Contesting brandscapes in Hong Kong: Exploring youth activist experiences of the contemporary consumerist landscape

Abstract

Chinese

Since the 2000s, Hong Kong has become inundated with retail centres, such that the territory is now known as ‘Mall City’, a condition now problematised by youth activists in the city. This article is interested in why these youths take issue with this form of urban development. By tracing the emergence of the contemporary consumerist landscape from the colonial era to the present, it is shown that the current manifestation and characteristics of Hong Kong’s brandscapes are the product of unequal power dynamics between the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government, estate developers and the Hong Kong citizenry in shaping the city. By bringing youth activist voices to the forefront through the use of ethnographic data, the discussion then examines youth activist accounts detailing the experiential dimensions of living in this consumerist landscape, noting the feelings of alienation and exploitation circulating within the vernacular domains of Hong Kong society. The article concludes by reviewing the different ways these youths have attempted to reconfigure their relationship with this brandscape, and thus challenge the control the HKSAR government and estate developers have over Hong Kong urban space.

Keywords

brand experience brandscapes Hong Kong land politics youth activism

Introduction

Brands proliferate in our lives, permeating the social and physical aspects of our urban environments, a phenomenon encapsulated by the term ‘brandscapes’ (Klein, 2000; Klingmann, 2007). Although most brandscape literature examines the concept from an indentitarian and marketing framework, the political dimension of brandscapes (Chua, 2000; Trentmann, 2007) is increasingly featured, with studies analysing how brandscapes have been used by the state to impose control over who can enter and use urban space (Osborn and Smith, 2016), to promote policies to their populations (Eshuis and Klijn, 2012) and to effect a ‘new mode of ordering’ in the way populations make sense of themselves and the world (Murakami Wood and Ball, 2013: 48). This interplay between brandscapes and politics is pronounced in Asia, where unlike Euro-American-centric brandscapes that are framed as the consequence of ‘hyper-consumption in neoliberal capitalism’ (Murakami Wood and Ball, 2013: 62), the creation and development of brandscapes is derived from direct state intervention. Brand consumption is co-opted into the citizen-making projects of Asian states. Governments in Japan, Singapore and China instil a sense of moral citizenship by discouraging the adoption of ‘American’ values of excessive materialism by their populations (Brooks and Wee, 2014; Chua, 2000; Garon and Maclachlan, 2006; Nelson, 2000; Oyama, 2009), and inculcate patriotic citizenship by encouraging people to buy domestic brands or spend money to boost the national economy (Callahan, 2006; Miles, 2014; Zhao and Belk, 2008).

Despite state influence over the consumerist landscapes in Asia, these brandscapes are also the site where vernacular agency is asserted. Asian populations are not passive consumerists but are able to use consumption as a form of ‘transgressive tactics of the weak’ (De Certeau, 1984, in Miller, 1995) to negotiate what citizenship entails in accordance with their own expectations (Chua, 2000). It is through these brandscapes that Asian citizen-consumerists demand that their rights be recognised by the state, as seen from the Taiwanese grassroots pressuring their government to provide consumer protections (Hsiao, 1990: 167), from Japanese civil society’s mobilisations against state-sponsored production of genetically-modified foods due to food safety concerns (Maclachlan, 2006) and in China where the 2008 infant formula poisonings prompted the public to boycott domestic formula brands and demand that the state enforce food safety standards as well as that it address broader issues of political corruption and accountability (Voice of America, 2010). Chinese consumers also embrace select American and European brands to imagine a future ‘modern China’ on their own terms that is marked by more freedoms for people, instead of adhering to visions of the future nation as espoused by the authorities (Li, 2010; Tian and Dong, 2010). These examples show how brandscapes can be used by the Asian vernacular sphere as a tool of empowerment, to contest the power the state has over imaginations and manifestations of their worlds.

Yet in these instances, the Asian citizenry project and realise their interests within the existing brandscape, acquiescing to the parameters of the consumerist environment established by the state (see Miller, 1995; Miles, 1998). In contrast, this article reviews the emergent voices of the Asian vernacular sphere that are taking a step back to critically reflect on the manifestation of the urban brandscape itself, questioning the power dynamics that went into the making of the urban brandscape, and the impact this has on their everyday urban experiences. In other words, the brandscape itself becomes the object of scrutiny, which will be revealed through examining the brandscape experiences of Hong Kong youth activists, who have criticised the consumerist landscape of the city since the late 2000s.

Scholars acknowledge the centrality of consumption in the constitution of subjectivities, social relations, values, meanings and practices in everyday life (see Bourdieu, 1984; Lefebvre, 2002 [1974]). For example, Daniel Miller (1998) observes that routinised acts of shopping foster and reinforce closeness between individuals, and Phil Crang (1996) suggests that the production and circulation of goods are integral to consumers’ processes of world-making. But this literature examines the ways consumerist landscapes act upon consumers, with little attention given towards consumers’ reflexive critiques towards the experiences generated by these brandscapes. Most research analysing the ‘experience economy’ of brandscapes documents the experiential ideologies that state officials, urban planners and corporations intend to convey to consumerists through their branding initiatives (see Klingmann, 2007; Löfgren, 2014), neglecting to explore how these brands are actually felt and received by consumerists. There are exceptions, with Loretta Lees (2003) noting the critical feelings New York and London residents harbour towards the increasing visibility of corporations in these cities. However, the bulk of this scholarship focuses on European and American consumption; of interest here are the brandscape experiences that have emerged in the Asian context. Robert Sack (1992) does provide a theoretical analysis of how consumerist spaces generate feelings of disorientation in American and Chinese urban life; yet absent from this work are first-hand accounts of how consumption is actually felt by consumerists themselves.

Overall, the meanings and worldviews that urban inhabitants derive from living in branded environments, and the impact they have on urban life, remain largely unarticulated in the scholarship. This prompted Sonia Bookman to comment that:

the specificity of brands and the ways in which they shape experiences of urban life remain less well explored … To what extent, and in what ways, do brands inform people’s meanings and experiences of urban space and everyday life? (Bookman, 2018: 2)

The omission of vernacular brand experiences produces an incomplete picture of the relationship between politics and brandscapes, and of the ramifications this has on the subjectivities of city dwellers, which this article hopes to rectify through an ethnographic study of the Hong Kong consumerist landscape.

This article begins by framing Hong Kong’s contemporary brandscape as the product of colonial-era land-use policies enabling the governing bodies and estate developers to take control over urban space, as well as the product of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) administration’s political agenda in the 2000s. The article then outlines the current features of the Hong Kong brandscape. As Hong Kong is a former British colonial port city founded for commerce and trade, a brandscape has always existed there. Rather, the question is how and why this brandscape changed through time. By illustrating the current prevalence of malls as the primary space of consumption and by identifying the brands that have come to dominate the city’s consumerist landscape, the unequal power dynamics between the HKSAR government, the corporate sector and the population are revealed. Lastly, the discussion draws attention to the political consciousness that arises from how experiences of brandscapes are interpreted by urban inhabitants. It looks at the meanings Hong Kong youth activists derive from brands, how this influences their perceptions of their urban environs and their positionality within the socio-political hierarchies of the city, as well as why they problematise such conditions. The concluding sections review how such understandings led these youths to contest their relationship with the government and estate corporations through reconfiguring the brandscape.

Methodology

As aforementioned, this article explores what it is like for ordinary citizens to be exposed to, and to engage with, spaces of consumption in the city. Secondary data is used to document HKSAR government policies that affected the Hong Kong brandscape in the 2000s, and to provide information on land prices and retail rents in the city. To attain insight regarding the subjective experiences of brandscapes, qualitative data was collected through ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Hong Kong from December 2010 to July 2012, and from June to August 2017. Methods used include participant observation which involved visiting a variety of retail centres across the city, along with attending protests and discussions critiquing the consumerist landscape, spearheaded by youth activists.

Attention is given to Hong Kong youth activists because they are currently the most visible and vocal demographic criticising the city’s brandscape. This article acknowledges that youth activist numbers in Hong Kong are not large, and that their opinions towards brandscapes are not representative of how the vernacular domain in its entirety perceives of the city’s brandscape. Many people enjoy the comforts and conveniences offered by the malls, which have served as ‘a popular place for young people to rendezvous and hang out’ since the 1970s (Lui, 2001: 34–35). Today, many contemporary youths spend a great deal of time in malls for social and leisure purposes, prompting retail centres like Island Beverley in Causeway Bay and Trendy Zone in Mong Kok to adopt an aesthetic catering specifically to a youth clientele. Nonetheless, the presence of Hong Kong youth activists’ dissenting voices towards the brandscape represents a departure from conventional claims that the ‘flaunting of wealth in conspicuous public display [is] a regular affair drawing little public approbation’ such that consumption is universally embraced by the Hong Kong population (Chua, 2000: 9), or that the acquisition of material goods is uncritically venerated by the populace (Sing, 2009). In other words, the existence of these youth activists indicates that societal sentiments towards the consumerist landscapes in Asia are not homogeneous, not only differing in their consumption attitudes and practices (Chan, 2000), but in that select portions of the citizenry express doubts about such conditions. To understand why this is, these emergent critical voices towards the Hong Kong brandscape warrant exploration.

In-depth semi-structured interviews were used, featuring 45 youth activists ranging from 19 to 35 years of age.¹ Informants for the study were recruited in two ways. First, youths who had developed a public activist profile (through writing socio-political commentary or giving interviews to media outlets) were approached through social media and email prior to meeting in person. As fieldwork progressed, these informants would introduce me to other youths, facilitating the snowballing process. Second, informants were recruited by chance encounter. From participating in youth-initiated events announced through Facebook, I had the opportunity to interact with other attendees to discuss matters pertaining to the Hong Kong brandscape. All informants are represented by pseudonyms.

By ‘youth activists’, this article is not referring to a singular collective or group of youths, but an agglomeration of individuals loosely affiliated with each other. The gender and socio-economic profile of these youths varied; individuals came from working-class and middle-class backgrounds, some were students whereas others were in part- or full-time employment in the artistic-creative, academic or other professional sectors. Yet all youth informants shared common traits, expressing an interest in local urban issues and embracing pro-democracy leanings. They were also politically engaged, whether this be through radical actions such as occupations, conventional mobilisations such as street demonstrations, community-level actions or political deliberations. These youths also saw themselves as living economically precarious lives, unable to afford the high cost of housing and amenities in the city (Sing, 2009). At the time of the fieldwork, some youth informants lived with their parents, some lived in student accommodation and some flat-shared with friends in ageing or remote districts where rent is more affordable. This condition of economic precarity is not unique to activists, but is endemic throughout the youth population, who increasingly struggle to attain upward socio-economic mobility and secure financial stability (Lui, 2007). Youth activists believe that these difficulties faced by their generation are a result of the power imbalances induced by the land-use system, a system that also produced and is exacerbated by the unequal and exploitative character of the contemporary brandscape.

Land use policies in Hong Kong: The leasehold system and economic recovery model

When Hong Kong was ceded to the British in 1841, the British Hong Kong government had limited sources of revenue. Hong Kong had no natural resources to export, and could not tax imported goods due to its free port status (Nissim, 2012). Land was recognised by the British Hong Kong government as one of the few viable sources of revenue left. With it being a scarce resource in the mountainous territory, the authorities introduced the leasehold system to manage land distribution and use (Poon, 2011). Under the leasehold system, the government owns almost all land in the city,² and the population can lease a plot of land (a ‘lot’) by bidding in public auctions.³ Those successful with their bids must pay the government a premium reflecting land market values, and a nominal sum known as Government Rent every year for the duration of the lease. Even after British colonial rule ended in 1997, with Hong Kong placed under the sovereignty of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the succeeding HKSAR government retained the leasehold system.

Because the auctioning of land leases is the main source of revenue for the colonial and HKSAR administrations (Poon, 2011; Wong and Yuen, 2012), both governments released a limited number of lots for auction at any given time to ensure that demand for land exceeded supply, and introduced zoning policies allowing small lots to be used for multiple purposes, thereby raising lot values (Smith, 2013: 216). These methods successfully resulted in large sums being transacted during auctions, with a Ma On Shan lot leased for HK$1.3bn (US$165m) in July 2017, and a Kwun Tong lot for HK$3.1bn (US$396m) in January 2018 (HKSAR Government Lands Department, 2018). The prohibitive cost of land excludes the majority of the population from partaking in land auctions. Only large estate developers with extensive financial resources, such as Sun Hung Kai Properties, Henderson Land Development, CK Hutchison Holdings, Sino Land, and the Mass Transit Railway (MTR) Corporation, can afford to lease land. Scholars and the Hong Kong population thus criticise the leasehold system for enabling estate developers to establish a ‘stranglehold’ over land acquisition in the city (Nissim, 2013), described as deihcháan bakyùhn (地產霸權, estate hegemony) (Poon, 2011).

Conditions of estate hegemony were strengthened by the HKSAR administration in the early 2000s due to the Asian Financial Crisis, which stalled economic growth and raised unemployment levels in the city, and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome outbreak that debilitated the tourism industry with knock-on effects for the catering, hospitality and retail sectors. To ameliorate the city’s dire economic situation, the HKSAR government introduced an economic recovery model advocating continuous infrastructural construction and consumerist culture. Chief Executives Tung Chee-Hwa (r. 1997–2005) and Donald Tsang Yam-Kuen (r. 2005–2012) claimed that infrastructural development would become ‘an important engine of economic growth and job creation’, thereby stimulating the economy (Poon, 2011). Promoting consumption was believed to facilitate economic growth because when people demand products and services, employment levels and wages in retail (and other related sectors) and the prices of goods will increase, allowing businesses to generate revenue, which is then taxable by the government. To stimulate consumerist activities, the government expanded the potential customer base by granting visas allowing PRC residents to temporarily enter the city, relaxed regulations making it easier for estate developers to lease a lot and shortened the planning and approval times for the construction projects of estate developers (HKSAR Government, 2005: 23).

The success of the HKSAR government’s economic recovery model is contingent on the participation of estate corporations, the driving force behind many residential and retail building projects. Although the infrastructural development initiatives launched by Tung and Tsang are considered public works funded by taxpayers, the boundaries separating public and corporate involvement in such projects are blurred. The construction of public works is often delegated to estate developers (for example, Cyberport), the result of public works such as land reclamation are later used for estate developers’ infrastructural projects (for example, the International Finance Centre) and some completed public works are managed by estate corporations (for example, the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre). Estate developers also play a vital role in encouraging consumption, since they are responsible for the shaping and management of the Hong Kong retail landscape, as seen in the following sections. This economic recovery model has therefore been criticised by Hong Kong youth activists for fostering collusion between the HKSAR government and estate developers (Wong, 2015: 2),⁴ inducing changes to the brandscape that negatively impact upon the everyday lives of the population.

The changing Hong Kong brandscape

To make up for the expense of acquiring land leases, estate developers pass this cost on to the Hong Kong population through increasing prices for residential and retail units. Hong Kong is one of the most expensive places in the world to rent shop space (South China Morning Post, 2013) (see Table 1), which has had a profound effect on the manifestation of the urban landscape in recent years.

Table 1.

The cost of ground-floor retail units as listed in August 2018. Prices vary depending on the size of the property, its location (in terms of district, and whether the shop is on the ground/upper floor), the amenities provided by the space and the trade licences attached to the site.

Location	Size of shop in square feet	Cost per month per square foot in HK$ (US$)	Cost per month for entire unit in HK$ (US$)
Rialto Building, Landale Street, Wan Chai, Hong Kong Island	750	193 (24.6)	145,000 (18,476)
Hollywood Building, Hollywood Road, Hong Kong Island	900	83 (10.6)	75,000 (9557)
Cameron Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon	1000	110 (14)	110,000 (14,016)
Pioneer Centre, 750 Nathan Road, Mong Kok, Kowloon	1183	117 (15)	138,000 (17,584)
Wai Wah Centre, Sha Tin Centre Street, Shatin, New Territories	2553	188 (24)	480,000 (61,162)

Source: PrimeShop (2018).

Disappearing síudim, emergence of the ‘Mall City’

High rents transformed the Hong Kong brandscape by facilitating the disappearance of businesses established in the early to mid-20th century, such as stall hawkers⁵ and síudim (小店, small independent shops). Síudim includes eateries such as chàhchāantēng (茶餐廳, traditional Hong Kong diners), and an array of sihdō (士多, corner stores) selling everything from stationery, hardware and groceries to everyday bric-a-brac. The síudim label may encompass a variety of commercial activities, but these shops share common characteristics. They express attachment to the búndeih (本地, local/locality). Occupying the street-level frontage of buildings, síudim shopkeepers can interact and develop convivial relations with people living and working nearby, and are able to provide services and products in response to the particular demands of that neighbourhood, setting each síudim apart from other síudim in the city (Flyingpig, 2016). Síudim renowned for a specific product or for exceptional service are deemed by the population to be urban landmarks and a locus for social interactions. For example, youth informants based in Yau Ma Tei regularly meet at Wing Fat chàhchāantēng because they are on friendly terms with the cafe owner, who updates them on neighbourhood events and gives them free pastries.

But with retail rents rising, síudim struggle to survive on the brandscape. One youth working in Yau Ma Tei, an ageing working-class district once filled with síudim, stated that the neighbourhood brandscape is drastically changing because ‘rents are increasing […] some síudim cannot rent space and leave. Many spaces are left empty’ (personal interview, 29 December 2011). Síudim relocate to areas with cheaper rent, or close their businesses permanently (South China Morning Post, 2013). The vacated retail spaces and structures are then replaced by large shopping centres constructed and managed by estate developers. Estate developers not only shape the Hong Kong brandscape by controlling rent levels, which forces out small businesses, but also by building their own network of retail centres across the city, each housing dozens to hundreds of shops. This ‘malling of Hong Kong’ began in the mid-1960s when the city underwent rapid economic growth (Lui, 2001), and was accelerated by the completion of the public train network in 1975 allowing malls to spread to distant New Territory settlements, by corporate interest in harnessing the spending power of the emergent middle class during the 1980s and 1990s and by the HKSAR government’s response to the Asian Financial Crisis in the 2000s. As a result, Hong Kong is described as ‘the last emporium’ (Abbas, 2002 [1997]: 142), a wordplay reflecting the city’s former inclusion in the British Empire and its many malls. There are currently over 300 malls in Hong Kong (Al, 2017), earning the city the moniker of ‘Mall-Oriented Complex’ or ‘Mall City’ (Al, 2016: 3).

The proliferation of malls transformed the physical and social dimensions of Hong Kong’s urban landscape. As a space of consumption, malls differ from the ‘ordinary shops on a public street’ because they are insular self-contained environments distanced from the ‘outside world’, designed to solely facilitate consumption (Sack, 1992: 143–144). Despite appearing as enclosed structures, malls have the capacity to reshape surrounding urban space; for example, in exacerbating socio-economic segregation by creating exclusionary enclaves in the city (Connell, 1999), or functioning as ‘sanitary and safe’ civic spaces obscuring the power problematics surrounding the production and consumption of goods (Goss, 1993: 25). In Hong Kong, malls have become an integrated part of everyday urban life, designed to become an entrenched part of the urban fabric, serving as public transportation hubs and merging with residential and office units (Lau et al., 2003). Elements mall in Tsim Sha Tsui is connected to Kowloon train station, and is part of an office and residential high-rise complex. Langham Place mall in Mong Kok hosts offices and a hotel, and is connected to the district community hall and Mong Kok train station (Table 2). As a result, the population’s exposure to such consumerist spaces has increased, so for:

millions of residents and pedestrians, then, entering commercialized areas becomes an inevitability, not a choice … Everyday life is played out in the terrain of the mall, and the private shopping atrium takes on the role of the public square. (Al, 2017)

Table 2.

A sample of Hong Kong shopping malls, noting their year of construction and the estate developer(s) behind the development and management of the project.

Shopping mall	Year mall began operations	Structures within/connected to mall	Developed by	Managed by
Apm (Kwun Tong, Kowloon)	2005	Part of Millennium City, a complex of office high-rises. Connected to buses and trains (local and cross-border lines)	Sun Hung Kai Properties	Sun Hung Kai Properties
Elements (Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon)	2007	Part of Union Square that also houses the International Commerce Centre offices, and five residential high-rises (The Arch, The Cullinan, The Harbourside, Sorrento, The Waterfront). Connected to buses and trains (local, airport and cross-border lines)	MTR Corporation	MTR Corporation
K-11 (Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon)	2009	Part of The Masterpiece, a building comprising the Hyatt Regency Hotel and residential flats. Connected to trains (local lines)	New World Development	New World Development
Langham Place (Mong Kok, Kowloon)	2004	Offices and Langham Place Hotel located above mall. Connected to train (local lines) and to the Mong Kok Community Hall	Great Eagle Holdings Limited and the HKSAR Government Urban Renewal Authority (URA)	Champion REIT (bought from Great Eagle Holdings Limited)
New Town Plaza (Shatin, New Territories)	1985	Connected to buses and trains (local line), and to the Shatin Town Hall, Shatin Public Library and Royal Park Hotel	Sun Hung Kai Properties	Kai Shing Management Services Limited (a subsidiary of Sun Hung Kai Properties)
Times Square (Causeway Bay, Hong Kong Island)	1994	Offices located above mall. Connected to trains (local line)	The Wharf Holdings Limited	The Wharf Holdings Limited

The population’s exposure to consumerist spaces is enhanced by the transformation of public space into brandscapes. By the early 1990s, the colonial government had come to ‘price itself out of the land market’ (Cuthbert, 1995: 298), a predicament the HKSAR administration also faces. Land had become so expensive that the governing bodies could no longer afford to provide public space, transferring this responsibility to estate corporations. Land leases contain a Deeds of Dedication clause legally obliging estate developers to designate a portion of their lots for public access and use, spurring the emergence and spread of ‘privately-owned public space’ (POPS) (Cuthbert and McKinnell, 1997). POPS manifest as plazas and foyers in malls, or as passageways and footbridges connecting retail premises together. Although POPS are supposed to serve public interests, they instead fulfil the economic interests of private corporations, as they are designed to facilitate consumption by encouraging the public to form ‘as many connections to surrounding retail opportunities as possible’ (Frampton et al., 2012: 28). For example, Festival Walk mall in Kowloon Tong provides a public path connecting the nearby university to a train station, but requires pedestrians to walk by numerous shops (Lau, 2012: 47). In Central, the warren of passages connecting retail and office buildings guides the public past dozens of shops, and is covered with advertisements, bombarding the pedestrian with messages to consume. The public have little say in the shaping of POPS, and are rendered into little more than consumers (Tang, 2017).

Limited brand representation, lack of consumer choice

After reviewing the infrastructural changes to the Hong Kong brandscape, attention must be directed towards examining its contents, to see what brands are present in this consumerist landscape. Of interest is the proliferation of ‘mainstream brands’,⁶ referring to brands that dominate and are commonplace in Hong Kong. This includes transnational brands originating overseas, such as Uniqlo from Japan and Starbucks from the US, and home-grown brands that have expanded abroad, such as the Watsons and Mannings pharmacies established in Hong Kong which now have branches throughout Asia. Although home-grown mainstream brands are founded in the city like the síudim, they project an international image to their clientele and ‘do not identify strongly with Hong Kong’, lacking the búndeih attachments of the síudim (Polsa et al., 2006: 180).

Unlike síudim, mainstream brands possess massive financial resources and reserves to afford high retail rents. This is exemplified by the AS Watson and Dairy Farm groups, two home-grown mainstream brands that respectively manage the ParkNShop and Wellcome supermarkets. From their diverse range of business ventures in Hong Kong and beyond, Dairy Farm made HK$156bn (US$20bn) in revenue for 2016 (Dairy Farm, 2017), and AS Watson generated HK$156.2bn (US$19.9bn) in revenue for 2017 (AS Watson, 2018). This means that the ParkNShop and Wellcome supermarkets have access to large amounts of capital, enabling them to cope with rent increases and to continue and even expand their operations. Unsurprisingly, ParkNShop and Wellcome have a pronounced presence in the Hong Kong brandscape, making up 33.1 per cent and 39.8 per cent of the domestic supermarket sector in 2012 (InsideRetailAsia, 2013).

What is notable is that AS Watson is a subsidiary of CK Hutchison Holdings (Hutchison Whampoa before 2015), and Dairy Farm of Jardine Matheson Holdings, which are estate corporations. Most mainstream brands in Hong Kong are entirely or partially owned by estate developers. To compensate for the high cost of land leases and to profit from their lots, estate developers diversify their business ventures towards telecoms, food and drink and more. For example, CK Hutchison Holdings also manages the power supplier Hong Kong Electric, CUP Magazine publishing, the Metro Broadcast radio stations and electronics retailer Fortress. New World Development Company deals with property, hotels and the ALT Logistics Centre which leases warehouse space and offers cargo distribution services, and owns a large portion of public transportation companies such as Citybus and New World bus and ferry services.

Such corporate ventures are presented under different brand names, obscuring their common ownership. Because of this, a university student called Susan says that although there are many shops in the Hong Kong brandscape, they represent a ‘lot of fake choices’ because Hong Kong people are only buying from the same group of estate developers.⁷ Mainstream brands under the control of a small number of corporate bodies face minimal competition, giving them little incentive to reduce the prices of their goods and services. For example, ParkNShop and Wellcome are managed by different estate developers, but allegedly work together to profit from their ‘duopoly’ over the supermarket sector. A 2003 Consumer Council report noted that prices in these supermarkets increased despite deflation in the city, prompting allegations of anti-competitive practices between these brands (Williams, 2005: 248). Such observations led Susan to proclaim that Hong Kong people lack choice regarding who to patronise, and are being ‘chāuséui’ (‘抽水’, drained/taken advantage of) by estate developers (personal interview, 7 June 2012).

Susan’s comments are echoed by a woman in her thirties called Marion, who claims that with the disappearance of síudim combined with the ubiquity of mainstream brands across the city, the population developed a dependence on estate developers for necessities ranging from food and household products to transportation and entertainment. Like Susan, Marion feels that the population has little control over who they patronise, arguing that:

we buy goods from supermarkets owned by these land developers, and our lives have become dominated and controlled by them. There is no way of breaking out of this cycle … the city is béikéuihdeih wuhnsaai [畀佢哋玩晒, completely played by them].

Marion articulates the control that estate developers have over the brandscape, describing how the population is forced to ‘play a game’ with the estate developers where the odds are stacked against them (personal interview, 13 January 2012). Elaborating on her statement, Marion explains that Hong Kong people are trapped in an exploitative relationship with estate corporations. Ordinary citizens are dependent on mainstream brands, and by spending money in these shops they unwittingly reinforce the wealth of the estate corporations managing these brands. In sum, the economic elites are getting richer at the expense of the population, and Marion finds it difficult to see how this unequal dynamic can be contested. But aside from inducing feelings of exploitation, the proliferation of mainstream brands has changed youth perceptions of their urban environs.

Living in an alienating and disorientating city

The dominance of mainstream brands has shaped youth understandings of their socio-economic and political positionality in the city. Youth activists criticise the HKSAR government’s economic model of continuous development and consumption for making land unaffordable, for leading to the commodification of public space, but also for homogenising urban space. This homogenisation occurs on the infrastructural level, because with land being expensive, estate developers maximise their lot capacity by using the same architectural designs, producing high-density environments. Some malls adopt a unique thematic style to differentiate themselves from other malls. For example, the exterior of Elements is rendered in a coppery-orange tone with its interior divided into four ‘element’ (water, earth, fire and metal) zones, whereas K-11 is rendered with geometric glass panes and is dubbed the ‘art mall’ for showcasing artworks on its premises. But beyond the artifice, both of these malls’ layouts are configured using principles of verticality, with shops distributed throughout corridors extending across multiple floors, connected by a series of escalators (Frampton et al., 2012; Shelton et al., 2015).

Feelings of urban homogeneity are strengthened by the recurrence of the same mainstream brands throughout the city. Unlike síudim, mainstream brands rarely tailor their products to the needs of the neighbourhoods they are situated in, offering the same merchandise and services as their other branches elsewhere in the city. Anna Klingmann cautioned that brands using a ‘standardised form and formula … imitating one another in their offerings and aesthetics’ without establishing ‘sensitive connections’ with their localities will induce feelings of place homogenisation, whilst diminishing feelings of place distinctiveness and authenticity, amongst populations exposed to such brands (Klingmann, 2007: 3). Klingmann’s claims are actualised in Hong Kong, with youth activist and social commentator Chan King-Fai lamenting that his generation feel disconnected from their surroundings:

[Hong Kong youths] live their lives day in day out in boring and monopolizing shopping malls … Inside all the malls are the same transnational designer brands, and the shops and food outlets are places with no history, no community connection and no story behind them … What we [Hong Kong youths] aspire to is the reclaiming of the city space. (Chan, 2010)

With malls using the same high-density architectural design and containing the same mainstream brands, every district in the city now looks and feels the same (Abbas, 1997), losing its distinctiveness and becoming ‘anonymous and characterless’ (Abbas, 2002 [1997]: 144). A Ming Pao Weekly article captures the homogeneous infrastructural sprawl initiated by the MTR Corporation, showing that their retail developments in Tai Wai, Tung Chung and Po Lam/LOHAS Park assume the same appearance and harbour the same brands (Chen, 2012). Similarly, youth informants observe how being in Apm mall in Kwun Tong is no different from being in New Town Plaza in Shatin or Times Square in Causeway Bay, because these locations offer the same range of shops. With every district housing a mall containing the same brands managed by the same estate corporations, these areas induce feelings of disorientation such that ‘for a growing number of Hong Kong citizens … the official rhetoric of large-scale development has started to take on the semblance of some ominous, Matrix-like obfuscation of reality’ (Doran, 2011).

Youth activists also feel alienated from the contemporary brandscape, which was created to realise the economic agendas of the HKSAR government and estate developers, and was constructed through a top-down dynamic with the authorities and corporate elites making all decisions. The population is given no opportunity to convey their opinions pertaining to urban development, so for youth activists the brandscape is a symbol of their exclusion from the ‘world building’ process of their own city (Trigg, 2006). Such sentiments are revealed in Chan’s comment about how malls do not contain and convey the ‘story’, the experiences and desires, of Hong Kong people. Echoing Chan’s critique, a man in his early thirties called Kip says that malls were not created by him or for him, and he feels very little affective attachment to these sites. Kip was born and raised in Hong Kong and considers it his ‘home’, but also paradoxically says that it is not ‘his city’ because he has little power in dictating its future development (personal interview, 13 June 2012).

Reconfiguring the Hong Kong brandscape

With Hong Kong now a Mall City consisting of a brandscape catering to the interests of the HKSAR government and estate developers, the question that dominates youth activist discourses is: whose city is it? Responding to their critiques pertaining to the unequal power dynamics imbued within the brandscape, a number of youth activists have, as described by Chan’s statement, mobilised to ‘reclaim’ the city since the late 2000s. More specifically, they are seeking to ‘reclaim’ the right to dictate how the city should manifest (Harvey, 2008) through reconfiguring their relationship to the brandscape and by challenging the dominance of mainstream brands.

Youth activists have employed different methods to reclaim a stake in shaping the Hong Kong brandscape. Youths involved with Occupy Central,⁸ inspired by Occupy Wall Street and European communes, espoused anti-capitalistic ideologies and refused to patronise the mainstream brandscape. They rejected acts of consumption based on monetary transactions, instead relying on donated and recycled items and partaking in dumpster diving for food and furniture. In contrast, youths associated with the Woofer Ten community arts centre focused on allaying the disappearance of Yau Ma Tei neighbourhood síudim from Hong Kong’s brandscape, by producing booklets celebrating the distinctiveness of these síudim, encouraging people to frequent these shops and hosting workshops enabling síudim artisans to demonstrate and promote their craft to the public. Other youths launched independent small brand businesses, such as the Sangwoodgoon farm established in 2010, presenting the population with an alternative brandscape in which to acquire goods, to lessen their reliance on the mainstream brand shops found in malls owned and managed by estate developers.

Yet these youth-led initiatives encountered problems. Occupy Central youths ideologically positioned themselves outside the mainstream brandscape, but in practice they frequented mainstream brand shops for food when dumpster diving did not generate results, and continued to use public transit run by estate developers because there are no other means of transport across the city. And because Occupy Central was deemed an illegal protest by the government and an inconvenience by mainstream society, their activities were often ignored or denounced by the public, limiting their impact on the city’s consumerist landscape. In turn, the documentarian approach of Woofer Ten youths seeking to preserve síudim did not remedy the difficulties imposed by unaffordable rents, and could not prevent these shops from vanishing. And lastly, small brands also face high retail rents, and opt to rent cheaper shop spaces within industrial buildings or are distanced from areas with heavy foot traffic, making it difficult for potential customers to find and frequent their shops. Small brands are also confronted with pricing issues. A Sangwoodgoon youth recalls disagreeing with their distributors on how much to charge for their produce, because whilst Sangwoodgoon wants to sell their crops at a ‘reasonable price’ to encourage the population to buy from small brands, retailers carrying Sangwoodgoon’s produce would mark up the prices to cover the costs of wages, crop transportation and shop rents (personal interview, 9 January 2012). Consequently, Sangwoodgoon’s goods are often priced higher than goods in mainstream supermarkets controlled by estate developers, giving the public little incentive to patronise small brands.

Youth attempts to contest mainstream brands have proved ineffectual, because they cannot escape the influence that the HKSAR government and estate developers have over space in the city. There are limits to how far youths can reject the existing brandscape, and the extent to which an alternative brandscape can emerge and develop, since high retail rents remain an unresolved problem, and it is difficult to avoid goods and amenities provided by estate developers. Because these attempts to contest the contemporary brandscape only emerged in the past few years, it is too early to tell how youth activists will overcome such problems, or whether these obstacles can be resolved at all.

Conclusion

Although the agentic capacity of citizens in Asian brandscapes has been detailed in studies on Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and even China, these observations of brandscape politics have yet to be recognised or applied within literature on Hong Kong consumerism. By examining Hong Kong youth activists’ perceptions and interpretations of the city’s consumerist landscape, this article shows that brandscapes are not merely the stage where the state and corporations impose their ideologies upon ordinary citizens, but are also a resource allowing youth activists to critically reflect upon the pervasive structural inequalities within the locality. Of interest are the reasons why and how youth activists problematise the brandscape, revealed through an ethnographic study examining their experiences of engaging with these consumerist landscapes. It is by appreciating how brandscapes are actually experienced that we are offered a glimpse of how the power imbalances embedded within the city’s consumerist landscape impact upon everyday urban lives.

The first sections of this article illustrate how the Hong Kong brandscape is the product of political interests throughout the past decades. This is exemplified by the use of the leasehold system by the colonial and HKSAR governments to monopolise control over urban space and to charge extraordinary sums for leasing land; and by the HKSAR government’s policy response to the Asian Financial Crisis which encouraged the large retail centres and mainstream brands of estate developers to displace síudim and dominate the city. For youth activists, this contemporary brandscape reflects the unequal power dynamics between the population, the administration and estate corporations. They see it as a symbol of their subjugated positioning within the socio-economic and political hierarchies of the city, and as representative of the population’s exclusion from decision-making processes pertaining to urban development. Realisation of such power imbalances mobilised these youths to ‘reclaim’ control over the brandscape, and more broadly over urban space. Youth initiatives to ‘reclaim’ the brandscape are diverse, with youths refusing the brandscape (Occupy Central), raising public awareness about síudim (Woofer Ten) or creating small brands to suggest an alternative brandscape (Sangwoodgoon). But they all had limited success, because to challenge the control estate developers have over the brandscape, reforms to the HKSAR government’s land policies are required, which necessitates a reconfiguration of the city’s political system, which has historically employed a top-down non-democratic mode of governance. Despite the herculean scale of this task, youth activists – and even mainstream civil society – are increasingly confronting such issues, seen in the recent eruption of protests calling for the government to include and accommodate vernacular voices. Whether such efforts will lead to structural reforms remains uncertain.

Whilst issues surrounding the unequal political dynamics behind brandscapes have yet to be redressed, there are signs that general societal attitudes towards brandscapes have started to change. It was observed during fieldwork in 2017 that the re/up-cycling and DIY movements originally advocated through the food and dumpster diving initiatives of Occupy Central, and a preference for goods produced locally, as seen in the veneration of síudim by Woofer Ten and the production of small brands such as Sangwoodgoon, are now gaining acceptance beyond the confines of activist communities in Hong Kong. Non-activist youths and social enterprises have established platforms featuring goods produced by local independent businesses, exemplified by the HK Department Store and Little Market pop-up events, and by the Jockey Club Creative Arts Centre in Shek Kip Mei which provides space for small brands to regularly exhibit and sell their products. These events have been attended and patronised not only by youth activists, but by members of the public who now find acquiring products that differ from what is offered by mainstream brands to be desirable. How these changing consumer practices will transform the brandscape itself in the long run remains to be seen.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Sonia Lam-Knott

Notes

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