【明報專訊】A nation may refer to people of the same ancestry, racial background, language, religion or culture. Nationalism(民族主義) comes in many forms. Generally speaking, nationalism is an ideology used by a group of people to maintain their autonomy, unity and self-identification and to distinguish themselves from others. A nation is not necessarily equivalent to a country, which may consist of many nations. For example, China is a multi-national country with 56 officially recognised nations.

Rise of white supremacism in the US

After he had started his campaign for the US presidency, Donald Trump repeatedly emphasised the need to "put America first". Since his election, he has been criticized for inciting anti-immigrant sentiments and even white supremacism (白人至上主義). In January 2017, he signed an executive order "banning terrorists from entering the US". The ban affected refugees and citizens from countries like Iran. The federal court suspended the ban the following month.

At a right-winger gathering that took place in Virginia in August 2017, a white supremacist allegedly drove his car into a group of counter-protesters, causing one death and nineteen injuries. The man was arrested and charged with murder. Though the incident was regarded as "an act of white-supremacist terror", Donald Trump condemned violence "on many sides" but failed to call the white supremacists by their names. He was lambasted for conniving at radicalism.

Do Hong Kong people belong to a ''nation''?

In 2015 Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying (as he then was) criticised Undergrad, which the Student Union of the University of Hong Kong publishes, for advocating Hong Kong's independence and self-determination. A debate over whether Hong Kong people belonged to a nation followed.

The issue of Undergrad in question made a reference to an essay written by Joseph Lian(練乙錚) in 2012. In that essay, Lian, invoking Joseph Stalin's definition of a nation, argued that Hong Kong met all the necessary criteria for being one. But a researcher at Sun Yat-sen University argued that Hong Kong people had never belonged to a nation and that Hong Kong had no right to seek independence as a "nation without state".

The Hong Kong National Party(香港民族黨), the first Hong Kong political party to advocate openly Hong Kong's independence, came into being in 2016. In response, the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office(國務院港澳辦)said it was a flagrant violation of China's constitution and the Basic Law to set up a pro-independence organization. The HKSAR government later rejected the party's application for the status as a society.

Related concepts:

．ethnic group

．ethnocentrism

．nationalism

．Basic Law

[通通識 第468期]