Recontextualisation of Beijing’s voice: A critical discourse analysis of hegemony and resistance in Hong Kong political discourse

This study adopts critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine the recontextualisation of Beijing’s voice in Hong Kong’s governance. Using Beijing’s interpretation of Article 104 of the Basic Law in 2016, which triggered a by-election in 2018, as the case, this article analyses two texts produced by two social actors: the press conference in response to Beijing’s interpretation by the Hong Kong government and an election flyer by a pro-democracy candidate, complemented by a corpus analysis of pro-Beijing newspapers reporting the incident. The findings show that the local government drew upon Beijing’s voice to help create a dominant representation of the Beijing–Hong Kong relations and thus hegemonised Hong Kong political discourse which influenced other social domains, such as newspapers and elections. The pro-democracy camp, as the resistance to the hegemony, drew upon Beijing’s voice to create an alternative representation to secure votes during the by-election. This article then proposes a model which could comprehend Beijing’s role in Hong Kong’s political events, of creating and perpetuating the tension between the hegemony and resistance in Hong Kong.