Politics of belonging and anti-neoliberalism : a study of the rise of Hong Kong’s nativist right

Most ordinary Hong Kong people, not to mention foreigners, did not pay much attention to the voice of pro-independence and separatism until the “swearing-in incident” -- Wai-Ching Yau and Baggio Leung (“Youngspiration duo”), two young lawmaker-elects, wearing on and displaying the “Hong Kong is not China” flag, took their oaths by pledging loyalty to the “Hong Kong nation” at the opening of the new Legislative Council. While they pronounced “China” as “Chee-na”, similar to “Shina” a term considered insulting since the Second Sino-Japanese War, one of them even mispronounced “People’s Republic of China” as “people’s re-fucking of Chee-na”. They claimed that their mispronunciations were due to their local accent and the term "Shina" is an archaic Japanese term for China.