Promoting Cultural Hybridity: The Study of the Hong
Kong and the Chinese New Middle Class Across the
Border under Globalization Era
Eileen Yuk-ha TSANG
Hang Seng Management College
Jose Lingna Nafafe
University of Birmingham
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Abstract
 The surging economic growth in China since the 1990s is attracting many
of the Hong Kong middle class to work and live in Guangdong province.
First, this paper finds that the Chinese new middle class and the Hong
Kong middle class are re-establishing social, cultural, and economic
relationships with each other in mainland China. Many members of the
Hong Kong and Chinese middle classes are now working in Guangdong
and Hong Kong respectively only for the purpose of making money.
 The process of re-establishing that connection is a process of cultural
hybridity since they already have a close economic integration. Even
though both groups are Chinese, they are virtual strangers to each other.
Second, this paper argues that globalization and economic integration
after post 1997 is promoting cultural hybridity instead of providing an
opportunity for cultural assimilation between the Hong Kong middle class
and the Chinese new middle class. Furthermore, they are not truly
culturally integrating. Rather, they are coming together for the sake of
economic expediency. This paper will focus on how the multiple
components of these two diverse groups come together in an across the
border relationship.
 Key words: Cultural Hybridity, Globalization, Hong Kong Middle Class, The
Chinese Middle Class, Cultural Assimilation, Regional Integration
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Hong Kong and Chinese middle class
across the border
1. The relocation of Hong Kong factories to
Guangdong province since 1989,
2. China joining the World Trade Organisation in
2001,
3. The enactment of the Closer Economic
Partnership Arrangement (CEPA),
4. The launch of the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS)
solidify the close connections between Hong
Kong and China.
3
Riding the identity of ‘Hong Kong Chinese’
versus ‘mainland Chinese’
 Wong (1996), Lau (1997), Ma (1998), and Fung (2004)
generally pinpointed Hong Kong in pre-1997 as having ill
feelings with no desire to claim themselves as mainland
Chinese.
 Rather, they felt much more comfortable identifying
themselves as Hong Kong Chinese. Before Hong Kong
reunited with China, the notion that mainlanders are a bad
influence permeates the minds of many Hong Kong people.
 Before the handover, mainland immigrants in Hong Kong are
almost roundly nicknamed dai luk lo (大陸佬) or dai luk por
(大陸婆) or even the hostile ‘Ah Chaan’ (阿灿 or 阿燦 literally,
‘the uneducated’ or ‘the hayseed’).
4
Riding the identity of ‘Hong Kong Chinese’ versus
‘mainland Chinese’
 Hong Kong has a local-national polarization between Hong
Kong Chinese and mainland Chinese. Hong Kong people in
general showed a dual self-claimed identity of ‘Hong Konger’
and ‘mainland Chinese’.
 It is understood Hong Kong-Chinese identity is not as fixed or
given, but ‘as a relation to something or someone else
that the boundary is drawn’ (Madianou, 2005:24).
 Identity is best conceived as always already in process and
in the making. It is not only being ‘out of place’ (Said, 1999)
but also ‘out of time’ (Ang, 2001).
 This is the best description since Hong Kong was the British
colony. The fluidity or changing of identity hearkens Stuart
Hall’s (1996: 4): that it is as much about ‘who we are’ or
‘where we came from’ as it is ‘what we might become’ .
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Hong Kong and Hybridity Space
 Hybridity is used in the paper as an attempt to challenge
and to override essentialism which has been deployed
by British colonial discourse in order to defend Western
colonial interest, in which the binary ‘us’ and ‘them’ or the
‘self’ verse ‘other’ was delineated through Chinese from
mainland China and Hong Kong people.
 Hybridity allow us to challenge the production and
implementation of certain dichotomies such as centre
verse margin, civilized verse savage, and enlightened
verse ignorant.
 Hybridity is the mixing together of different culture
elements to create new meanings and identities, which
destabilises and blurs established culture boundaries in a
process of fusion or creolisation, be it Chinese from
mainland or Hong Kong middle class (Rutherford, 1990:
211; Lingna Nafafé, 2007).
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Hong Kong and Hybridity Space
 Abbas (1997) recently contends that Hong Kong is losing its
cultural space, because of China’s emerging political and
economic power. Abbas (1997) asserts that the influence of the
Chinese has pronounced ‘death’ to Hong Kong’s culture, a
cultural dislocation that ‘is posited on the imminence of its
disappearance... Hong Kong’s sense of its own distinct
identity has appeared only recently, just as it’s about to
banish.’ (Abbas, 1997: 7)
 It is the contention of this paper that intersectionality between
Hong Kong and Chinese middle classes refers to a process
of integration, dialectical articulation, which stands at the
junction with the potential to mediate and displace the
process of domination through the reinterpretation of
political discourse (Bhabha, 1994: 181).
 The contention is that hybridity as a process unsettles and
undoes the established identities of, both Chinese and Hong
Kong middle classes.
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Hong Kong and Hybridity Space
 Bhabba (1994) contends that postcolonial discourse
mimics the dominant discourse and this produces a
new cultural form that is appropriated by the
dominant as well as the dominated. Invariably, there is
a celebration of common heritage from Hong Kong people,
in which desirable practices from mainland China are
extracted and incorporated into Hong Kong culture in
order to identify with China.
 As such both Chinese and Hong Kong can express
their identity by constantly borrowing from each other
at the level of economic exchange.
 As Papastergiadis argues: ‘[hybridity] stresses that
identity is not a combination, accumulation, fusion or
synthesis of various components, but an energy field
of different forces’ (Papastergiadis, 1997: 259).
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Hong Kong and Hybridity Space
 Stuart Hall (1992) mentioned self and others which deem
appropriate to describe the ‘self and local’ Hong Kong
Chinese identity and ‘other’ mainland Chinese identity.
 The mainland Chinese are described as degenerate,
imperiling and inferior leaving them perhaps with the
effect of insulating themselves within the spatial-temporal
zone circumscribed by its identity.
 They can crisscross harmoniously with the transnational or
global flows in economic dimension. But when the two
cultures crisscrossed culturally, ideologically, politically and
culturally, they still create some conflicts and hybridity.
 This two-way process necessarily involved Hong Kong
Chinese and mainland Chinese entering the spatial-temporal
dimension through the embodiment of a new Hong KongMainland trans-border identity during globalization era.
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Research design - When the West meets the East
60 members of the Chinese new middle class in South China.

Half are entrepreneurs, one-third cadres and one-third professionals

The term ‘Chinese new middle class’ would then fall into the categories of
professionals, entrepreneurs and cadres for the purposes of our
operationalisation.
1. A minimum monthly per-capita income of RMB¥9,000 (US$ 1,155);
2. Post-secondary education (technical or non-technical) or above;
3. Managerial-level or managerial-type job position;
4. Native belonging (hukou),
5. Possession of a house or a car either by mortgage or outright ownership,
6. A certain amount of disposable income, at least they should own
RMB500,000 or above (Tsang, 2010).
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The Hong Kong Middle Class

Interviewed about 30 people of the Hong Kong
middle class who work in South China.
1. Entrepreneurs and professionals such as
factory managers, accountants and
administrative executives.
2. They earn at least monthly HK$35,000 (£3,500).
3. Most of them have been working in Guangdong
since 1989.
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How Do the Hong Kong Middle Class
Regard its Chinese Cousin?
 I have hate and love with China. China is
good for my career can I can have a
breakthrough to my career too. But I don’t
why, I cannot make myself completely
adapt to my livelihood in Guangdong. May
be I think there are different mentalities.
(Wing, 40, HK accountant)
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How Do the Hong Kong Middle Class Regard its
Chinese Cousin?
 We can maintain a superficial harmony with
the Chinese new middle class because both
of us aim for economic interests and want to
extend our networks in China…We have
great and bold gaps between China and
Hong Kong, culturally and ideologically
speaking. I can’t make myself accept that
everything is solvable by guanxi alone.
Corruption is serious…water and food
poisoning, transport is so messy in China….
(Lawrence, 40, HK accountant)
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How Do the Hong Kong Middle Class Regard
its Chinese Cousin?
 The [Chinese] new middle class might give
priority to better-off partners of similar
kinship rather than to Hong Kong partners….
This was manifest by the financial tsunami since
2008, when the volume of exports soared since
2002 but slackened in 2008….We’re always in
low priority for their consideration and selection,
even though we share the same type of
consumption patterns and lifestyles. (Jimmy, 45,
HK entrepreneur)
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How Do the Hong Kong Middle Class Regard its
Chinese Cousin?
 Hong Kong people is sometimes characterised as
natural-born opportunists who see the world
around them almost exclusively in terms of selfinterest and self-benefits as a survival strategy.
 For Hongkongers, there is practical truth to the
Cantonese colloquialism wun jet-so (搵着数 ‘to
find benefits,’ or ‘opportunity-hunting’ in plain
English).
 They try to get as much benefit from society as
possible for themselves or their own or family good
but contribute as little as practicable in return. They
are apostles of utilitarianism, evangelists of
looking for the upside in things, princes of
seizing opportunities and queens of alliances. 15
How do the Chinese new middle class regard its
Hong Kong cousin?
 China is now growing as a world superpower.
When Hong Kong encounters any financial
problems, the Chief Executive [of the Hong
Kong SAR] just waits for Ah Yeh [阿爷
grandfather, i.e. the Chinese government] in
China to pài táng [派糖 passing out sweets, i.e.
financial help for Hong Kong]. If the central
government won’t give any financial help to
Hong Kong, then she will become an
orphan. How come we need to learn from
Hong Kong? …We’ve got our own shortcuts
to succeed… (Uncle Chan, 60, Chinese
cadre)
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How do the Chinese new middle class
regard its Hong Kong cousin?
 One of the more influential cadres in Guangdong
province always receives a lot of gifts from
different kinds of people. But these people [cadres]
are always too busy to take care of those gifts,
which are processed by their domestic helpers or
even second hand shop. The maids put the gifts
away for a while and then throw them out when
the mooncakes are expired. Those who
scrounge mooncakes for a living may well be
blessed with an unforeseen income, as there is
nothing but money inside those gifts. Diamonds,
wine and cigarettes are among the popular items
for this, and red packets also. (Uncle Wen, 48,
Chinese entrepreneur)
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How do the Chinese new middle class
regard its Hong Kong cousin?
 Many civil servants in Hong Kong are required
to take on all responsibilities and always be
ready to stand up and be accountable for any
wrongdoing.…. However, in China, in some
ways, it is a normal situation for cadres to have
corruption. It is a common custom for [a cadre]
to do a sideline job without applying for outside
engagement. As long as you’re not too
greedy, there shouldn’t be any problems. If
you’re corrupt, you become abnormal…
(Tom, 45, Chinese professional)
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Cultural and Ideological Disharmonies
 The popular perception of China in the minds of
many Hong Kong people (and especially in those
who have some kind of ties with China) is that the
country is nothing but traffic chaos, deception,
crime and other social ills.
 Currently (2008-09), Hong Kong people are afraid
of becoming poisoned by mainland Chinese
food, after a spate of poisonings from
mainland-made eggs and milk (Mathews, Ma &
Lui 2008).
 Many Hong Kong people are quite insistent on
calling themselves a Hongkonger rather than
Chinese (even though they are racially Chinese).
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Cultural and Ideological Disharmonies
 I don’t have any special feelings when we hear
the national anthem or see the national flag.
I’m still unsure about accepting the political
ideological concept of the Communist Party—
which are very horrible and you don’t know
when and why you’d be arrested for no
reason. You won’t know when you’ll violate the
law of the PRC. The Chen Chang case is a
typical example. It is awful and horrible to
accept any [kind of] administration by the
Communist Party. (Ken, 50, HK entrepreneur)
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Cultural and Ideological Disharmonies
 Hong Kong residents in general have mixed feelings.
They are a pragmatic, utilitarian, sometimes even
a mercenary lot. They are proud of China and feel a
sense of superiority of being Chinese in situations
where the nation is famous or successful for
something—or bring advantages for Hong Kong.
 Examples include the first-ever manned Chinese
space mission and the first-ever Chinese spacewalk
by cosmonaut Yang Liwei. The Beijing Olympics
in 2008 was a media success and Chinese athletes
brought home an all-time record of gold medals.
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Conclusion
 The Chinese new middle class and the Hong Kong middle
class are not truly culturally integrating.
 Rather, they are coming together for the sake of economic
expediency.
 This kind of hybridization of the two identities is increasing
again.
 Hong Kong people proclaimed a more dual and
hybridized identity since 1997. This new, dual,
pragmatic, and utilitarian between Hong Kong and
mainland Chinese are in the making. The identity is
conceived as always already in process and in the
making. It is not only being ‘out of place’ (Said, 1999)
but also ‘out of time’ (Ang, 2001).
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The End
Q and A
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