Hong Kong identities and the friends and enemies of recent protests

Abstract

This essay analyzes the current protests in Hong Kong from the perspective of the friends/enemies dialectic. It depicts the opposed political positions involved in the protests, considers the relations of these positions to ethnic and linguistic identities in Hong Kong, and analyzes the protests through a case study of the politics and identities of a woman who immigrated to Hong Kong from Mainland China thirty years ago. The essay concludes by considering both the necessity and limitations of analyzing political actions through the lens of friends and enemies. It also introduces the other essays in this Currents collection of articles about protests in Hong Kong.