Heaven is High and the Emperor is Far Away: The Hong Kong/China Crisis in the Nation-State System Context

Timothy E. Dolan

《Journal of Futures Studies》 25卷1期 (2020/09) Pp. 55-63

https://doi.org/10.6531/JFS.202009_25(1).0006

摘要

Before the nation-state system was devised China had developed a highly systematized philosophy of social relations known as Confucianism. This philosophy provided a collective sense of being Chinese still present as a kind of substrata upon which the current state has been built. That being noted, China has still had to contend with persistent tribalizing forces in the form of ethnic, linguistic and religious divisions from the times of empire to present. In the past two centuries there has been the added challenge of Western influences and even occupation that profoundly shook Chinese assumptions of cultural superiority ultimately resulting in an ambivalent industrial transformation. This piece utilizes reverse causal layered analysis (historical analysis by another name) to situate the current situation in Hong Kong in that context. By analyzing the Hong Kong protests and the Chinese response through the long lens of history, and specifically within the universal and perennial tension between globalization and tribalization, a probable resolution might be considered in which Hong Kong is absorbed over the next generation with an ensuing larger transformational global consciousness influence taking hold in China after that.

關鍵字

China and Hong Kong ； Globalization and Tribalization ； Confucianism ； Han Identity ； Ethnocentrism ； Colonial Legacy ； Hong Kong Futures ； Chinese Futures