Hong Kong Belongs to Hongkongers is a claim—personal, political, and deeply human.
Written by an American who chose Hong Kong as his home, this book is a clear-eyed reckoning with how a city came to be misunderstood, instrumentalized, and ultimately torn apart by forces far beyond its control. Adam Clermont does not write as a partisan, a dissident, or an apologist. He writes as someone who has lived inside multiple systems; American media, Western politics, and Hong Kong’s legal and civic life - and has learned how narratives are built, sold, and weaponized.
This is a book about identity: what it means to belong to a place that is constantly spoken about but rarely listened to. It is about resistance - not only in the streets, but in language, framing, and memory. And it is about home: how easily it can be turned into a metaphor for someone else’s agenda.
Moving from colonial history to the post-1997 handover, from the failed promises of gradual reform to the explosive confrontations of 2014 and 2019, Clermont challenges the simplified morality play that has come to dominate Western coverage of Hong Kong. He examines uncomfortable truths on all sides: the limits of British rule, Beijing’s strategic calculations, the failures of maximalist activism, and the role of foreign media and governments in amplifying confrontation while bearing none of its costs.
This is not a defense of power. It is a defense of complexity.
Drawing on law, psychology, journalism, and lived experience, Hong Kong Belongs to Hongkongers asks a harder question than who is right or wrong: What was possible—and who benefited when that possibility was destroyed?
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