Between Dominance and Rising: The Role of Status Considerations in United States’s Hong Kong Policy, 1997–2023

After the 2019 Anti-extradition Amendment Bill Movement, the United States’s Hong Kong policy experienced significant changes. The change is closely related to the escalating rivalry between the United States and China. This article investigates the role of status considerations in the United States’s Hong Kong policy since 1997. The authors introduce entry-level and in-depth interpretive analyses to examine 3 Hong Kong–related legislative acts and 44 reports from the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, which is part of the U.S. Department of State. Wendtian constructivism, status anxiety and prospect theory are introduced to construct a conceptual framework that emphasises status considerations as a key factor in the United States’s Hong Kong policy. The findings indicate that the United States, as a dominant power in the international hierarchy, is likely to experience status anxiety in confronting China’s rise across status dimensions (economic and military capabilities as well as prestige), prompting a more aggressive approach to its China strategy, which will subsequently influence its Hong Kong policy.