Abstract: Since the 1990s, Hong Kong and overseas scholars have borrowed the idea of the "third space" to investigate the issue of cultural identity in Hong Kong literature, which has brought about three typical views: "the margin theory", "the crevice theory" and "the theory of imagining Hong Kong moving North", all based on the inherent contradiction between the Hong Kong nativeness and Chineseness. In order to transcend the framework of "Hong Kong and China", Zhu Yaowei shifts his vision to the framework of "East and West, local and global, orientalism/postcoloniality and global capitalism". The above discussion shows that political factors play a significant role in restraining the long-term discussion of the relationship between Hong Kong literature and Chinese literature. In the process of interpretation those discussions have displayed academic flaws and ideological biases, which, in theory and in reality, can hardly be convincing.

Key words: the 1990s, Hong Kong literature, studies of cultural identity, nativeness, Chineseness, inherent contradiction