Mobilizing Hong Kong

Abstract The 1986 antinuclear movement in Hong Kong against the construction of the Daya Bay Nuclear Power Plant was a watershed event. The campaign saw society-wide mass participation, amassing 1.04 million signatures while becoming a global protest that confronted the political, developmental, and diplomatic interests of Chinese, British, and colonial Hong Kong governments. This article traces the origins of the nuclear power project between Guangdong officials and the China Light and Power Company in 1979 to mass mobilization in Hong Kong in the summer of 1986, after a nuclear reactor meltdown in Chernobyl. Drawing from a range of previously untapped official, corporate, newspaper, and oral history sources, this article foregrounds nuclear anxiety as a politicizing force that resulted in the emergence of a collective political consciousness in Hong Kong. Environmental risk and subsequent political disenfranchisement recast the anti–Daya Bay movement's formative role within Hong Kong's political and environmental histories.