Back to the Masses: The Historiography of Hong Kong's Recent Political Developments and the Prospects of Future Scholarship

This paper examines the historiography of Hong Kong's recent political developments. It addresses the different schools of thought, represented by some important English-language works. It highlights the respective roles of the Chinese, the British and the Hong Kong side in the 1980s and 1990s. Several important questions are raised: Does the existing literature provide us with a better understanding of the Hong Kong situation after 1997? What factors affected the assessment of the Hong Kong problem, with particular reference to the concept of "one country, two systems"? And, how should the scholarship of Hong Kong politics develop?