PhD defence
Navigating between empires: the discourses on self-determination in and about Hong Kong
- S.H. Lam
- Date
- Tuesday 6 January 2026
- Time
- Address
-
Academy Building
Rapenburg 73
2311 GJ Leiden
Supervisor(s)
Summary
Using the “hard case’’ of Hong Kong, this dissertation shows that whether self-determination is granted or denied in small colonial territories often depends less on legal principle than on geopolitical bargaining. In Hong Kong’s case, the political future of the territory was never designed to be determined by its inhabitants, but by the shifting compromises between Britain and China. Drawing on newly declassified British archives, memoirs of Chinese negotiators, and a variety of legal materials from 1945 to 2021, the thesis makes three core claims: First, self-determination is not a fixed right, but a dynamic discourse shaped by competing values, such as nationalism, self-government, independence, freedom of choice, sovereignty, democracy, and autonomy. Second, Hong Kong’s post-1997 autonomy was built not on democratic participation but on functional separation of social, economic, and legal systems. This model aims to accommodate conflicting discourses, while at the same time, fosters a distinct local identity in Hong Kong without fully satisfying the people’s underlying political demands. Thus, the recent erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy and democracy is not a sudden rupture, but the inevitable result of these very contradictions. Third, the Hong Kong case shows that self-determination as a legal right did not end the empire; it gave them a new set of grammar to manage the relationship between a territory and its people.
PhD dissertations
Approximately one week after the defence, PhD dissertations by Leiden PhD students are available digitally through the Leiden Repository, that offers free access to these PhD dissertations. Please note that in some cases a dissertation may be under embargo temporarily and access to its full-text version will only be granted later.
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