Love, patriotism, and the city: Hong Kong's new regime

This paper examines the relationship between brand-building, patriotism and the love of home. Taking Hong Kong as a case study for its observations it argues that, in the context of the transfer of sovereignty in 1997, and, more recently, in the light of the 2003 and 2004 July demonstrations against Article 23, and the 2004 debate on patriotism in the SAR (Special Administrative Region), that corporate and state organised versions of love of country do not capture the complex emotional relationship between home and resident. The suggestion of this paper is that love of (home) place is more apparent in the passionate contingencies of cinematic narrative, and in the actions of residents, than in the structures of loyalty managed by government and its agencies. It remarks that the patriotism debate which was somewhat in evidence in late 2003 but which took off in earnest in 2004 when Beijing and Beijingoriented politicians called for a Hong Kong where only 'patriots' could enter the legislature did not account for the demonstrated love of place which had been evident at least to an outside eye in several instances over the previous twelve months. Beijing's political unwillingness to accept that love of country (national patriotism) might be complicated, although not necessarily undermined, both by local place-loyalties and by democratic aspirations shows the division between the political imagination of the state and the heterogeneous forms of love which citizens owe to place and people and local histories. This paper takes the position that political loyalty to a state-led agenda does not measure the limits of passionate attachment.