Who are we? Prominent American political scientist Samuel Huntington asked this of his countrymen in the face of rising Hispanic immigration which threatens to alter America's national identity based on its historic, Anglo-Protestant cultural core. 'Who are we?' Hong Kong's young people also ask. Groups competing for attention on the popular social networking utility Facebook pose the same question to Hong Kong's users: they are urged to join groups like 'I am Hongkongese', 'Proud to be Chinese', or 'Face it, Taiwan is part of China'. Are we first and foremost Chinese or Hongkongese? Who are we?
The answer to this question is as elusive as the answer to the related one on Hong Kong's core values. They probably mean different things to different people. From its historic origins as the Far Eastern outpost of the British Empire on the South China coast, Hong Kong has been uniquely located at the intersection of two empires to be the natural receptacle of the influences of both. To the earliest indigenous settlers, Confucian values reigned supreme. Filial piety, hard work, loyalty to one's family, clan and country, self-sacrifice, veneration for authority and hierarchy were the defining values. To those converted to Christianity, the values of order, discipline, moral clarity, mutual help, human warmth, healing and spiritual renewal guide and mould their behaviour. Then, of course, to those of us brought up imbibing modern, western values, the rule of law, government by representative bodies, and individualism appear to provide the normative basis of a civilised society. Are Hongkongese mainly Chinese or western?
The truth lies somewhere in between. Traditional Chinese and modern, western values do not have to be mutually exclusive, and most Hongkongese are neither purely Chinese nor western in their values or sense of identity. Baby boomers like myself are fiercely Confucian in the emphasis we place on education and responsibility to the family, but we also highly treasure the rule of law, the crucial western legacy which confers predictability, consistency and formal rationality on Hong Kong's government and society. The rule of law ensured the protection of human rights, including property rights, long before democracy started to burgeon. Yet few middle-of-the-roaders like myself will take an intransigent stand on the timetable for universal suffrage in Hong Kong, or insist that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights provides a firmer constitutional basis for Hong Kong's democratic development than the Basic Law. Most will agree it is fine to become democratic, but few would risk rocking the boat to demand that universal suffrage must happen on a certain magical date.
The same probably holds true of Hong Kong's younger generations, who, like younger people in developed economies around the world, are setting higher store on post-materialist values than their forebears. Preventing cruelty to animals, protecting the environment, preserving local cultural landmarks and denizens of our rapidly fading past matter more to many young people than material progress and development. Members of the younger 'me' generation may have a weaker deference to authority and sense of responsibility towards the older members of their families, but few would completely jettison classical Confucian nostrums embedded in the Chinese way of life. Hong Kong Chinese are less self-consciously Chinese than their kinsmen and cousins on the mainland. Yet the allure of the mainland - the people, landscape, shared heritage and sense of shared pride in modern China's achievements - continues to be a centripetal force for many, even among diehard colonial loyalists.
The finest Hongkongese can shuttle between two cultures - Chinese and western - while retaining a strong sense of who we are. We are the southern barbarians; scions of the economic and political migrants desperately eking out a survival on the fringe of the ancient Chinese empire; supporters of rebels against imperialism who, in the process, helped the ancient power, China, go down the modernisation path.
Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee is chairperson of the Savantas Policy Institute