The Foundation of an Uprising: Spatial Socialization and National Identity Formation in Hong Kong’s Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Protests

The Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Protests (Anti-ELAB) brought an end to an era of psuedo-democracy in Hong Kong, a semi-autonomous region of mainland China operating under a One Country, Two Systems model of governance. Following the proposal of the Fugitive Offenders Amendment Bill, an article allowing for criminal suspects to be extradited out of the region and into mainland China, Hong Kong erupted into a city of political resistance and civil dissent. At the root of the conflict is a civil society that has developed in opposition to the systems and structures of its hybrid regime, a form of governance inconducive with the region’s bottom-up campaign for democratization. The Anti-ELAB movement demands an interrogation of the relationship between national identity formation and political resistance throughout Hong Kong. By utilizing the theory of spatial socialization to understand the complex relationship between society and the state, this paper seeks to establish the factors that transformed Hong Kong into a region of contention, and the impact of the protests on the development of China and Hong Kongs’ transitional, hybrid regime