A history of hold-outs against new rulers in China

During the inaugural ceremony last month of the Hong Kong Army Cadets Association, members took an oath to, among other things, “build Hong Kong and serve the motherland”. The PLA-linked association was immediately accused of brainwashing local youths.

While it’s normal in many countries for citizens to pledge allegiance to the state, it remains controversial here because many Hongkongers don’t feel they owe the People’s Republic of China any loyalty. There are even some who are nostalgic for the benign dictatorship that is colonial rule.

When the Manchu conquered China, a group of loyalists of the ousted Ming dynasty held out on the island of Taiwan. Led by the Zheng family, the resistance movement refused to recognise the legitimacy of the Manchu Qing dynasty. They proudly professed their loyalty to the Ming imperial clan by retaining the use of the Ming-era name Yongli for their dates instead of using that of the Qing emperor. For example, when the first year of Kangxi (1662) was marked in the rest of China, in Taiwan it was the 15th year of Yongli.

The island finally surrendered to the Qing in 1683. It’s perhaps ironic then, that when Taiwan, abandoned by Qing-dynasty China to Japan in 1895, declared itself the independent Republic of Formosa, the island’s government used the era name Yongqing, literally “the eternal Qing dynasty”.