Yip, M. (2022). Policing territory: The yet-to-be unsettled space of the property-sovereignty nexus. In W. Liu, J. Chien, C. Chung, & E. Tse (Eds.), Reorienting Hong Kong’s Resistance: Leftism, Decoloniality, and Internationalism (pp. 103–117). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-4659-1_8
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This chapter conceptualizes an understanding of territory as the space of the property-sovereignty nexus in order to problematize the particular ways the nexus is made, entrenched, and enacted in Hong Kong. Such a conceptualization is rooted in some observations of land and the Anti-ELAB Movement. By tracing the historical linkages between the police and land property since the 1840s, this chapter shows that the colonial state established the police force for making and safeguarding the nexus. The post-1997 society has inherited the nexus, and the Chinese state further utilizes this product of colonial knowledge for policing the territory under the New Constitutional Order. The contested nature of the nexus is manifested during the Anti-ELAB protests in three ways, namely: defense, discrimination, and differentiation.