Navigating Double Decolonization: Mainland Chinese Immigrants' Re‐Emphasis or Concealment of Chineseness in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT This article engages with Ching‐Kwan Lee's (2025) idea that the post‐1997 Hong Kong protests represent a series of decolonization efforts, stemming from British colonial rule and now from the Chinese ‘neo‐colonial’ regime. Instead of focusing on Hong Kong natives, however, this article presents mainland Chinese immigrants (MCIs) who live in Hong Kong and how they perceive themselves being the settler colonizers within two conflicting decolonization efforts—the Chinese government's decolonial initiatives in Hong Kong (i.e., removing the British legacy) as well as local resistance to the political rule under the Chinese regime. The latter was entangled with failed decolonization from the British colonial nostalgia, valuing English over Mandarin, and resistance to the idea that reunification with China is the only imaginable destiny. Realizing the state's failed decolonization and unfavourable traits associated with Chineseness, some re‐emphasized the sovereignty of Chineseness, whereas others concealed it by speaking English or pretending they were from other countries to facilitate better social integration. Such strategies manifest the tensions within this double decolonization process—in ethnopolitical identities, cultural and sociopolitical spheres, intercolonial competitions and conflicts between the government's decolonization agenda from above and daily encounters of Hong Kongers' resistance to the neo‐colonial Chinese regime from below.