Hong Kong’s APEC 2026: How Beijing’s Authoritarian Modernization Reshapes Global Economic Governance Under the Shadow of Lost Autonomy

Hong Kong’s indigenous communities, particularly those with roots in the New Territories, have long resisted state-led homogenization, framing their cultural practices as forms of *resistance sovereignty*. The 2019 protests saw activists invoke the city’s *pre-colonial* history, where local clans and villages governed themselves under a patchwork of customary laws long before British rule. This perspective is absent from mainstream narratives, which treat Hong Kong as a purely economic entity rather than a site of *ongoing decolonization struggles*. The erasure of these indigenous voices—such as those of the Ping Shan Tang clan or the Tai Hang Fire Drill Ground protesters—further obscures how Beijing’s policies are not just political but also *culturally genocidal*, aiming to replace local identities with a state-imposed Han Chinese nationalism.