Hong Kong’s Struggle of Decolonization and Democracy: A Conversation with Ching Kwan Lee

In this episode of the ChinaPower Podcast, Dr. Ching Kwan Lee joins us to discuss her newly released book Forever Hong Kong: A Global City’s Decolonization Struggle. She reframes the 2019 Hong Kong protests not merely as a fight for democracy, but as the culmination of a two-decade decolonization struggle that sought to redefine the city’s identity, economy, and society. Dr. Lee first explains how Hong Kong experienced double colonization - first under Britain, then under Beijing - each system of rule justified through race, from colonial difference to China’s coercive sameness. Dr. Lee also explores Beijing’s contradictory impulses toward Hong Kong—wanting the city open enough to serve as a global hub yet controlled enough to prevent it from inspiring resistance on the mainland. She explains how this tension led to the imposition of the National Security Law and draws parallels to China’s approaches in Tibet and Xinjiang, while reflecting on what Hong Kong’s experience means for Taiwan and the fading credibility of “One Country, Two Systems.” Her insights in the book challenge familiar narratives and place Hong Kong’s struggle within the wider global conversations about authoritarianism, resistance, and decolonization in the 21st century.

Dr. Ching Kwan Lee is a professor in the department of Sociology at UCLA. She is a sociologist working at the intersection of global and comparative issues, including labor, political sociology, global development, decolonization, comparative ethnography, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, and Africa. She has published three multiple award-winning monographs on contemporary China, including Gender and the South China Miracle, Against the Law, and The Specter of Global China. The trilogy of Chinese capitalism was written through the lens of labor and working-class experiences. Her most recent publications include a short format book titled Hong Kong: Global China’s Restive Frontier, and two co-edited volumes — Take Back Our Future: an Eventful Sociology of the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement and The Social Question in the 21st Century: A Global View. Forever Hong Kong: A Global City’s Struggle for Decolonization is her newest monograph.