SUNY series in Global Modernity

Presents an updated account of Hong Kong and its culture two decades after its reversion to China. In Found in Transition, Yiu-Wai Chu examines the fate of Hong Kong's unique cultural identity in the contexts of both global capitalism and the increasing influence of China. Drawing on recent developments, especially with respect to language, movies, and popular songs as modes of resistance to "Mainlandization" and different forms of censorship, Chu explores the challenges facing Hong Kong twenty years after its reversion to China as a Special Administrative Region. Highlighting locality and hybridity along postcolonial lines of interpretation, he also attempts to imagine the future of Hong Kong by utilizing Hong Kong studies as a method. Chu argues that the study of Hong Kong-the place where the impact of the rise of China is most intensely felt-can shed light on emergent crises in different areas of the world. As such, this book represents a consequential follow-up to the author's Lost in Transition and a valuable contribution to international, area, and cultural studies.

Explores the cultural dimensions of protest and dissent in China, focusing on dramatic forms of bodily, spatial, strategic, and artistic performativity. Since the 1989 Tiananmen Square occupation, mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau have experienced an increase in and persistence of mass gatherings, demonstrations, and blockades staged as a means of protesting the ways in which people are. In this book, Shih-Diing Liu argues that these popular protests are poorly understood, because they are viewed through the lens of protests and occupations globally, with insufficient attention given to their distinctively local aspects. He provides a better account of these distinctively Chinese-style occupations by describing, contextualizing, and analyzing a range of relevant recent case studies. Liu draws on theoretical concepts developed by Judith Butler, Jacques Rancière, Ernesto Laclau, and other contemporary critical theorists and shows the the importance of considering bodily, spatial, and visual dimensions of these protests. By seeing them as staged, contentious performances, the author demonstrates how these precarious populations mobilize their bodies and symbolic resources offered by the Chinese government to open up temporary spaces of appearance to articulate their grievances, and argues that this kind of embodied and performative analysis should be more widely conducted in studies of popular politics worldwide.

A study of Hu Feng as a literary critic and case study on how intellectual work can respond to political pressure. In this book, Ruth Y. Y. Hung provides a study of Hu Feng (1902—1985) as a critic, writer, and editor within the context of the People's Republic of China's political ascendancy. A member of the Japanese Communist Party and the Chinese Communist Party, Hu rose to fame in the 1940s and became a representative persecuted intellectual soon after 1949. "The Hu Feng Case" of 1955-more than a decade before the Cultural Revolution-was a significant, large-scale campaign of intellectual persecution. Hung examines Hu's work as a literary critic in this context, and examines the intricate historical and sociopolitical forces against which intellectuals in his milieu in twentieth-century China adopted Marxism as a measure of their critical position. She demonstrates how this first generation of modern Chinese literary critics practiced criticism, examining the skills and arguments they used to negotiate their institutional and ideological relations with state-party power. This exceptional case of intellectual engagement offers broader insight on critical literature's humanistic aims and methods in the context of intellectual globalization and changing political climates. Ruth Y. Y. Hung is Associate Professor of Literature at Hong Kong Baptist University.