This article seeks to elucidate the intersecting processes of colonialism and nation formation in the subject formation of Hong Kong women. The analysis is drawn from a study of individual Hong Kong women who, from the early 1990s on, have launched development projects in China with a focus on gender. For these Hong Kong women, Mainland women represented both what they considered China to be lacking and what they envisioned a modern Chinese nation to be. By showing how these Hong Kong women inadvertently identified with the British colonial discourse of “East meets West” in representing themselves as liberated subjects uplifting the “oppressed” Mainland women following Hong Kong’s reunification, the article illuminates the different and differentiating effects of colonization on women under colonialism. It also shows how women are not simply objects acted on by the nation but are also subjects engaged in narrating the nation.
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