The Hong Kong independence movement is a political movement advocating the independence of Hong Kong as a sovereign state separate from China. Hong Kong is a special administrative region (SAR) of China and is thus granted a high degree of de jure autonomy, as stipulated by Article 2 of the Hong Kong Basic Law ratified under the Sino-British Joint Declaration. Since the handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to China in 1997, a growing number of Hongkongers have become concerned about what they see as Beijing's encroachment on the territory's freedoms and the failure of the Hong Kong government to deliver "genuine democracy". Since the early 2010s there has been a major rise of awareness in Hongkonger self-identity, which was largely seen as a reaction to the gradual encroachment of the One country, two systems status-quo by the Chinese Communist Party especially after Xi Jinping's accession to General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, the top position in November 2012, marked a more hardline authoritarian approach. The spectre that Hong Kong may similarly be brought to heel became an important element in the independence movements. Advocating for Hong Kong independence became illegal after the Hong Kong national security law was enacted in 2020.
The current independence movement gained significant support after the 2014–15 Hong Kong electoral reform which deeply divided the territory, as it would have allowed Hongkongers to have universal suffrage conditional upon Beijing having the authority to screen prospective candidates for the Chief Executive of Hong Kong (CE), the head of the government of the territory. It sparked the 79-day massive occupation protests dubbed as the "Umbrella Revolution". After the protests, many new political groups advocating independence or self-determination were established, as they deemed the "One Country, Two Systems" principle to have failed.
According to a number of opinion polls conducted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute (HKPORI), and Reuters, a majority of Hongkongers do not support Hong Kong independence. However, support for independence is higher amongst young Hongkongers. In a CUHK survey of 1,010 Cantonese speaking Hong Kong residents in July 2016, nearly 40 per cent of respondents aged 15 to 24 supported the territory becoming an independent country, whereas 17.4 per cent of the respondents overall supported independence, despite only 3.6 per cent stating that they thought it was "possible". A majority of respondents, 69.6 per cent, supported maintaining "One Country, Two Systems", while slightly over 13 per cent of respondents supported direct governance by China.
History
Colonial period
Hong Kong Island was first occupied by the British in 1841. The island was officially ceded as a crown colony to the United Kingdom from the Qing dynasty in 1842 after the First Opium War under the terms in the Treaty of Nanking. The other parts of Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories were ceded permanently and leased for 99 years to the British in 1860 under the Convention of Peking and in 1898 under the Second Convention of Peking respectively. Although the Chinese government under the Kuomintang led by Chiang Kai-shek initially intended to take back the territory, the British resumed control of Hong Kong in 1945 after the Second World War, in which Hong Kong was occupied by Japan for three years and eight months. There were few advocates for the decolonisation of Hong Kong from British rule during the post-war period, notably Ma Man-fai and the Democratic Self-Government Party of Hong Kong in the 1960s, but the fruitless movement ceased to exist without substantial support from the public.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the question of Hong Kong sovereignty emerged on Hong Kong's political scene as the end of the New Territories lease was approaching. The British and Chinese governments had also begun negotiations in 1982 which would lead to the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984. Hong Kong and Macau were both removed from the United Nations list of non-self-governing territories, in which territories on the list would have the right to become independent, on 2 November 1972, by the request of China. Although there were advocates of Hong Kong independence, the majority of the Hong Kong population, many of whom were political, economic or war refugees from the Chinese Civil War and the communist regime in mainland China, wished to maintain the status quo.
Of 998 Hongkongers polled by Survey Research Hong Kong Ltd. in March 1982, 95 per cent said that the status quo (i.e. British rule) was "acceptable", 64 per cent said the same about Hong Kong remaining under British administration but under Chinese sovereignty, 42 per cent about Hong Kong becoming a special economic zone of China, 37 per cent about independence, and 26 per cent about a handover to China without special provisions. When asked for their preferred outcome after the 1997 deadline stipulated by the Sino-British Joint Declaration, 85 per cent of respondents supported the continuation of British rule70 per cent supported the status quo, while 15 per cent supported the transformation of Hong Kong into a British trust territory. Only 4 per cent of respondents supported full Chinese sovereignty over Hong Kong, while 2 per cent answered "None of the above" (including those who supported independence).
The request for a Hong Kong representative in the Sino-British negotiation was rejected by Beijing. In 1984, the British and Chinese governments signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration which stated that the sovereignty of Hong Kong should be transferred to China on 1 July 1997, and Hong Kong should enjoy a "high degree of autonomy" under the "One Country, Two Systems" principle.
From 1983 to 1997, Hong Kong saw an exodus of emigrants to overseas countries, especially in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, when more than a million Hongkongers showed up on the streets to support student protesters in Beijing. The Tiananmen massacre of 1989 strengthened anti-Beijing sentiments and also led to the emergence of the local democracy movement, which demanded a faster pace of democratisation before and after 1997.
Early SAR era
Since 1997, the implementation of the Hong Kong Basic Law Article 45 and Article 68, which states that the Chief Executive (CE) and the Legislative Council (LegCo) should be chosen by universal suffrage, has dominated the political agenda in Hong Kong. The pro-democracy camp, one of the two largest political alignments in the territory, has called for the early implementation of the universal suffrage since the 1980s. After more than 500,000 people protested against the legislation of national security law as stipulated in the Basic Law Article 23 on 1 July 2003, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPCSC) in April 2004 ruled out universal suffrage before 2012.
Since 2003, Beijing's growing encroachment has led Hong Kong to become increasingly integrated as part of China. Hong Kong's freedoms and core values were perceived to have been eroded as a result. In 2009 and 2010, the construction of the Hong Kong section of the high-speed rail link to Guangzhou (XRL) escalated to a series of massive protests. Many protesters accused of the Hong Kong government spending HK$69.9 billion (US$9 billion) for an unnecessary railway just to please Beijing. Some also feared it was for the benefit of the People's Liberation Army in order to mobilise its troops quicker. In 2012, the government's plan to carry out moral and national education sparked controversy as it was accused of praising the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese nationalist ideology while condemning democracy and "western values". The anti-moral and national education led by student group Scholarism headed by Joshua Wong successfully attracted high turnout of people attending assemblies which led to the government backing down.
In 2011, there was an emergence of localist sentiments, of which some took the anti-immigration nativist stance, fearing mainland Chinese new immigrants, tourists and parallel traders would threaten the established institutions and social customs of Hong Kong. Chin Wan's On the Hong Kong City-State, published in 2011, arguing for a "localist" perspective and to abandon the "Chinese nationalist sentiment", triggered fierce public debate and was popular among the young generation. Chin Wan theory had a strong influence on the younger activists, who held a strong resentment against the mild Chinese nationalistic pan-democrats and its organisation of the annual memorials for the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre which had a "Chinese nationalistic theme" as they perceived. Many of them also promoted nostalgic sentiments for British rule and waved colonial flags at public assemblies.
Emergence of the pro-independence movement The Undergrad, the official publication of the Hong Kong University Students' Union (HKUSU), from February 2014, published a few articles on the subject of a Hong Kong nation including "The Hong Kong nation deciding its own fate" and "Democracy and Independence for Hong Kong". Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying used his 2015 New Year's policy address to direct harsh criticism at the magazine for promoting Hong Kong independence, which in fact had little traction up to that point, fanning both the debate and sales of the book Hong Kong Nationalism which featured the articles.
On 31 August 2014, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPCSC) set restriction on the electoral method of the Chief Executive, in which any candidate should be screened through by a Beijing-controlled nominating committee before standing in the election. The 2014 NPCSC decision triggered a historic 79-day protest which was dubbed as the "Umbrella Revolution". The failure of the campaign for a free and genuine democratic process strengthened the pro-independence discourse, as it was viewed as a failure of the "One Country, Two Systems" and an independent state would be the only way out. Localist political groups led by youngsters mushroomed after the protests. As some of them such as Youngspiration took the parliamentary path by participating in the 2015 District Council elections, other such as Hong Kong Indigenous took the "street action" by targeting the mainland tourists and parallel traders with a militant style of protesting.
On 8 February during the 2016 Chinese New Year holidays, the Mong Kok civil unrest broke out between police and protesters following the government's crackdown on unlicensed street hawkers. Batons and pepper spray were used by the police and two warning shots were fired into the air, while protesters threw glass bottles, bricks, flower pots and trash bins toward the police and set fires in the streets. The main participant in the event, Hong Kong Indigenous, a political group with pro-independence tendencies, was branded by Director of the Chinese Liaison Office in Hong Kong Zhang Xiaoming as "radical separatists" who were "inclined toward terrorism." The People's Liberation Army also released a statement holding "individual local radical separatist organisation(s)" responsible for the riot as well as criticising western media for "beautifying the unrest" in its early reports. Edward Leung, leader of the Hong Kong Indigenous who was heavily involved in the civil unrest, scored a better-than-expected result in the New Territories East by-election later in the month by taking 15 per cent of the vote. After the result, Leung claimed localism had gained a foothold as the third most important power in local politics, standing side by side with the pan-democracy and pro-Beijing camps.