The Linguistics Journal September 2009 Special Edition Language

The Linguistics Journal – September 2009
HK context, the same problem arose. For example, according to the HK Transition Project in 1993
(conducted during the colonial years), there was only a minority of HK residents who identified
themselves as “Chinese”. The majority of respondents identified themselves as “Hong Kong-Chinese.”
According to Ming Pao, 60% of secondary school students recognized themselves as “HK People” rather
than “Chinese”, while 30% claimed themselves as “Chinese” in 2002. Fu et al. (1999) also found that
respondents had negative evaluation of being a Chinese. Those who identified themselves as Hong
Kong-Chinese were expected to have less desire to reduce the dissimilarity between HK and Mainland
China (Hong & Chiu, 1996; Lau et al., 1996).
A further example is Abrams et al’s (1999) study in which they found that that majority of their
respondents reported fairly strong feelings of their identification, pride in their status, and satisfaction
with their current life in Hong Kong. However, looking towards the future of HK (after 1997), they were
rather pessimistic. Abrams et al. (ibid) believed that how people in HK perceive their identity is strongly
associated with the perceived status of Hong Kong.
Most of the above-mentioned studies, are outdated. Even Abrams et al’s (1999) work was
conducted immediately after the post-colonial years, the relationship between HK and China and their
socio-political statuses had also been changing and this relates to how HK people viewed their national
identity.
Cheng & Wong’s (2002) started to look into specific reasons attributable to national identity
change among HK people. They found that the percentage of Chinese in HK claiming themselves as
being from “Hong Kong” was decreasing while claiming themselves as “Chinese” and “both Chinese
and from Hong Kong” was increasing. 70% of respondents aged under 30 claimed themselves “from
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