Pursuit of National Identity of Hong Kong Young People

Abstract

Hong Kong was handed over to China from Britain more than 20 years ago, and Hong Kong has the Sino-British Joint Declaration which states that Hong Kong will be ruled by the Hong Kong government for 50 years with “one country, two systems” from 1st July 1997 (Cheung, 2019). However, concerning Hong Kong people’s national identity, there is no clear definition. This research is on the thoughts of national identity of young people of Hong Kong. The purpose is to understand Hong Kong young people’s perspectives on themselves, since the significance of these views influence how they see their futures. For this research, I carried out interviews with 20 young people in Hong Kong. The interviews were organized to hear their voices about their national identity. The results of the research are divided into information about all the participants which is followed by two case studies. Of the twenty participants, six say they changed their national identities and the others did not. The reasons they have their specific national identities are related to many factors, yet the most important seem to be family and education. In the future, six out of 20 want to live abroad and six want to live in Hong Kong. While the others have various views. The two cases depicted in more detail than the graphs the influences on the participants. One case is about a person who says she changed from HongKonger to Chinese, and the other said she changed from Chinese to HongKonger. There seems to be no one particular reason to change, but important factors were travelling and talking and interacting with other people.