Analysis of Hong Kong protests from the Umbrella Movement to the present

The protests that started in Hong Kong in 2019 as demonstrations against the Draft Extradition Bill have evolved into a long-term broad social movement that has attracted regional and global attention with the mobilization of the masses. Recent protest movements in post-colonial Hong Kong have emphasized a divided society in the middle of an identity crisis, and have become a mass display of the differences among Hong Kong's subnational identity and its national Chinese identity. Despite differing political aspirations, the mobilization of the people seeking recognition as having a distinct environmental identity underlined the notion of identity as well as the desire for democracy in this massive wave of protest. Indeed, since 2008, local "Hong Kong" identity, and self-identification (identity) surveys have produced striking results. Almost a quarter of the population in 2008, nearly half of the population in 2019, and almost all of the young population between the ages of 18 and 29 in Hong Kong in 2019 identified themselves with the purely "Hong Kongian" identity. This thesis examines the current social movement and identity theory literature, as well as Doug McAdam's political process model, to examine the development process of Hong Kong's 2019-2020 pro-democracy movement and the relevance of identity in this process. Thus, with these two pieces of literature considered together, the cognitive liberation aspect in identity and political process theory has been included in the analysis with a holistic perspective. Considering other factors and looking from the analytical framework of the political process approach, the significance of subnational identity in the movement's evolution is obvious.