FIELD INTERVIEW / HONG KONG
李予信
Political figure
Hong Kong · 2025 February
Politics / Rule of Law / Civil Society / Democratic Development
A graduate of the Chinese University of Hong Kong who entered politics after university and participated in the 2019 District Council Election.
CONTEXT
Why I Wanted This Perspective
Before this conversation, I was investigating how public policy is experienced through work, institutions, and everyday choices. This perspective was useful because it could complicate the question rather than settle it. I wanted to understand where professional experience, personal observation, and broader policy conditions aligned, or did not align.
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
Questions I Asked
01 Why did you decide to participate in the 2019 election, and what did its results mean to you?
02 How do you understand the introduction of the National Security Law and the way “subversion” has been defined and applied?
03 When the pro-democracy primary led to accusations and charges, how did you respond? Had you anticipated this possibility?
04 What did the dissolution of the Civic Party mean to you, and how did it affect your view of elections as a means of creating political change?
INTERVIEW RECORD
What We Discussed
01 / THE 2019 DISTRICT COUNCIL ELECTION
We discussed his participation in the 2019 election, the democratic camp’s large gains, changing public opinion, and the government’s response afterward.
Key Finding — Elections can reveal major shifts in public opinion, but electoral results alone do not determine what political change follows.
02 / NATIONAL SECURITY LAW
Our conversation examined the law’s introduction and questions surrounding how “subversion” is defined, where its legal boundaries lie, and how courts interpret them.
Key Finding — Understanding a law requires examining not only its written definition, but also how its boundaries are interpreted and applied.
03/ GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY
We explored transparency, accountability, freedom of speech, and the tension between national-security concerns and public expression.
Key Finding — Accountability involves more than formal government structures; transparency and space for public expression are also part of how citizens interact with institutions.
04 / PERSONAL ADVICE
The conversation ended personally: stay consistent, develop good habits, make room for life outside research, and keep investigating the questions that interest me.
Key Finding — Sustained curiosity depends on consistency, but also on maintaining interests and routines beyond academic work.
FIELD REFLECTION
What Changed in My Thinking
BEFORE THE INTERVIEW
I approached Hong Kong largely through formal structures: elections, the Basic Law, political parties, and legislation. I tended to treat these institutions as the primary way to understand political change.
WHAT COMPLICATED IT
The conversation made me more cautious about treating concepts such as “rule of law,” “accountability,” or “political participation” as abstract ideas. Their meaning depends partly on how legal boundaries are interpreted and how people encounter institutions in practice.
AFTER THE INTERVIEW
I left Hong Kong with a broader question. Instead of asking only whether a political or legal institution exists, I became more interested in how that institution functions in practice and how people living within the system interpret it.
That distinction—between institutional design and institutional experience—became one of the questions I carried into my later field research.