilitation, whereas 40.2% replied that the media should stay neutral. Among the older journalists, 59.8% thought the media should support rehabilitation and 34.0% thought the media should remain neutral. The difference is also not statistically significant. But here, younger journalists seem to be less likely to think that the media should take sides on the matter. The survey findings remind us that, as a result of professional socialization and constant interactions, journalists tend to form an interpretive community sharing similar views on world affairs (Zelizer, 1993). Hence generational differences on views regarding public matters might tend to be weak. But it does not mean that some nuanced generational differences cannot exist. We can have a glimpse at such possible generational differences through the story of Patrick, the documentary producer quoted in Chapter 2. Patrick worked for the public broadcaster RTHK for more than 20 years12 and was the producer of several June 4-related programs in the 1990s and 2000s. In the case of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Incident in 2009, he started preparing for the commemoration-related programs back in 2007 even before his organization made any decision regarding how the 20th anniversary should be approached. When, in 2008, he received the notification that he would be responsible for the programs about the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen, he immediately picked a co-producer whom he could trust. From 2008 to 2009, he had to respond to several suspected attempts by some high-ranking officers in the organization to interfere with, if not directly censor, his work. But he successfully guarded off the intervention through careful planning and the formulation of a clear structure for the episodes to be produced. Similar to many journalists of his generation, the 1989 student movement constituted an unforgettable experience for him both as a citizen and as a 12 Pseudonym is also used here. The interview was conducted in February 2018.

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journalist. As a junior program assistant working for the documentary team at RTHK he recalled a discussion on whether the documentary team should also send a crew to Beijing. Producers and journalists in the team were ready to go, but the team leader decided against sending people to Beijing because of the uncertainty regarding whether a documentary team could do anything meaningful that the news team was not already doing. However, he decided that he had to go to Beijing. He rushed into the supervisor’s office and said that he had to take leave, and he would rather resign if he was not allowed to. He opined that what he saw and felt in Beijing at that time had given him certain perspectives that any review of footage could not have given him. He noted that, in the years after the Tiananmen Incident, the documentary team would regret the decision not to send a crew to Beijing. In every year between the 1990s and the 2000s, the documentary team invariably discussed whether to produce any program related to Tiananmen. While the final answer may be yes or no depending on the situation of the year, the discussion proceeded as if not producing a Tiananmen-related episode in a specific year would require justification. He felt that, over the years, there was a sense that some of the core members of the documentary team were haunted by the regrettable decision in 1989 and were trying to make amends. In other words, in addition to personal memories, the documentary team at RTHK had its own organizational memory about 1989, and this organizational memory has influenced the operation of the team in subsequent years. However, by the mid-2010s, most producers and journalists of the documentary team in 1989, including Patrick himself, have left RTHK. When asked if that means the organizational memory also disappeared, Patrick gave a straightforward yes. He opined that producers of the younger generation still seriously work on Tiananmen-related programs, but they do not have the same sense of personal involvement and the backdrop of the organizational memory. In sum, what one can see in the above discussion is that generational replacement within profession inevitably occurs. At least in the cases of some schools and some media organizations, this generational replacement could mean a loss of personal and/or organizational memories about 1989. This can occur even when individual attitudes toward the issue of rehabilitating June 4 appear to have remained largely the same. To the extent that personal and organizational memories in certain institutions have facilitated the transmission and perpetuation of memory about Tiananmen, the loss of such memories also imply the weakening of the memory transmission mechanisms.

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Searching for Sustainability This chapter examines intergenerational memory transmission and uptake. It focuses on how young people who were very young or not even born yet in 1989 were brought into the mnemonic community of the Tiananmen Incident. Besides the Alliance’s emphasis on “passing on the baton,” we emphasized how the operation of a web of institutions – including school, family, and the media – allowed young people in the 2000s and early 2010s to take up a simplified and essentialized understanding of the Tiananmen crackdown focusing on the moral wrong of a government killing innocent civilians. Equipped with this essentialized understanding, many of our young interviewees were capable of confidently denouncing the memoryblurring discourses proffered by the state and its agents. However, there are limitations in the processes and outcomes of memory transmission. We have seen that young people in Hong Kong were less affectively attached to the Tiananmen Incident. While it is relatively easy to convey certain facts and knowledge about the happenings in 1989 to the younger generation, it is more difficult to reproduce the emotional imprint obtained by Hong Kong people through experiencing the events in 1989. In other words, it was easier to transmit the cognitive rather than the affective component of a collective memory to the younger generation. Yet the affective component was arguably more crucial for producing and maintaining the sense of a duty to remember. Besides, while the analysis of intergenerational transmission highlights the significance of the institutions of family, school, and the media, generational replacement also occurred within such institutional contexts. When a generation of parents, school teachers, and journalists were replaced by the younger generation who did not experience Tiananmen firsthand, the result can be the weakening of the memory transmission mechanisms. In terms of the outcome of memory transmission, a comparison can be made between the analysis in this chapter and Hirsch’s (2012) notion of “postmemory.” In her work on the children of the Holocaust survivors, Hirsch used the term postmemory to describe the relationship between the young generation’s relationship with their parents’ experiences during the Second World War. The prefix “post” points to the undeniable differences between remembering what one has personally experienced and remembering the experiences of others. Yet the term “memory” is still used because people of the younger generation can be connected so deeply to the earlier generation’s remembrance of the past such that they identify the connection as a form of memory (McGregor, 2013). Hong Kong’s young people’s “memory” about

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June 4, however, lacked the emotional intensity that would qualify it as postmemory in the sense described by Hirsch (2012). Of course, the Holocaust is an extreme case. The weakening of emotional attachment to a historical event among the second generation is probably the norm rather than the exception. Besides, strength of emotional attachment is a matter of degree. Contemporary Japanese’s feelings about the atomic bomb are probably not as strong as the feelings harbored by the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Contemporary French citizens’ emotional attachments to the French Revolution are probably not comparable to that of the French people in the late 18th century. These have not prevented the continual commemoration of the historical events. Therefore, the difficulty in reproducing the emotional imprint of Tiananmen among young people in Hong Kong does not entail the discontinuation of collective remembering. In the search for long-term sustainability of collective remembering, another key issue is institutionalization. We turn to this problematic in the next chapter.

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Edgerton, G. R., & Rollins, P. C. (eds.) (2003). Television histories. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. Edy, J. A. (2006). Troubled pasts. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Griffin, L. J. (2004). “Generations and collective memory” revisited: Race, region, and memory of civil rights. American Sociological Review, 69(4), 544-557. Halbwachs, M. (1992/1952). On collective memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hirsch, M. (2012). The generation of postmemory. New York: Columbia University Press. Jennings, M. K., & Zhang, N. (2005). Generations, political status, and collective memories in the Chinese countryside. Journal of Politics, 67(4), 1164-1189. Koppel, J., & Berntsen, D. (2014). Does everything happen when you are young? Introducing the youth bias. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 67(3), 417-423. Ku, A. S. (2012). Remaking places and fashioning an opposition discourse: Struggle over the Star Ferry Pier and the Queen’s Pier in Hong Kong. Environment and Planning D: Space and Society, 30, 5-22. Lee, C. C., Li, H. T., & Lee, F. L. F. (2011). Symbolic use of decisive events: Tiananmen as a news icon in the editorials of the elite U.S. press. International Journal of Press/Politics, 16(3), 335-356. Lee, F. L. F. (2018b). The role of perceived social reality in the adoption of postmaterial value: The case of Hong Kong. Social Science Journal, 55(2), 139-148. Lee, F. L. F., & Chan, J. M. (2011). Media, social mobilization, and mass protests in post-colonial Hong Kong. London: Routledge. Leung, D. K. K. & Lee, F. L. F. (2015). How journalists value positive news: The influence of professional beliefs, market considerations, and political attitudes. Journalism Studies, 16(2), 289-304. Mannheim, K. (1972). Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Routledge. McGregor, K.E. (2013). Memory studies and human rights in Indonesia. Asian Studies Review, 37(3), 350-361. Misztal, B. A. (2003). Theories of social remembering. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Muller, F., Bermejo, F., & Hirst, W. (2016). Argentines’ collective memories of the military Junta of 1976: Differences and similarities across generations and ideology. Memory, 24(7), 990-1006. Osborne, D., Sears, D. O., & Valentino, N.A. (2011). The end of the solidly Democratic South: The impressionable-years hypothesis. Political Psychology, 32(1), 81-107. Pickering, M., & Keightley, E. (2013). Communities of memory and the problem of transmission. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 16(1), 115-131. Pilcher, J. (1994). Mannheim’s sociology of generations: An undervalued legacy. The British Journal of Sociology, 45(3), 481-495.

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Schuman, H., & Scott, J. (1989). Generations and collective memories. American Sociological Review, 54, 359-381. Svob, C., Brown, N. R., & Taksic, V. (2016). Intergenerational transmission of historical memories and social-distance attitudes in post-war second generation Croatians. Memory & Cognition, 44(6), 846-855. Tschuggnall, K., & Welzer, H. (2002). Rewriting memories: Family recollections of the national socialist past in Germany. Culture & Psychology, 8(1), 130-145. Volkmer, I. (ed.) (2006). News in public memory. New York: Peter Lang. Weispfenning, J. (2003). Cultural functions of reruns: Time, memory, and television. Journal of Communication, 53(1), 165-177. Winter, J. (2010). Sites of memory and the shadow of war. In A. Erll & A. Nunning (eds.), A companion to cultural memory studies (pp. 61-74). Berlin: De Gruyter. Wong, T. K. Y., & Wan, P. S. (2009). New evidence of the postmaterialist shift: The experience of Hong Kong. Social Indicators Research, 92(3), 497-515. Zelizer, B. (1993). Journalists as interpretive communities. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 10(3), 219-237. Zerubavel, E. (2000). Time map. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Zittoun, T. (2017). Dynamic memories of the collective past. Culture & Psychology, 23(2), 295-305.

5

The Struggle for Memory Institutionalization Abstract Chapter 5 discusses the struggle for memory institutionalization. Given the role of schools in intergenerational memory transmission, part of the empirical analysis focuses on the controversies surrounding the place of June 4 in the secondary school curriculum. Besides, the chapter examines efforts by the Alliance and other activist groups to establish enduring “sites of memory” for Tiananmen. Specifically, the struggles surrounding the placement of June 4-related monuments on university campuses and the project of a permanent June 4th Museum are examined. Keywords: memory institutionalization, the educational institutions, sites of memories, June 4th Museum

The transmission of collective memory from one generation to the next can be achieved through informal and interpersonal mechanisms. As illustrated in the previous chapter, some young people in Hong Kong became interested in the Tiananmen Incident through an emotional sharing by their teachers. Some of the teachers talked about June 4 in their classes even though the Tiananmen Incident was not pertinent to the subjects they taught. Having the teachers venturing outside of the school curriculum may signal the specialness of the topic and may therefore help arouse students’ interests. But in the long run, it can be difficult for memory transmission to be sustained if it remains entirely reliant on such informal mechanisms. As suggested toward the end of the last chapter, when a generation of teachers left their position, they also took their memories of Tiananmen away. The situation could be different if the discussion of the Tiananmen Incident can become a regularized part of the curriculum or the school calendar. It could ensure that students will learn about the event no matter who the teacher is.

Lee, Francis L.F., and Joseph M. Chan, Memories of Tiananmen: Politics and Processes of Collective Remembering in Hong Kong, 1989-2019. Amsterdam University Press 2021 doi: 10.5117/9789463728447_ch05

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Beyond the context of secondary school education, the broader issue here is memory institutionalization, by which we mean the inscription of collective memory into enduring institutional forms such that the collective memory gains a permanent presence in specific arenas in the society. This can be achieved through the inscription of collective memory into existing institutions or through the establishment of institutions devoted to collective remembering of an event. Hence entering the school curriculum is only one of many possible means of memory institutionalization. Savelsberg and King (2005), for example, examined how collective memories about past atrocities were institutionalized into the legal system through the making of hate crime laws in Germany and the U.S. (also see Tirosh & Schejter, 2015). Allen and Parson (2006) examined the Sports Halls of Fame in the U.S. as an institution for collective memory about sporting excellence. Klockmann (2018) discussed how the activism by the mayors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima led to the institutionalization of collective memory about the atomic bombing into the United Nations’ disarmament endeavor. Pelak (2015) talked about the institutionalization of collective memory of the civil rights movement in terms of the renaming of streets for civil rights heroes/heroines, installing commemorative historical markers, and creating institutes and museums designed to tell stories about the movement. Monuments, memorials, and museums, of course, are widely examined memory institutions (e.g., Bartram, 2017; Crane, 2000; Marschall, 2010). Institutionalization is a key aspect of the politics of collective memory. The establishment of a museum on a certain subject or the inclusion of a certain subject into the school curriculum, for example, establishes and confirms the significance of the subject. Besides, the way a museum or a textbook narrates the past delimits, though not necessarily determines, how visitors or students understand the past. Hence both power holders and oppositional groups have an interest in shaping the narratives in museums, textbooks, and other memory institutions. Not surprisingly, a distinctive body of literature in collective memory studies is constituted by critical interrogation into the hegemonic implications of the narratives in memory institutions (e.g., J. Y. Lee, 2018; Nasser & Nasser, 2008; Podoler, 2017; Withers, 2011). Obviously, not all collective memories are institutionalized. Pennebaker and Banasik (1997) found that, in many countries, collective remembering often follows a 25-year cycle. Monuments about historical events, for example, are often created about 25 years after the original events. They explained the time gap in terms of a combination of the critical years

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hypothesis and a generation-in-power argument: people remember things happening in their adolescent years the best, and they tend to construct memorials about those events when they become powerful enough to do so. 25 years is roughly the time gap between adolescence and the time when people start to become holders of power and resources in the society (i.e., around 45 to 50 years old). This argument, however, is premised on the capability of the proponents of collective remembering to gain power and the lack of controversies surrounding collective memory of an event. When the memorized event is contentious and the proponents of collective remembering are essentially the “political opposition,” institutionalization becomes more likely only when numerous factors converge. Pelak (2015), for instance, studied the case of the National Civil Rights Museum at the site of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Tennessee, U.S. He explained the establishment of the museum in 2000 in terms of a confluence of conditions: “the mnemonic capacity of symbolic entrepreneurs, shifting political claims and other cultural developments over time, local speculative and economic development efforts, the growth of the black heritage tourism, and the collective desire to remedy negative reputations of the community” (p. 324). On top of all these factors, the convergence between the economic and political interests of the white elites and the cultural and political interests of the black activists was also crucial. It is therefore not surprising that institutionalizing collective memory about Tiananmen has faced huge difficulties in Hong Kong. The proponents of collective remembering did not become the dominant power holders, and there was no interest convergence between the activists and the state on the matter. However, institutionalization of collective memory about June 4 was not totally absent either. In fact, one might even contend that there has been partial success in this regard. This chapter thus discusses memory institutionalization as an ongoing struggle. We will first further examine the context of secondary schools in Hong Kong and review the debates surrounding the inclusion of the Tiananmen Incident into the secondary school curriculum. We also examine how discussions of the Tiananmen Incident at schools may be facilitated or suppressed through efforts and dynamics outside the formal curriculum. Second, this chapter examines the attempts by pro-commemoration groups to establish Tiananmen-related monuments and a June 4th Museum, as well as how Tiananmen might feature in other museum space.

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Teaching Tiananmen in Secondary Schools The Tiananmen Incident in Chinese history The most important way to institutionalize collective memory of an event in schools is to incorporate discussions of the event into the syllabi of specific subjects. The first subject that is obviously pertinent to the politics of collective memory is history (Wertsch, 2002; Zerubavel, 1995). It should be noted that the teaching of history as a subject in secondary schools in Hong Kong has its own peculiar historical development. Specifically, “Chinese history” had been separated from “(Western or World) history” in secondary schools since the 1950s. Kan and Vickers (2002) argued that the introduction of a locally drafted curriculum for Chinese history was partly an attempt by the colonial government to conciliate local nationalistic sentiment, and partly an attempt to bring the teaching of Chinese history within the boundary of political acceptability. They noted that, so long as the curriculum designers “avoided the politically sensitive modern and contemporary periods of Chinese history and did not dwell on the iniquities of past foreign encroachments on Chinese sovereignty,” they were free to pursue their agenda of “extreme cultural conservatism” (Kan & Vickers, 2002: 76). Similarly, Chin (2014: 1572) noted that Chinese history textbooks in the colonial era tended to see helping individuals “to become better moral beings through learning about the past” as the main function of teaching Chinese history, while post-handover history textbooks put more emphasis on inculcating a sense of belonging to the People’s Republic of China (also see Vickers, 2005). Neither scenario was conducive to the inclusion of the Tiananmen Incident into the subject. By the early 2000s, as then chairperson of the HKPTU and core member of the Alliance Cheung Man Kwong noted, only two secondary school history textbooks briefly talked about June 4.1 In the 1990s, one constraint or argument against including the Tiananmen Incident into the study of Chinese history was the recency of the event. In 1994, in response to attempts by a few publishers to include the Tiananmen Incident into history textbooks, the Head of the Department of Education of the Hong Kong government claimed that history textbooks should not discuss events that were not at least 20 years old.2 Indeed, some people might argue that only events sufficiently removed in time and about which 1 “Primary school students don’t know about June 4,” Sing Tao Daily, January 12, 2001: A33. 2 “The government once said: events within 20 years should not be in history textbooks,” Apple Daily, May 1, 2009: A08.

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certain “objective conclusions” have been reached should be included into history textbooks. However, as time moved on, the Tiananmen Incident became more and more distant from the present. The constraint of recency thus became less important. Even the “20-year rule” proclaimed by the government official in 1994 became irrelevant by 2009, the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown. Meanwhile, as the society continued to commemorate the Tiananmen Incident, there were pressures for the government and the curriculum designers not to ignore the event totally. Tiananmen became part of the Chinese history syllabus in secondary schools in 2004. Nevertheless, this marked the beginning rather than the end of contestation regarding how the event should be represented in textbooks. Controversies arose when Chinese history textbooks apparently tried to undermine the significance of the event either by giving it very brief treatment or by downplaying the military crackdown. As a matter of fact, June 4 is typically included in Chinese history textbooks as part of the discussion of the process of “reform and opening-up” in China since 1978. For example, the textbook New Ideas on Chinese History published in 2004 spent two pages on the reform and open-up policy. After describing the background of the policy and its implementation, the text talks about the accomplishments and problems. The paragraph on the problems of the reform and open-up process reads: However, some problems appeared in the process of reform and openingup, which aggravated social conflicts. Among the more prominent events was the Tiananmen Incident in summer 1989. Beijing students and citizens self-mobilized to commemorate the death of CCP General Secretary Hu Yaobang. It kick-started a movement against corruption and “gun dou.” After the event subsided, widespread practices of corruption remained.3

People can disagree on whether such a description is “too brief.” After all, the book has to cover China’s five thousand years of history. Even in the period after the establishment of the PRC, there are other important events, such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, etc., that require substantive treatment. It is hardly possible to come to a precise and non-debatable judgment of how much space should be devoted to any specific event. However, the above paragraph totally omits the military crackdown. There are no hints of who put the event to an end and by what means. The event simply subsided (ping sik). 3 This passage, as well as other quoted textbook passages in this chapter, was translated by the current authors.

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It should be noted that many textbook publishers in Hong Kong were at least partly owned by Chinese capital. New Ideas on Chinese History was published by Hong Kong Educational Publishing Company, which was owned by The Commercial Press. The latter was in turn partly owned by the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in Hong Kong.4 Similar to the mainstream news media in Hong Kong, if there was self-censorship in textbook writing, the practice could be understood as rooted in the political economy of the publishing industry. Nevertheless, the politico-economic setup only constrained, but did not totally determine, the content of the textbooks. As textbook descriptions of the Tiananmen Incident can arouse public debate, there were pressures on publishers to treat June 4 more seriously. Hence there was no linear trend of increasing marginalization of the Tiananmen Incident in Chinese history textbooks. In fact, the 3rd edition of New Ideas on Chinese History published in 2012 slightly expanded on the discussion of June 4. Instead of simply stating “after the event subsided,” the text reads: “On June 4, the CCP sent out the PLA to evict Tiananmen Square, thus putting the movement to an end. The event aroused debates in the international community.” The text thus mentioned the deployment of the army and conveyed the idea that the government’s action was controversial in the international arena, even though the text still does not emphasize the use of force by the army, nor does it explicitly mention civilian deaths. A more substantial revision of the discussion of June 4 appeared in the Chinese history textbook by another publisher, Ling Kee. In its first edition of New Concise Chinese History, published in 2005, June 4 was only briefly described in one single sentence in the main text: “But official corruption and social problems such as income inequality emerged, causing discontent among citizens and leading to two student movements in 1986 and 1989 respectively.” A footnote is associated with the sentence and reads: In April 1989, tertiary students in Beijing initiated rallies to commemorate the death of CCP General Secretary Hu Yaobang and criticize official corruption. Later they started a hunger strike in Tiananmen Square. The government resolved the event on June 4, and Zhao Ziyang was relieved from all his posts in the Party because he was regarded as having made mistakes in the event.

4 “The Liaison Office controls United Publishing; owns the three major bookstore chains and monopolizes distribution,” Apple Daily, April 9, 2015.

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Such a description of June 4 omitted any problematic actions on the part of the Chinese government. It reads as if Zhao was the main culprit. In contrast, in the second edition published in 2013, one and a half pages are devoted to the Tiananmen Incident. The text mentions the declaration of martial law on May 19, the entrance of the PLA into Beijing, the use of force, and the presence of bloodshed and casualties. It includes a photo of student leaders Wu’er Kaixi and Wang Dan speaking at a rally in 1989. It even includes a “side box” briefly discussing the relationship between the June 4 Incident and the Statue of the Goddess of Democracy. The text of the side box reads: “The Statue of the Goddess of Democracy” is modeled upon the American Statue of Liberty. The figure holds the torch – which represents the light of democracy – with both hands, and it personifies the students’ search for liberty and democracy.

The text also does not shy away from the question of casualties and the unreliability of official figures. A footnote reads: “The official announcement stated that ‘3,000 non-military officers were injured, and 200 people died,’ but people generally believed that the number of deaths was not lower than 2,000, whereas the number of injured was uncountable.” Admittedly, this relatively detailed treatment of the Tiananmen crackdown is by no means the norm in secondary school textbooks. But such changes in the textbook descriptions of the Tiananmen Incident do point to the presence of a degree of operational autonomy at the level of textbook writing and production, at least in the mid-2000s. In fact, a main author of New Concise Chinese History Volume III told the authors that he did not experience any attempts to censor his work. “People still followed the existing rules those days. As long as I was approaching the matter from the perspective of historical analysis, it was fine […]. I didn’t feel any pressure from the publisher.”5 Changes in textbook contents are indicative of the continual tug of war between the state and the pro-commemoration social forces. Even government officials and pro-government politicians had to acknowledge the legitimacy for history textbooks to discuss the Tiananmen Incident. The debates centered on the question of proportionality. For instance, one pro-China politician opined that there was no need to make the Incident

5

Personal interview with Chan Hon Sum conducted in April 2018.

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a big deal,6 and a government official once commented that “one can talk about June 4, but no need to do it every day.”7 Notably, Chinese history has not been a “core subject” for all secondary school students in Hong Kong since the handover. Yet in 2016, the Hong Kong government announced the plan to turn Chinese history into a core subject for junior high school beginning in the academic year 2018-2019. In October 2017, new Chief Executive of the Hong Kong SAR Government Carrie Lam confirmed the plan in her first Policy Address. The stated goal of the move was to cultivate the concept of the nation among young people and to encourage students to contribute to the country and the society. The policy aroused a new round of debates surrounding whether and how June 4 should be included in the subject. When the expert committee reviewing the Chinese history curriculum announced their proposed new framework for the subject, pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily foregrounded the committee’s decision not to include specific events, such as the 1967 urban riots in Hong Kong and the Tiananmen Incident, into the framework.8 Y. S. Leung, committee chairman and a respected history professor, acknowledged that not including specific events into the curriculum framework is for the sake of simplifying the framework and avoiding unresolvable debates about which events to include. He stated that teachers can make their own decisions, and he personally opined that it is reasonable for teachers to talk about Tiananmen because it is a good example to illustrate the shock created by the reform and open-up policy.9 How textbook publishers and history teachers will approach the topic after Chinese history becomes a core subject remains to be seen. The politics of Liberal Studies Chinese history is not the only subject within which the Tiananmen Incident can be “reasonably” discussed. As a significant event which continues to exert influence on contemporary Hong Kong and China, the Tiananmen Incident can be highly relevant to subjects focusing on or closely tied to 6 “Advocating for including facts into textbooks, Mrs. Fan hoped that young people know about ‘June 4,’” Hong Kong Daily News, October 16, 2010: A04. 7 “Mr. Suen denied brainwashing when talking about national education; no need to avoid issues such as June 4 or Liu Xiaobo,” Sing Tao Daily, October 16, 2010: A25. 8 “Revision of Chinese history curriculum: No mention of 67 riots and June 4; Chairperson of the committee: they are not important events,” Apple Daily, October 31, 2017: A02. 9 “Chairman of curriculum revision committee Y. S. Leung: teaching June 4 in Chinese history is reasonable,” Ming Pao, November 3, 2017: A06.

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current affairs. In secondary schools in Hong Kong, there is the subject Economics and Public Affairs (EPA) at junior high school. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was also a subject called Integrated Humanities for senior high school students, though neither EPA nor Integrated Humanities were required subjects for all students. Since the 1970s, there were other attempts by the government to set up subjects related to social and political affairs, such as Social Studies and Government and Public Administration. The colonial government also introduced Liberal Studies as a sixth-form subject in 1992. But all these attempts have faced various difficulties and constraints (Fung & Liang, 2018). For many years, the subjects were not widely adopted by secondary schools. A major change then occurred in the 2000s. As part of a broad educational reform gearing toward changing university education from three years to four years, the Hong Kong SAR Government initiated the discussion of a New Secondary School curriculum in 2004. Among the more specific proposals is the establishment of Liberal Studies as a core subject for senior high school students. The stated goals of the subject are to “deepen students’ understanding of themselves, the society, the nation, and the world through the learning process, and hope that the students can think independently and from multiple angles, and can respect and appreciate different cultures and viewpoints, thus becoming educated and responsible citizens” (quoted in Kwok, 2007: 2). There were debates and criticisms of Liberal Studies even before the New Secondary School curriculum was put into practice in 2009. As Kwok (2007) summarized, people criticized the proposal of Liberal Studies for lacking a clear definition, for lacking thorough discussions of methods of teaching, for displacing the learning of basic facts about history, society, and culture, and for lacking concrete guidelines for teaching. Nonetheless, Howard, who had taught both Integrated Humanities and Liberal Studies at secondary schools in the mid-2000s, opined that the Liberal Studies curriculum was not very different from the curriculum of Integrated Humanities.10 In fact, it is not rare for teachers of Liberal Studies – as long as they entered the field before the early 2000s – to have taught Integrated Humanities before. Hence the subject was institutionalized quite smoothly. Specif ically, the curriculum of Liberal Studies has an open-ended character. Unlike Chinese history, Liberal Studies did not point to a set of factual knowledge or past events that students must know about. The 2009 curriculum of Liberal Studies was constituted by six units: 1) personal growth 10 Personal interview conducted in April 2018.

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and interpersonal relationship, 2) today’s Hong Kong, 3) contemporary China, 4) globalization, 5) public health and biotechnology, and 6) energy and environment. Teachers were allowed to decide upon the specific topics to be taught, and schools could develop their own sets of teaching materials. Therefore, it is not necessarily the case that the Tiananmen crackdown would be covered in Liberal Studies. In Chapter 4, we quoted Terry, a young Liberal Studies teacher, who said that he did not teach the Tiananmen Incident every year because he did not find a strong linkage between Tiananmen and the subject. It is also plausible that the topic would be omitted in secondary schools that are more politically conservative. In fact, in the years when the subject was first put in place, there was even the suspicion that the topic of Tiananmen would not feature in public examination.11 This could constitute another disincentive against teaching about Tiananmen, at least when the teachers are exam-oriented. However, there were also teachers who regarded the Tiananmen Incident as essential to specific parts of the Liberal Studies curriculum. Fred and Charles, both Liberal Studies teachers, emphasized how the Tiananmen Incident impinged on Hong Kong people’s identity. Both of them and Howard agreed that the social, economic, and political development of contemporary China cannot be properly understood without understanding the Tiananmen Incident.12 Howard, in particular, said that he usually scheduled the classes so that he could start talking about China’s post-reform-and-open-up development around May every year. That allowed him to talk about the Tiananmen Incident around June 4. When asked what the aim of teaching students about Tiananmen was, he said: Against the background of government propaganda, the students need to know that the [Chinese] government had done something wrong, and it has not acknowledged its mistakes even today. I hope [the students] could use a different perspective to look at what the government does. I am not trying to make them anti-government. I just want them to know that the government is not always right.

Charles, Howard, and Fred also shared the view that, while it is important for teachers to maintain their professionalism, it is fine for Liberal Studies teachers to let students know about their personal views. There can be 11 Nevertheless, June 4 did appear in the Liberal Studies exam paper in the public examination in 2013. 12 Personal interviews conducted in April and May, 2018.

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variations in how they manage the tension between their personal views and the professional requirement of presenting multiple perspectives to the students. Howard argued that teachers should in fact reveal their stance on the matter: The teacher should feed more information to the students, including information that the teacher agrees or disagrees with. Then the students should try to integrate the information by themselves. After the students form their own perspectives, the teacher can let the students know what he thinks.

For Howard, to share one’s views is to illustrate to the students how the teacher forms his or her own views based on the same set of information. The key is to demonstrate the process of analysis, not to impose a conclusion. This is the approach he used when discussing any social and political matters. “My students know my views; they also know that our relationships won’t be affected if they hold different views. That is a kind of trust built over time.” Fred is somewhat more equivocal on the issue of reconciliating one’s personal views and professional requirement. He stated that “while more than 90% of world affairs have two sides, there are also big issues of right and wrong.” In his view, detailed matters such as whether the students made mistakes, how many people actually died, whether there were tanks rolling over people, etc. can indeed be debated, but asking the question of what advantages the violent crackdown has brought to the economic development of the country would be violating a basic sense of human decency. This seems to suggest that Fred would regard certain perspectives as not worth considering. However, Fred also stated that he did let students know about the presence of those viewpoints regarding the “advantages” of violent crackdown. Hence there is a sense that he could not forbid students from identifying with the perspective after all. In any case, Fred emphasized that he is aware of the need not to be biased against China. He observed that many students held negative views toward the mainland. He actually had to spend efforts to let his students understand that not everything about China is bad. One has to appreciate China’s economic development and how it helped to improve the lives of many poor people, despite the continual presence of serious inequalities. On the whole, although Liberal Studies might not be utilized by all teachers as the platform to discuss the Tiananmen Incident, it was adopted for that purpose at some schools. More generally, Liberal Studies has been a subject through which students can get acquainted with critical views

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regarding the social and political situation in Hong Kong and China. In fact, several years after the implementation, many teachers agreed on the positive impact of the subject on students. Fung and Liang’s (2018) survey of more than 100 Liberal Studies teachers in Hong Kong found that 66% of the respondents agreed that the units of “Modern China” and “Hong Kong Today” can help their students to understand more about citizenship, and 60% believed that Liberal Studies can help students to better understand mainland China and Hong Kong. In addition, the positive impact has arguably spilled over to the society at large. As one core member of the HKPTU pointed out in a commentary article, the institutionalization of Liberal Studies led many media organizations to establish sections for general education. These sections turned complex social and political affairs into materials that even secondary school students can understand. NGOs also proactively collaborated with secondary schools. Such developments constituted “a process of civic education promotion and the popularization of basic knowledge about politics.”13 Interestingly, the development of Liberal Studies as a core subject had coincided with the emergence of prominent young activists in Hong Kong. Scholarism, a group formed in 2011 by high school students, became the center of media and public attention in 2012 when the group took the leading role in the anti-national education movement.14 The leaders of the group, especially Joshua Wong, would continue to play an important role in subsequent protest movements in Hong Kong, including the Umbrella Movement in 2014. Of course, such a temporal coincidence does not constitute solid evidence regarding the impact of Liberal Studies. Depending on one’s political stance and values, the rise of activism among young people can be a welcome development. But the scenario led to criticisms from pro-government politicians and commentators. Some of them claimed that Liberal Studies had become “hijacked” by the oppositional forces to fan the flame of anti-government protests.15 There were even claims that Liberal Studies was a “cause” behind the Umbrella Movement.

13 Cheung Yui-fai, “What can Liberal Studies change among young people?” Ming Pao, June 27, 2017: A25. 14 The movement was a protest against the Hong Kong government’s attempt to turn national education into a core subject for high school students. The critics saw the subject as an attempt to “brainwash” young people. The protest succeeded to force the Hong Kong government to shelf the plan. 15 E.g., Lai Chi-Chun, “The opposition faction has hijacked Liberal Studies, inculcating a biased stance and mobilizing for the illegal ‘Occupy Central,’” Wen Wei Po, August 30, 2013: A23.

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Research has shown that both teachers and students disagreed with such claims (Fung & Su, 2016), and there was no evidence showing a linkage between Liberal Studies and political participation by young people (Lee & Chiu, 2018). But criticism against the subject persisted. Since 2014, the Hong Kong government had reviewed the implementation of Liberal Studies. There were calls for reducing the proportion of socio-political topics from 25% to 18% of the overall Liberal Studies curriculum; calls for turning Liberal Studies into an elective subject instead of a core subject; calls for continuing the teaching of Liberal Studies but abolishing examination; and even calls for canceling the subject altogether. There was widespread suspicion about the government’s intention. In Fung and Liang’s (2018) survey of Liberal Studies teachers, 65% of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that “in general, I think the review of Liberal Studies has underlying political motivations as a result of Occupy Central and the Umbrella Movement.” Although it is difficult to ascertain the motivations of the government, it is relatively clear that the pro-government politicians were trying to marginalize the subject or call for a much more depoliticized curriculum. This debate was driven by contentious politics in the local arena rather than by the issue of Tiananmen. In summer 2019, when Hong Kong was embroiled in the anti-extradition law amendment bill protests, the argument about the linkage between Liberal Studies and students’ radicalism emerged again. The continual evolution of the debates and the curriculum will have implications for the teaching of the Tiananmen Incident at schools. Extracurricular activities and the school environment Entering the syllabi of specific subjects is not the only way through which discussions of the Tiananmen Incident can be institutionalized in secondary schools. Throughout our interviews with young vigil participants and secondary school teachers, it is clear that the Tiananmen Incident can be the subject matter of weekly assemblies and a wide range of extracurricular activities. The extracurricular activities can be ad hoc in some schools, but they can be regularized in others. As mentioned in Chapter 4, Terry noted that his secondary school invited the group Stage 64 every year to perform dramas related to the theme of Tiananmen. Terry explained that the decision was made by the teachers in charge of the Other Learning Experience (OLE) unit. OLE is one of the three main components of the New Secondary School curriculum that was put in place in 2009. It is expected to supplement the core and elective subjects for the “whole-person development” of students.

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The five designated areas for OLE include moral and civic education, community service, career-related experiences, aesthetic development, and physical development. For Terry’s school, the performance by Stage 64 belonged to the category “aesthetic development.” The example of Terry’s school suggests that whether Tiananmen-related activities can be institutionalized as part of the school calendar can depend on how the relevant decision-making units within a school are set up. Fred’s school provides another example. He explained that his school had the Guidance Unit, under which there was a civic education group. The group was led by a senior teacher who had “standing” within the school, and the civic education group had, over the years, put Tiananmen commemoration activities into the school calendar. The civic education group also introduced the Tiananmen Incident to all year 1 students in a weekly assembly every year. Fred used the term “fossilized” to describe the regularized status of such activities. He opined that it is difficult to see how even a change in top management at the school could lead to the cessation of those activities. It should be noted that the formation of “units” or “groups” for organizing civic education activities not only provides students with additional opportunities to engage in various societal and public affairs, it can also have influence on the teachers involved. Fred himself is an interesting case. A junior high school student in 1989, he did not harbor very strong feelings toward the Tiananmen Incident at that time, even though he did remember the emotional responses of his teachers. Over the years, Fred became more interested and involved in current affairs because of the influence of one of his own secondary school teachers, “who always challenged me to think more about school policies and about news events.” The first time he joined the June 4 vigil – also as a result of an invitation from his teacher – was in 2003, when he had already graduated from university and had become a teacher. Around the same time, he was invited by a senior teacher at his school to join the civic education group. It was also around this time that he studied for a master’s degree in sociology and started to shift his teaching interests from his own university major to subjects related to social and public affairs. All of these paved the way for him to become a Liberal Studies teacher. In the late 2000s, he suggested to his senior that the civic education group should organize students to visit the candlelight vigil. He noted that even his senior was somewhat concerned about the appropriateness of organizing students to the vigil. But he emphasized that they were not mobilizing students to join a collective action. He regarded the vigil, with the presence of many civic associations and political parties, as a very important site to learn about the civil society of Hong Kong. Hence the activity was designed as a

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field trip, with notice sent to parents beforehand and with worksheets for the students to fill out. He successfully persuaded his colleagues to organize the activity for the students. Unlike Charles and Howard, who regarded the events in 1989 as having left a very strong imprint onto themselves personally, Fred is more similar to a young person being socialized into the mnemonic community of Tiananmen over time. In this process, engaging in the civic education unit was only one of many interacting factors that shaped his personal and career development, but it did provide a platform for him to become more engaged with the issue. The experience of Howard, meanwhile, can provide a contrast on how the school environment may shape the opportunity structure for teachers to talk about the Tiananmen Incident. Howard joined the education sector in the early 2000s. After working as a short-term “substitute” for a pregnant staff in his alma mater, he became a full-time teacher in a new secondary school. The target students of the school were generally academically weak, and the principal was from the vocational training sector and thus did not have much experience in secondary education. This environment nonetheless allowed Howard the space to suggest the inclusion of Integrated Humanities as a subject and then use the subject as a platform for discussing public affairs with students. A few years later, Howard was “borrowed” by the Education Bureau to work on curriculum development matters. Afterwards, he was relocated to another secondary school. At the beginning of the semester, he was included in a delegation of Hong Kong teachers to the National Day celebration in Beijing on October 1. The principal of his new secondary school asked him to give two seminars for the senior and junior students, respectively, after the trip. When he held the talk to the senior students, he described what happened during the trip, and then he shared how he felt: “When I walked toward Tiananmen Square from the rostrum of Tiananmen, I was thinking of June 4.” He then elaborated on the mistakes made by the Chinese government. Although the part about June 4 did not last for more than a minute, he recalled that the vice-principal was apparently very uneasy. After his sharing, the vice-principal rounded up by suggesting that the school may have other views regarding the Chinese government. Howard did not receive any criticisms or warnings from the school management, but he was told he did not need to give the planned talk to the junior students. Howard also recalled that he was once asked to organize some lunch time forums related to public affairs for students and teachers. He did not pick the most sensitive topics, but he did address issues such as democratic reform and the then upcoming Chief Executive elections. After a few forums,

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he was informed that another teacher would replace him to handle the activity. Howard said that he could feel the pressure as time went on, and he left the school after only eight months because he felt he could not fit in. The stories of Howard and Fred provide only two examples, but they do show that there is a range of possibilities regarding how free teachers and students are to talk about Tiananmen and other political issues in secondary school. Notably, in addition to the existing personnel and culture at the school, this freedom is influenced by at least two other factors. The first is the employment structure of the teaching profession. Several interviewees saw the distinction between permanent posts and contract posts as crucial. Facing changes in the population structure and a declining number of students, the Hong Kong government had been reluctant to increase funding for secondary schools to hire more permanent teachers. Some schools were even found to use permanent positions to hire contract-based teachers. The result has been an increase in the number of contract-based staffs, whose job security is not guaranteed. It is much more difficult for teachers on contract posts not to “fall in line” with the school management. In contrast, as Howard put it, although teachers in permanent posts may also have a price to pay (e.g., lack of promotion) if they work in a conservative school environment and yet remain outspoken, the cost is relatively low. Second, the broader social and political environment inevitably influences the operation of secondary schools. All our interviewees acknowledged that the political atmosphere in Hong Kong has become more polarized during and after the Umbrella Movement. When a school organizes activities related to political issues, the risks of catching unwanted attention increase. Fred used as an example a controversy surrounding a prominent teacher at another school. The teacher’s public writing on a court case about police violence during the Umbrella Movement led to protests in front of his secondary school. “The same thing could happen here. Personally, I am not afraid of those people. So what if they beat me up? But you have to think about the students […]. I don’t want them to be harassed.” As a matter of fact, his school has stopped organizing students to visit and observe the June 4 vigil partly because the possibility of receiving complaints from parents or the public has become too real. In sum, the institutionalization of the teaching of the Tiananmen Incident in secondary schools is neither a success nor an utter failure. The state and its supporters cannot totally deny the significance of the Incident and ban the topic from being discussed in the school environment. Teachers who regarded Tiananmen as an important matter continued to find ways to articulate the Incident with aspects of the secondary school curriculum.

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However, a tendency of de-politicization has long existed in secondary school education in Hong Kong (Chin, 2014; Tse, 1997). The Chinese state has also been trying to marginalize the discussion of the Tiananmen crackdown in schools through pushing for de-politicization. Together with the worsening political environment, the memory transmission process at schools has been under constant and arguably increasing pressure.

Sites of Memory: Monuments and Museum From the Pillar of Shame to the Statue of the Goddess of Democracy One specific way to institutionalize collective memory of an event is to construct “places of public memory” (Dickinson, Blair & Ott, 2010) related to the event through the establishment of museums, monuments, or other kinds of memorials. There is no officially sanctioned memorial of the Tiananmen Incident in Hong Kong. However, several memorials exist on the campuses of public universities in the city. A 6.4-meter wide statue produced by artist Chan Wei-min, for example, locates on the campus of Lingnan University. More well-known are two other “unofficial monuments” of the Tiananmen Incident at the two oldest universities in the city. The struggles to put these two monuments on the campuses are illustrative of the struggle to establish sites of Tiananmen memory in Hong Kong. In 1997, Danish sculptor Jens Galschiot created a Pillar of Shame on the June 4 massacre. The 7-meter tall pillar is covered with painful and distorted faces. After being displayed during the June 4 candlelight vigil of that year, the sculpture was transported to the University of Hong Kong, “guarded” by 400 students and citizens. Citing safety concerns, security officers of the university attempted to block the entry of the sculpture into campus. Police was called upon. But after a few hours of confrontation, the police decided not to intervene in the campus affairs. The sculpture entered the campus successfully. It is impossible to ascertain if the university had any political concerns when the security officers tried to block the sculpture. In fact, the student union of the university acknowledged that the university turned cooperative after the sculpture entered campus. Between September 1997 and March 1998, the sculpture was displayed at other university campuses in turn. The Alliance tried to persuade the Urban Council to allow the Pillar of Shame to be placed permanently inside Kowloon Park, one of the major public parks in Hong Kong. But the Urban Council rejected the suggestion.

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Figure 5.1 Hong Kong University students holding a ritual in front of the Pillar of Shame in 2018

Photo from inmediahk.net, originally appearing on www.inmediahk.net/node/1057451. Faces of the activists blurred by the present authors.

The student union of the University of Hong Kong then held a referendum in late 1998 to support placing the pillar permanently at the university. Since then, the pillar constituted a distinctive landmark on the campus. Drawing upon Billig’s (1995) notion of banal nationalism – the idea that nationalism is embodied in mundane and everyday objects such as a national flag quietly hanging outside a government building, we can argue that the sculpture served as a banal reminder of the Tiananmen crackdown to students and visitors of the university. Outside the cycle of memory mobilization, people may not pay much attention to the sculpture, but its presence signifies a relationship between the university’s student body and the historical event. In the cycle of memory mobilization, the sculpture can become the site of on-campus commemoration activities, e.g., for many years the university’s student union would wash the Pillar of Shame before June 4. Even after the Umbrella Movement, as many student unions distanced themselves from the June 4 commemoration, members of the Alliance continued the annual ritual of washing the pillar. Compared to the Pillar of Shame, the recreated Statue of the Goddess of Democracy aroused an even bigger controversy in Hong Kong in 2010. The Incident began with Chinese artist Chan Wei-min recreating the statue

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erected by the protesting students in Tiananmen Square in late May, 1989. The statue was transported to Hong Kong in late May 2010. The original plan was for the statue to be displayed publicly in the city center for a few days and then in Victoria Park during the June 4 candlelight vigil. It would then be sent to the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). Lai Yan Ho, chairperson of CUHK’s student union at the time, recalled that the negotiation between the university administration and the student union was mostly focusing on logistical matters at first – “where to place it, who will look after it, and when will it come.” He recalled that both sides adopted an open attitude.16 The situation changed on May 29. The Alliance displayed the statue in front of a major shopping mall to promote the candlelight vigil. But the police charged the Alliance for holding an unauthorized exhibition in public space, arrested several members, and took the statue away. The activists and the news media mocked the police for seizing “min-nu” – the Goddess of Democracy’s abbreviation which also literally means “citizen-girl.” Although the statue was “released” quickly, the police action made the statue the center of a prominent controversy. In response, CUHK’s student union publicly stated that the statue would be brought to the university’s campus after the vigil. However, the university administration then announced the decision not to allow the statue to enter the campus. The rationale was that the permanent placement of any statue on campus needed to follow a designated procedure. The university’s announcement aroused uproars from students and many staff members. On-campus seminars were held in which prominent alumni and faculty members heavily criticized the university administration. Some treated the administration’s decision as an act of political censorship; others argued that the administration was too insensitive and bureaucratic. Granted, there were also students and staff members who supported the argument that the student union should not disregard proper procedures and force the university to accept the statue, but the overall atmosphere on campus was strongly against the university’s decision. Lai recalled that the original plan was actually not to place the statue permanently at CUHK: “The statue will come to CUHK, be placed at the train station, and then at the Cultural Square [the area on campus managed by the student union], and then after a few months it will go to other universities’ campuses. That was the original script.” This was, for Lai, also the main reason why the university administration was not against the 16 Personal interview conducted in October 2014.

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placement of the statue on campus at first. But when the issue became a controversy and the university administration adopted a hardline approach, the student union also needed to change their approach. Lai described the situation as follows: The university adopted a very logistical angle to look at the matter at first. Then it became a political issue and a matter of principle […]. I was inclined to adopt a hardline stance. To fight by all means, because if you allow this to happen, then there might be a lot of things you can’t do in the future. And at that moment, journalists were already asking me what we were going to do. We had very little time to make decisions.

The student union thus refused to back down. In the end, not unlike 1997 at the University of Hong Kong, around 2,000 students and citizens “guarded” the statue to the CUHK campus after the candlelight vigil on June 4. The statue was placed – and has since remained – just outside the entrance of the university train station, a location most students, staff, and visitors pass by each day. Besides being a banal reminder of the Tiananmen Incident, students also decorated the statue in different ways to link it to ongoing political events and controversies. During the Umbrella Movement, students covered the head of the statue with black cloths. During the anti-extradition law amendment bill protests in 2019, students placed a helmet – the type worn by many frontline protesters when facing the police – onto the head of the statue. Moreover, the presence of the statue changed the significance of the open space outside the entrance of the train station. Originally largely a non-place where people simply pass by as they enter and leave the campus, the space was turned into a place for staging seminars and rallies associated with political and public affairs. The June 4th Museum Both the University of Hong Kong and the Chinese University of Hong Kong are publicly funded universities. Their campuses are open to the public. Hence the Pillar of Shame and the Statue of the Goddess of Democracy can be considered public monuments. It was difficult for the government to prevent the erection of such monuments partly because of the strength of collective memory of Tiananmen in the society and partly because university campuses are places where freedom of speech and of thought are especially honored. Yet the monuments are simple structures – they are essentially just two pieces of artworks. They may symbolize key aspects of the event.

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Figure 5.2 The Statue of the Goddess of Democracy during the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement in 2019

The slogans read “Five Demands, Not One Less,” and “Hong Kongers, Resist.” Photo by Joseph M. Chan

They may become the sites for other mnemonic practices. But they do not provide a rich narrative or historical record of the event by themselves. The latter could be much better accomplished through a museum.

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The idea of having a museum in Hong Kong about the Tiananmen Incident was raised by members of the Alliance since the mid-2000s. Besides, a “virtual museum” has long been set up as part of the Alliance’s website. But in 2010, core members of the Alliance still indicated in the media that building a physical museum would be too daunting because doing so would require the Alliance to buy a suitable property. In Hong Kong’s soaring property market, the amount of financial resources needed would be huge.17 Nevertheless, the Alliance started to engage in the project of building a museum more seriously since 2011. In April 2012, a temporary June 4th Museum was established in a building in a residential area. The museum was understandably small – only 1,000 square feet in size. It operated for about one and a half month, attracting a total of around 20,000 visitors, i.e., about 400 to 500 visitors per day. Boosted by the experience, the Alliance started calling for donations for building a permanent museum since late 2012. In 2013, the Alliance set up a temporary museum again at the City University of Hong Kong. The museum was open between mid-April and mid-July. It thus also constituted a part of the mobilization cycle for the year’s candlelight vigil. Media reported that a total of around 21,000 visitors had gone to the temporary museum by the end of its operation period. In late 2013, the Alliance had accumulated 6 million Hong Kong dollars in donations for the project. They used the money as down payment for an apartment in a commercial building in Tsim Sha Tsui, a core commercialcum-tourist district in the city center. The “permanent” June 4th Museum opened in late April 2014 and attracted 5,000 visitors in the first month of operation. According to Lam Hon Kin, veteran cultural critic and art curator who was invited by the Alliance to serve as the director of the museum, the museum was designed to have 60% of the materials as permanent exhibits, whereas the remaining 40% were rotatable thematic exhibits. The internal space was designed with the idea of a maze and the concept of “100% citizens’ space.” These notions were aimed at incorporating more exhibits and facilitating interactions among visitors. The events in 1989 were narrated through a “time tunnel,” which recounted what happened each day through contrasting what the government said and what the students thought. At the end, the visitors were invited to write down their thoughts. Lam emphasized that it would be his failure if the visitors did not do so. The aim was to generate cognitive and affective responses from 17 “Treasures of June 4 scattered around; lacking capital to build a museum,” Ming Pao, June 4, 2010: A03.

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the visitors. Lam mentioned the placement of a green carpet at the center of the museum as an example: We hope we can recall the situation of the students sitting down at Tiananmen Square […]. Although we didn’t participate in the protest [in 1989], we thought the most interesting things in the 45 days of the movement should have been the discussions among the students, their discussions about how China should move ahead, what problems the economy was facing, how to fight corruption, etc. We could not record those discussions. But we hope we can recreate them. People can sit down and discuss. When there are guided tours for schools, [students] can sit down and discuss without any interference from others.

In addition, Lam noted that they did have the idea of “museum activism” in mind when designing its interior: Rehabilitating June 4 is our goal. So when people leave the museum, the words “rehabilitating June 4” will be spotlighted onto the backs of people. People will suddenly discover that it is [a responsibility] that one cannot avoid. We hope that every visitor can think deeply about their own roles, about the issues facing China today.18

The design of the museum thus put much emphasis not only on how to narrate the events in 1989 but also on how to structure the museum experience, or what scholars have called the “museal game” for the visitors (Żychlińska & Fontana, 2016). Meanings are expected to be produced less by the visitors “reading” the exhibits than by the visitors interacting with the museum and with other visitors. While the museum attracted citizens from all walks of life, secondary school students constituted a main group of visitors. Alliance staff member Fung Oi Ling noted that, before the establishment of the museum, the Alliance often went to secondary schools to give seminars about June 4. After the museum was established, teachers and students could come to the museum instead. Fung noted that there could be advantages associated with this change. She noted that, based on her experiences of giving talks in secondary schools, the leadership of some schools may try to monitor how guests share their views with the students. She opined that if the internal environment of a school is not particularly open, it might be better for 18 Personal interview conducted in November 2014.

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Figure 5.3 Showing of a documentary inside the June 4th Museum

Photo by Chuntung Lam of The Initium, originally appearing on https://theinitium.com/ article/20160602-hongkong-tiananmen-memory01/

teachers to bring the students outside the school. In addition, “[the museum experience] is also more concrete to the students, not as boring as our talks.”19 Besides secondary school students, tourists constituted another important group of visitors. As the museum was located close to the Museum of Hong Kong History, the Alliance even tried to promote the idea of visiting both the official Museum of Hong Kong History and the June 4th Museum at the same time in order to compare the state-sanctioned version of Hong Kong history and what the state would leave out. Fung Oi Ling observed that there were visitors from all over the world because the foreigners were curious about China, and many tourist guidebooks indeed mentioned the June 4th Museum. More important, certainly from the perspective of the Alliance, was the large number of visitors from mainland China. Alliance member Mak Hoi Wah estimated that 30% to 40% of the visitors of the June 4th Museum were from the mainland. Museum director Lam Hon Kin noted that many mainlanders might not know about the Tiananmen Incident. “We hope we can introduce this history to them, so they can pass it on when they go back. To know about what happened at that time – this is also civic education.” 19 Personal interview conducted in October 2014.

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The news media paid much attention to the presence of mainland tourists in the June 4th Museum. In media portrayals, the mainland visitors ranged from senior citizens who knew about the crackdown in 1989 and were touched by the exhibited materials to people who wondered why there was no mentioning of PLA casualties. In other words, the Hong Kong media did acknowledge that not all mainland visitors responded to the museum’s exhibits in the same way. Yet some representations of the mainland visitors were arguably more common and more illustrative of Hong Kong society’s imagination of mainlanders. For instance, one Apple Daily report on May 16, 2014, was titled “Post-80 from Guangzhou visited the museum repeatedly.” The article interviewed a few mainland visitors from Southern China who openly acknowledged that they had only a hazy idea about what happened in 1989, and they visited the museum because they wanted to “fill in the blanks”. Yet another Apple Daily report on the same day was titled “interviewees from the mainland were evasive; their eyes showed a sense of fear.” The text described one mainland visitor as follows: One university student from Dalian did not want to give even a pseudonym. He claimed that he was just curious and did not have specific feelings after the visit. “There are also many troubles in Xinjiang and Tibet, too distant from me, I don’t feel anything” […]. Despite what he said, his hands held tightly to the pamphlets given out by the museum, and he took away a pamphlet about Liu Xia.

Underlying this portrayal is the imagination that many mainlanders could not speak freely and were forced to pretend to be apathetic, while deep down they still cared about what happened. This imagination, in turn, validated the value of the June 4th Museum. The Chinese and Hong Kong governments did not comment on the establishment of the June 4th Museum, but the presence of mainland tourists made the museum even more politically sensitive. Against this background, the museum faced legal and other challenges even before it began operations. In early April 2014, the Owners’ Corporation of the building where the museum was located issued a lawyer’s letter to the Alliance, claiming that the museum violated the deed of mutual covenant of the building. In October 2014, the building initiated a rule requiring all visitors to obtain a visitor card before going upstairs, and there could not be more than 20 visitors on the same floor at any time. The regulation restricted the number of visitors to the museum. In May 2015, the museum received an order from the Buildings Department and a letter from the Fire Department stating

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that certain structures of the museum failed to meet the required standards of fire prevention and needed to be rebuilt. The pro-democracy media and movement activists criticized what they saw as harassment driven by political motivations. Meanwhile, the museum faced its own financial difficulties. Numbers of visitors went down substantially over time, especially outside the annual period of memory mobilization. By December 2014, media reports indicated that the museum registered a loss of more than 1 million dollars.20 In December 2015, the Alliance announced that they would sell the property housing the June 4th Museum. The museum closed on July 11, 2016, slightly more than two years after its opening. Nonetheless, the Alliance did not abandon the idea of a permanent June 4th Museum. In November 2018, it publicized the progress of finding a new site for the museum. On April 26, 2019, the 30th anniversary of the “426 editorial” issued by the People’s Daily, the new permanent June 4th Museum was opened. The opening of the new museum faced immediate challenges. On the very first day of its operation, a pro-government group organized a protest, claiming that there were safety issues inside the museum. Firemen were called to the museum by (false) reports of gas leakage. In subsequent days, suspected gangsters congregated in front of the building hosting the June 4th Museum. They disbanded only after the police intervened. The harassment stopped afterward, but one cannot completely rule out its return in the future. A brief note on June 4 in the News Expo While the Alliance’s June 4th Museum is a site devoted completely to the Tiananmen Incident, to the extent that Tiananmen was an important event in contemporary Hong Kong history, it might also be featured in other museums relevant to the social and political history of Hong Kong. More precisely, just as many Hong Kong people expect the Tiananmen crackdown to be discussed in school textbooks, people may also expect the event to be mentioned in museums that tell stories about Hong Kong society. Debates or even controversies might ensue if there are discrepancies between people’s expectations and museum practices. The Hong Kong News Expo will be briefly discussed as a case in point.

20 “Albert Ho took up leadership of the Alliance; Ah Yan says he’s too busy to continue to serve,” Sing Tao Daily, December 1, 2014: A14.

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Partly inspired by the Newseum in Washington D.C., the project of the Hong Kong News Expo was initiated by the Journalism Education Foundation in 2013.21 The project received government support in the form of HKD85 million of financial subsidies. The government also granted the News Expo the right to use a heritage building as its site. The two-story News Expo was opened in December 2018, and debates about its treatment of historical events immediately arose. An Apple Daily reporter wrote in an article that “the museum did not provide detailed information and did not say much about important historical events that had a huge influence on Hong Kong people, such as the 1967 riots, the June 4 Incident, and Occupy Central.”22 The news report, originally published online, immediately attracted the attention of pro-democracy legislators. Two legislators criticized the News Expo in a financial committee meeting at the Legislative Council (LegCo) for “not mentioning” the politically sensitive events. The News Expo responded by issuing a public letter to the legislators, correcting their mistakes and emphasizing that the museum had already used a lot of space to present the major events in contemporary Hong Kong history. One of the two legislators issued a public statement apologizing for the mischaracterization of the work of the Expo. The debate was a relatively minor one, but it did illustrate the sensitivity of the issue of Tiananmen, not in the sense of the issue being unwelcomed by the state, but in the sense of people being sensitive toward whether and how the issue is talked about in important public spaces. Notably, discussions about the News Expo’s treatment of social and political events did not completely subside after the legislators’ apology. After all, if the claim that the News Expo “did not mention” June 4 was factually incorrect, Apple Daily’s judgment that the News Expo “did not say much” about June 4 was more difficult to dismiss. As a matter of fact, June 4 was discussed together with nine other major social and political events for Hong Kong on a large interactive installation on the second floor of the Expo. The list of top ten events was determined by a public vote held earlier in the year. It did include the occupation movement in 2014, the Tiananmen Incident in 1989, and the 1967 urban riots. Other events on the list include the outbreak of SARS in 2003, when hundreds of citizens died from the disease, and the 1953 Shek Kip Mei fire, which directly 21 The Journalism Education Foundation was set up by two professional organizations of the news industry in Hong Kong. 22 “Carrie Lam encouraged reports to ‘seek truth and seek the good’; News Expo opens, but there is little discussion of 1967, June 4, and Occupy Central,” Apple Daily, December 6, 2018.

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led the colonial government to quicken and expand the development of public housing in the city. A three-minute video was made for each of the ten events. In each video, journalists who reported on the event recounted their experiences. The focus is less on the events themselves than on how the news media covered the events. Is this treatment of Tiananmen fair and adequate? Obviously, it is difficult to come to a consensual judgment of exactly how much space the News Expo should devote to a specific political event. On the one hand, the Hong Kong News Expo was relatively small in size, occupying a space of only 10,000 square feet, i.e., about 4% of the size of the Newseum in Washington D.C. It can indeed be unfair to criticize the News Expo as if there was enough space to “say a lot” about each and every historical event. But on the other hand, the News Expo devoted two “corners” on the first floor to how the Hong Kong media covered the Sichuan earthquake and Hong Kong’s hosting of the Olympic Equestrian events, both from 2008. The contents for these two corners were designed to be changeable. The question is whether the News Expo will one day devote more space to the Tiananmen crackdown.

Institutionalization as a Dynamic Struggle This chapter examines efforts to institutionalize collective memory of the Tiananmen Incident. In both the case of secondary schools and the case of establishing monuments and museums, institutionalization has not been a simple story of success or failure. Consistent with our overall theoretical emphasis, the struggle for institutionalization has been a dynamic process of negotiation and contestation. There have been partial achievements – the possibility of teaching about the Tiananmen Incident in the subjects of Liberal Studies and Chinese History, the incorporation of June 4-related activities in the calendars at some secondary schools, the erection of Tiananmen-related monuments at universities, and the establishment of the June 4 museum. One might argue that these partial achievements were impressive given the fact that the context of post-handover Hong Kong has not been one that is conducive to memory institutionalization. However, one can also see the never-ending challenges the proponents of collective remembering had to face as they attempted to turn memories into durable forms. Several analytical points are worth noting regarding the struggle for institutionalization in the present case. Although we have argued that the Hong Kong context was overall speaking not conducive to the institutionalization of collective remembering of Tiananmen, opportunities of

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institutionalization arose due to the fact that various social and political institutions do have different degrees of relative autonomy and operate according to their distinctive rules and norms. Universities, for example, are places that value open and free discussion of all kinds of ideas, including unpopular ones. The university administrations could object to the permanent placement of Tiananmen-related monuments on campus on procedural or safety grounds, but when the student representatives “forced their ways,” it was difficult for the administrations to stand firm and execute their decisions without severely damaging the universities’ reputation. Similarly, secondary school textbook production includes a complex operation serving primarily a pedagogical purpose. There were norms governing how a textbook should be written. For a long period of time, it was difficult for any political force to exercise detailed control of the drafting, editing, and printing of all textbooks, especially if the textbook producers followed their professional norms. Liberal Studies, meanwhile, was established because there are educational reasons for having a subject to enhance students’ capability of understanding their society. What teachers needed to do was to articulate why discussing Tiananmen or even observing the candlelight vigil could serve the educational purpose. Therefore, as long as political concerns could not completely dominate, it was up to the individual actors to exercise their agency. Willing and capable actors could seize the opportunities and make use of the spaces for resistance. If the struggle for institutionalizing collective memory could go on in secondary schools, it was because of the continual efforts on the part of certain secondary school teachers to defend the space for discussing the Tiananmen Incident at schools. The successful erection of the Tiananmenrelated monuments in universities was based on the efforts by the student unions and their supporters. In addition, the various social institutions had to face the social pressure exerted by the public and the media. It does not mean that public criticism against those organizations and individuals who were charged with undermining the Tiananmen crackdown was always valid. But as long as questions about the handling of the Tiananmen Incident can be anticipated, they constituted constraints on actors involved in efforts such as school curriculum reform or museum building. Combined together, the partial success of the institutionalization of collective memory about Tiananmen was often the unintended consequence of other institutional developments – “unintended” from the perspective of those who initiated the institutional developments concerned. For example, providing a platform for some schools and teachers to discuss the Tiananmen

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Incident can be regarded as the “unintended consequence” of establishing the subject of Liberal Studies and the institutionalization of Other Learning Experiences. When the state tried to control or “correct” such unintended consequences by implementing changes, it would be difficult for the changes not to have an adverse impact on the capability of the institution to achieve its intended goals. Nonetheless, although the dominance of the society’s collective memory of Tiananmen had made it difficult for the state to directly suppress the institutionalization of collective remembering, the efforts to undermine the institutionalization of collective remembering of Tiananmen can be more effective when conservative social forces worked together with the state. When some secondary schools became more “careful” about organizing seminars or student activities addressing political issues, the schools might be less concerned about the state than about reactions from the conservative section of the public. When the Alliance had to close down the first “permanent” June 4th Museum, it was because of “harassment” by other property owners of the commercial building. It is hardly possible for observers to ascertain if the state had directly or indirectly coordinated the actions of the conservative social forces in various cases. But in terms of the consequences of their actions, the conservative social forces were indeed working with and for the state (Cheng, 2020). Therefore, one cannot romanticize the scenario and paint an unrealistically positive picture of the success of institutionalization. The difficulty of institutionalization is part of the limitations of the process of memory transmission over the long haul. These limitations, in turn, are an important component of the background for understanding the challenges to collective remembering of Tiananmen since 2014.

Bibliography Allen, M. P., & Parsons, N. L. (2006). The institutionalization of fame: Achievement, recognition, and cultural consecration in baseball. American Sociological Review, 71(5), 808-825. Bartram, R. (2017). Housing historic role models and the American dream: Domestic rhetoric and institutional decision-making at the Tenement Museum. Qualitative Sociology, 40(1), 1-22. Billig, M. (1995). Banal nationalism. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Cheng, E. W. (2020). United front work and mechanisms of countermobilization in Hong Kong. China Journal, 83, 1-33.

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Chin, A. Y. (2014). Diasporic memories and conceptual geography in post-colonial Hong Kong. Modern Asian Studies, 48(6), 1566-1593. Crane, S. A. (2001). Introduction: Of museum and memory. In S. A. Crane (ed.), Museums and memory (pp. 1-13). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Dickinson, G., Blair, C., & Ott, B. L. (eds.) (2010). Places of public memory. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Fung, D., & Liang, T. (2018). The legitimacy of curriculum development in postcolonial Hong Kong: Insights from the case of Liberal Studies. Oxford Review of Education, 44(2), 171-189. Fung, D., & Su, A. (2016). The influence of liberal studies on students’ participation in socio-political activities: The case of the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong. Oxford Review of Education, 42(1), 89-107. Kan, F., & Vickers, E. (2002). One Hong Kong, two histories: “History” and “Chinese history” in the Hong Kong school curriculum. Comparative Education, 38(1), 73-89. Klockmann, J. B. (2018). Remembrance diplomacy by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the UN, 1976-2015. International History Review, 40(3), 523-545. Kwok, H. K. (2007). The implementation of Liberal Studies in Hong Kong and its strategies. Hong Kong Teachers’ Centre Journal, 6, 1-6. [in Chinese] Lee, J. Y. (2018). Yasukuni and Hiroshima in clash? War and peace museums in contemporary Japan. Pacific Focus, 33(1), 5-33. Lee, T. T. L., & Chiu, S. W. K. (2018). Conduit for engagement? School curriculum and youth political participation in Hong Kong. Young, 26(2), 161-178. Marschall, S. (2010). Commemorating the “Trojan Horse” massacre in Cape Town: The tension between vernacular and official expressions of memory. Visual Studies, 25(2), 135-148. Nasser, R., & Nasser, I. (2008). Textbooks as a vehicle for segregation and domination: State efforts to shape Palestinian Israelis’ identities as citizens. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 40(5), 627-650. Pelak, C. F. (2015). Institutionalizing counter-memories of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement: The National Civil Rights Musuem and an application of the interestconvergence principle. Sociological Forum, 30(2), 305-327. Pennebaker, J. W., & Banasik, B. L. (1997). On the creation and maintenance of collective memories: History as social psychology. In J. W. Pennebaker, D. Paez, & B. Rime (eds.), Collective memories of political events (pp. 3-19). Hillsdale, NJ: LEA. Podoler, G. (2017). The past under the shadow of the present: The case of the National Museum of Korean contemporary history. Asian Studies Review, 41(3), 424-440. Savelsberg, J. J., & King, R. D. (2005). Institutionalizing collective memories of hate: Law and law enforcement in Germany and the United States. American Journal of Sociology, 111(2), 579-616.

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Tirosh, N., & Schejter, A. (2015). “I will perpetuate your memory through all generations”1: Institutionalization of collective memory of law in Israel. International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics, 11(1), 21-35. Tse, T. K. C. (1997). The poverty of political education in Hong Kong secondary schools. Occasional Paper No. 69. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Institute for Asia-Pacif ic Studies. Vickers, E. (2005). In search of identity: The politics of history as a school subject in Hong Kong, 1960s-2005. Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Comparative Education Research Centre. Wertsch, J. V. (2002). Voices of collective remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Withers, D. M. (2011). ss Great Britain and the containment of British collective memory. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 17(3), 245-260. Zerubavel, Y. (1995). Recovered roots. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Żychlińska, M., & Fontana, E. (2016). Museal games and emotional truths: Creating Polish national identity at the Warsaw Rising Museum. East European Politics and Society, 30(2), 235-269.

6

The Challenge of Localism and Memory Repair Abstract Chapter 6 discusses how Tiananmen commemoration was challenged from within the broadly defined pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong as a result of the rise of localism in the early to mid-2010s. The analysis reconstructs how the challenge of localism entered the mainstream media, and how the Umbrella Movement constituted a critical event strengthening this challenge. It also discusses how memory entrepreneurs responded to the challenge by reframing the significance of Tiananmen commemoration in order to seek common ground. Keywords: memory repair, localism, critical event, Umbrella Movement

Chapters 2 to 5 have examined the processes involved in the formation and sustenance of collective remembering of the Tiananmen Incident in Hong Kong between the early 1990s and the early 2010s. Although Chapters 4 and 5 have also pointed to certain limitations in intergenerational memory transmission and memory institutionalization, on the whole, the memory entrepreneurs have largely been successful in defending the collective memory of the Tiananmen crackdown against the state’s occasional attempts to undermine it. However, into the 2010s, collective remembering of Tiananmen in Hong Kong faced challenges coming from not only the state but also from within the opposition camp, especially public figures and movement activists belonging to the loosely defined faction of the localists. From 2014 to 2018, the number of participants in the June 4 vigil in Victoria Park went down from 180,000 to 115,000, according to the Alliance, or from 99,500 to 17,000 according to the police (though the numbers rose again in 2019 for the 30th anniversary of Tiananmen). More importantly, since around 2013, there had been calls issued by localist activists and commentators urging people not to participate in the June 4 vigil. After the Umbrella

Lee, Francis L.F., and Joseph M. Chan, Memories of Tiananmen: Politics and Processes of Collective Remembering in Hong Kong, 1989-2019. Amsterdam University Press 2021 doi: 10.5117/9789463728447_ch06

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Movement in 2014, criticisms against June 4 commemoration became even more vocal. Some young movement activists and student leaders argued that Tiananmen crackdown is an issue for the Chinese, but not Hong Kongers, to be concerned about. They rejected the claim that Hong Kong people have the responsibility to promote democratization in China. In 2015, The Hong Kong Federation of Students (HKFS) decided not to participate in the candlelight vigil. HKFS withdrew from the Alliance in 2017 and had not returned to the vigil since then. Broadly speaking, the rise of localism and the weakening of young people’s national identification constituted the context for the new challenges to collective memory of Tiananmen. However, these two factors did not lead to the immediate weakening of collective remembering of Tiananmen. The decline of Hong Kong’s young people’s national identification can be dated to 2008 (Ping & Kwong, 2014; Steinhardt, Li & Jiang, 2018), whereas the rise of a form of progressive localism in Hong Kong can be traced to the mid-2000s (Chen & Szeto, 2015). Yet the discourse of localism was linked to discussions of the Tiananmen commemoration in the mainstream media only since 2013, and Tiananmen commemoration became more seriously questioned mainly after the Umbrella Movement. Therefore, to understand how contextual change impinges on collective remembering, we need to examine the ways through which the relevant contextual factors were brought to bear on the discourses and practices of remembering. This chapter thus aims to reconstruct the discursive contestation and negotiation surrounding Tiananmen commemoration brought about by the challenge of localism. We begin by further discussing the rise of localism and Hong Kong people’s changing identities. We then analyze the emergence of the localist challenge to Tiananmen commemoration in 2013 and 2014. It is followed by an analysis of the use of Tiananmen as a historical analogy during the Umbrella Movement and how it ended up undermining Tiananmen’s perceived contemporary relevance. We then examine the post-Umbrella Movement debates on the value of continual commemoration. We will see how the memory entrepreneurs responded to the challenges by engaging in memory repair, i.e., rearticulating Tiananmen commemoration’s rationale and contemporary significance.

A Brief History of Hong Kong Identity and Localism To understand how the changing identities of young people and the rise of localism have influenced the dynamics of collective remembering of the

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Tiananmen Incident since the early 2010s, it is important to first historicize the notions of the “local” and the Hong Kong identity. After the Second World War, a huge number of people fled from the mainland to Hong Kong to escape from the civil war and then the natural disasters and political chaos on the mainland. The Hong Kong population grew from 1.2 million in 1946 to 3.63 million in 1966. Hong Kong in the early post-war decades was therefore a society of refugees, many of whom saw Hong Kong only as “borrowed place, borrowed time” (Hughes, 1968). They had no strong sense of belonging to the city. They focused on the struggle for personal survival and had minimal expectations regarding what the colonial government should do to improve their livelihood (Lau, 1982). If they paid attention to politics and public affairs, they were often more concerned about Chinese politics than local matters (Chan & Lee, 1991). The situation changed in the 1970s. First, the second generation of the early refugees, who were born and grew up in the city, entered their adolescence or early adulthood. Second, the 1967 urban riots led the colonial government to change its governing approach. It began to invest substantially in public services and create channels to more effectively absorb public opinion into the policymaking process (Ma, 2010; Tsang, 2004). Such changes improved citizens’ livelihood and laid the foundation for the rapid modernization and economic take-off of Hong Kong, which in turn contributed to Hong Kong people’s feelings of distinction from their mainland relatives. Third, the media started to pay more attention to local public affairs (Chan, 1992). The fast-pace economic development also led to the formation of a surplus economy supporting the development of local popular culture (Ma, 1999). The living experiences and sentiments of Hong Kong people were articulated and expressed through Cantopop, the “new wave cinema,” and television dramas. Popular cultural products offered the resources based on which people constructed new understandings of themselves. These developments led to the formation of a local society and a local identity. Lau and Kuan’s (1988) seminal survey in 1985 found that, when asked to choose between “Hong Kongers” or “Chinese,” 59.5% of the respondents identified themselves primarily as Hong Kongers, whereas 36.2% identified themselves as Chinese. Certainly, it does not mean that many people had rejected their Chinese identity. Later surveys would add “mixed categories” (e.g., “both Hong Kongers and Chinese”) for respondents to choose, and substantial proportions indeed chose the mixed categories (Lee & Chan, 2005). More importantly, the survey instrument might have created an unnecessary contrast between the Hong Kong and Chinese identities. In reality, ordinary people did not have to pit the two against each other. As a

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matter of fact, throughout the 1970s up to the handover and beyond, Hong Kong society exhibited occasional outbursts of patriotic sentiments, such as the Diaoyu Island protests,1 public support for Chinese athletes in the Olympic Games, and widespread concern for and donation to the severe flooding of Eastern China in 1991. One might include public support for the student movement in Beijing in 1989 into this list of patriotic outbursts. Therefore, while Hong Kong people in the 1980s and 1990s might see themselves as significantly different from mainlanders, they treated both “Hong Kongers” and “mainlanders” as belonging to the general category of “Chinese.” Or as Mathews (1997) put it, Hong Kongers in the 1990s saw themselves in terms of “Chinese plus,” i.e., they are Chinese with some additional characteristics, such as being wealthier and more cosmopolitan. Notably, political orientation constituted another distinctive characteristic of “Hong Kongers.” When Hong Kong and Chinese identities are pitted against each other in survey studies, the results have consistently shown that people who claimed to be Hong Kongers were more likely to support democratization (Lau & Kuan, 1988; Lee & Chan, 2005; Wong, 1996). Without pitting the Hong Kong and Chinese identities against each other, Chan and Chan (2014) used the term liberal patriotism to describe Hong Kong people’s feelings toward China. Hong Kong people exhibited a degree of love for the country, its culture, and its people, but they did not support the state unconditionally. They evaluated the actions of the Chinese state through the lens of liberal democratic values and would criticize the state when its actions deviated from the values. Liberal patriotism presumes a distinction between the country as an abstract and largely socio-cultural category and the state as a political entity. Proclaiming a love for the country should not commit oneself to support the current regime. In the early years after the handover, it was not difficult for Hong Kong people to maintain their liberal patriotism when China adopted a largely non-interventionist approach to governing Hong Kong. There were few direct conflicts between the local society and the Central Government. As a result, even when the Hong Kong society was embroiled in a protracted economic downturn and public evaluation of the SAR government fell substantially, Hong Kong people still exhibited a substantial level of trust toward the Chinese government.2 1 Both China and Japan claim sovereignty over the Diaoyu Islands, or the Senkaku Islands in Japanese. 2 According to the surveys from the Public Opinion Programme of the University of Hong Kong, 32.4% of Hong Kong people trusted the Chinese government in the second half of 1997.

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However, when the SAR government failed to push forward national security legislation in 2003, the Chinese government concluded that the “hearts” of the Hong Kong people had not returned to the mother country. The Chinese government thus changed its approach to governing Hong Kong by becoming more active in local social and political affairs (Lee & Chan, 2011; Poon, 2008; Tai, 2009). It tried to help Hong Kong to get out of the economic quagmire through establishing the Closer Economic Partnership Agreement between Hong Kong and the Guangdong province and allowing mainland tourists to travel to the city on an individual basis. In the sociopolitical arena, the Chinese government began building its support network of middle-class professionals to counterbalance the city’s existing, largely liberal-oriented professional groups. Culturally, China began to proactively inculcate patriotic feelings among Hong Kong people, such as by organizing visits of Chinese astronauts and Olympic gold medalists to the city. The broadcast of the national anthem before major newscasts in Hong Kong started in 2004, and national education was introduced into Hong Kong schools in 2007. Notably, as the Chinese government attempted to impose a kind of “topdown patriotism” onto the city, social and economic integration also led many Hong Kong people to obtain new and more intensive experiences of traveling to China and interacting with mainlanders. As a result, many Hong Kong people developed new imaginations of Hong Kong being part of the national community (Ma, 2007). For several years, the above strategies and developments had seemingly succeeded in improving Hong Kong people’s attitude toward China. For example, the proportion of Hong Kong people trusting the Chinese Central Government reached 54.9% in the first half of 2008.3 However, the same strategies and developments also sowed the seeds for the reversal in later years. As mentioned in Chapter 2, the combination of the Sichuan earthquake, the Beijing Olympics, and the Sanlu milk scandal in 2008 generated a disturbing picture of a corrupt Chinese society in spite of its apparent economic achievements. In Hong Kong, while people might not react too strongly when national education was first introduced into local schools as an elective subject, the topic became the focus of a huge protest The percentage rose to above 40% in 2002. After a drop to 37.6% in the first half of 2003, arguably due to the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome and the national security legislation debate, it rose again to 45.6% in the second half of 2003. 3 According to the Public Opinion Programme of the University of Hong Kong. See http:// hkupop.edu.hk

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campaign when the government tried to turn it into a core subject for all secondary school students in 2012. More generally, increasing economic and social integration started to generate problems for Hong Kong people’s livelihoods. The growth in the number of mainland visitors aggravated the crowdedness of the city, strained public transportation, and led to the transformation of community life-space into tourist shopping sites. The influx of Chinese capital became one of the factors pushing up property prices. The arrival of significant numbers of pregnant women who wanted to give birth to children in Hong Kong was seen as affecting local people’s access to hospital services. The arrival of migrants from the mainland on a daily basis was seen as straining the welfare system of the city. The increasing number of mainland students in secondary and tertiary institutions was seen as an example of mainlanders coming to town to take away opportunities from Hong Kongers. Some of these perceptions might not be justified, but they led to a general perception of mainlanders as a threat. Some Hong Kong people began to use the derogatory metaphor “locusts” to refer to mainlanders, i.e., mainlanders were seen as swarming over the city, consuming its resources, and leaving its people devastated. Citizens self-mobilized through digital media and organized protests targeting at mainland tourists (Ip, 2015; So, 2017). Certainly, the Hong Kong and Chinese governments remained the ultimate targets of criticism not only because the entrance of Chinese tourists, migrants, and capital was facilitated by government policies, but also because some citizens treated the arrival of mainland capital and migrants as part of China’s attempt to “mainlandize” Hong Kong. Meanwhile, political conflict between the Hong Kong society and the Chinese government heightened as democratization stood still. The earlier promise by the Chinese government to allow popular election of the Chief Executive in Hong Kong became void as the democrats rejected an electoral framework that would allow China to filter out unwanted candidates. In addition, the State Council of China issued a white paper in June 2014, stating that the Central Government had “complete jurisdiction” over Hong Kong. It signified the Chinese government’s increasing emphasis on its “right” to intervene in Hong Kong affairs, which contrasted sharply with the early post-handover emphasis on the city’s “high degree of autonomy.” Against such background, bun-tou (i.e., “local”) became the core symbol used by various groups and opinion leaders to articulate their response to the threat of “mainlandization” (Ping & Kwong, 2017) on the one hand, and to the democrats’ continual failure of forcing the government to concede on important social and political matters on the other. It should be noted that

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the idea of localism was first utilized by a group of progressive activists in the “preservation movement” in the mid-2000s (Chen & Szeto, 2015). These activists called for the democratization of urban planning, rejected the neoliberal model of economic development, and exhibited concerns for various forms of social inequalities. Progressive localism did not involve a rejection of the Chinese identity and animosity against mainlanders. But in the early 2010s, bun-tou became more closely linked to a strong anti-China sentiment and a sense of “Hong Kongers” being a distinctive ethnic group. Nevertheless, there has been no single and coherently developed localist ideology. Bun-tou can be seen as a flexible cultural carrier appropriated by different groups for varying purposes (Chan, 2017). In fact, if localism is understood broadly as an emphasis on the interests of the local society and people, even government officials and pro-government groups might occasionally make “localist” claims (Kaeding, 2017; Lo, 2018). However, in public discourses in the 2010s, the term localist, or bun-tou-pai, was typically understood as an emerging political faction highly critical toward both the Chinese government and the democrats in Hong Kong, while localism referred generally to the sentiments and the range of arguments expressed by the faction. In the following analysis, we are interested in the challenge to Tiananmen commemoration posed by this more narrowly defined localist faction. Yet we should keep in mind the openness of the symbolic meanings of bun-tou.

The Emergence of the Localist Challenge to Commemoration, 2013-2014 To analyze how localism impinged on public discourses surrounding the Tiananmen Incident, we searched for newspaper articles – including news reports, editorials, and commentaries – containing the keywords bun-tou and luk-sei (i.e., “June 4”) from the electronic news archive Wise News. We focused our attention on the memory mobilization period of April to June in each year of 2010 to 2017. To keep the amount of materials manageable, our analysis was restricted to eight Chinese newspapers: Apple Daily, Ming Pao, Oriental Daily, Hong Kong Economic Journal, Hong Kong Economic Times, Sing Tao Daily, Wen Wei Po, and Ta Kung Pao. The eight newspapers covered the whole political spectrum ranging from the most strongly pro-democracy (Apple Daily) to the CCP-sponsored press (Wen Wei Po and Ta Kung Pao). Table 6.1 shows the numbers of articles derived from the search. The first column shows that the number of articles related to June 4 in the memory

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Table 6.1 Number of newspaper articles mentioning both June 4 and “local,” 20102017 Year

Number of articles mentioning June 4

Number of articles also mentioning bun-tou

% of articles mentioning June 4 that also mentioned bun-tou

2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

335 334 462 512 504 327 346 229

8 8 8 162 96 167 158 71

2.4% 2.4% 1.7% 31.6% 19.0% 51.1% 45.7% 31.0%

mobilization period increased from around 330 in 2010 and 2011 to more than 500 in 2013 and 2014. The number then declined to around 330 again in 2015. It fell further to merely 229 in 2017. This trend is consistent with the argument about the weakening of collective remembering since 2014. More importantly, the notion of bun-tou was largely absent in discussions of June 4 between 2010 and 2012. 2013 was the year when the localist challenge to the Tiananmen commemoration entered mainstream media discourses. The proportion of June 4-related articles that mentioned bun-tou surged to more than 30% in that year. It further surged to over 50% in 2015. This is suggestive of the intensification of the localist challenge to Tiananmen commemoration after the Umbrella Movement. Hence our analysis differentiates between the pre-Umbrella Movement, the Umbrella Movement, and the post-Umbrella Movement periods. This section focuses on the pre-Umbrella Movement period of 2013 and 2014. The localists’ arguments In our corpus of materials, the first substantive discussion of the “localist perspective” in relation to Tiananmen commemoration in 2013 was offered in an Apple Daily editorial on April 20. The article was written by veteran commentator Li Yee and titled “A review and preview of anti-communist thoughts in Hong Kong.” The article treated the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989 as having dealt a severe blow to the anti-communist struggle in Hong Kong at the time. But given the inevitability of the handover, “mainstream anti-communist thoughts” believed that commemorating June 4 could help promote democratic development on the mainland. The dominant

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theory was that “it would be difficult for Hong Kong to have democracy if China does not democratize; the voices of freedom in Hong Kong will promote democracy in China. The destiny of Hong Kong and China are closely intertwined.” However, Li Yee continued to argue that China not only failed to put forward any political reform after more than two decades; it had become even more authoritarian. With the growth of crony capitalism, power and wealth became more and more concentrated into the hands of a small ruling class. At the same time, Hong Kong society had to face the intrusion of China in its polity, economy, and society. The development aroused various protests against China-Hong Kong integration. Li concluded: Anti-communist thoughts [in Hong Kong] have gradually dissociated themselves from the idea of the close intertwining of democratization in China and in Hong Kong. If political parties want to obtain citizens’ support, […] they must put aside the unrealistic thinking that “Hong Kong would not have democracy if China does not have political reform.”

Nonetheless, Li’s April 20 article did not contain any criticism against the Alliance and June 4 commemoration. Framed as a historical analysis, the article did not arouse much debate. The article mentioned that young people in Hong Kong did not see the rehabilitation of June 4 as closely related to their interests, but the phenomenon and the rise of localism in general were treated merely as a fact that political groups had to respond to. June 4 commemoration became the center of controversy only when the Alliance announced in mid-May the slogan for the year’s candlelight vigil. The slogan began with “Loving the country and the people [is] the spirit of Hong Kong.” The explicit emphasis on patriotism (i.e., loving the country) was seen as strategically unwise given the emerging localist sentiments in the society. Even Ding Zilin, the respected leader of the Tiananmen Mothers, criticized the slogan for its “stupidity.” For Ding, the meaning of patriotism had already been distorted by the regime. It had become impossible to maintain liberal patriotism’s distinction between loving the country and supporting the government. Amidst the controversy, Apple Daily published another editorial by Li Yee on May 18, titled “Will the localists attend the June 4 rally this year?” Li extended Ding’s argument: The Alliance put forward “loving the country and the people” in an attempt to retake the right to define “patriotism.” The intention was good, but it

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is dissociated from the reality of Hong Kong. The “country” has already been hijacked by the “Party” […]. As for the people, the Chinese people that Hong Kongers encounter these days are often travelers from the mainland, who either like to show off their wealth or are hard to serve. They are just unlovable. Localist democrats are on the rise exactly because the younger generation in Hong Kong can no longer “love the country and the people.”

Li also reiterated the point that the imagined trajectory of “rehabilitating June 4  political reform in China  democracy in China  democracy in Hong Kong” was no longer feasible. Moreover, he noted the problem underlying the call for rehabilitating June 4: The evaluation by the international community of June 4 is clear. Even in mainland China, many people have obtained from the Internet a basic understanding of the event. There is no need for rehabilitation. To talk about rehabilitating June 4 is to request the Chinese government to reevaluate June 4 […]. Some people thus think that to call for rehabilitating June 4 is to recognize the legitimacy of the corrupted CCP regime.

It should be noted that, despite his conspicuous sympathy toward the localists, Li Yee’s writings in 2013 and 2014 still employed discursive means to distance himself from one side or the other, e.g., he stated that “some people” treated the call for rehabilitation as equivalent to acknowledging the legitimacy of the CCP, and he posed the question of whether the localists would join the candlelight vigil instead of urging people not to join. Therefore, although his articles covered many of the key points made by the localists, his rhetoric was moderate, and he refrained from iterating some of the most controversial views espoused by certain localist figures. For example, while Li Yee did mention the unlovable character of many mainland tourists in Hong Kong, other localist commentators might express a much stronger disdain toward mainland Chinese in general. For example, Lewis Loud, an influential blogger belonging to the localist camp, wrote in a commentary piece on Apple Daily: We have closer contact [with China] these days. And we discover that China’s problem is not just whether June 4 can be rehabilitated or whether the government is democratic or not. It turns out that the people of this place are also rotten to the core. Those who “got rich first” do not show a concern for integrity after having their basic needs met. Instead, they have

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become even more predatory and constitute a public hazard wherever they go. 4

Premised on the “bad qualities” of mainlanders, one localist argument went a step further to hold that democratization of China could be detrimental to Hong Kong’s interests. This view was often attributed to Chin Wan, author of On the Hong Kong Polity (hence he and his supporters were sometimes labeled “the polity faction” by the media). Chin himself did not frequently write for the mainstream media, though. Ng Chi-sum, a commentator highly critical toward the localists, characterized the view of the polity faction as follows: The polity-localist faction not only claims that Hong Kong people do not have the responsibility to fight for democracy on behalf of mainlanders; they even argue that mainland China should not and cannot have democracy. If mainland China has democracy and freedom, mainlanders will flood into Hong Kong. Hong Kong will be engulfed.5

It is worth reiterating the point that the localist faction was not a well-defined entity with a well-established and coherent ideology. Hence the view cited by Ng might not really be held by many localist supporters. But the argument is worth highlighting because it not only allowed people to justify their own non-participation in the Tiananmen commemoration; it also provided a rationale people could use to persuade others not to join the vigil. Limits and responses Although the localist challenge to Tiananmen commemoration emerged in public discourses in 2013 and 2014, there were recognizable limits in the severity of the challenge in the two years. There were not many localist figures who had regular access to the mainstream media space at the time. There was a relative scarcity of politicians and public figures serving as “representatives” of the localists in news coverage. Chin Wan himself was not very frequently quoted, and the localist political party Civic Passion would become more vocal in the media on the issue of the June 4 commemoration only in 2014. Among the commentaries collected for the present analysis, the most frequent 4 Lewis Loud, “Readjusting our values as the context changes hugely,” Apple Daly, May 30, 2013: A21. 5 Ng Chi-sum, “The Greater China retards,” Ming Pao, June 3, 2013: D05.

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contributors were all supportive toward the Alliance and Tiananmen commemoration. In other words, news readers very often came across localist arguments only as they were presented by the critics of such arguments. As noted earlier, Li Yee did not really belong to the localist faction. Despite his argument of the need to dissociate democratization in China from democratization in Hong Kong, Li acknowledged the continual significance of the June 4 commemoration. In the May 18 Apple Daily editorial, he wrote that “it remains meaningful to participate in the June 4 commemoration to express condemnation for the atrocity committed [by the Chinese government] more than 20 years ago.” Li was not alone in his combination of a professed sympathy to localism and an explicit support for continual commemoration. Claudia Mo and Gary Fan, for example, were two politicians belonging to the pro-democracy camp. They established the group Hong Kong First in January 2013 and positioned themselves as localists who prioritized Hong Kong people’s interests and defended Hong Kong’s way of life against mainlandization. Yet they did not sever their ties with the democrats and continued to participate in the vigil. Conceptually, one way to characterize the situation is to recognize the presence of moral bottom lines that the localists and their sympathizers dared not cross in 2013 and 2014, just like the presence of moral bottom lines that government officials and conservative politicians dared not cross in the 1990s and 2000s. Such bottom lines can be most clearly discerned from the aforementioned article by localist commentator Lewis Loud. In the article, he defended the localists by criticizing others for distorting what the faction represented: It is convenient to find a person and a faction and try to beat them up. Earlier, “the localists” were seen as blind and xenophobic Fascists. More recently, Ming Pao wrote: “There are ‘localists’ who call for boycotting the candlelight vigil and for ‘forgetting June 4.’” Wow, that’s a big hat created out of nothing.6

Not only did Lewis Loud argue that others were wrongly criticizing the localists for urging people to forget June 4, he treated the criticism as a “big hat,” i.e., a serious accusation. Instead of urging people to forget about June 4 altogether, he explicated his own position as follows: There is no need to pay the patriotic debt. I object to the bundling of remembering June 4 and patriotism. I therefore boycott the June 4 rally of 6 Lewis Loud, “Readjusting our values,” Apple Daly, May 30, 2013: A21.

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the Alliance. Many people talk the bullshit of “loving the country does not entail loving the Party” […]. When citizens stop going to the Alliance’s rally, it does not mean that they put aside June 4. Instead, they are just staying away from patriotism and returning to the original meaning of June 4.

The passage thus treated the Alliance and the misguided emphasis on patriotism as the targets of criticism. The emphasis is on the non-equivalence between the Alliance and the Tiananmen Incident, as well as the nonequivalence between not attending the candlelight vigil and forgetting June 4 altogether. Consistent with this line of thinking, some critics of the Alliance highlighted the ritualistic character of the vigil and argued that just attending the rally every year could not bring about changes. Some even criticized Hong Kong citizens for doing little other than participating in the annual protests. As one localist politician said in an interview: I think the Victoria Park rally should not go on. The annual June 4 rally and July 1 protest have become just a habit for Hong Kong people. They don’t pay attention to politics regularly. They come out only on June 4 and July 1. This is called promoting democracy?7

This line of argument would not preclude the value of commemorating June 4 through other means. In any case, remembering June 4 remained the bottom line shared by the proponents and apparent doubters of collective commemoration. Ultimately, the strength of the localist challenge was also limited by the fact that, despite the debates, the sizes of the vigils in 2013 and 2014 did not go down. Immediately after the 2013 vigil, news coverage cited not only the size of the vigil but also findings from on-site surveys showing a high proportion of young people participating, and a substantial proportion of the participants acknowledged that they were patriotic.8 Some commentators thus claimed that people had overestimated the appeal of localism.9

7 “Should the candlelight in Victoria Park continue to light up?” Apple Daily, May 20, 2014: A20. 8 In an on-site survey by Ming Pao, 51% of the respondents agreed that their participation was related to patriotic sentiments. “Half of the respondents: Participation related to patriotism,” Ming Pao, June 5, 2013: A04. 9 E.g., Li Sin-chi, “Localists not a force yet; patriotism weakens gradually,” Ming Pao, June 5, 2013: A19.

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The relative weakness of the localist challenge means that the need for memory repair was also weak. Indeed, when the memory entrepreneurs and the Alliance’s supporters responded to the localists in 2013 and 2014, they largely re-emphasized the existing understandings of the significance of the Tiananmen commemoration to Hong Kong. Some insisted on the impossibility or inappropriateness of cutting off patriotism from Tiananmen commemoration. For example, the editorial of Hong Kong Economic Times on June 4, 2013 wrote: “The commemoration activities of Hong Kong people in the past 20 years were all based on the affection for one’s comrades, on the wish that the sacrificed students can be rehabilitated and justice can be done.” The editorial concluded that to bluntly dissociate patriotism from June 4 is against the many years of insistence of Hong Kong people. However, there were also signs that some writers had started to adjust the framing of Tiananmen. For example, one commentator noted that he did not object to the localists using other means to commemorate June 4, and he acknowledged that people might feel indifferent toward the mainland. However, Hong Kong people “cannot escape from the political and economic changes in China […] because the unbalanced integration between the two places has huge influence on Hong Kong.”10 On the one hand, the writer criticized the claim of the irrelevance of China’s democratization to Hong Kong’s future. On the other hand, the article was titled “the localness of June 4 commemoration.” The overarching theme is that the Tiananmen Incident was not merely an event in Beijing; it was also a local event because many Hong Kong people participated in the protests at the time. Highlighting the localness of the 1989 protests can be interpreted as a rhetorical move to seek common ground with the localists. In fact, the “localness” of June 4 was a theme articulated by various authors. Another author wrote: June 4 did not occur only in Beijing; it occurred in Hong Kong. It was a key moment in Hong Kong’s local history. From April 1989 onward, Hong Kong people supported the movement wholeheartedly not only because of identification with one’s country; it was a confirmation of Hong Kong’s core values: fairness, integrity, freedom, human rights, and democracy. These were common values of Beijing and Hong Kong at the time.11 10 Lai Chak-fun, “The localness of June 4 commemoration,” Hong Kong Economic Journal, May 14, 2014: A22. 11 Lam Fai, “Attending June 4 rally is not because of the Alliance,” Apple Daily, May 20, 2013: A21.

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This passage also illustrated another rhetorical move to seek common ground with the localists: to highlight the local-cum-universal values underlying the June 4 commemoration. For some supporters of continual commemoration, people who do not identify with China can still participate in the vigil based on a generalized concern for justice. Overall speaking, 2013 and 2014 witnessed the emergence of the localist challenge in public discourses. There were some adjustments by the proponents of collective remembering in an attempt to search for the common denominator with the localists. Nevertheless, the need to remember remained unquestionable, and citizens’ willingness to participate in commemoration activities had seemingly remained intact. The contemporary relevance of Tiananmen would become more severely questioned only through the Umbrella Movement.

Tiananmen as an Analogy in the Umbrella Movement From September 28 to December 15, 2014, hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong people engaged in the occupation of urban streets in the city in an attempt to pressurize the Chinese and Hong Kong governments on the issue of democratic reform (Cheng & Chan, 2017; Lee & Chan, 2018). The campaign acquired the name the Umbrella Movement or Umbrella Revolution after the protesters used umbrellas to protect themselves against police batons and tear gas (Tang, 2015). On the one hand, the occupation campaign had no direct connection with the Beijing student movement 25 years earlier. But on the other hand, given people’s tendency to look to history in order to understand the present, it is not surprising that memories of Tiananmen were prominently evoked in public discourses during the Umbrella Movement. Some conceptual discussions of the use of historical events as analogies are in order before we analyze media discourses during the Umbrella Movement. Historical analogy refers to an invocation of a past event which is regarded as similar to a current event (Edy, 1999). The past event is used to define the current happenings, generate predictions, and provide suggestions for actions. One incentive for people to deploy the past to tackle current issues is cognitive. When confronted with new and unfamiliar situations, past experiences can assist people in making difficult decisions (Brandstrom, Bynander, & Hart, 2004; Hemmer, 1999). Memories of historical events are often invoked in times of imminent social or political uncertainties, (Brandstrom et al., 2004; Chan, 2016; Noon, 2004). Under these circumstances, “historical lessons” offer a cognitive shortcut for addressing the present.

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The invocation of historical analogies can also be politically motivated (Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983; Neustadt & May, 1986). Politicians may invoke historical events to legitimize their controversial decisions (Noon, 2004). Social movement leaders often deploy group memories of past events to ground their claims and mobilize their constituencies (Farthing & Kohl, 2013; Gongaware, 2010; Harris, 2006). Historical events are useful symbolic resources for political actors to exercise power (Stein, 1998). Regardless of motivations, past and present events are never the same; they can even be rather different in some cases. Invocation of a historical analogy, by definition, involves emphasizing the commonalities between past and present events and figures, ignoring or downplaying their differences, and aligning the values expressed in the past and present events (Schwartz, 1996). In short, the past is “keyed” onto the present. A resemblance is established so that the present would look like “a redoing of the past” (Gongaware, 2011: 51). Once the past-present linkage is established, the historical events would look like a “guidebook” that sheds light on the present and orients actions and thoughts. Although studies typically emphasized how the relevance of a past event is presumed and maintained throughout its present use (Edy & Daradanova, 2006; Schudson, 1992), Kitzinger (2000: 74) noted that the meaning and applicability of a past event can be challenged and potentially reconstructed “in the course of competition between sources, routine media processes, and audience reactions.” Specifically, there are several reasons for negotiations of the relevance and significance of a historical analogy to take place. First, a historical analogy is likely to invite challenges when its proffered predictions of current events do not materialize, thus failing its cognitive function. In this regard, while historical analogies may work well for episodic incidents, it is more difficult for their interpretive power to be sustained in continuous events (Houghton, 1998: 283). When a present event continues to unfold, its differences with the past event may surface and culminate to a point that renders the analogies untenable. Second, historical analogies can be subject to negotiation because different political forces may hold competing interests and views toward past and current events (Schudson, 1992). To the extent that the invocation of the historical analogy is motivated politically and suggests a line of action, some groups may find the analogy useful for furthering their cause, while others may see the analogy as a constraint that hinders theirs. Those who are not well served by the historical analogies would be motivated to question their usefulness. Third, not everyone in a society relates to a past event in the same way. People of different genders, classes, ethnicities, and religious faiths may

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consider some historical events as more important than others (e.g., Eyerman, 2004; Jacobs, 2008). Collective memories are heterogeneous (Schudson, 1992), and this heterogeneity provides a basic condition for negotiation and contestation. With these conceptual considerations in mind, the following examines how Tiananmen was invoked as an analogy in news discourses during the Umbrella Movement, and how the relevance and significance of the analogy were constructed and contested as the movement evolved. We studied relevant texts from six local newspapers.12 After preliminary analysis, we found that references to Tiananmen and their intertwinement with the dynamics of the Umbrella Movement could be seen as evolving through four phases. The following delineates the significance of the Tiananmen analogy in each phase. The Prelude: Tiananmen as context and movement symbol The occupation campaign that would constitute the Umbrella Movement was originally planned as a campaign called “Occupy Central for Love and Peace” (OCLP). Initiated by two university academics and a priest, OCLP was conceived as a civil disobedience campaign adhering to the principle of non-violence. The initiators did not make use of references to the Tiananmen Incident to explicate their planned action. Instead, Occupy Wall Street and the non-violent civil disobedience advocated by Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. were treated as the main inspirations. According to news reports, the OCLP leaders actually refused to comment on journalists’ questions related to Tiananmen. It was an act of conscious distancing possibly because of the need to avoid over-provoking China. Nevertheless, as the campaign entered its final preparation stage, references to Tiananmen started to appear in the media. Yet Tiananmen was not used as a historical analogy. Some writers invoked the Tiananmen Incident as the historical context that could explain the contemporary political deadlock in Hong Kong, i.e., the distrust between China and Hong Kong dated back to 1989. Others appropriated Tiananmen as an icon symbolizing the courage of fighting an uphill battle. After university students initiated a week-long class boycotts 12 The newspapers are: Apple Daily, Ming Pao, Sing Tao Daily, Oriental Daily, Wen Wei Po, and Ta Kung Pao. Articles were obtained from the electronic archive Wise News. By entering the keyword “luk-sei” (i.e., June 4) and setting the time frame as between September 1 and December 31, 2014, 644 articles were found, including news reports, editorials, and commentaries. After filtering out irrelevant articles, 416 articles constitute the corpus of materials to be analyzed.

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on September 22, there were many who doubted whether the action would pay off. In supporting the students, some academics pointed to Tiananmen as a source of inspiration and encouragement, saying that the movement in 1989 awakened a generation.13 Others invoked Tiananmen for the same purpose, but tying it to the value of perseverance signified by the continuation of the annual commemoration vigil in Hong Kong for 25 years.14 In these uses, there was no attribution of similarities between Tiananmen and the planned occupation campaign, and there were no predictions of what is to come. Interestingly, in some news reports, some secondary school students revealed that they learned about the Tiananmen Incident at school and had attended the candlelight vigils before. They regarded the experience as enlightening, compelling them to learn more about public affairs. In these news discourses, Tiananmen also constituted the historical context for individual political participation.15 Tiananmen as analogy in times of uncertainty The planned OCLP unexpectedly evolved into the Umbrella Movement on September 28 as the police fired tear gas into the protesting crowd, creating a dynamics that led to the occupation of streets in multiple districts (Lee & Chan, 2018). But before the movement settled down into a new formation, the police threatened to escalate its actions throughout the night of September 28. Gun-holding riot police was dispatched. Warning flags were raised. There were rumors about imminent actions of the PLA. The tense situation led the HKFS, who had taken up a leadership role in the movement, to issue a late-night call urging protesters to leave. The atmosphere calmed down somewhat only after Chief Executive of the Hong Kong government C. Y. Leung dismissed, through a television address, claims that the police had opened fire and the PLA would arrive. The specter of violent suppression by the state machine did not go away easily, however. Speculations and rumors about imminent actions by the police continued in the first week of the movement. Within this context, Tiananmen started to be evoked as a historical analogy: The scenes are so similar to the nightmare 25 years ago […]: the students who stay behind, the altruistic citizens there to protect the students, 13 “Voicing out even being weak in face of giant power,” Apple Daily, September 27, 2014: A08. 14 Brave-hung, “Let God decide outcomes,” Apple Daily, September 24, 2014: A20. 15 E.g., “Reasons for class boycott,” Ming Pao, September 28, 2014: P01.

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the undercover police, the flunkies criticizing the movement, resource shortages, the crude protective equipment against the pepper spray and tear gas, the food and water supply depots, masks, raincoats, umbrellas, sweats, tears […] conscience, hope, and despair 16

Other writers and news interviewees stated that they have not seen similar scenes after the Tiananmen Incident, and they were surprised to witness them again in Hong Kong. The analogy generated strong emotions, as articulated in Apple Daily’s editorial on September 29, which was written in an unusually personalized tone: As I am writing, a friend suddenly called me from Spain. He couldn’t stop crying when he talked […]. Yes, the nobility and passion of the citizens and students and the police’s cold-blooded repression resembled what happened in the June 4 Incident.17

As discussed, similarities between the past and present events have to be constructed. The similarities highlighted in the earlier quoted passage moved from concrete people and objects to abstract ideas (hope and despair). Apple’s editorial also highlighted the intangible qualities of nobility, passion, and cold-bloodedness. Meanwhile, differences between the events were neglected. Most notably, the June 4 massacre in 1989 occurred only after 50 days of continual protests. The crackdown came only after the declaration of martial law and the hawkish faction won the internal power struggle. If these aspects of Tiananmen were emphasized, there were no strong reasons to expect immediate violent suppression. But the details of the 1989 student movement were largely neglected in news discourses in the first phase of the Umbrella Movement. Scenes derived from the end of one movement (Tiananmen) were compared and keyed to scenes derived from the beginning of another (Umbrella Movement). Notably, the June 4 analogy appeared mainly in the liberal-oriented press and much less frequently in the pro-government newspapers. This is because reference to Tiananmen did not fit into Beijing’s official narrative about the current events. From the beginning, the pro-government media consistently portrayed the occupation as a rendition of the Arab Spring and the Color Revolutions, which were seen as evil plots of the U.S. to destabilize their rivals. There is no need to evoke Tiananmen in such a narrative. However, 16 P. W. Lee, “The post-64 nightmare,” Apple Daily, September 30, 2014: E03. 17 F. Lo, “Crazy dictatorial government, get out!” Apple Daily, September 29, 2014: AAA12.

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as June 4 became prevalent in the universe of public discourses, the progovernment media could not ignore the analogy completely. For example, Oriental Daily’s editorial on September 29 wrote: The political atmosphere of Hong Kong right now is strikingly similar to that of the 1989 Tiananmen Incident. That year, the student movement in Beijing lingered for a long period of time and became increasingly serious. The event finally came to a tragic and bloody ending […]. In face of the current political crisis, if the authorities fail to decide and act quickly, the June 4 tragedy may happen again.18

This passage was ambiguous. It described Tiananmen as a tragedy, implying that military action should not happen again. But it also portrayed the 1989 crackdown as coming only after the protest had gone on for too long. The historical lesson is that the authorities needed to act swiftly, though there was no concrete suggestion on what the authorities should do. In fact, the call for swift action might even connote a call to immediate police action. Despite the ambiguities, the passage did not challenge the applicability of the June 4 analogy. In other words, in the first phase of the movement, the relevance of June 4 was accepted by all. The analogy generated the prediction of military action and thus produced a sense of fear, which would affect the subsequent development of the movement and the discursive contestation of the relevance of Tiananmen. Contesting the June 4 Analogy While the first few days of the Umbrella Movement were overwhelmed by the fear of suppression, such fear started to dissipate after a week. By mid-October, the media reported the unconfirmed information that national leaders had demanded that there shall be “no bloodshed.” The Hong Kong government shifted toward a strategy of attrition (Yuen & Cheng, 2018). As the movement entered a stalemate, tense emotions were replaced by more pragmatic analyses, and the Tiananmen analogy was called into question. Writers started to note the differences between Tiananmen and the Umbrella Movement. One author argued that the Umbrella Movement “is highly self-organized in which social media played a vital role.” With weak organization, the occupation “is difficult to maintain its strength.” 18 “The trees want rest but the winds won’t stop: Hong Kong wants governance but unrests won’t stop.” Oriental Daily, September 29, 2014: A02.

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Hence “the likelihood of it evolving into a bloody incident is low.”19 Another author argued: [The Umbrella Movement] mainly consists of the supporters of the student groups, the Occupy Central campaign, and the pro-democracy parties. The majority of citizens still oppose this movement. It is therefore believed that another June 4 will not happen again.20

Other commentators noted differences in the stance of the Chinese government toward the movements, in the threats brought by the movements to Beijing, between the quality of the civil societies in contemporary Hong Kong and China in 1989, and in the movements’ impact on the financial markets, among others. Notably, the identified differences are not necessarily more real than the similarities, and some of the arguments can be rather arbitrary (e.g., why would a lower level of public support lead to a lesser likelihood of suppression?). Differentiating between the two events is equally an achievement of discursive construction and selective articulation. Conceptually, one main reason for contestation over collective memories is that different groups have varying connections with the past and varying interests at the present. In the Umbrella Movement, the contestation over the Tiananmen analogy was closely linked to a few lines of cleavages. First, internal cleavages started to emerge within the movement in the face of a stalemate. Older activists and public figures favored a retreat from the occupied areas because prolonged occupation might alienate public opinion due to disruption of citizens’ everyday lives. Meanwhile, some older activists still felt uneasy about the possibility of military suppression. Even in late October, a core OCLP supporter still wrote: The younger generations may not understand the bloody history of the pro-democracy movement in 1989 […] [but] I still remember it. 25 years ago, the Communist Party violently suppressed the people irrationally. More than 10,000 people died. Student activists in the frontline, watch out!21 19 “Battling the political market amidst the shock of Occupy Central,” Sing Tao Daily, October 6, 2014: K12-14. 20 To Leung-Mao, “Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Off ice working committee stationing at Shenzhen,” Sing Tao Daily, October 14, 2014: A05. 21 Chin Chi-kin, “Looking back from ‘Umbrella’ to June 4,” Apple Daily, October 31, 2014: A21.

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However, these concerns were not echoed by the student activists. For instance, Alex Chow, chairperson of HKFS, argued that the public was tired of the “old politics” of compromise. Although he acknowledged the fear engendered by Tiananmen memories, Chow stressed that a responsible leader would not let fear affect one’s decisions. Likewise, Joshua Wong, leader of the student activist group Scholarism, stated that he did not have a “June 4 complex,” and he believed that persistence was pivotal to victory.22 Certainly, the generational divide is not absolute. The young activists’ commitment not only resonated with the younger generation and the diehard protestors, but also won the support from some older movement participants. But overall speaking, while many members of the older generations remained affected by the experiences of Tiananmen, the younger activists who had access to mainstream media space rejected treating June 4 as the only “available past.” Instead, they tried to draw inspirations from some recent and successful movements in which they had participated, such as the anti-national education campaign in 2012. The June 4 analogy faced challenges not only from within the movement. For the pro-government camp, the June 4 analogy had to be dismissed because it symbolized the brutality of the Chinese government. To contest the analogy, the Chinese government, through middle-ranked officials, state media, and its political proxies in Hong Kong, repeatedly assured that the PLA would not be dispatched. Having learned the “historical lesson” from Tiananmen, the pro-Beijing camp suggested, the new generation of Chinese leaders would not allow the Umbrella Movement to become the “Hong Kong-version of Tiananmen.” As China saw the Umbrella Movement as an anti-communist campaign staged under the auspices of “foreign powers,” it was argued that the Beijing government would not fall into the trap.23 These discourses constructed an alternative “June 4 lesson” already learnt by China. Besides, by attributing the responsibilities to the protesters and rival countries, the Chinese government was portrayed as the scapegoat or even victim in the two events. Transcending the June 4 Analogy As the Umbrella Movement entered the final stage, the June 4 analogy has largely faded. Nevertheless, elements related to Tiananmen could still be 22 “Open the umbrella gloriously, walk through the 10 passionate days,” Apple Daily, October 7, 2014: A02. 23 S. S. Lau, “No timetable for eviction,” Oriental Daily, October 27, 2014: A32.

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found. Throughout the movement, the press did many feature stories about the lives and traumatic experiences of the Tiananmen student leaders and witnesses who had come to Hong Kong to join the Umbrella Movement. At the same time, Tiananmen continued to serve as an inspiration for the protesters. This was especially manifested in the art works and activities in the occupied areas. For example, on November 30, the 64th day of the movement, some secondary school students performed a “prostration walk” in the occupied area. Besides, among the most iconic art works in the occupied areas was a plastic tank model made by a mainland artist referencing to the tanks in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Into the last stage of the movement, the public was largely relieved from the fear of violent crackdown. A tacit consensus was formed among the movement leaders, the protesters, and the government that the movement would come to an end by mid-December. The campaign ended in a way that fell in line with the original plan of Occupy Central. On December 11, when the police finally evicted the main occupied area in Admiralty, about 250 protestors sat on the roads and waited to be arrested. The peaceful ending of the Umbrella Movement was not only a relief; the ability of the movement to avoid a tragic ending was interpreted by some as having important implications for the future of the city. Sociologist Hung Ho-fung proclaimed that the CCP has shown it would not allow June 4 to happen again. Although the establishment was likely to retaliate against the protesters and the civil society, “young people will not be easily settled” after the experience of two months of occupation. The Umbrella Movement has broken “the June 4 fear” and “heralded a new age of full-scale resistance.”24 According to this analysis, the Umbrella Movement has exposed the Achilles’ heels of the Beijing government, hence rendering the June 4 analogy obsolete. By shrugging off the fear over Tiananmen, Hung called for sustained political contention in Hong Kong. However, the idea that “China will never use military force in Hong Kong” is dubious. One can argue that the Umbrella Movement never went to a stage where China needed to seriously consider military action. Despite the occasional police-protester confrontations, the movement has largely remained orderly and calm. In certain moments when some protestors attempted to escalate the actions, they were warned by the movement leaders and pulled back by mainstream public opinion. In particular, the movement has done all it can to prevent protesters blocking the entrances to key government buildings, which might have given an excuse for the 24 Hung Ho-fung, “The implications of occupy,” Ming Pao, December 8, 2014: A34.

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government to resort to violent suppression. Therefore, instead of conceiving the Umbrella Movement as having followed the script of the Tiananmen Incident and yet ended differently, it is probably more appropriate to say the Umbrella Movement has intentionally deviated from the Tiananmen script in order to avoid having the same ending. Yet Hung’s analysis rhymed with the views of the localists. In fact, during the Umbrella Movement, there was a spatial divide in the occupation campaign such that the democrats and moderate groups were located mainly in the occupied area in the Admiralty district, whereas localist groups and their supporters were more likely to be stationed in the occupied area of the Mong Kok district (Yuen, 2018). As the Umbrella Movement entered a stalemate, the localists became more and more critical toward the moderate democrats and urged for more radical actions. In the end, many localist figures attributed the failure of the movement to the leaders’ cowardice, which was seen partly related to the latter’s obsession with Tiananmen (even though the analogy was already questioned and negotiated by the student activists). They thus argued that the Umbrella Movement leaders should be held accountable and the ghost of June 4 should be banished in the future politics of Hong Kong. Nevertheless, not unlike the debates surrounding Tiananmen commemoration in 2013 and 2014, localist groups and opinion leaders were not prominently featured in mainstream media discourses during the Umbrella Movement. Yet the aftermath of the Umbrella Movement witnessed the emergence of new localist groups and representatives. The voices of the localists became louder, and their challenge to Tiananmen commemoration became more prominent.

The Intensification of Contestation, 2015-2017 The Umbrella Movement is an unprecedented large-scale civil disobedience campaign in Hong Kong. Despite its insistence on the principle of non-violence, illegal occupation of urban streets was not a form of action widely accepted by the general public as legitimate (Lee & Chan, 2018). The Umbrella Movement was therefore an important part of the trend of movement radicalization in the city (Cheng, 2014) in light of the inefficacy of more moderate movement tactics. The “failure” of the occupation to achieve tangible outcomes thus led to further disenchantment among movement supporters, especially those of the young generation, toward the moderate democrats. Toward the end of the movement, there were

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debates about whether non-violence was indeed necessary. Many movement supporters believed that more disruptive forms of protests were needed. Even more young people turned toward localism. In a survey conducted in March 2016, 40% of respondents aged between 18 and 29 claimed that they were supporters of the localists.25 Meanwhile, new localist groups (e.g., the Hong Kong Indigenous and Youngspiration) and political figures (e.g., prominent young activists Edward Leung and Baggio Leung) emerged and gained prominence in the public arena. Led by the new localist groups and figures, political protests in Hong Kong further radicalized in both action tactics and ideologies in 2015 and 2016. Here, the term radicalization does not involve a judgment of the normative desirability of the tactics and ideologies; it simply means that they deviated more sharply from the prevailing social norms and/or the existing political set up (Beach, 1977; Beck, 2015). Some localist groups continued to engage in highly confrontational forms of actions, culminating in the Mong Kok “riots” in February 2016 in which protesters dug up bricks from the roadside and threw them at the police. Some localist groups began to explicitly call for Hong Kong independence. Within universities, many of the new student union leaders became explicitly localist in orientation. At the same time, several student unions organized referendum in 2015 to withdraw from the HKFS. The HKFS itself also needed to respond to the tide of localism. In late April 2015, the HKFS announced that it would not participate in the year’s June 4 vigil, citing as the main reason the lack of consensus among its members on whether to participate in the activity or not. The HKFS further dissociated itself from the candlelight vigil one year later by withdrawing from the Alliance altogether. Accompanying such developments is the intensification of the debates surrounding Tiananmen commemoration in the public arena. The radicalization of criticism As Table 6.1 has shown, the sheer volume of discussions tying together “bun-tou” and the June 4 commemoration proliferated further in 2015 and 2016. The range of substantive arguments against the candlelight vigil raised by the localists and their supporters remained largely the same. However, there were two interrelated differences between mainstream media discourses in 2013/2014 and those in 2015 to 2017. Because the HKFS and other 25 Lee Lap Fung, “How many citizens claimed to be localists? The results of a March survey,” Ming Pao, April 15, 2016: A28.

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university student unions had taken the concrete action of refusing to join the June 4 vigil, the localist-oriented student leaders and young activists were frequently quoted in the news. In other words, the young localists gained the chance to express their views in their own voices. Compared to the rhetoric of sympathetic commentators such as Li Yee, the young localists’ rhetoric was even more confrontational and openly hostile. Parallel to the radicalization of political protests after the Umbrella Movement (Lee, 2018a), the criticism leveled against the Alliance and the candlelight vigil can also be characterized as having become more radical in the sense that they deviated further from the existing norms in public discourses. More specifically, the rhetoric employed by some of the student leaders and activists became increasingly inciting or even uncivil. For instance, convenor of the Hong Kong National Party Chan Ho-tin stated in a university forum that participation in the commemoration should not be the result of social or peer pressure, and no one should treat the commemoration activities as a stage for political performance. Otherwise, it would be a case of “making money on the dead” which is illustrative of “the despicable side of human nature.”26 Although Chan fell short of directly criticizing the Alliance for doing so, the Chinese phrase faat-sei-jan-coi (i.e., “making money on the dead”) was a very serious accusation. Even more directly inflammatory, in one notorious instance, the chief editor of the editorial committee of a university student union published an article on Facebook in May 2016, claiming that the Alliance was “the bawd and the pimp of a brothel whose job is to seduce young girls and let them be violated.” In yet another prominent instance, then chairperson of University of Hong Kong’s student union was quoted by the media for saying that “the June 4 commemoration should reach its full stop in one or two years.” Both statements created uproars and were widely reported in the news.27 Not surprisingly, as the localists’ rhetoric became more provocative and confrontational, the countercriticisms offered by defenders of the Alliance and critiques of the localists also became stronger in rhetoric and tone. One commentator criticized the localists for being “extreme” in the sense that the localists exhibited a tendency to be exclusionary and to sever oneself 26 “Debating patriotism in two university forums,” Hong Kong Economic Journal, June 5, 2017: A16. 27 E.g., “Criticizing the claim of the Alliance being bawds and pimps; Wang Dan: The chief editor at Shue Yan is like a 50-cents,” Apple Daily, May 29, 2016: A02; “University of Hong Kong’s Student Union Chairperson: The candlelight vigil is meaningless,” Apple Daily, May 26, 2016: A05.

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totally from the past.28 Another writer criticized the localists for having a high standard when judging others but doing nothing themselves, for picking on the powerless while not confronting the truly powerful people, and for “climbing up on the back of the weak and the dead.”29 Yet another writer simply stated that the “rightwing localists” “do not look like human beings.”30 In addition to heightened animosity between the localists and supporters of the Tiananmen commemoration, the localists’ discourse was also radicalized in terms of its articulation with a form of ethno-nationalism that underlies the call for Hong Kong independence. For instance, an ex-student leader at the University of Hong Kong was quoted by the press for claiming that his generation loves neither the country nor the Party; they only love Hong Kong, and they are “naturally pro-independence.”31 More elaborately and systematically, author Tsui Shing-yan rearticulated the history of Hong Kong in a commentary article in May 2016. He argued that Hong Kong had already become a “quasi-nation state” in the 1970s when the colonial government’s social reform led to increased degree of distinctiveness between Hong Kong and the mainland as well as the formation of Hong Kong people’s own identity. The Tiananmen Incident led to the political awakening for many Hong Kong people. For Tsui, while many citizens continued to support the development of a democratic China after 1989, even more Hong Kong citizens turned their attention to the struggle for democracy in Hong Kong. Tsui argued that “the core of June 4 is justice, freedom, and democracy,” and to “fight for the autonomy of the family-polity of Hong Kong” was the real lesson learned by Hong Kong people through June 4: “Patriotism” is only a walking stick when people’s subject consciousness remains immature. Any talks about justice, freedom, and democracy would entail the construction of the subject, and it would inevitably be extended to a form of proto-nationalism that calls for self-determination. Young people, who are not burdened by the idea of “cultural China,” have

28 Chan King-fai, “To deny June 4 is to kill the local,” Ming Pao, April 30, 2015: A38. 29 Chan Po-shun, “The rouge of localism,” Apple Daily, June 3, 2016: B05. 30 Cheung Chui-yung, “Don’t look like a human being,” Hong Kong Economic Times, June 4, 2016: C04. 31 “Post-90s ex-undergrad editor: Loves neither the country nor the Party,” Apple Daily, June 1, 2016: A09.

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inherited the values of freedom and democracy. They naturally want to turn Hong Kong from a nation in itself into a nation for itself.32

For the present analysis, there is no need to evaluate the validity of the “political theory” underlying Tsui’s account. The point to note is Tsui’s attempt to redefine the significance of June 4 through locating the event in a specific historical account of Hong Kong people’s “subject consciousness.” In this account, June 4 is not to be forgotten because it was indeed an important historical event. But its significance resided in how it awakened many Hong Kong people and led them to begin the search for self-determination. Searching for new common ground Despite being grounded on an explication of “Hong Kong nationalism,” Tsui’s article involved an effort to rearticulate the meanings of June 4 instead of dismissing Tiananmen commemoration altogether. In fact, “one should not forget about June 4” remained the moral bottom line that most localist figures did not cross, at least when they spoke in the mainstream media. For example, two days after the chairperson of the student union of the University of Hong Kong made the controversial statement about putting a full stop to June 4 commemoration, she apologized publicly and clarified that she only meant to predict (as opposed to prescribe) the end of the June 4 commemoration conducted from the subject position of the Chinese national. New political groups of localist orientation also attempted to strike a more nuanced “middle-of-the-road” position on the question of Tiananmen. Before the 2016 LegCo elections, Youngspiration and the Hong Kong Indigenous, two important localist groups emerging after the Umbrella Movement, expressed support for rehabilitating June 4. But they also claimed that the student movement in 1989 should be seen as a “world event” and refused to include rehabilitating June 4 as an item in their electoral platform.33 In other words, in spite of the more radical voices, there were attempts from both sides to search for new common grounds. One influential article was written by Joseph Lien, an ex-government policy advisor known for his sympathy toward localism. Lien argued that patriotism and even democracy 32 Tsui Shing-yan, “Let June 4 and the idea of Greater China be delinked,” Ming Pao, May 31, 2016: A32. 33 “New political groups do not list rehabilitating June 4 into platforms; Youngspiration: should look after Hong Kong affairs first; Demosisto: will consider,” Ming Pao, June 1, 2016: A06.

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were of secondary importance in 1989. “The mainstream [sentiments] were anger and fear, especially fear,” against Communist China. Lien argued that contemporary youngsters’ indifference toward China was also rooted in deep anger and fear against the CCP. Lien argued that young people’s new discourse about Tiananmen – i.e., recognizing its historical significance, seeing the CCP’s atrocity as condemnable, but not tying democratization in China and Hong Kong together – would gain more support, “not because its ‘reasons’ are more adequate, but because […] contemporary localist sentiments and thoughts are actually in line with the original intention of Hong Kong people in 1989.”34 Lien’s characterization of the student movement and Hong Kong people’s support for the movement in 1989 were criticized by some, but Lien did acknowledge in his article that the new localist discourse about June 4 “will not, need not, and should not completely replace the older discourse [of supporting democratization in China].”35 In other words, Lien would not object to people commemorating June 4 out of patriotism, but the common ground between the localists and the Alliance should be their common resistance against CCP. This latter point was also expressed by prominent localist activist and leader of the Hong Kong Indigenous Edward Leung, who stated that the June 4 candlelight vigil contained a large amount of political energy, and the most important issue for the oppositional forces in Hong Kong was how to turn the political energy into a force against authoritarian power. His view was approvingly quoted in a commentary article by a retired government official, who acknowledged that loving the country is not a prerequisite of the June 4 commemoration, and it is appropriate for different groups to organize different types of activities about Tiananmen.36 The acknowledgment of the non-necessity of patriotism for commemorating June 4 signified the Alliance’s and its supporters’ recognition of the evolving political reality. Identification is not something that can be imposed onto young people. Therefore, to persuade young people to continue to participate in the candlelight vigil, changes in emphases were needed. Some authors focused on movement strategies. For example, one commentator argued that the Alliance should be more proactive in responding to the agenda of the localist and leave behind “formalistic commemoration.”37 34 Joseph Lien, “Yesterday’s anger: What was Hong Kong people’s original intention on June 4, 1989?” Hong Kong Economic Journal, May 30, 2016: A20. 35 Ibid. 36 Wong Wing-ping, “Patriotism is not needed to commemorate June 4; forums and vigils just suit different people,” Hong Kong Economic Journal, June 8, 2016: A19. 37 Tamar Man, “The Alliance under the Umbrella,” Apple Daily, June 8, 2015: A17.

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More substantively, in 2015 and 2016, there were stronger emphases put on the “localness” of June 4 commemoration in pro-commemoration discourses. Veteran journalist Ching Cheong, who took the lead in 2009 to describe Hong Kong’s candlelight vigil as “China’s conscience,” also attempted to articulate the localness of June 4 commemoration. In an article in 2015, Ching criticized the predominant localism discourse for neglecting history and being exclusionary. He argued that the 25-year insistence by the Alliance on commemorating June 4 “had silently developed Hong Kong into China’s conscience. This is what Hong Kong people are proud of, and it is a ‘brand’ that the localists can also proudly appropriate.”38 Ching Cheong retained the notion of “China’s conscience” in the 2015 article, but it would be the only article published by all newspapers in Hong Kong evoking the phrase when talking about June 4 during the memory mobilization period in the years 2015, 2016, and 2017. In 2016, when Ching wrote about the relationship between Tiananmen and localism again, he dropped the notion of Hong Kong as China’s conscience. Instead, Ching argued that the main “local characteristics” of Hong Kong has been its internationalism, diverse and tolerant way of life, and tradition of pushing China toward modern civilization: Talking about localism without addressing these three characteristics will only “trivialize” Hong Kong. Hence those who are truly defending the local should protect these three characteristics from the corrosion of “one-party dictatorship,” but not discriminate against mainlanders or dismiss all symbols related to the mainland.39

Ching further added that from the perspective of protecting the three main characteristics of Hong Kong, commemorating June 4 is an important means to advance Hong Kong’s localism. Of course, it does not mean that Ching himself would dissociate Tiananmen commemoration and democratization in China, and even in the 2016 piece, the third characteristic of “the local” identified by Ching is still tied to the Chinese society. But a shift toward an emphasis on “internationalism” and “diversity and tolerance” was both a critique of the perceived exclusionary character of rightist localism and a concession that a one-sided emphasis on Hong Kong’s relationship with China would not be persuasive to young people. Overall speaking, the 38 Ching Cheong, “June 4 and ‘localism,’” Ming Pao, June 2, 2015: A27. 39 Ching Cheong, “Advancing localism through commemorating June 4,” Ming Pao, June 2, 2016: D05.

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shifting discourses of Ching were highly illustrative of how the memory entrepreneurs of Tiananmen had to engage in memory repair. Just as “not forgetting June 4” remained a bottom line that the localists could not cross, “the priority of local interests” had become a theme that supporters of the Tiananmen commemoration could not dismiss. The two themes carved out the space within which more detailed and specific positions on the Tiananmen commemoration were articulated by different parties.

Rearticulating the Rationale for Commemoration This chapter has reviewed the localist challenge to Tiananmen commemoration before and after the Umbrella Movement. Against the background of a fear of “mainlandization” of Hong Kong society, the perceived inefficacy of the democrats’ fight for political reform, and young people’s rejection of the Chinese identity (Steinhardt et al., 2018), the relevance of Tiananmen to the struggle for democracy in Hong Kong was questioned. However, the localist challenge did not gain prominence in the public arena until 2013 when the Alliance’s emphasis on patriotism aroused controversies. Even then, the strength of the localist challenge was limited by the strength of the existing collective memory of Tiananmen in Hong Kong and the general lack of “representatives” of the localist faction in the mainstream media. The situation further changed only during and after the Umbrella Movement. One theoretical implication of this chapter is therefore about how a present critical event may alter the historical significance and relevance of a past historical event. Studies of collective memory have often emphasized how past events can be invoked for understanding present events (Brandstrom et al. 2004; Hemmer, 1999). Schudson (1992) argued that a critical historical event has both power of contingency and power of collective memory. While one might have expected the Tiananmen Incident, as a critical historical event, to exert its power of collective memory through influencing how people make sense of the Umbrella Movement, it turned out that the Umbrella Movement became a critical event exerting its power of contingency on Hong Kong politics as well as a special type of power of collective memory – not in terms of how it will influence people’s understanding of contemporary events in the future, but how people understand the relevance of a past event. In any case, as the Umbrella Movement led to the further radicalization of political protests in Hong Kong and the rise of new localist groups and activists, the mix of key actors in the discursive contestation in the public

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arena also changed. The localist arguments gained force not necessarily because they had become more coherent or better articulated. Rather, the enhanced prominence of the localists in the public arena and the structure of feelings of the post-Umbrella Movement Hong Kong society – a mixture of frustration with old protest tactics, a sense of powerlessness in the face of China, and anger toward the continued trend of mainlandization – made the localist arguments more influential and appealing. Nevertheless, Tiananmen commemoration did not die down quickly. The localists’ arguments could hardly persuade people who experienced the tormenting events in 1989 to forget about June 4. Besides, supporters of the Tiananmen commemoration made two key points that the localists could hardly refute. The first is that the Tiananmen Incident has had huge influence on the development of Hong Kong society and is therefore a core part of the city’s history. The second is that the Tiananmen crackdown signified the atrocity committed by the authoritarian power against which the localists were resisting. As a result, despite the contempt they could hold against the candlelight vigil, even the most radical localists found it hard to urge people to forget the event altogether. What emerged was the effort of rearticulating the significance of June 4 by people from both sides of the divide. One overall result is the decline of the theme of Hong Kong being China’s conscience through continual Tiananmen commemoration. In its place, there were various versions of how Tiananmen commemoration constitutes part of “the local.” This rearticulation has led collective memory of Tiananmen in Hong Kong to deviate from the previous path along which it has been developing. Nonetheless, when the localists and the supporters of the Tiananmen commemoration attempted to seek common ground, they did so partly through an effort to reinterpret the “original intention” of Hong Kong people in 1989. The redefinition of collective memory cannot be achieved merely through the creation of new meanings based on current circumstances; it requires efforts to reconstruct the relevant historical narrative. There were limits to the process of reconciliation between the localists and the democrats. The agendas and goals of the groups involved were ultimately different. The two sides might have set up certain boundaries of discourses – the necessity of not forgetting June 4 and the necessity to recognize localist sentiments – that actors on the two sides cannot violate. But whether the two sides can strike a more substantive agreement within the boundaries is another matter. The Alliance, for instance, might have downplayed the notion of patriotism in public discourses, but the rituals of the June 4 vigils remained largely unchanged. On the other hand, treating

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Tiananmen as an important “local” historical event does not entail that the young localists would feel the urge to participate in commemoration. There is a fundamental difference between “not forgetting” and “active remembering.” By the end of 2019, efforts of memory repair were still ongoing.

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7

Changing Attitudes toward Tiananmen? Abstract Chapter 7 discusses the impact of young people’s identity shift on collective remembering of Tiananmen. It examines intergenerational memory transmission in an altered social and political context. It illustrates the extent and characteristics of generational differences on the issue of Tiananmen. In addition, drawing upon sociologist Karl Mannheim’s distinction among generation of location, generation in actuality, and generation unit, the chapter examines why and how some young people came to abandon Tiananmen commemoration, yet others were still recruited into the mnemonic community surrounding Tiananmen. Keywords: national and local identity, generational differences, generation units

Chapter 6 has reviewed the rise of the localist challenge to Tiananmen commemoration in the 2010s. Indeed, since 2015, the localists have constituted a force to be reckoned with in Hong Kong politics. In addition to their prominence in media and public discourses on various issues, Edward Leung of the Hong Kong Indigenous participated in the by-election of the LegCo in February 2016, and obtained more than 66,000 votes (or more than 15% of the votes). Despite losing the election, the results were taken as surprisingly good for a politically radical candidate without election experience and the support of a strong electoral machine. In the LegCo elections in September 2016, in spite of the government’s disqualification of Edward Leung and a few other candidates for their professed support for Hong Kong independence, three localist candidates won in the popular election in the geographical constituencies. Some media organizations grouped the localists together with candidates advocating “democratic

Lee, Francis L.F., and Joseph M. Chan, Memories of Tiananmen: Politics and Processes of Collective Remembering in Hong Kong, 1989-2019. Amsterdam University Press 2021 doi: 10.5117/9789463728447_ch07

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self-determination” for Hong Kong’s future as a faction. This broader faction obtained six seats and about 19% of the total votes.1 However, there was no linear growth of political influence and public support for the localists from 2015 to 2018. The Chinese and Hong Kong governments had adopted a hardline approach to suppress political radicalism. In addition to the highly controversial decision to disqualify candidates who advocated Hong Kong independence from the 2016 LegCo election, the government further disqualified two of the three elected localist legislators – both members of the group Youngspiration – due to their political antics during oath-taking.2 In 2016 and 2017, the court sentenced key participants in several prominent confrontational protests to prison terms. Edward Leung, in particular, was sentenced to six years in jail for his role in the Mong Kok riots (dubbed Fishball Revolution by the protesters) in February 2016. In September 2018, the Hong Kong government officially banned the Hong Kong National Party on the grounds of national security and territorial integrity concerns. Amidst such developments, public support for the localists stalled. In a population survey conducted in March 2016, 8.4% of the respondents claimed that they were supporters of the localist faction. The figure dropped somewhat to 7.3% in July 2016, then dropped further to 5.1% in June 2017 and stood at 5.7% in April 2019.3 It is not clear to which extent the drop can be attributed to the state’s suppression or to the occasionally controversial words and deeds of the localists, which might have alienated potential supporters. But what is clear is that ordinary citizens who identified themselves as supporters of the localists did not necessarily agree with all the claims made by localist public figures. For example, a survey of university students conducted by two researchers in early 2018 found that supporters of the pan-democrats and of the “broadly

1 “The localist-self-determination faction obtained 390,000 votes; Academic: democratic self-determination became a key issue,” The Initium, September 5, 2016, https://theinitium.com/ article/20160905-hongkong-legco-analysis/ 2 The two legislators used “People’s Refucking of Chee-na” – Chee-na being a pejorative term associated with how the Japanese called China before and during World War II – to refer to China. Their oath was invalidated by the chairman of the legislature. Then, in November 2016, the National People’s Congress of China interpreted the Basic Law and banned people who did not take the oath sincerely or solemnly from retaking the oath. The NPC’s decision effectively barred the two localist legislators from taking up their post as legislator. 3 The results are from the surveys conducted by the Center for Communication and Public Opinion Survey at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Information about the 2016 and 2017 surveys can be found at: www.com.cuhk.edu.hk/ccpos/research/taskforce-en.html

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defined localist camp”4 did not differ substantially in their participation in “mainstream social protests.” Specifically, 10.3% of supporters for the pan-democrats and 10.0% of supporters for the localists, respectively, had participated in the 2015 June 4 candlelight vigil, whereas 4.3% and 5.5% of the supporters of the two camps, respectively, had participated in the 2017 vigil. Their findings corroborated the claim that young people’s participation in the June 4 candlelight vigil had dropped between 2015 and 2017. But this decline cannot be described as a withdrawal merely by the localists.5 The two researchers argued that “although some localists criticized ‘mainstream social movement’ very strongly, the division between the pan-democrats and the broadly defined localists cannot be used to distinguish people with different levels of support for ‘mainstream social movement.’”6 There can be a discrepancy between what localist politicians professed and how localist supporters behaved. By the same token, while the media often portrayed the localists as a faction supported mainly by young people, we can question the extent to which young people in Hong Kong had taken up the localists’ discourses about the Tiananmen crackdown. Here, besides the point that not all localist supporters would agree with everything the localist public figures proclaimed, the more fundamental point is that not all young people were supporters of the localists.7 Theoretically, the internal heterogeneity of a generation can be understood with Mannheim’s (1972) distinction among generation of location, generation in actuality, and generation units. As discussed in Chapter 4, Mannheim defined a generation in terms of common location within ongoing socio-historical evolution. People of the same age group face the same set of dominant social and political influences when they are young. As a result, they may take up a specific character when compared to other age groups. However, in addition to the possible overall character of a generation, Mannheim (1972) also acknowledged that not all people are directly affected by the dominant influences. The generation in actuality thus refers to the 4 The faction was operationalized as encompassing the labels “localist,” “self-determination,” and “pro-independence.” 5 Chung Hiu-fung and Gary K. Y. Tang, “Localist youth are not necessarily resistant toward mainstream social movements,” June 28, 2018, Ming Pao: A28. 6 Ibid. 7 In the March 2016 survey, for instance, about 30% of respondents aged 18 to 29 supported the localists, whereas 41% supported the pan-democrats (including both the moderate democrats and the radical democrats). About 26% claimed that they were “centrists” or had no political inclination.

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group of people who actually participate in the dominant influence of the historical period. Furthermore, not all individuals interpret their political environment in the same way and derive the same idea regarding how people should respond. A generation unit is a subgroup within a generation within which people share the same response to social and political change (BenZe’ev, 2009). Mannheim thus opens up the possibility that a generation can consist of multiple generation units with competing or even contradictory views about their society (Allerbeck, 1977; Pilcher, 1994; Yang, 2005, 2016). Employing Mannheim’s concepts, the localists can be understood as a generation unit who had come up with a specific response to the dominant influences in Hong Kong in the 2010s. These influences included the surge in the China-Hong Kong conflict, the worsening political condition, the stalemate of the democratization process, and the experience of the Umbrella Movement. Yet other youngsters could respond to these influences in other ways, while some might not be drawn into the events and remained outside the generation in actuality. This chapter examines the question of whether and in what sense Hong Kong people’s – especially youngsters’ – attitudes toward June 4 had changed before and after the Umbrella Movement. It also examines how young people’s understanding of June 4 related to their own formative political experiences. The analysis will provide a more nuanced understanding of how young people related to Tiananmen commemoration. We will discern how the process of intergenerational memory transmission operated under altered political conditions.

Citizens’ Political Attitudes, 2014 vs. 2018 We can begin the analysis by comparing Hong Kong citizens’ political attitudes and perspectives on the Tiananmen Incident before and after the Umbrella Movement. Chapters 3 and 4 have made use of data derived from a population survey conducted between January and June 2014. In January 2018, we conducted another survey with largely the same set of questions. A direct comparison is therefore possible. The first finding to note is the proportion of citizens recalling Tiananmen as an important historical event. In 2014, Tiananmen was the second most frequently mentioned historical event, trailing only after the Hong Kong handover. In 2018, the Umbrella Movement became the most frequently mentioned event (47.6%). This is not surprising given the scale, significance, and recency of the occupation campaign. The percentage mentioning the

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Table 7.1  Changing levels of recall and attitudes toward June 4, 2014 vs. 2018 Whole sample

18-29 years old

2014

2018

2014

2018

Recall Tiananmen as a significant event

22.5

14.5

11.8

5.6

Attitudes toward June 4  Concern about June 4  Support for rehabilitation  Support continuing commemoration  Intend to participate

39.8 37.9 51.3 12.4

35.0 40.7 41.9 7.8

38.3 55.8 68.9 20.3

24.4 56.1 66.0 13.2

23.5

22.3

12.6

10.9

18.0

14.8

15.4

3.8

13.9

13.2

9.9

5.0

Memory blurring discourse  “Can’t blame the government only because students were responsible too”  “China’s economy would not have the same development if there was no crackdown during June 4”  “June 4 is a matter in China, irrelevant to Hong Kong, so Hong Kong people don’t need to commemorate”

Note: Entries in the first row are percentages recalling the event. Entries in the other rows are percentages scoring 4 or 5 on the five-point scale (i.e., agreeing with the item or indicating “should participate / definitely participate” on intention to participation).

Hong Kong handover did not change substantially, however (40.5% in 2014 vs. 43.4% in 2018). The percentage of respondents mentioning the SARS outbreak in 2003 also remained stable (12.8% in 2014 vs. 11.6% in 2018). In contrast, the percentage of respondents mentioning the Tiananmen Incident indeed registered a relatively substantial decline from 22.5% to 14.5%, even though Tiananmen remained the third most frequently mentioned event and one of only four events which were mentioned by more than 10% of the respondents in the 2018 survey. Comparing across age groups, the youngest cohort was the least likely to mention Tiananmen in both surveys. As Table 7.1 shows, in the 2018 survey, only 5.6% of the respondents between 18 and 29 years old mentioned Tiananmen as an important historical event. The first two figures of the second row of Table 7.1 show that, for the whole population, the percentage of people saying they were concerned about June 4 dropped by only about 5% between 2014 and 2018. Comparatively, the last two figures on the same row show that the decline in concern about June 4 was about 14% within the group of 18-to-29-year-olds. Nevertheless, as Chapter 4 already pointed out, young people were not necessarily less supportive toward rehabilitating June 4 or continuing the commemoration. Table 7.1 shows that both the percentage of Hong Kong

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people supporting rehabilitation and the percentage of young people supporting rehabilitation remained virtually the same. Besides, while the percentage of all citizens supporting continuing commemoration dropped by nearly 10% between 2014 and 2018, the corresponding drop in the age group 18 to 29 was not more than 3%. If there was a decline in the proportion of Hong Kong people supporting continual commemoration, the drop was larger in the older cohorts instead of the youngest cohort. Moreover, if we use agreement with the memory-blurring discourses as an indicator of the “clarity” of people’s memory, the survey findings show that there was no increase in “confusion” about the Tiananmen Incident. The percentage of the Hong Kong public agreeing with the two memoryblurring discourses from the pro-establishment camp even decreased somewhat between 2014 and 2018, whereas the localist argument that June 4 is a Chinese matter irrelevant to Hong Kong was supported by only about 13% of the Hong Kong public in 2018. Young people continued to be the least likely to agree with the memory-blurring discourses. Remarkably, the percentage of young people agreeing with the localist argument remained low and even decreasing. In 2018, only 5% of respondents aged between 18 and 29 agreed that the Tiananmen Incident is irrelevant to Hong Kong. Besides attitudes directly related to June 4, it is also worthwhile to look into Hong Kong citizens’ national/local identification and trust toward the government. As Table 7.2 shows, between 2014 and 2018, Hong Kong citizens’ identification as Hong Kongers increased slightly from 7.00 to 7.23 on a 0-to-10 scale. Among the youngest respondents, Hong Kong identification registered a larger increase – from 6.86 to 7.31 – in the period. Meanwhile, the degree to which Hong Kong citizens identified themselves as Chinese declined only slightly. The decline was more substantial among the youngest respondents (from 5.14 to 4.57). Among the public as a whole, trust toward both Hong Kong and Chinese governments remained stable. But in both surveys, the youngest group trusted the Hong Kong and Chinese governments to substantially lesser extent when compared to the population as a whole. Moreover, young people’s trust toward the Chinese government declined from 3.37 to 2.95. Combined together, a few points can be made based on Tables 7.1 and 7.2. First, young people have indeed become less affectively invested in the issue of Tiananmen in the mid-2010s. They have become less likely to recall Tiananmen as an important event, less likely to be concerned with the issue, and less likely to intend to participate in the candlelight vigil. The commonality among these items is that they signify the degree

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Table 7.2  Changing identity and trust toward the government, 2014 vs. 2018 Whole sample

Hong Kong identification Chinese identification Trust the HK government Trust the Chinese government

18-29 years old

2014

2018

2014

2018

7.00 6.30 4.48 4.13

7.23 6.18 4.46 4.05

6.86 5.14 4.02 3.37

7.31 4.57 3.89 2.95

Note: Entries are mean scores on a 0-to-10 scale.

to which people cared about Tiananmen. Second, in contrast to the items signifying an affective relationship, when asked to express their views on Tiananmen and its commemoration, young people were often more likely than the older citizens to hold a pro-commemoration and pro-rehabilitation view. Of course, this pattern of findings – cognitive clarity plus (relative) affective detachment – was already noted in Chapter 4. What the analysis here shows, therefore, is that the characteristics of young people’s attitude toward June 4 have remained the same into the late 2010s. Third, young people’s relationship with localism can be similarly complicated. On the one hand, they exhibited stronger local identification, weaker national identification, and lower levels of trust toward the Chinese government between the two surveys. Yet very few young people agreed that June 4 is irrelevant to Hong Kong. One possible interpretation is to argue that young people shared a “localist sentiment” centering on a sense of local identification, but they did not necessarily agree with the specific localist arguments circulating publicly. Besides attitudes more directly related to Tiananmen and China, since an important indicator of the strength of collective remembering of Tiananmen is people’s participation in the candlelight vigil, attitudes closely connected to political participation are also worth examining. One set of such attitudes is people’s sense of efficacy. Lee’s (2006) study in 2004 found that Hong Kong citizens had only a moderate level of internal efficacy – the belief that they can understand and participate in public affairs as individuals, but people tended to have high levels of collective efficacy – the belief that Hong Kong people can have huge influence on public affairs when acting collectively. A high level of collective efficacy was a condition for the continual growth of social mobilization in the 2000s and early 2010s. However, the failure of the Umbrella Movement to achieve tangible outcomes on the issue of democratization and the subsequent political dynamics might have generated a strong sense of frustration and political

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Figure 7.1 Political efficacy among Hong Kong citizens

IE1: I have enough ability to understand politics; IE2: I have enough ability to participate in public affairs; CE1: Collective actions of HK people have huge influence on public affairs; CE2: Collective actions of HK people can improve the society; EE1: The current HK political system can effectively respond to citizens’ demand; EE2: The current SAR government can effectively respond to public opinion.

inefficacy among the Hong Kong public. The 2018 survey, when combined with earlier surveys in Hong Kong, did register this trend. Figure 7.1 summarizes the results regarding a set of survey questions about citizens’ internal, collective, and external efficacy (i.e., the extent to which people see the political system as responsive to public opinion) between 2004 and 2018. In 2004, citizens’ mean scores on the two internal efficacy items were at the midpoint of the five-point Likert scale. It indicated that the average Hong Kong citizen neither agreed nor disagreed that s/he was capable of understanding and participating in politics. In contrast, the average citizen scored substantially above the midpoint of the scale for the two collective efficacy items. That is, people tended to see the collective actions of Hong Kong people as capable of influencing public affairs and improving the society. Hong Kong citizens’ level of collective efficacy remained substantially higher than their level of internal efficacy in 2008. Even in March 2014, Hong Kong citizens still scored relatively high on one of the collective efficacy items. In 2018, however, the mean scores of the two collective efficacy items had declined to 3.04 and 2.74 respectively. Respondents no longer tended to agree with the influence of collective actions of Hong Kong people. The average citizen even tended to disagree with the notion that collective actions of Hong Kong people can improve the society. To the extent that collective efficacy has long been a factor behind Hong Kong citizens’ political participation (Lee, 2006, 2010), the decline in collective efficacy should

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constitute part of the explanation for the decline in political participation in the immediate years after the Umbrella Movement.8 While the comparison between the 2014 and 2018 surveys gave us some indication of whether and how people’s views changed before and after the Umbrella Movement, we can also examine whether participation in the Umbrella Movement at the individual level had any impact on people’s political attitudes and views about the Tiananmen Incident. The 2018 survey asked the respondents whether they had participated in the Umbrella Movement by going to the occupation site. Table 7.3 compares the political attitudes of the participants and the non-participants of the Umbrella Movement. In the whole sample, the Umbrella Movement participants were more likely to recall both the Umbrella Movement and the Tiananmen Incident as important historical events. They were more likely to be concerned about June 4, to support rehabilitation, to support continuing the commemoration activities, and intend to participate in the June 4 vigil. Umbrella Movement participants were also less likely than non-participants to agree with the various memory-blurring discourses. They had stronger identification as Hong Kongers and weaker identification as Chinese, and they trusted both the Hong Kong and Chinese governments to a much lesser extent. These differences, of course, are largely the result of the fact that the Umbrella Movement participants were almost invariably pro-democracy citizens, whereas the non-participants included a large proportion of centrists and pro-establishment citizens. Similar differences between the Umbrella Movement participants and non-participants also existed among the young respondents. For people between 18 and 29 years old, the Umbrella Movement participants trusted the Hong Kong and Chinese governments to a substantially lesser extent, identified more strongly with Hong Kong, identified more weakly as Chinese, and were more likely to support rehabilitating June 4. The participant-non-participant differences among the young respondents were generally less stark than the corresponding differences for the whole sample. This can be understood in relation to the fact that the majority of young people, regardless of whether they had participated in the Umbrella Movement or not, were supporters for democratization. Nevertheless, whether the person was a participant in the Umbrella Movement could 8 It is also notable that citizens’ scores on the two internal efficacy items diverged in 2014 and 2018. The average Hong Kong citizen tended to slightly agree that s/he had enough ability to understand politics, yet s/he tended to dismiss his/her ability to participate in public affairs. Citizens might think that they were not capable of participating in public affairs because of the closing down of effective channels to do so in Hong Kong society.

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Table 7.3 Differences between participants and non-participants in the Umbrella Movement Whole sample 18-29 years old Non-P

P

Non-P

P

42.7 12.4

60.4 20.1

61.5 5.4

71.0 5.9

28.1 32.0 33.6 2.7 26.5

54.0 70.9 67.9 21.0 15.0

16.3 44.9 61.9 4.4 11.2

24.7 71.6 72.0 24.6 10.5

19.2

6.8

3.4

4.4

15.5

10.4

8.9

0.0

Identity and trust  Hong Kong identification  Chinese identification   Trust the HK government   Trust the Chinese government

7.01 6.73 5.02 4.81

7.76 4.80 3.04 2.11

7.03 4.70 4.27 3.35

7.68 4.40 3.39 2.41

Efficacy  Internal efficacy  Collective efficacy  External efficacy

2.76 2.80 2.37

3.25 3.06 1.73

2.98 2.97 2.08

3.25 3.01 1.77

Event recall  Recall Umbrella Movement as a significant event  Recall Tiananmen as a significant event Attitude toward June 4 and memory blurring discourses  Concern about June 4  Support for rehabilitation  Support continuing commemoration  Intend to participate  “Can’t blame the government only because students were responsible too”  “China’s economy would not have the same development if there was no crackdown during June 4”  “June 4 is a matter in China, irrelevant to Hong Kong, so Hong Kong people don’t need to commemorate”

Note : Non-P = non-participants; P = participants. See Tables 7.2 and 7.3 for what the entries stand for.

still represent the strength of their pro-democracy attitude. Hence there are still significant differences on most of the variables. Against this background, it is remarkable that, among respondents aged 18 to 29, whether one had participated in the Umbrella Movement made no difference to whether the person would recall the Tiananmen Incident as an important historical event and agree with the two memory-blurring discourses propagated by the pro-establishment side. In addition, among the 18-to-29-year-olds, the difference between participants and non-participants on Chinese identification was only 0.3 on a 0-to-10 scale. What the findings suggest is that a strongly critical attitude toward the Chinese government pervaded the younger generation regardless of their political participation.

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Lastly, among the whole sample, the Umbrella Movement participants had higher levels of both internal and collective efficacy than the nonparticipants. This is consistent with the idea that a sense of efficacy can motivate people to participate in protests. But among the young respondents, the Umbrella Movement participants had higher levels of internal, but not collective, efficacy when compared to the non-participants. The lack of difference on collective efficacy between participants and non-participants is suggestive of the frustration with the ineffectiveness of the Umbrella Movement among its young participants.

Changing Profiles of the Candlelight Vigil Participants In addition to the results from population surveys, we can also examine whether the vigil participants’ attitudes have changed. We conducted seven vigil on-site surveys over the years. While the survey of each year might contain questions specific to the year, certain basic questions were repeated in several surveys. Table 7.4 summarizes the comparable findings. In terms of demographics, when we conducted the on-site survey for the first time in 2004, only 6.7% of the respondents were 19 years old or below, whereas 26.8% of the respondents were between 20 and 29. Respondents in the latter group were born in 1984 or before. Therefore, in 2004, the absolute majority of the vigil participants were already born in 1989. The proportion of young vigil participants increased substantially in the early 2010s. In 2010, 30.8% of the respondents were between 20 and 29, whereas 22% of the respondents were 19 or below – all of the latter group were not yet born in 1989. In 2014 and right before the Umbrella Movement, 20.0% of the survey respondents were 19 years old or below. The percentage of young participants fell conspicuously after the Umbrella Movement. In 2015, only 10.3% of the vigil participants were 19 years old or below. In 2018, the survey set the minimum age for being a respondent as 15, and 7.0% of the respondents belonged to the 15-to-19 category. However, the decline does not mean a disappearance of young people. The percentages of teenagers in 2015 and 2018 were comparable to or even slightly higher than the figure in 2004. Besides, by 2018, people aged 29 or below were born in or after 1989. In other words, our on-site survey shows that about 30% of the vigil participants in 2018 did not experience the Tiananmen Incident. In other words, the candlelight vigil continued to attract the participation of a non-negligible number of young people, even though its ability to attract young participants had declined somewhat from the “peak period” between 2010 and 2014.

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Table 7.4  Over time changes in vigil participants’ background, attitudes and beliefs 2004

2010

2011

2013

2014

2015

2018

Age *   19 or below   20 to 29   30 to 39   40 to 49   50 to 59   60 or above

6.8 27.2 23.1 24.1 11.7 7.2

22.6 31.6 15.8 14.7 10.0 5.3

23.7 34.4 14.3 9.9 12.2 5.6

23.6 34.4 13.9 9.9 10.6 7.5

20.0 29.3 13.6 13.0 14.6 9.5

10.3 27.3 18.3 14.5 16.8 12.7

7.0 23.9 21.8 15.0 15.6 16.6

Gender *  Male

64.6

55.8

58.6

54.9

52.4

60.6

59.8

Educational level *   Tertiary or above

65.9

60.9

64.2

63.4

67.6

72.8

73.5

Social class (self-proclaimed) *   Middle class  Lower / Grassroots

59.4 23.6

52.1 38.2

56.5 36.9

56.7 35.3

61.0 32.1

62.3 30.6

60.8 30.0

Past participation *  First-timer  Once to three times in the past

27.2 25.3

30.1 28.1

20.3 41.9

21.6 30.0

19.5 25.9

11.5 20.1

19.7 9.2

----------------------

----------------------

71.5 78.3 63.3 74.4 45.7 69.4 63.1

62.9 66.4 56.4 70.4 44.2 58.9 59.1

59.7 62.6 43.6 68.5 34.8 51.1 52.4

62.2 63.6 50.2 70.6 39.3 39.9 60.0

63.0 61.5 46.5 75.1 40.0 37.8 51.8

46.9 63.6 19.5 59.0

41.7 63.7 17.2 59.6

-------------

-------------

21.1 49.5 18.1 43.5

22.2 57.2 26.2 53.2

23.4 52.4 26.6 46.7

7.30 5.45

-------

-------

7.03 4.11

7.55 4.57

7.99 4.26

7.09 3.47

0.53

----

----

0.36

0.32

0.28

0.38

Importance of motivation **  Commemorate the dead  Urge China to rehabilitate June 4  Criticize human rights in China  Defend memory of June 4   Protest against HKG on June 4  Strive for democracy in China  Strive for democracy un HK Perceived impact on self: June 4 Incident make me…… **  Concerned about China more   Value freedom more  Fear the CCP more  Support democracy more Sense of belonging ***   Today’s Hong Kong   Today’s China Correlation between sense of belonging to HK and China****

Notes: For age, the surveys in 2010 and 2018 included respondents aged 15 or above. The survey in 2004 interviewed respondents aged 10 or above. The other years included respondents aged 9 or above. * Entries are percentages. ** Entries are percentages scoring 5 on the five-point scale, i.e., those who regarded a goal as “very important” or “strongly agreed” with a statement regarding the impact of June 4 on oneself. *** Entries are mean scores on a 0-to-10 scale. **** Entries are Pearson correlation coefficients.

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Consistent with this latter statement, the candlelight vigil also continued to attract a significant proportion of newcomers. In the 2004 vigil, which was the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown, slightly more than one-fourth of the participants were “first-timers” in the vigil. The percentage of first-timers rose to 30.1% in 2010. It then dropped to around 20% between 2011 and 2014. One way to understand this drop is that the vigils in 2009 and 2010 should have incorporated many newcomers, hence the pool of potential newcomers diminished in subsequent years. After the Umbrella Movement, the proportion of first-timers dropped further to 11.5% in 2015. Yet the figure rose back to nearly 20% in 2018. Again, the change between 2014 and 2015 was suggestive of the impact of the Umbrella Movement, but the 2018 finding hinted at the possibility of a “return to normalcy” after a few years. We asked the respondents in various years about their motivation to join the candlelight vigil. In 2011, “defending the memory of June 4,” “commemorating the dead,” and “urging China to rehabilitate June 4” were the three most important motives behind people’s participation in the candlelight vigil. Over the years, these three remained the most important motivations, though by 2018, the percentage of respondents recognizing “defending the memory of June 4” as an important motivation had clearly surpassed other percentages. It had become the most important motivation behind vigil participation. More importantly, two items related to the contemporary situation in mainland China had become substantially less important to the vigil participants. In 2011, more than 60% of the respondents regarded “criticizing human rights in China” as highly important to their participation. The percentage dropped to 43.6% in 2014 and remained at around 45% in 2018. An even more obvious decline is registered for the item “striving for democracy in China”: while close to 70% of the vigil participants in 2011 saw it as a highly important motivation, the percentage dropped to 51.1% by 2014, and then further to below 40% in 2015 and 2018. Another set of questions asked the respondents to evaluate the impact of the Tiananmen Incident on themselves. In 2004, more than 60% of the respondents strongly agreed that Tiananmen had made them value freedom more, and close to 60% strongly agreed that Tiananmen made them support democracy more. These percentages declined somewhat over the years. But even in 2018, more than or close to half of the respondents acknowledged the impact of Tiananmen on their support for freedom and democracy. In comparison, the percentage of respondents acknowledging the impact of Tiananmen on their concern with China had declined more substantially. While more than 40% of the respondents in 2004 and 2010

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strongly acknowledged the impact, the percentage dropped to about 20% in 2014, 2015, and 2018. Meanwhile, not many vigil participants strongly agreed that Tiananmen made them fear the CCP more. Nonetheless, the percentage rose from below 20% before the Umbrella Movement to above 25% in both 2015 and 2018. This latter finding can be understood together with the vigil participants’ changing sense of belonging to Hong Kong and China. As indicated at the bottom of Table 7.4, the vigil participants’ sense of belonging to “today’s Hong Kong” had long surpassed their sense of belonging to “today’s China.” But the discrepancy between the two had enlarged over the years. The mean score of sense of belonging to China stood at 5.45 in 2004. It decreased to between 4.11 and 4.57 in 2013, 2014, and 2015. It further dropped to merely 3.47 in 2018. At the same time, the mean score of sense of belonging to Hong Kong increased from 7.30 to 7.99 between 2004 and 2015, though it dropped to 7.09 in 2018. How can we understand the decrease in sense of belonging to Hong Kong among the vigil participants between 2015 and 2018? One possible answer can be derived by looking into how sense of belonging to today’s Hong Kong and sense of belonging to today’s China relate to each other. To the extent that people see Hong Kong as a part of China, the two sense-of-belonging variables should be positively correlated. Indeed, the correlation between the two items was at 0.53 in 2004. Yet the correlation weakened over time, signifying a tendency for the vigil participants to dissociate Hong Kong from mainland China. In the 2015 vigil, the correlation between the two sense-of-belonging variables was only 0.28. Nonetheless, the worsening political and social conditions in Hong Kong might have led more people to see “today’s Hong Kong” as “mainlandized” and thus similar to “today’s China” after all. In the 2018 survey, the correlation between the two senseof-belonging variables rose to 0.38. Overall, Table 7.4 suggests that changes in the political context and the critical event of the Umbrella Movement were associated with changes in the attitudes of not only Hong Kong people at large but also the June 4 vigil participants. Particularly, the decline in sense of belonging to China and the increase in “fear” against the CCP signified a strengthening of anti-CCP sentiments among the vigil participants, especially in the post-Umbrella period. Table 7.4 shows the changing make-up of the vigil participants as a whole. Yet between-age-groups differences could also exist in the vigils. Table 7.5 summarized such differences over the years. The scores represent the size of the differences between vigil participants 29 years old or below and the older

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participants (“ns” means no significant difference between the two groups). Several findings are worth highlighting. First, younger participants who did not experience or were very small in 1989 understandably acknowledged the impact of Tiananmen on themselves to a lesser extent. The gap existed on all four perceived impact items in 2004. There was no major over-time change in the pattern of between-age-groups differences. Second, there were some between-age-groups differences in the importance of specific motivations for participation. In 2011, older participants were more likely to acknowledge commemorating the dead, urging China to rehabilitate June 4, defending June 4 memory, and protesting against the Hong Kong government on the issue of June 4 as motivations for participation. Interestingly, in 2018, the significant differences had shifted to a different set of items. Older participants were more likely to acknowledge striving for democracy in China and striving for democracy in Hong Kong as motivations for participation. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that young participants’ lesser likelihood to acknowledge striving for democracy in China as a motivation for participation emerged only after the Umbrella Movement. Third, there was no between-age-groups difference in sense of belonging in the 2004 survey. Such differences emerged only in more recent years. The pattern was not highly consistent though. Young participants in the 2014 vigil had a lower sense of belonging to Hong Kong, but young participants in the 2018 vigil had a stronger sense of belonging to Hong Kong. In contrast, the difference in sense of belonging to today’s China is more consistent: young vigil participants’ sense of belonging to China had always been lower, with the difference in the 2013 and 2018 surveys being statistically significant. In sum, Table 7.4 suggests that some generational differences did exist among the participants of the June 4 vigil. Some of the differences were long-existing ones associated with the distinction between people who experienced the events in 1989 and those who did not. But there were also generational differences that emerged only in the late 2010s. The emerging differences were typically related to the vigil participants’ attitude toward contemporary China.

The Perspectives of the Localist Youth While the previous sections have illustrated the overall patterns of young people’s attitudes toward June 4 and their differences from the more mature citizens, we can acquire a deeper understanding of how young people

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Table 7.5  Between-age-group differences in vigils in various years

Importance of motivation *  Commemorate the dead  Urge China to rehabilitate June 4  Criticize human rights in China  Defend memory of June 4   Protest against HKG on June 4  Strive for democracy in China  Strive for democracy un HK Perceived impact on self: June 4 Incident make me…… *  Concerned about China more   Value freedom more  Fear the CCP more  Support democracy more Sense of belonging **   Today’s Hong Kong   Today’s China

2004

2010

2011

2013

2014

2015

2018

----------------------

----------------------

12.6 10.9 ns 10.4 9.9 ns ns

ns ns ns ns 10.8 ns ns

ns ns ns ns ns ns ns

12.2 11.1 ns ns ns 9.0 ns

ns ns ns ns 10.7 14.6 12.3

17.2 17.0 8.3 22.0

18.6 21.6 ns 23.2

-------------

-------------

10.0 7.3 8.0 ns

4.7 14.9 9.1 12.7

12.7 18.6 14.7 16.8

ns ns

-------

-------

ns -0.57

0.65 ns

ns ns

-0.44 -0.49

Notes: * Entries are percentages among respondents 30 years old or above answering “very important” or “strongly agree” minus the corresponding percentages among respondents 29 years old or below giving the same answer to the questions. ** Entries are the differences between the mean scores of the two sense of belonging variables among respondents 30 years old or above and the corresponding mean scores of the variables among respondents 29 or below. Positive scores mean that the older group had a higher score on the variable when compared to the younger group. Ns = no significant differences between the two age groups.

developed their views toward June 4 through a qualitative analysis. Chapter 4 has examined the process of intergenerational memory transmission. We saw how young people can take up the society’s memory about June 4 through the operation of a web of social institutions. But from a Mannheimian perspective, young people are not only empty containers to be filled with contents provided by the society; rather, people growing up in a particular social milieu are influenced by their own set of formative experiences. These formative experiences become the basis for the new generation to evaluate the society’s heritage. Nevertheless, individuals can vary in the extent to which they participate in and the way they respond to the dominant influences of the period (Pilcher, 1994). Following these premises, we conducted 10 in-depth interviews with young activists – mostly student union leaders – in the summer of 2018. The aim of the interviews was to reconstruct their brief “political biographies”:

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the life course through which they became attentive toward and active in public affairs, and how their public participation shaped their political outlook, including their views about June 4. We interviewed mostly young student leaders because university student unions’ attitudes toward Tiananmen commemoration were often prominently discussed and were taken by the press as a key indicator of young people’s attitude toward June 4. The student leaders, on average, should have more articulated views on the Tiananmen commemoration because they needed to respond to their fellow students, the press, and other social movement groups. When compared to ordinary youngsters, they were likely to have richer personal stories that can help to shed light on the current problem. In order to capture the internal heterogeneity in attitudes toward Tiananmen among the young generation, we included several self-proclaimed localist student leaders and several young activists who still attended the June 4 vigils after the Umbrella Movement. This section focuses on the self-proclaimed localists.9 We may illustrate the possible path through which a Hong Kong youngster became a self-proclaimed localist through the story of Joyce.10 Joyce attended a secondary school where the Tiananmen Incident was regularly discussed. She noted that many of her secondary school teachers had a “pan-China mindset.” The teachers would organize activities and seminars about June 4 every year. This made Joyce not very different from many young candlelight vigil participants in how she became familiar with the Tiananmen Incident. In fact, Joyce attended the candlelight vigil when she was in secondary school forms 3 and 4. She did not remember much about the vigil, however. When asked about her impression, she commented that the vigil was a bit “sensationalistic” and did not elaborate much. Beyond the issue of Tiananmen, Joyce became more engaged with public affairs in 2012. She mentioned the influence of both her family and studying Liberal Studies at school. She also became interested in the political group Civic Passion and one of its prominent leaders, though she admitted that she did not understand the difference between Civic Passion and other political groups very well at the time. She knew Civic Passion held a separate June 4 rally in 2014, but she admitted that she did not understand the ideological differences between the rally organized by Civic Passion and the Victoria Park vigil. Joyce’s political participation intensified through the Umbrella Movement. Inspired by the Facebook pages set up by secondary school students at other 9 Each interview lasted between 55 and 75 minutes. 10 Unless otherwise indicated, pseudonyms are used.

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schools, Joyce initiated a political reform concern group at her own school. She admitted that she and her schoolmates did not have well-established discourses on the issue of political reform; they simply wanted their classmates to pay more attention to the matter. She joined the secondary school student class strike on September 26, 2014. She was in Admiralty two days later, i.e., the first day of the occupation. She emphasized: “I was in the group that charged [the police] and took the tear gas [shot by the police].” After the beginning of the occupation, she was in Admiralty for a period of time. But she then withdrew from the occupation area because she felt the atmosphere was unlike a resistance movement. She was frustrated by both the ineffectiveness of the occupation and the government’s unwillingness to respond. She saw the Umbrella Movement – or Umbrella Revolution in her words11 – as a failure. She explicitly noted that it was during the occupation that “I changed from being a supporter of the pan-democrats to a supporter of the localists.” Joyce defined localism in terms of “sovereignty of the people” ( jyu-kyun joi-man). She saw democracy as more important than independence. But in her understanding, the pan-democrats supported “reunion in democracy,”12 whereas she believed that setting democratization in China as the premise of democratization in Hong Kong is “unrealistic.” This led her to re-evaluate Tiananmen commemoration: For the localists, the most important thing is the separation between Hong Kong and China. Once you have this thought, you feel there’s no necessary linkage between Hong Kong and China; you feel that June 4 is a tragedy, it was real, and the CCP is an atrocious regime, but this incident became more separated from you because of your political view. You feel that this is China’s issue, so naturally the Chinese people should handle it.

Throughout the interview, Joyce repeatedly acknowledged the importance of not forgetting June 4. Yet she noted that she would ask people not to go to the vigil if there were opportunities to do so: “Although there is a lesson [in the Tiananmen Incident], in order to construct the Hong Kong identity and to emphasize the detachment of Hong Kong from China, not doing 11 Umbrella Revolution is the label generally preferred by protesters with a localist orientation. 12 “Reunion in democracy” refers to a discourse originating in the 1980s in Hong Kong, which saw reunif ication with China with the promise of democratization as the best solution to the question of Hong Kong’s future. After the Umbrella Movement, China was seen as having broken the promise of allowing Hong Kong to democratize. Some localist figures criticized the democrats for mistakenly believing in “reunion in democracy.”

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anything is the best option.” Nonetheless, would “not doing anything” lead the society to forget about June 4? When this possible criticism was highlighted, Joyce simply insisted on the appropriateness of withdrawing from commemoration. One might argue that Joyce was only paying lip service when she acknowledged the necessity of remembering June 4. Among the four localist interviewees, Joyce held the most negative attitude toward the Alliance and the pan-democrats. She agreed that, as a student leader, she would cooperate with the pan-democrats on specific social issues. But as an individual, she preferred not to cooperate with them at all. Apparently, her negative view toward the pan-democrats was built upon the information she derived from social media. Among the interviewees, Joyce was the most familiar with the localist media outlets and key opinion leaders in the online arena. We began with the story of Joyce because she is the most “consistently localist” among the interviewees. She expressed a strong negative view toward the pan-democrats and the Alliance, a strong anti-commemoration attitude, an emphasis on dissociating Hong Kong from China, a rejection of democratization of China as the precondition for democratization of Hong Kong, etc. She was relatively well-versed on the discourse of localism and had a relatively crystallized view on what localism means. This “consistency” might partly be attributed to the fact that she paid close attention to localist media outlets and online opinion leaders. The other three self-proclaimed localist student leaders exhibited individual variations on some of the characteristics. Collin, for instance, shared with Joyce the experience of getting to know about the Tiananmen crackdown in secondary school, and some of the Liberal Studies teachers at his school were actually core members of the Hong Kong Professional Teachers Union, which is closely connected to the Alliance. He started paying attention to the Golden Forum, an online forum known for the localist orientation of its frequent users, since around 2012. Hence he acknowledged that the weakening of his Chinese identity began in around 2012 during the debate surrounding the “locust invasion.”13 But Collin was unaware of the term localism or the presence of a distinctive localist discourse at that time. He did not become a self-professed localist through the Umbrella Movement. Different from Joyce, Collin had only minimal participation 13 The “locust invasion” debate refers to the debate surrounding the localists’ criticisms against the influx of resource-consuming mainlanders to Hong Kong. Movement activists of liberal progressive orientation criticized the localists for using the derogatory and dehumanizing term “locusts” to refer to mainland migrants and tourists.

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in the Umbrella Movement. He was in Admiralty for one day, but left the Umbrella Movement at a very early stage because the atmosphere there was too far removed from his imagination of forceful resistance. Yet he remained unaware of the presence of localism until the Mong Kok riots in February 2016. Collin noted that localism, for him, was primarily a kind of “consciousness” ( ji sik), and the rise of the localist consciousness was related to a sense of one’s own place being invaded. Collin acknowledged that he was not deeply involved in the social movement circle, so he did not know much about the characteristics of the pan-democrats and various political groups. It nonetheless led to a lesser degree of negativity toward the pan-democrats. He was also less adamant about not doing anything regarding June 4. In contrast, he noted that he might join the candlelight vigil “if it was only about commemorating [the dead].” In fact, he joined a June 4 commemoration activity at his university organized by the teachers’ union, and he gave a speech urging the staff members to pass on the knowledge about the Tiananmen Incident to the next generation. He criticized the Alliance for imposing a Chinese identity and agenda onto Tiananmen commemoration. However, he argued that Hong Kong people should not and cannot refrain from trying to understand China because of China’s huge influence on Hong Kong. Collin actually majored in a subject about China. The other two localist student leaders exhibited other variations. Austin was similar to Joyce in his experience of a shift toward localism during the Umbrella Movement. Over the course of the movement, he “moved” from Admiralty to Mong Kok, the occupied area presumably with a stronger localist presence. He felt that the atmosphere and spirit of the Mong Kok occupation – a stronger sense of solidarity in resistance – was what Hong Kong needed. Since the Umbrella Movement, Austin had become an admirer of Hong Kong Indigenous. He appreciated the group for its “sincere hearts.” Austin was also explicit about how the Umbrella Movement changed his view on June 4. He said that he was sympathetic toward June 4 commemoration at first. But after the Umbrella Movement, “I was using a localist perspective to look at the matter.” He saw June 4 as a historical event, “while you know that many people died and you do feel sympathetic, you don’t feel that there is the responsibility to commemorate.” He also held negative views about the Alliance. Yet he did not go as far as Joyce in claiming that people should refrain from commemorating June 4. He agreed that it is fine for people to commemorate June 4 through various means. Compared to the other three localist interviewees, Helena probably was least engaged with social movements. She had minimal participation in

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the Umbrella Movement, and she seldom paid attention to localist writings and discourses on the Internet. She treated “localism” as a sentiment that came to her naturally: “So from a young age I’ve always felt I was a Hong Konger, and I love this place.” She did not attend the June 4 vigil because of the lack of identification: “I just don’t feel that I am a Chinese; I am a Hong Konger and Hong Kong’s problems are serious enough.” She criticized the Alliance for turning the vigil into a donation-seeking event. But when asked how one can differentiate between legitimate donation-seeking and advantage-taking, she admitted that people’s views on such matters are often “more sentimental than rational.” She also did not object to other people attending the June 4 vigil. On her student union’s take on the question of June 4, she even acknowledged that sometimes one has to follow the footsteps of the student unions of other universities. In other words, she was partly following the lead by others instead of having very strong attitudes herself. Considered together, it is not only that the young localists did not experience June 4; they also had their own formative political experiences. Some of them were once upon a time “socialized” into the mnemonic community of June 4 when they were in secondary schools, but their perspectives can change by later experiences that are truly important to them. However, the localist interviewees did not pick up and agree with all localist themes. They tended to treat localism as a sentiment or a matter of “consciousness,” and they saw their Hong Kong identity as coming to them “naturally” through everyday experiences. Grounded on the localist sentiment and a strong local identity, they may then selectively appropriate the localist discourses. Yet they might also make arguments that do not contradict what supporters of the Tiananmen commemoration might say, such as the importance of understanding China. Ultimately, there were individual variations in whether they would pay attention to Chinese affairs, whether they believed there is room for collaboration between the localists and the pan-democrats, whether they were against commemoration of June 4 in any form, and so on. These variations were tied to whether they had the experience of joining June 4 commemoration before, their amount of exposure to localist media and discourses, and their experiences working with various political groups. Admittedly, the interviewees’ reconstruction of their backgrounds inevitably involved efforts of impression management. People are likely to construct coherent stories about themselves in interviews (Linde, 1993). But the need for impression management has not turned the localists’ stories into a standardized narrative. Rather, people had to make sense of themselves in ways that render their life stories consistent with the basic facts of their lives. This contributed to a degree of heterogeneity in

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how Tiananmen commemoration was viewed as well as how localism was defined by the interviewees.

The Perspectives of the Young Vigil Participants As the on-site surveys indicated, the post-Umbrella candlelight vigils continued to attract the participation of many young people. In fact, facing the localists’ challenge, the candlelight vigils in 2015 and after often included a session in which “representatives” of young participants would speak on the stage about the importance of continuing the commemoration. Nga-man14 was one of the student leaders who spoke on stage in the 2018 vigil. She can serve as a point of comparison with the localists discussed in the previous section. Similar to many young people, the secondary school context played an important role in introducing the issue of June 4 to Nga-man. But different from those who were influenced by a pro-commemoration teacher, Ngaman recalled her Liberal Studies teacher as a pro-government person who criticized the student movement in 1989. She then discussed what she learned from the class with her parents, and her parents gave her a very different perspective. This aroused her curiosity. She began to proactively find more information about the events in 1989. Over time, she became more interested in social affairs in China. She saw “modern China” as her favorite part of the Liberal Studies curriculum despite her teacher’s pro-government attitude. She was particularly interested in the various social problems in China. She also chose to study a relevant subject when she entered university. Nga-man was working as an intern at an NGO when the Umbrella Movement occurred. The internship prevented her from spending too much time on the movement. She was in the occupied area for only four nights. Yet she paid attention to the development of the movement and became frustrated with the lack of positive governmental response. However, she noted that the strong sense of frustration went away very soon because she understood that it often takes a long time for any social movement to achieve positive outcomes. She was inspired by those groups who called for a “return to the local community” toward the end of the occupation campaign. When she returned to the university as a student, she found that a lot of associations 14 Real name is used here because her identity as the youngster who spoke on stage during the 2018 vigil is important here, making anonymity meaningless. The consent of the interviewee on using her real name was obtained.

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had already been taken over by students with localist orientations. She disagreed with the localist discourses and opted to join a group focusing primarily on labor issues because she thought that democracy and livelihood issues are closely intertwined. In early 2018, she ran for the presidency of the student union at her university. Despite the absence of competition, she was ultimately not elected because the total number of votes cast fell below the threshold required for a successful election. When running in the student union election, Nga-man made it explicit that, if elected, the student union would attend the June 4 vigil. She acknowledged that there were debates within her team when they developed their electoral platform. To those students who criticized the Alliance and the candlelight vigil, she replied: The theme of the commemoration is June 4; you are not raising the candlelight to the Alliance. Is it true that if you refrain from participating [in the vigil], you can express your dissatisfaction effectively? If not, then why don’t you try to do something in the vigil, to understand the people there.

Together with other claims and issue stances, Nga-man’s team was treated by many fellow students as inclining toward the pan-democrats. In fact, Nga-man was critical toward the localists she had encountered. She claimed that “going against the pan-democrats” had become “the political correctness” among university students. She opined that the previous student union committee at her university, a self-proclaimed localist one, could not really teach her too much about how to achieve one’s goals. She believed that “during their tenure they were just objecting to things” instead of trying to establish something more positive. Using as the example the localist claim that “if China has democracy, [the Chinese people] would vote and rule out self-determination by Hong Kong people,” she noted that localist arguments were often rooted in the fear against CCP and not based on rational analysis. However, one might argue that Nga-man had picked up one of the more extreme and unreasonable claims by the localists as her object of criticism. In the end, Nga-man did not dissociate herself too sharply from the localists. In media interviews conducted during the time she was running in the student union election, she stated that her team would not object to calls for Hong Kong independence as long as the envisioned independent Hong Kong was a democracy and a fair society. When speaking on stage in the 2018 vigil, she emphasized that she was a Hong Konger. While she did not explicitly deny her Chinese identity, she did not acknowledge it either. Her speech focused entirely on why a Hong Konger should be concerned about June 4.

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A few points about Nga-man can be noted when her case is compared to the political biographies of the localist student leaders in the previous section. Nga-man drew a very different lesson at the end of the Umbrella Movement. Facing the stalemate of the democratization process, she opted for a “solution” different from the localists’ urge to radicalize. She had the awareness that she did not agree with the localist agenda, and she deliberately connected herself with people and groups without a strong localist orientation. However, it does not mean that Nga-man could not work with localist-oriented individuals. She was also aware of the sensibilities of young people around her. She shared some of these sensibilities, such as a strong identification as a Hong Konger. As a result, she would make claims that appealed to the localist sentiments of her generation. In other words, while some young people’s life experiences and interpretations of their environment led them not to identify with the localists, they shared certain experiences and sentiments with the localists’ supporters. Murphy constituted another illustrative example in this regard. He came from the mainland to Hong Kong after primary school. He became interested in the Tiananmen Incident and other issues such as the situation of dissidents when taking Liberal Studies in secondary school. He also became interested in Hong Kong issues when studying world history, which has a chapter on Hong Kong. In the Umbrella Movement in 2014, he was in the class strike on September 26 and was one of the young people who rushed into the “Civic Square”15 and got arrested by the police. He refrained from participating in the occupation later because of the risk of getting arrested again. Nevertheless, since he was arrested before, he was banned from entering China in the period right after the Umbrella Movement. He once traveled to the mainland to visit his relatives, but was stopped by customs on the Chinese side. After a few minutes, the custom officer handed him a piece of paper saying “you may negatively influence the stability of the Chinese society.” He was shocked and felt that he was excluded by China. On the one hand, he was afraid that he would no longer be able to go back to the mainland to see his relatives again. But on the other hand, the experience made him feel even more strongly that he would not go back to the mainland to live and work. He felt he no longer had connections with the country. 15 It refers to the action initiated by student leader Joshua Wong on September 26, when a large group of young people climbed over the fence and entered the enclosed front area of the Government Headquarters, which was dubbed the Civic Square by the protesters because of the role of the space during the anti-national education protests in 2012.

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Murphy did not become a supporter of the localist, however. This can be understood from his earlier encounter with localist groups. Even before the Umbrella Movement, Murphy had started listening to the online radio program hosted by a core figure of Civic Passion. He became familiar with the localists’ critique of the pan-democrats. After going to the Victoria Park candlelight vigil in previous years, he went to Civic Passion’s June 4 rally in Tsim Sha Tsui in 2014. However, he recalled Wong Yuk-man, leader of Civic Passion at the time, saying on the stage that “Ah Tat [another Civic Passion leader] is going to win the next election.” He felt very negatively about what Wong said because Civic Passion often criticized the pan-democrats for doing everything based on calculations of votes, and it turned out they were apparently the same. In addition, while some supporters of Civic Passion went to the nearby tourist area to protest against mainland tourists after the end of the June 4 rally, Murphy did not agree with the tactic of targeting tourists. Murphy was therefore neither the prototypical localist supporter nor the prototypical supporter of the pan-democrats. Regarding his relationship with China, Murphy resembled Collin, who was introduced in the previous section: while he no longer had much positive affection toward China, he thought that a lot of the discussions about China in the Hong Kong media were stereotypical. “If you treat it as an opponent, this simplified understanding is inadequate.” Hence he decided to enter a postgraduate program related to China studies. But he emphasized that he was concerned about Hong Kong. His need to study China was rooted in China’s huge influence over Hong Kong. Meanwhile, after not participating in the candlelight vigil between 2015 and 2017, Murphy returned to Victoria Park in 2018. After graduating from university, he became involved in a civil society organization conducting archival studies related to the history of Hong Kong. In the process of doing research, he saw a lot of government documents about the events in 1989. He acknowledged that his “affective understanding” of the event increased. He realized how big the Tiananmen Incident was. He felt that, having witnessed the event, there was a need to be concerned about the Tiananmen Incident. Different from Nga-man, who presented herself as having never been attracted by localism, Murphy had once been paying close attention to a localist political group, though without being its supporter. The case of Murphy shows how many young people in Hong Kong were navigating the quickly changing political landscape to find their own orientation and direction. Young people did not take localism or the discourses of the pan-democrats as holistic packages that they had to either embrace or reject entirely. Rather, they developed their own thinking based on their life

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experiences and then relate themselves to the existing political discourses, with the latter often understood selectively. When our interviewees are considered together, we can certainly see the typical differences between the localists and non-localists: whether they distinguished negative affects toward the Chinese government from the need to understand the country, whether they distinguished the Alliance as a political organization from the issue of June 4, how they understood what localism entails, etc. These typical differences were in turn connected to their varying personal experiences, social networks, and media consumption. But the term typical differences has to be used because the distinction between localists and non-localists is not absolute. We also saw how both localists and non-localists actually shared certain common sentiments, including the negative affect against the Chinese government and a strong local identification. Last but not least, no matter whether they leaned toward the localist faction or not, the interviewees were all active in the student movement or civil society at large. They might be distinguished from young people who do not pay much attention to politics and public affairs. In fact, one common observation of the interviewees regardless of their own political views is the lack of interest in politics among their peers. Some student leaders remarked that the majority of university students did not care about politics. Several interviewees noted that even their own student union committee members were uninterested in politics. Nga-man noticed a tendency for some student unions to withdraw from politics and position themselves as “welfare-oriented unions.” As a matter of fact, in 2018, there were simply not enough interested students to form a committee for the student union in a few universities. While the failure of Nga-man’s team to garner enough votes was sometimes attributed to the rejection by the localist supporters, a general lack of voting participation by university students was probably also part of the cause. Our interviewees varied in their diagnosis of the phenomenon. Some saw it as the extension of a strong sense of political inefficacy since the Umbrella Movement. Some tied it to the hardline approach adopted by the state against radical protests, which increased the risks for engaging in student movements. Others saw it as the “normal” tendency of the majority of Hong Kong public. In Mannheim’s terminology, the politically uninterested youngsters can be constituted partly by people not having participated in the dominant influence of the time and therefore remained outside the generation in actuality, and partly by people who were influenced by the major events but came away with their specific interpretations, thus belonging to yet another generation unit.

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Concluding Remarks This chapter has illustrated to what extent and in what senses young people’s attitudes toward June 4 differed from those of senior citizens in the late 2010s. A few themes common to the quantitative and qualitative analyses emerged. The first is the pervasiveness of localist sentiments among young people in Hong Kong in the period. The self-proclaimed localist supporters, not surprisingly, held strong views regarding the need to defend Hong Kong from the perceived “invasion” by social and political forces from mainland China. But the analysis also made it clear that young people who did not regard themselves as localists also held a strong local identification. If localism is defined merely as a strong local identification plus a general sentiment favoring the detachment of Hong Kong from China, one might indeed venture the claim that Hong Kong people who had their adolescent years in the 2010s constituted a localist generation. Nevertheless, if localism is defined in terms of the range of public discourses ventured by localist activists, then what we see was the absence of a widespread uptake of the localist ideologies by young people in Hong Kong in the period. This was true not only when young citizens from the whole society are considered as a group; even the self-proclaimed localist student leaders did not agree with all the claims associated with localism in public discourses. We therefore need a more measured evaluation of the power and influence of the localist challenge to the June 4 commemoration. It would be misleading to see the discourses analyzed in Chapter 6 as representing the thoughts of most young people. Nevertheless, we do not intend to argue that the localist discourses were completely inconsequential. They did constitute the discursive resources for young people to make sense of themselves and their environment, and there has indeed been partial uptake of such discourses by a section of young people. Meanwhile, the analyses pointed toward the declining sense of political efficacy as a possible cause behind people’s – and especially young people’s – declining interests and participation in the Tiananmen commemoration in the period. That is, the perceived ineffectiveness of major protests led people to question the collective efficacy of Hong Kong citizens. People thus withdrew from politics and public affairs in general. Understood this way, the decline in participation in the June 4 vigil was not necessarily only a matter of people’s changing attitudes toward Tiananmen; it could be partly a result of a broader withdrawal from public life by citizens. This latter interpretation is in line with the research finding noted at the beginning of this chapter that

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both young supporters of localists and young supporters of pan-democrats had participated in the June 4 vigil to a lesser extent between 2015 and 2017.16 This chapter extends the examination of generational differences and intergenerational transmission of collective memory in Chapter 4 both temporally (i.e., it covers the situation after the Umbrella Movement) and conceptually. Some of the findings presented in this chapter are consistent with the findings in Chapter 4. For example, the importance of the web of institutions formed by secondary schools, family, and the media for socializing young people into the mnemonic community of Tiananmen is shown in the political biographies of some of the interviewees, though we also see that an early involvement in June 4 vigils did not ensure that young people would not change their views toward the Tiananmen Incident later because of their own experiences. Many of our interviewees also mentioned the role of Liberal Studies in generating their interest in politics and public affairs, a theme discussed in Chapter 5. However, when compared to Chapter 4, this chapter emphasizes that intergeneration memory transmission is not just a matter of how well the older generation “teaches” the younger generation about an objective “history.” It is a matter of how the younger generation, as active sense-makers, re-evaluates a society’s heritage according to their present situation. Young people are supposed to have “fresh contact” (Mannheim, 1972) with the society’s heritage and view it through the lens of their own experiences. Moreover, the analysis emphasizes the internal heterogeneity of a generation through Mannheim’s (1972) distinction among generation of location, generation in actuality, and generation unit. There can be significant internal variations within a generation in terms of their responses to the present situation and therefore the way they re-evaluate the society’s past. As illustrated in the brief “political biographies” of the interviewees, the articulation and interpretation of the past are an ongoing process with uncertain outcomes. People continually evaluate their experiences in the face of new happenings, observations, and additional experiences of activism. Throughout the process, young people’s interpretations of their environment also depend on the discursive and symbolic resources they acquire from the media. As a result of the dynamic process, individuals who became acquainted with localist groups at some point might reject the “localist” label later. Individuals who participated in the June 4 vigil in their high school years can become critical toward the vigil, but individuals who had once left the mnemonic community of Tiananmen can also return. 16 Chung and Tang, “Localist youth.”

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Moreover, the Mannheimian theoretical framework on generation acknowledges that the temporal distance between two successive generations is not fixed (Pilcher, 1994). A new generation can emerge very quickly in times of rapid social change, because rapid social change implies quick changes in the formative experiences of young people. In fact, we may describe the activists discussed in the qualitative part of this chapter as the “Umbrella generation,” since the Umbrella Movement constituted their most important formative experience. But as a few interviewees recognized, the Umbrella Movement might not mean much to those merely five or six years younger than them – this point had probably become prophetic with the happening of the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement in 2019. In any case, the “next generation” could have their own “fresh contact” with the world of public affairs and the issue of Tiananmen. This is a fundamental reason why the perpetuation of a collective memory is never guaranteed, but also why the apparent weakening of collective remembering may be reversed.

Bibliography Allerbeck, K. R. (1977). Political generations: Some reflections on the concept and its application to the German case. European Journal of Political Research, 5, 119-134. Ben-Ze’ev, E. (2009). The canonical generation: Trapped between personal and national memories. Sociology, 43(6), 1047-1065. Lee, F. L. F. (2006). Collective efficacy, support for democracy, and political participation in Hong Kong. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 18(3), 297-317. Lee, F. L. F. (2010). The perceptual bases of collective efficacy and protest participation: The case of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 22(3), 392-411. Linde, C. (1993). Life stories: The creation of coherence. New York: Oxford University Press. Mannheim, K. (1972). Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Routledge. Pilcher, J. (1994). Mannheim’s sociology of generations: An undervalued legacy. The British Journal of Sociology, 45(3), 481-495. Yang, G. (2005). Days of old are not puffs of smoke: Three hypotheses on collective memories of the Cultural Revolution. China Review, 5(2), 13-41 Yang, G. (2016). The red guard generation and political activism in China. New York: Columbia University Press.

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Digital Media and Memory Balkanization Abstract Chapter 8 discusses the impact of digital media on collective memory. The chapter examines both the positive and negative impact of digital and social media. On the one hand, the analysis notes how digital media provided the channels for memory mobilization and the archives for memory transmission. On the other hand, the analysis examines the problematics of memory balkanization. It explicates how political forces have shaped the development of digital and social media in Hong Kong and how competing representations of the Tiananmen Incident and commemoration activities are articulated and reinforced within distinctive memory silos. Keywords: digital media, memory archive, memory balkanization, polarization

When the Tiananmen crackdown occurred in 1989, most people in the world had probably not even heard of the Internet. The popularization of Internet technologies would come a few years later. By the 30th anniversary of “Tiananmen,” people were living in a fully digitalized world. Hong Kong, in particular, has one of the highest levels of Internet penetration and social media use in East Asia (Lee et al., 2017). One cannot fully understand the dynamics of collective remembering in the contemporary world without considering the influence of digital media platforms. Scholars have identified numerous ways through which digital media have altered collective remembering. Digital media platforms facilitate the production of archives (Jensen, 2016), thereby making various kinds of historical records more readily accessible to people. In addition, digital media provide the space within which people engage in commemorative practices. This can alter what is being remembered, who can initiate collective remembering, and who can participate in remembrance and how

Lee, Francis L.F., and Joseph M. Chan, Memories of Tiananmen: Politics and Processes of Collective Remembering in Hong Kong, 1989-2019. Amsterdam University Press 2021 doi: 10.5117/9789463728447_ch08

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(Harju, 2015; Rik, Ansgard & Marcel, 2018). More specifically, by adding their own input to the online pool of stories, experiences, historical knowledge, and amateur media products, the role of ordinary people has changed from relatively passive participants in elite-led activities to active contributors to commemoration (Lee, 2014; Liew, Pang & Chan, 2014). People can sometimes engage in diverse interpretations of a past event (Rantasila et al., 2018). In authoritarian contexts, social media even have the potential to empower people by allowing the expression of otherwise suppressed experiences and knowledge, thereby constructing new and critical versions of historical memories (Hillenbrand, 2020; Liu, 2018; Zhao & Liu, 2015). Moreover, social media platforms change the ways individuals connect with each other and the ways materials circulate across society. This has led some scholars to argue for a shift from collective to connective remembering (Hoskins, 2011, 2016; Karugia, 2018). For Hoskins (2011: 272), remembering in the contemporary world is “a matter of navigation in and through emergent and shifting complexities of connections in and through media,” and memory is “generated through the flux of contacts between people and digital technologies.” For van Dijck (2011: 411), with the emergence of a culture of connectivity, social media sites such as Flickr do not simply produce a collective vision of the past; they offer platforms “where algorithms, professionals and pro-amateurs select uploaded [materials] and connect them to groups, interpretations, audiences, institutions, and so on” (p. 411). However, we do not go so far as to argue for replacing the term “collective memory” by “connective memory.” As the previous chapters have shown, despite continual contestation, a version of collective memory of the Tiananmen Incident centering on the morally condemnable act of a government killing unarmed citizens has remained largely dominant in Hong Kong society into the late 2010s. With the annual vigil in Victoria Park serving as the center of commemoration activities and public attention, together with the struggle for memory institutionalization, collective remembering of Tiananmen in Hong Kong was not as decentralized as the term connective memory would suggest. Furthermore, with or without social media, people and their memories are always networked. It has always been the case that certain ideas about the historical past are more likely to circulate within some social networks rather than others. For the present authors, the fundamental question remains how social and political forces attempt to promote distinctive versions of the past, though they indeed need to do so in an increasingly networked media environment. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize, following van Dijck (2011) and others, that the virtually unlimited amount of online materials related to a

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historical event does not constitute any singular and coherent vision, and the materials are unevenly distributed, consumed, and circulated among various groups of people. With the intrusion of political interests, memory contestation can take new forms in cyberspace. This chapter discusses three aspects of the relationship between digital media and collective remembering of Tiananmen in Hong Kong. First, digital media can play an important role in the process of mobilization. We will examine the level of digital media use among the candlelight vigil participants and argue that digital media had been part of a “two-step mobilization” process behind the annual commemoration ritual. Second, through online user-generated archives such as YouTube, citizens have easy access to a wide range of materials about or related to the Tiananmen crackdown. These materials range from footage of the events in 1989 to user-generated videos commemorating the event. Meanwhile, opponents to Tiananmen commemoration can also propagate their viewpoints by uploading their preferred type of historical materials, providing interpretations of existing materials, and debating with others. We will present a content analysis of Tiananmen-related YouTube videos to demonstrate how people can engage in collective remembering (and its contestation) through uploading and responding to online materials. Third and most importantly, some scholars have argued that digital media have created a high-choice media environment that could heighten audience selectivity (Bennett & Iyengar, 2008; Prior, 2007). The consequence is the formation of online echo chambers and a balkanized online environment (Sunstein, 2009, 2017). Although there have been debates about the prevalence of selective exposure and the echo chamber phenomenon (Dubois & Blank, 2018; Garrett & Stroud, 2014; Fletcher & Nielsen, 2017), there were indeed online sites proffering distinctive views on the Tiananmen crackdown. We will provide an analysis of pro-government and localist Facebook pages. We will see how Tiananmen commemoration has been criticized in these online spaces in the most recent years, sometimes in ways that go beyond how Tiananmen commemoration has been contested in the mainstream public arena. At the end, we will also provide empirical evidence about the increasing polarization of Hong Kong people’s attitudes toward the issue of Tiananmen.

Digital Media in Mobilization for Commemoration A large body of literature in political communication and social movement studies has demonstrated the positive impact of digital media use on

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protest participation (e.g., Enjolras, Steen-Johnsen, & Wollebæk, 2013; Tang & Lee, 2013; Valenzuela, 2013; Valenzuela, Arriagada, & Scherman, 2012). There are numerous reasons why digital media can help mobilize people to participate in protests. The Internet lowers information costs and makes movement- and protest-related messages more readily accessible (Coopman, 2011). It provides a platform for the growth of activist media and alternative journalism (Harcup, 2011; Forde, 2011). It provides citizens with opportunities of expression, discussions, and various forms of virtual political actions (Earl & Kimport, 2011). Moreover, digital media allow people to maintain contact with others and develop both bonding and bridging social capital, which in turn promote civic and political engagement (e.g., Gil de Zúñiga, 2012; Zhong, 2014). The networks that citizens create and maintain through the Internet may even include politicians and social activists. Such direct connections with public figures and activists can be particularly effective in generating political participation (Tang & Lee, 2013). The emergence of social media and user-generated content sites have further strengthened the informational, expressive, and networking utilities of digital media. As Valenzuela, Arriagada and Scherman (2012: 303) stated summarily, “frequent Facebook users are more likely to protest because they engage in activities that are essential for collective action, such as learning information, exchanging and forming opinions about social issues, and constructing a common identity.” Meanwhile, the seminal theorization by Bennett and Segerberg (2013) has explicated how social media can facilitate the emergence of new and powerful forms of decentralized “connective action.” Chapter 3 has shown that political communication via social media was related to recall of Tiananmen as a significant historical event among Hong Kong people. Besides, an analysis of our 2018 population survey data showed that, in a multiple regression analysis, engaging in political communication activities via Facebook related positively to intention to participate in the June 4 candlelight vigil after controlling for demographics, political interest, support for democracy, three dimensions of political efficacy, and mainstream news media attention. That is, people who used social media for political communication more frequently were more likely to remember Tiananmen and participate in commemoration activities. The following analysis aims at moving one step further to illustrate how digital media use was embedded in the mobilization process behind the vigil through the notion of participation leadership. Numerous studies have shown that individuals with friends already involved in social movements are more likely to participate in collective actions (e.g., della Porta, 1995;

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Kriesi, 1993). Social networks can socialize people into holding certain beliefs, present people with participation opportunities, and alter people’s calculation of the costs and benefits of participation (Diani & McAdam, 2003; Passy, 2003). However, not everyone in a network is equally influential. Similar to the concept of opinion leadership (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1957), the concept of participation leadership is concerned with social influence in interpersonal networks and points to the possibility that social influence flows mainly from certain people acting as “leaders” to others acting as “followers.” Opinion leaders “did not necessarily hold formal positions of power or prestige in communities but rather served as the connective communication tissue that alerted their peers to what mattered” (Nisbet & Kotcher, 2009: 329). Similarly, participation leaders are not necessarily members of movement groups; they are ordinary citizens who not only decide to participate but also influence others, sometimes through persuasion, sometimes through sharing mobilizing information, and sometimes simply through communicating their own participation decision to others. Classic studies about opinion leadership often found that opinion leaders consume the mass media to larger extents and are more knowledgeable about their areas of expertise (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1957; Weimann, 1991). For the present purpose, we expect the participation leaders to be more active in utilizing digital media for protest-related purposes. The main reason resides in the expressive and networking utilities of digital media. It is very easy for any individual who has decided to participate in a protest to share relevant information, announce his/her decision, and ask others to join via social media. As Macafee and de Simone (2012) argued, social media are by nature expressive spaces. Those people who regularly engage in online political communication are likely to express their participation decisions. The expression can be as simple as a status update or as elaborate as a blog-post. We illustrate the relationship between digital media use and participation leadership empirically through the rally on-site surveys in 2014 and 2018. In both surveys, we asked the rally participants a set of questions about their digital media use. Table 8.1 shows the items’ descriptive statistics. On a five-point scale ranging from “never” to “very frequently,” nearly two-thirds of the participants in the 2014 vigil and about 60% of the participants in the 2018 vigil reported using Facebook frequently or very frequently. In the 2014 vigil, slightly more than one-fifth of the respondents browsed Inmedia, an alternative media site with close relationship with progressive social movements, frequently or very frequently. The figure in 2018 is 29%. Meanwhile, about 30% of the respondents in both 2014 and 2018 used House

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Table 8.1 Vigil participants’ digital media use and online political communication activities 2014

2018

Mean

Frequently / v. frequently

Mean

frequently / v. frequently

Use/browse Facebook Use/browse Twitter or Weibo Use/browse Inmedia Use/browse House News / Stand News Use/browse Passion Times Use/browse The Initium

3.78 2.02 2.66 2.97 -------

64.4 12.5 22.8 34.8 -------

3.71 ---2.97 2.99 2.06 2.29

60.8 ---29.1 28.4  5.0 13.2

Communicate with others about public affairs Express views about public affairs in forums/social media Participate in social media groups related to public affairs Participate in online petition Participate in other online actions related to public affairs

3.14

34.9

3.05

30.6

2.50

17.1

2.42

12.3

2.40

17.1

2.31

12.7

2.50 1.91

18.0  7.7

2.57 2.29

14.8  9.2

Notes: The mean scores are on a five-point scale ranging from 1 = never to 5 = very often. Entries in the columns “often or very often” are percentages choosing one of the two answering categories.

News (which later became Stand News), another alternative media site, frequently or very frequently. These figures do not seem to be huge, but they are much bigger than the proportions of the general public who were users of these sites.1 The questionnaire also asked respondents if they have engaged in various forms of online political communication or action. Expressed through the same five-point scale, about 30% to one-third of the participants in both vigils frequently or very frequently communicated with others about public affairs via the Internet. About 12% to 18% frequently or very frequently expressed their views about public affairs through online forums or social media, participated in social media groups related to public affairs, or participated in online petition. On the whole, the rally participants were quite active in online political communication. But our primary interest resides in whether degree of 1 In a population survey conducted in September 2013, only 5.7% of the respondents reported they had browsed Inmedia “once or twice” or “occasionally or frequently,” whereas 9.7% had browsed the House News site “once or twice” or “occasionally or frequently” (Lee, 2015).

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online political communication related to participation leadership in the candlelight vigil. We used time of participation decision as an indicator of participation leadership. The questionnaire asked the respondents the time they decided to participate in the vigil. The answering categories range from 1 = today to 7 = since last year’s vigil. An early decision maker is treated as a participation leader. Of course, making an early participation decision does not entail proactively mobilizing others to join the rally. Hence time of decision is only a surrogate and less-than-ideal indicator of participation leadership. However, early deciders were indeed the “first movers” in the mobilization process. Their participation decisions, when communicated to others, might influence others’ participation decision even if no explicit persuasion was involved. Multiple regression analysis was conducted. We first examine the predictors of online political communication, which is the average of the five items at the bottom of Table 8.1. In the 2014 survey, the predictors include demographics, mainstream news media consumption,2 interpersonal political discussion,3 whether one has voted in the previous LegCo election, past June 4 vigil participation, and several variables related to social media use and alternative media consumption. The regression models for 2014 and 2018 are not exactly the same. The 2018 survey did not include items on news media consumption and interpersonal political discussion. But it contained an item about whether the respondents had participated in the Umbrella Movement. 4 Besides, exposure to Passion Times, an alternative media outlet with a localist orientation, was included in 2018. It was used as a separate predictor given the localist’s tendency to criticize the June 4 vigil organized by the Alliance. After predicting online political communication, in both the 2014 and 2018 surveys, we used the same set of predictors plus online political communication to predict time of participation decision. Table 8.2 summarizes the findings. In the 2014 survey, young people and better educated people were more likely to have engaged in online political communication. Interpersonal political discussion related to online political communication highly significantly, while there was a 2 News consumption was the average of the frequencies with which the respondents “read newspapers” and “watched TV news,” both captured with a five-point scale ranging from never to very frequently. 3 Political discussion was the average of the frequencies with which the respondents discussed public affairs with “family” and “friends,” both captured with a five-point scale ranging from never to very frequently. 4 It was measured by an item asking people if they had gone to the occupied areas to support the Umbrella Movement.

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Table 8.2  Predictors of online political communication and participation leadership 2014 Sex Age Education Class News consumption Interpersonal discussion Past voting Past June 4 participation Facebook use Twitter/Weibo use Alternative media use Online political com. Adjusted R² N 2018 Sex Age Education Class Past voting Joined the Umbrella Movement Past June 4 participation Facebook usage Alternative media use Localist online media use Online political com. Adjusted R² N

Online political communication

Time of decision

-.07* -.17*** .11*** -.03 -.08* .25*** .04 .06 .21*** .08** .35***

.04 -.05 -.04 -.00 .10* .02 .05 .32*** -.04 -.03 -.00 .14* 0.122*** 626

0.523*** 626 Online political communication

Time of decision

-.01 .01 .08* .00 -.05 .09* .01 .23*** .32*** .14**

-.01 .15* -.01 -.04 .03 .04 .27*** -.08 -.01 -.02 .13** 0.168*** 551

0.324*** 551

Notes Entries are standardized regression coefficients. Missing values were replaced by means in the first and third columns. Missing values were deleted pairwise in the second column. *** p < .001; ** p < .01; * p < .05.

weak but signif icant negative relationship between mainstream news consumption and online political communication. More importantly, all three indicators of social media and alternative media use were significantly related to online political communication. That is, both general usage of social media and consumption of alternative media content fueled online political communication activities. Online political communication, in turn, significantly predicted time of decision. Those who made an early

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decision to participate indeed engaged in online political communication activities to larger extents. The main findings from the 2018 survey are similar. More educated people and Umbrella Movement participants were more active in online political communication. Facebook use, alternative media use, and consumption of the localist Passion Times were all significantly related to online political communication. Online political communication, then, related to time of participation decision positively. Online political communication is the only variable other than past vigil participation that related significantly to time of decision in both surveys. If making an early participation decision is treated as a sign of how politically active a person is, the fact the more politically active citizens would use digital media for political communication to larger extents is not surprising. But this finding does point to how digital media was embedded in the mobilization process behind the annual vigil. Research on large-scale contentious collective actions in Hong Kong has often emphasized the “self-mobilizing” character of the actions, i.e., citizens were responding not so much to the calls to action issued by the protest organizers as to the calls to actions issued by their friends and acquaintances (Lee & Chan, 2011, 2018). The current findings suggest that digital media could have strengthened the self-mobilization process by providing additional platforms for active citizens to play the role of participation leaders and influence others.

Building the Memory Archive In the process of mobilization for participation in collective remembering, people could share with each other various kinds of materials related to the Tiananmen Incident, ranging from old news coverage to personal stories. Since the arrival of the Web 2.0 era, people can also visit and share with each other a large amount of historical or contemporary materials readily accessible via online archives such as YouTube. Many scholars have commented on the significance of online archives. Jensen (2016) noted the distinction between online archives produced and maintained by specific social or media institutions and user-generated archives such as YouTube. The latter not only contains a huge amount of historical materials. It is open, dynamic, and ever-growing. People are not only consumers; they can also become contributors by uploading the materials they have in hand or personally produce. The materials contributed by ordinary people can often extend commemoration in

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new ways. Studying the use of social media for collective remembering in China, Ibrahim (2016) noted how people used coded language and recreated photos – the most famous being the Tank Man photo with the tanks replaced by large yellow ducks – to refer to the Tiananmen crackdown during the 24th anniversary of the event. He concluded that, “[in] the image archive of the Internet, the Tank Man will reside with his memetic incarnations endlessly reproduced, circulated, consumed without context and exchanged as a cultural artifact to recapture the imagination of younger generations” (Ibrahim, 2016: 592). Certainly, the user-generated archives are not the kind of reliably structured and professionally curated archives on which one can depend for an “objective” record of all meaningful and pertinent materials related to a historical event. Hartley (2013) used the term probability archive to refer to the uncertain characteristic of YouTube: one does not know the exact algorithms based on which search results are produced, and materials uploaded onto the archives might be taken down at any point without notification. Put more critically, Lothian (2013: 544) argued that the online archive is only presenting an enduring ephemeral, “a temporality of perpetual presentness and unreliable memory in which the trivial lasts forever and the crucially important may disappear at any moment.” Nevertheless, bearing the problem of reliability in mind, in the case of Tiananmen, one can indeed easily access various kinds of relevant materials via YouTube. We thus conducted an analysis of Tiananmen-related YouTube videos to illustrate how the event was memorized in the website, how video uploading activities were related to the annual memory mobilization process, and how collective remembering of Tiananmen was contested through the presence of videos that presented an “anti-movement” perspective of what happened in 1989. The analysis was conducted in October 2018. Relevant YouTube videos were derived from the site using the Chinese terms for “Tiananmen” and “June 4,” respectively. Since the search results could be affected by personal search histories stored in a computer, we used a publicly accessible computer on a university campus to conduct the search.5 The first 300 videos ranked according to relevance derived by each of the two keyword searches were registered. A sample of 556 videos was derived after removing items that appear in both lists of 300 videos. 5 This did not alter the fact that people using a different computer may derive a somewhat different set of videos. But the discrepancies should not be huge, and the sample should be adequate for the present purpose.

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We recorded some basic information about each of the videos, such as the year and date when a video was uploaded, the length of the video, and the number of likes, dislikes, views, and comments registered by the time the current analysis was conducted. In addition, two assistants coded the videos based on a coding scheme after training. The content analysis was aimed at capturing certain basic features of the videos, such as the language used, whether they contained original footage of the 1989 movement, whether they contained specific symbols of or related to the 1989 student movement and its commemoration, etc.6 Before presenting the results, it should be useful to highlight several major types of videos in the corpus. A substantial proportion of the videos are constituted by recordings or footage of the events in 1989. Some of these are just footage of happenings in the areas around Tiananmen Square in the early morning of June 4. Others are recordings of notable incidents during the movement, such as a video about the April 27 demonstration in Beijing (conducted one day after People’s Daily published the “426 editorial”), a video-recorded speech by student leader Chai Ling on May 28, and a “complete recording” of Zhao Ziyang’s visit to Tiananmen Square on May 19. Recordings of the events in Hong Kong are also available, e.g., a recording of the concert organized by Hong Kong artists to solicit donations for the student movement in Beijing, a video of pop diva Anita Mui singing during the demonstration on May 21, etc. These videos provide viewers with records of the original events, even though full appreciation of the signif icance of the recordings may require certain background knowledge. Another main type of videos is constituted by television news coverage or broadcast media programs. These include news coverage of the student movement back in 1989, as well as many news programs and coverage produced by broadcasters over the years. Beside the products of broadcasters in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China,7 the corpus also includes productions from other parts of the world, such as an interview with core members of the Tiananmen Mothers by Voice of America and a video produced by BBC Chinese introducing the history of Hong Kong people’s support for the Beijing student movement during 1989. 6 Since some of the videos are very lengthy documentaries, only the first 5 minutes of the video were coded. Inter-coder reliability was measured in Scott’s pi, except in cases where percentage of agreement by chance is very high. All reported items have a Scott’s pi higher than 0.80 or percentage of agreement over 95%. 7 Since we used Chinese keywords to search for the videos, the videos were primarily in Chinese.

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Table 8.3  Month and year of uploading of June-4-related YouTube videos Year

Number

Av. Length (mins)

Month

Number

Av. Length (mins)

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 Total

32 25 13 64 23 27 41 55 51 39 23 79 83 555

7.3 6.3 8.8 6.9 5.2 11.9 14.7 6.6 28.0 13.8 35.4 25.9 19.2

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

18 12 22 38 107 191 31 52 17 19 17 30

27.9 7.1 19.2 11.4 11.4 19.7 18.7 7.7 13.6 19.1 23.5 12.3

Total

554

Note: The numbers do not add up to 556 because of missing values.

Yet another main type of videos consists of recordings and footage of commemoration activities in Hong Kong. Some of the videos of this category were produced and uploaded by the Alliance. As noted in earlier chapters, over the years, people came to commemorate not only the events in 1989 but also their own commemoration activities. These videos provide a record of the persistence of collective remembering. One last type of videos worth noting is constituted by appropriated popular culture content. Music video seems to be a particularly preferred genre. For example, one video in the corpus is a rendition of the song Bloodstained Glory. The song was originally written in 1987 to commemorate the Chinese soldiers who fought in the Sino-Vietnamese war. After the Tiananmen crackdown, the song was quickly appropriated by movement supporters to hail the student protesters. Another music video in the corpus featured the Canto pop song Under the Fuji Mountain, but with the lyrics rewritten into In Front of Tiananmen. This is a typical piece of user-generated derivative work. This latter type of content illustrates how ordinary people without access to historical footage or recordings of media materials can still participate in building the memory archive through their creative works. The online videos related to Tiananmen were accumulated over the years. As Table 8.3 shows, among the 556 videos in the corpus, only 70 (about 13%) were uploaded between 2006 and 2008. 64 videos (i.e., more than 10%) were

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uploaded in 2009, the 20th anniversary of the Incident. Nonetheless, the important point is that the corpus contains videos uploaded in every year since the popularization of YouTube in Hong Kong in 2006. The videos derived from YouTube were not necessarily uploaded by Hong Kong people. Further analysis shows that 23.1% of the videos that were uploaded between 2006 and 2010 were in Cantonese, whereas the corresponding percentage rose to 37.9% between 2011 and 2014, and then fell to only 13.4% between 2015 and 2018. Since Cantonese videos were particularly likely to have been uploaded and consumed by Hong Kong citizens, these percentages are suggestive of the activeness of Hong Kong citizens in participating in building the online archive over the years. Their rise and fall are consistent with the rise and fall of collective remembering of Tiananmen in Hong Kong in the period. Moreover, Table 8.3 shows that over half of the videos (298 out of 556) in the corpus were uploaded onto YouTube in May or June. Further analysis by breaking down the calendar year into five periods (January to April, May 1 to 28, May 9 to June 4, June 5 to 30, and July to December) shows that a particularly large proportion of videos uploaded between May 1 and 28 are in Cantonese (35.7% vs. 13.7% to 24.1% for the other periods). These findings suggest that a significant portion of the video uploading activities, especially those carried out by Hong Kong people, was tied to the annual memory mobilization cycle. Table 8.4 shows the percentages of videos containing specific content elements. Nearly half of the videos contain images of Tiananmen Square, whereas 38.3% and 43.5% of the videos in the corpus contain footage of the 1989 protests and footage of the military crackdown, respectively. About 20% of the videos contain images of candlelight, a symbol of commemoration, whereas 8.3% contain images of the Statue of the Goddess of Democracy. There are some systematic relationships between the content elements and time of uploading. Videos uploaded in the earliest years of YouTube’s popularization are more likely to contain footage of the 1989 protests and the military crackdown. They are also more likely to contain images of Tiananmen Square. In contrast, videos uploaded onto the website after 2011 are more likely to feature the symbol of candlelight and the Statue of the Goddess of Democracy. This pattern suggests that, when the memory archive was first developed, people were more concerned with collecting records of the original events. Over the years, as many historical records were already available, there was a shift toward videos focusing on commemoration or the symbolic meanings of the Tiananmen Incident.

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Table 8.4  Contents of and symbols in videos 1989 protest Footages of Tiananmen Statue of the Candlelight footages crackdown Square Goddess of Democracy Total

38.3

43.5

48.7

8.3

21.1

Period by year 2006-2010 2011-2014 2015-2018 χ²

50.6 31.6 34.8 14.50**

51.3 46.0 36.2 9.19**

55.8 50.6 42.4 6.91*

1.9 10.9 10.7 11.62**

16.0 26.4 20.5 5.43

Period by month Jan to Apr May 1 to 28 May 29 to Jun 4 Jun 5 to 30 Jul to Dec χ²

33.3 35.7 41.3 38.4 39.2 1.78

38.9 37.1 47.1 43.8 45.2 2.94

45.6 47.1 51.0 46.6 50.0 0.99

2.2 8.6 16.1 12.3 2.4 25.97**

17.8 17.1 30.3 20.5 16.3 11.51*

Note: Entries are percentages of videos in the period featuring the symbol or element. ** p < .01; * p < .05.

Interestingly, the bottom half of Table 8.4 shows that footage of the protests and the crackdown in 1989 were uploaded more or less equally frequently throughout the calendar year. In contrast, videos featuring the symbol of candlelight and the Statue of the Goddess of Democracy were particularly likely to be uploaded onto YouTube between May 28 and June 30. It suggests that videos containing the two symbols are more likely to be tied to the annual commemoration activity surrounding June 4. Up till this point, we have discussed the YouTube videos as if all of them contributed to the sustenance of the pro-movement collective memory of the Incident. However, there are also videos in the corpus that, through their contents, titles, or description provided by the uploaders, present perspectives on the Tiananmen Incident that are supportive toward the Chinese state and critical toward the student movement. The content analysis includes an item for “anti-movement videos.” 29 videos, or 5.2% of the videos in the corpus, were classified as such. The percentage is small, which suggests that pro-movement memory remained dominant in the YouTube archive. But the figure is not negligible. The videos present the anti-movement perspective in several ways. One video uploaded in 2009 features Chinese Central Television’s main evening newscast on June 4, 1989, in which the newscasters presented the

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“official version” of the event, i.e., the PLA entered Tiananmen Square and successfully quashed a riot. The uploader wrote: “20 years have passed; the historical truth should be presented to the younger generations. There is no way to hide [the truth] in today’s society.” In other words, what could have been taken as exemplary of how official media distorted the reality was treated by the uploader as presenting the truth. Such direct re-publication of the official account of the event is rare. More common are videos on the violent behavior of the protesting crowd. For instance, a video titled “Rehabilitating June 4; Telling the truth of June 4” features edited screen shots and footage showing violence committed by the protesters at various sites. The video also includes images of corpses of military officers. Another video consists mainly of coverage by the BBC on June 3 and 4, 1989. The coverage included images of protester violence, and the uploader wrote on YouTube: “how can the students be considered peaceful? The editing was done to generate sympathy! The aim was to influence international public opinion!” Notably, some of the videos contain ambivalent messages, sometimes praising parts of the movement while presenting an overall speaking critical view toward it. One example is a video featuring Liu Xiaobo and Zhou Duo, two of the four intellectuals who began a hunger strike on Tiananmen Square on June 2, speaking about the events on June 4. The uploader praised Liu and Zhou for “speaking the truth about June 4 with conscience” and criticized the Alliance for lying about the number of deaths in Tiananmen Square and the total number of casualties. The presence of the anti-movement videos shows that the online archive is also a site for memory contestation. Memory contestation can be most clearly exhibited in the comments under the uploaded videos. It is beyond the scope of the present analysis to examine the comments systematically. Nevertheless, a cursory reading of the comments could give one an impression that, while the more prominent user comments typically presented views consistent with the perspective presented in the video, there were also occasional comments arguing against the perspective presented in the video. Given the varieties of videos available on YouTube, what kinds of contents were more capable of attracting people’s attention and responses in the online environment? Table 8.5 presents the results of a series of regression analyses predicting numbers of views, likes, dislikes, and comments acquired by the videos. Understandably, videos uploaded in earlier years have accumulated larger numbers of views and audience responses. Longer videos attracted more views and user engagement. More importantly, videos

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Table 8.5  Predicting views and engagement obtained by the YouTube videos

Year of upload May 1-28 May 29 to June 4 June 5 to June 30 Length 1989 protests footage Crackdown footage Anti-movement Cantonese Adjusted R2

Views

Likes

Dislikes

Comments

-.51*** -.06 -.03 -.04 .18*** .11** .12** .06 -.08* 0.316***

-.30*** -.08* -.00 -.06 .25*** .08 .15*** .10* .01 0.186***

-.23*** -.05 -.04 .03 .19*** .05 .19*** .14*** -.06 0.163***

-.19*** -.11** -.06 .02 .19*** .10* .17*** .16*** -.05 0.166***

Notes: Entries are standardized regression coefficients. N = 542 to 554. *** p < .001 ** p < .01; * p < .05.

containing footage of the 1989 protests received more views and comments, while videos containing footage of the crackdown attracted more views, likes, dislikes, and comments. Interestingly, the anti-movement videos also attracted larger numbers of likes, dislikes, and comments. It seems that any provocative contents, no matter whether they are supportive or critical toward the student movement, can attract larger amount of both positive and negative audience responses on YouTube. In sum, our analysis illustrates the characteristics of Tiananmen-related videos in the open and dynamic video archive of YouTube. The video uploading activities were often tied to the process of memory mobilization. Yet memory contestation was also going on. The fact that anti-movement videos could attract larger numbers of likes and dislikes show that audience responses were not one-sided in the online environment. The Internet offers platforms for both the proponents and opponents of collective remembering to propagate their views. This latter theme will be further examined in the next section.

Social Media and Memory Balkanization In the early 2010s, both the mainstream media and academics were engrossed by the seeming power of digital and social media to facilitate large-scale movements that led to significant political change (Castells, 2012). Phrases such as Facebook Revolution and Twitter Revolution were buzzwords of the time. But only within a few years, analysis of the political impact of social media has turned largely toward the problematics of audience fragmentation,

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echo chamber formation, and public opinion polarization. One distinctive line of argument was initiated by Bennett and Iyengar (2008). They argued that the Internet provided a high-choice media environment to people. People are more likely to exercise selectivity in the online environment not only because of the sheer number of outlets available, but also because media outlets in such a hyper-competitive environment have the incentive to target at niche audiences by providing specialized contents or taking up explicit ideological stance. As a consequence, the mass audience would be fragmented into many small groups of people who consume consonant views and information most of the times. The rise of social media, along this line of thinking, is likely to aggravate the situation because people have the tendency to connect themselves to likeminded others (Huckfeldt, Johnson & Sprague, 2004), and the impersonal algorithm tends to push agreeable contents to users. The overall result, according to Sunstein (2009, 2017), is a balkanized cyberspace, which can exacerbate the problem of public opinion polarization. In collective memory studies, Robinson, Knisely and Schwartz (2014) analyzed the case of how Wisconsin citizens discussed the 2011 Wisconsin protests in its anniversary. They found that citizens’ online discussions did not generate a consensual narrative of the event. Rather, they continued to talk about the event in a polarizing and politicized manner. Conceptually, Edy (2014) has noted the possibility of the development of “memory silos” in a fragmented online environment. But overall speaking, there have not been many studies on how social media may fragment social memories and polarize people’s attitudes toward the past. The problematics of “cyberbalkanization” and memory silos should be particularly important to the case of collective remembering of Tiananmen in Hong Kong. In fact, public opinion polarization itself has become an important concern among local scholars. At one end of the political divide, public discontent toward the government has been expressed through numerous large-scale protests in the past two decades. At the other end, since the early 2010s, the government and the pro-government forces have become more active in counter-mobilizing people against the democrats. The result is a more confrontational social atmosphere and a trend toward more polarized attitudes toward the Chinese and Hong Kong governments among the general public. In opinion polls, the proportions of people giving very positive and very negative evaluations of the government have both been rising (Lee, 2016). Although there are complicated factors driving the dynamics of political polarization (Kobayashi, 2020), Chan and Fu (2017) showed that cyberbalkanization, operationalized in terms of the structure

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of content sharing behavior among Facebook pages belonging to different clusters, can indeed contribute to opinion polarization at the collective level. It should be noted that cyberbalkanization is not a natural phenomenon arising out of people’s inherent tendency toward selectivity. Researchers have questioned the prevalence of audience selectivity in several ways. Some argued that selective exposure cannot be equated with selective avoidance (Garrett, 2009; Garrett & Stroud, 2014). A tendency to consume ideologically consonant contents does not entail a tendency to avoid dissonant contents. Others argued that people typically consume multiple media outlets, and the media repertoires of people are unlikely to be completely ideologically homogeneous (Fletcher & Nielsen, 2017). Nevertheless, these considerations should not lead us to deny the presence of online echo chambers. While ordinary people may not proactively construct echo chambers for themselves, political forces may try to establish them to consolidate their supporter bases. Specifically, while there was a period of growth of online alternative media outlets in Hong Kong in the early 2010s, localist and pro-government online media outlets grew since the mid-2010s. These latter outlets may present “alternative” perspectives on the Tiananmen crackdown. The localists might argue against the Tiananmen commemoration was based on a preference to dissociate Hong Kong from China. The pro-government online media might propagate various memory-blurring discourses to undermine collective remembering of Tiananmen. We thus conducted an analysis of six Facebook pages – three belonging to the localist faction and three are pro-government outlets – about how they talked about the Tiananmen Incident and June 4 commemoration. The three localist pages are Passion Times, VJ Media, and Local Press. Passion Times was associated with the political party Civic Passion and was established in 2012. VJ Media was established in 2012 and was a commentary website publishing articles often written by ordinary citizens. Local Press was established in 2014 and exhibited the strongest localist orientation among the three. As at November 30, 2018, the three pages had 381,557, 109,328, and 58,071 followers respectively. The three pro-government pages are Speak Out Hong Kong, HKG Pao, and Silent Majority for Hong Kong. All three pages provided constant news updates throughout the day, though mostly based on materials from other media organizations. The pro-government pages presumably had large amounts of resources at their disposal because of their owners’ connections with the establishment. HKG Pao was owned by conservative media persona Chow Yung, who founded the pro-government group Silent Majority of Hong Kong. The group also operated the Facebook page with the same name. Speak Out

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Table 8.6 Information about the posts from six Facebook pages included in the analysis Type

No. of posts in sample

Average reactions

Average no. of comments

Average no. of shares

Localist media Passion Times VJ Media Local Press

120 120 114

545.3 21.0 112.4

17.0 1.0 6.4

107.6 4.2 54.6

Pro-government media HKG Pao Silent Majority Speak Out HK

 91  91 114

636.4 908.1 1185.4

67.0 117.3 133.7

57.4 62.5 171.3

HK was funded by the Hong Kong United Foundation, which had close ties to former Chief Executive of the Hong Kong government C. Y. Leung. As at November 30, HKG Pao had 132,164 followers on Facebook, whereas Silent Majority and Speak Out Hong Kong had 168,585 and 309,378 followers respectively. Facebook changed its application programming interface in mid-2018 due to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Researchers could no longer easily scrape the posts of Facebook pages. We relied on the search function available on Facebook public pages, which is less desirable but adequate for the present purpose. Two assistants manually searched for contents on the pages mentioning “June 4.” The aim was to derive 120 relevant posts from each page. If there were more than 120 posts from a page, we included the first 120 into the sample. If there were fewer, we simply included all relevant posts. Table 8.6 shows the numbers of posts derived from each Facebook page, together with the average number of reactions, comments, and shares obtained from the posts. Notably, the amounts of audience engagement obtained from the June 4-related posts by the pro-government pages were substantially higher. Besides registering basic information about each post, a content analysis was conducted to register the presence of certain major themes. The themes were developed partly based on a preliminary reading of the posts and partly based on our expectations of how Tiananmen commemoration might be critiqued by the localists and the state. A total of 10 themes were registered in the content analysis.8 Six of them are expected to be propagated mainly by the pro-government forces, whereas 8 It should be noted that only the contents of the posts, instead of the contents of the materials (e.g., an article on a website) that the posts may be linking to, were coded. This is partly due to

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the other four are presumed to be “localist.” It should be useful to explicate the themes here. The first pro-government or anti-movement theme is the idea that the annual vigil has become an occasion for the Alliance and other movement organizations to get money from the participants deceptively. Such posts use a highly satirical tone and demeaning wordings to describe what is otherwise the very ordinary practice of donation-seeking. Some posts highlight the groups and people involved, e.g., “Falun Gong is here too and joins the democrats,” “[legislator] Nathan Law had just been disqualified; of course he needs money,” “have you ever seen barristers begging for money?”9 The second anti-movement theme centers on criticizing the procommemoration groups and the Alliance for propagating wrong facts or misleading claims. Most common are criticisms against the Alliance for exaggerating the number of participants in the annual candlelight vigils. But there can also be other criticisms, such as one post arguing that the Alliance has misled the general public regarding its overall financial situation. The third anti-movement theme is a broad one encompassing all kinds of criticism toward the Alliance not already included in the first two themes. We treat it as a broad theme here because it might not be plausible to further categorize the various criticisms that can be leveled against the Alliance. Examples of posts falling under this category include one post alleging the Alliance for wrongfully criticizing the police’s management of their annual demonstration, one criticizing the Alliance for allowing student representatives to burn the Basic Law during the vigil, and one criticizing the Alliance for needlessly politicizing the government’s plan to build a branch of the Imperial Palace Museum in Hong Kong.10 The fourth theme is a similarly broad one encompassing all kinds of criticism against the pan-democrats. Although the posts were collected by using June 4 as a keyword, many of them actually focused on other ongoing consideration of feasibility and partly based on the presumption that many social media users may only consume the posts without actually reading the linked contents. Two assistants conducted the coding after training. Inter-coder reliability was measured in Scott’s pi, except in cases where percentage of agreement by chance is very high. All reported items have a Scott’s pi higher than 0.80 or percentage of agreement over 95%. 9 The post refers to the Civic Party, of which many key members are from the legal sector. 10 The controversy arose in December 2016 when the Hong Kong government suddenly announced an agreement with Beijing’s Imperial Palace Museum to set up a Hong Kong branch of the museum in the West Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD). Critiques argued that the Hong Kong government had not followed proper procedures to determine the use of land in the WKCD. In January 2017, as the Hong Kong government was promoting the project with a massive wall display of the Imperial Palace Museum of Beijing in a main metro station, the Alliance staged a “recreation” of the 1989 student movement in front of the wall display.

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issues and controversies. These posts often contain various kinds of criticism against the pro-democracy faction. The fifth anti-movement theme is the notion that very few people participated in the annual commemoration activities. This is related to but distinctive from the idea that the Alliance has exaggerated the number of participants in their activities. For instance, a post from Speak Out Hong Kong in 2016 stated that “the number of participants in the June 4 rally reached a new low since 2009.” One post from Silent Majority of Hong Kong wrote that only 200 people participated in the 2018 demonstration, and “the number of participants is even smaller than the spring vacation trip organized by a kindergarten.” The last anti-movement theme expected to be propagated by pro-government forces is the notion that the Chinese state was right in suppressing the movement in 1989. This does not mean that the pro-government pages would explicitly justify the act of killing unarmed citizens. Rather, the abstract and decontextualized idea of “suppression” can be treated as necessary or conducive to the subsequent development of China. For example, one post on HKG Pao quoted Ko Chi Sum, a movie director known for his conservative political views, for saying that “if ‘there was no decisive act to stop the riot on the part of Deng Xiaoping,’ China would not enjoy today’s prosperity. Those who call for ‘rehabilitating June 4’ should pay attention to this.” By contrast, the first of the four “localist themes” registered in the content analysis is the idea that Chinese affairs and Hong Kong affairs should be separated. The idea can be expressed not only through arguing for the irrelevance of the June 4 commemoration to Hong Kong, but also through arguing for the irrelevance of Hong Kong affairs to mainland China. For example, influential localist writer Lewis Loud asked, in a post published by Local Press: “So what if Chinese people do or do not sympathize with the Umbrella Movement?” The second localist theme is an explicit emphasis on the Hong Kong identity. Different from the first theme, an emphasis on Hong Kong identity does not necessitate a rejection of the Tiananmen commemoration. In fact, one famous articulation by localist activist Edward Leung, reported in a post by Local Press, argued that Hong Kong people should re-evaluate the political implications of June 4 and make use of the political power accumulated through the candlelight vigil. Leung called for an end to the debate about the format of commemoration. Yet his perspective remained one rooted in an identification of oneself as a Hong Konger. The third localist theme is an emphasis on the “distance” between the historical event of the student movement in 1989 and contemporary Hong

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Kong citizens, especially those of the younger generation. Posts expressing this theme did not necessarily question the value of commemoration. The argument is not that people should not commemorate; it is just that many people do not feel the urgency to do so. For example, the title of one commentary published by Local Press expressed the sentiment most typically tied to this theme: “What is the relationship between June 4, 1989 and me?” The last theme registered in the content analysis refers to efforts to rearticulate the significance of the June 4 commemoration. These posts were driven by a perceived need to reconsider the meanings of the Tiananmen commemoration in contemporary Hong Kong. For example, a post by Local Press reported a statement by several university student unions, which argued for transforming the June 4 spirit into one supportive toward Hong Kong’s self-determination. To the extent that some localists rejected Tiananmen commemoration altogether, some of the posts even contained criticisms against the localists. For instance, a post from VJ Media reads: “Some young people who totally rejected the value of June 4 are even more stupid, and this explains why the localists have been driving potential supporters away […]. What we need to do is not to reject commemoration of the June 4 tragedy; it is to criticize the Alliance, who took advantage of the June 4 heroes to take money from people.” The last example also criticized the Alliance for deceptively taking money from people – the 10 themes are not mutually exclusive. Table 8.7 presents the prevalence of the 10 themes. Slightly more than one in five of the posts contain some criticisms against the pan-democrats, whereas 14.7% of the posts contain an explicit emphasis on the Hong Kong identity. Slightly less than 10% of the posts contain the notion of the Alliance deceptively taking money from the rally participants, 3.2% criticize the Alliance for perpetuating wrong facts or misleading claims, whereas about 8% contain some “other criticisms” against the Alliance. These percentages do not seem large, but they need to be understood together with the fact that Facebook posts often do not contain elaborate contents, and some posts in the sample do not focus entirely on Tiananmen. It is unrealistic to expect the themes to be expressed in the majority of the posts. Taking these considerations into account, it is remarkable that nearly 10% of the posts contain the specific criticism against the donation-seeking activities during the vigils. By the same token, it is notable that 7.8% of the posts contain some efforts to rearticulate the significance of Tiananmen. Not surprisingly, the four “localist themes” were present primarily or even exclusively in the localist Facebook pages, whereas five of the first six themes in Table 8.7 were present primarily or even exclusively in the

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Table 8.7  Prevalence of themes in the Facebook posts Themes 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

9.2

3.2

8.6

22.2

4.4

0.6

2.6

14.7

0.8

7.8

0.0 2.5 1.7 35.2 17.6 6.1 109.2

0.8 0.0 0.0 6.6 12.1 2.6 36.6

15.0 10.0 5.1 8.8 4.4 7.0 10.9

8.3 2.5 6.8 34.1 33.0 55.3 142.4

0.0 4.4 2.5 13.2 8.8 4.4 30.8

0.0 0.0 0.0 2.2 1.1 0.9 6.5

4.2 9.3 0.8 0.0 0.0 0.0 31.6

68.3 2.5 9.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 343.7

0.0 0.8 2.5 1.1 0.0 0.0 7.6

28.3 7.5 6.8 0.0 0.0 0.0 95.6

Faction Localist Pro-gov. χ²

1.4 18.6 57.4

0.3 6.8 21.9

10.1 6.8 2.3

5.9 41.9 121.9

1.1 8.4 20.5

0.0 1.4 4.9

4.7 0.0 14.4

26.8 0.0 93.0

1.1 0.3 1.3

14.2 0.0 45.7

Month May/June Others χ²

11.6 2.3 13.1

3.9 1.2 3.2

10.6 2.9 9.5

18.7 32.0 13.0

5.2 2.3 2.4

0.8 0.0 1.4

3.1 1.2 1.9

19.5 1.2 34.0

0.8 0.6 0.1

10.7 0.0 19.7

Year 11-14 15-16 17-18 χ²

0.4 6.6 24.9 79.3

0.4 0.9 9.9 36.6

6.5 13.7 5.5 10.6

18.4 17.0 33.7 19.4

0.0 5.2 9.9 25.4

0.0 0.0 2.2 10.5

0.8 6.1 1.1 15.5

22.6 17.0 0.6 42.8

0.8 0.9 0.6 0.2

11.9 7.1 2.8 12.6

All Outlet Passion VJ Media Local P. HKG Pao Silent Speak Out χ²

Notes: Entries are percentages. Bolded χ² values are statistically significant at p