Hong Kong as special cultural zone: Confucian geopolitics in practice

Responding to An, Sharp, and Shaw’s article, ‘Towards Confucian Geopolitics’, I consider how strategies and interpretations of Chinese geopolitics are playing out in Hong Kong with attention to their cultural dimensions. First, I reflect upon the reactions of individuals and the media in the West—specifically Britain—to the protests and street violence that rocked its former colony in the summer of 2019. Second, to reckon with An, Sharp, and Shaw’s contention that the hybridized nature of Chinese geopolitics emerges from its ‘strategic adaptability’, thereby enabling the integration of foreign ideas into Chinese cultural traditions, I offer a brief critique of cultural and infrastructural developments in Hong Kong relating to the West Kowloon Cultural District. Initially intended to showcase local culture and link it into the art world’s global circuits, the megaproject is increasingly being made in China’s image. Third, as a counterpoint to the supposed flexibility of the Chinese geopolitical imagination, I address the ossification of Western geopolitical thought and practice. In order for geographers to build more pluralistic critical geopolitics, engaging with a diversity of geopolitical approaches and their cultural underpinnings is key. For Western nation-states, failing to practice a more hybridized geopolitics may represent a more existential risk.