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“After Autonomy: A Post-Mortem for Hong Kong’s first Handover, 1997-2019 by Daniel F. Vukovich. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. XIV, 175pp. US$109.99 (Paperback). ISBN: 9789811949852″
Simon Young
The China Review, Vol. 24, no. 3 (August 2024), 305 – 308
Published in August 2024
Book Review: Hong Kong
is dead, long live Hong Kong. That is one way of capturing the thesis of Daniel
Vukovich’s new book, After Autonomy: A Post-Mortem for Hong Kong’s first Handover. For there must be a death to hold a post-mortem and life after
autonomy. The autonomy he refers to is that of Hong Kong from Mainland
China, as entrenched by the Basic Law. What comes next, he hopes, is the integration
of Hong Kong and Mainland China in an egalitarian manner that is attentive to
the needs of people on both sides of the border.
Vukovich
has written an important book about Hong Kong, at a critical time. It is
recommended reading for all those who care about Hong Kong’s future. More than
a commentary on the 2019 protests and unrest, the book reflects on the
significance of 2019 along the historical trajectory of Hong Kong’s progress
and evolution. Conscious of being labelled as belonging to either the “yellow”
or “blue” camps – the superficial and divisive labels used in public discourse
after the 2014 Occupy Central protests – Vukovich takes neither side. Instead,
he writes a “green book” (p. 6), a mélange of yellow and blue…Please contact Prof. Young for a full copy of the review.