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This article examines the complex process of symbolic boundary-making of 'Hongkonger' cultural identities through the lens of the controversial 2015 film Ten Years, which is a celebrated omnibus production comprised of five short segments that picture a dystopic end to Hong Kong's cherished way of life in the year 2025. The article is premised on an interdisciplinary approach engaging with cultural studies and film studies. On one hand, it explores how Ten Years functioned as a boundary object, a vast terrain within which cultural identities of what it means to be a Hongkonger are constructed, banished, imagined, and performed under the rubric of bodily performatives. On the other hand, it offers blurring encounters into unfamiliar and precarious territories where the formation and formulation of Hongkonger identities and sense of belonging are negotiated, evacuated, and inhabited. In the end, the key tropes in Ten Years suggest that boundary work in post-Umbrella Hong Kong affectively negotiates with state-level nationalism advocated by the central government in Beijing through establishing and reformulating notions of 'localism' and Hongkonger identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An iconic characteristic of Hong Kong's social unrest in 2019 was the establishment of the so-called "yellow economic circle"—a networked system of retailers and consumers linked by shared political values. Movement sympathizers chose to consume products from retailers perceived as supporting movement aims and boycotted retailers thought to be in favor of closer ties with China. This research focuses on the challenges of the yellow economic circle through the lenses of class and consumer nationalism. Drawing on social media posts and interviews with pro-democracy individuals from different socio-economic backgrounds, we highlight challenges to the sustainability of the "yellow economic circle." Class-based purchasing power represented an obstacle to the success of the yellow economic circle; however, it was not the biggest challenge. Instead, an inherent incompatibility between the movement's aims and the means for achieving these aims posed the biggest hurdle. Navigating this incompatibility represented an opportunity for movement participants to develop innovations in thinking about consumer nationalism and the role purchasing power may play in participation. We conclude that the way participants defined consumer nationalism determined whether the yellow economic circle could be understood to engender a shared "Hong Kong identity" and eliminate existing class differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is Chinese nationalism? Is nationalism the most effective framework for understanding how people in China are making sense of the world today? These are among the questions raised by Allen Carlson in his 2009 article 'A flawed perspective: the limitations inherent within the study of Chinese nationalism', which developed a provocative critique of decades of scholarship. Acknowledging the insights of Carlton's questions while disagreeing with his proposed conceptual shift towards national identity construction, I propose a further shift towards national identity deconstruction. In doing so, I combine the political insights of Hong Kong nationalists with the theoretical insights of deconstruction. This shift redirects the study of Chinese nationalism away from an abstract conceptualisation of nationalism to a more precise definition of the phenomena under study, as well as moving the debate on potential impacts away from international relations to consideration of the complex dynamics of China's ethnic politics. New definitions of both nationalism and minzu (of minzu zhuyi) are developed, reconceptualising the phenomena heretofore known as 'Chinese nationalism' as external symptoms of underlying tensions between conflicting identity narratives. In conclusion, the practical implications of this reconceptualisation are considered, exploring potential future paths for the People's Republic of China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been proven that language is a symbol of culture and politics. This study investigates the cohort effect of Hong Kong's handover on the language spoken in adulthood based on the 2006 and 2011 Hong Kong population censuses. We find that Mandarin is more likely to be used by Hong Kong natives who were exposed to the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997 during their school‐age years, especially the generation that were exposed during their primary‐school years. This cohort insisted on speaking Mandarin, even when the political environment changed from 2006 to 2011. Our evidence reveals that the political change that occurs during one's school‐age years has a long‐term impact on an individual's behaviour in adulthood. Further discussion indicates that exposure to political change such as regime transfer during school‐age years impacts an individual's national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Native-place associations have played an indispensable role in the global migration of ethnic Chinese. Although there has been growing attention to their political role in advancing the Chinese state's interests, few studies have looked into how they are organized and how they operate vis-à-vis the state. This article focuses on post-handover Hong Kong, where native-place associations, despite their long presence, are still growing in number and sophistication after the 1997 handover. It posits that native-place associations there are forming a "cultural nexus" through which the Chinese state fosters political mobilization in support of its interests and policies. Based on an original set of event and biographical data, it shows that native-place associations are consolidating into a massive network connected by power-seeking elites. It also demonstrates how these associations seek to renew the significance of native-place and national identities. The findings point to how native-place associations may serve as a powerful cultural space for the Chinese state to project its influence offshore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the lens of sport, this article explores the trajectories of local and national belonging in various forms and degrees, which, in turn, bespeak the evolving Hong Kong–China relationship in the larger socio-political context of post-handover Hong Kong. With an eye to cross-border sports competitions (e.g., the Hong Kong-China football rivalry), sport-related events (e.g. gala performance and sports demonstrations by Chinese Olympic gold medalists in Hong Kong) as well as their media representation and repercussion, this article examines the multifarious articulations of local and national identifications registered in the athletes' and the spectators' performing bodies, their mediated images and embodiments. The ultimate goal of this article is to tease out the body and identity politics embedded in the production, mediatization and narrativization of local-national relations in an array of official and non-official discourses disclosed through sports practice and viewership partaken in different scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article surveys the challenge to China's "one country, two systems" principle that has underpinned Hong Kong existence and prosperity since 1997. Domestic dissatisfaction with structural inequalities, disillusionment with power-sharing and governance issues along with external geopolitical factors exacerbated a strong anti-Chinese Hong Kong nationalism to ignite the 2019 crisis. This article provides an analysis of the issues at stake, and maps out the dilemmas and challenges facing China and Hong Kong for the foreseeable future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on Hong Kong's history have viewed the 1967 riots as a watershed in the formation of Hong Kong identity in the 1960s and 1970s. However, by considering MacLehose's social policies as the main contribution to Hong Kong identity formation and defining China as 'the Other' in that process, the prevailing view overlooks the multifaceted nature of Hong Kong identity formation and the continuity of Hong Kong's historical development between the mid-1960s and the 1970s. This article questions that view by investigating the Cultural Revolution discourse in three rarely examined yet representative Hong Kong youth and student journals: Undergrad (Xueyuan), Chinese University Student Press (Zhongda xuesheng bao), and Pan Ku (Pangu). Through examining the three publications' interpretations of the Cultural Revolution during nationalist moments and movements in Hong Kong—the 1967 riots, the Chinese Language movement, the Defending the Diaoyu Islands movement, and the 'Learning about China, Caring about Society' campaign—the article discusses the ways in which the Cultural Revolution profoundly affected educated youth and students by contributing to the mutual development of their national and local identities at the intersection of political, ideological, cultural, and geographical perspectives. By documenting the local practices of the Cultural Revolution and the concept of 'serving the people,' the article demonstrates that Chinese nationalism, along with Maoism and the Cultural Revolution, played an important role in the formation of Hong Kong identity in the colonial setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why have separatist sentiments increased in Hong Kong despite of China's growing economic attractiveness? This question is critical for China–Hong Kong relations. However, few studies have explored it from a comparative perspective. This study compares Hong Kong and mainland college students' national identities by making a series of interlocked surveys and interviews from 2012 to 2016. It shows that Hong Kong students have a much lower sociopolitical identity with China, which proves to be the primary cause for their separatist tendencies. Although they hold a comparably strong pan-Chinese economic identity, it does not strengthen their sociopolitical identity as it does for mainland students. This can be attributed to their post-materialist framework through which they are unlikely to believe that economic development alone can bring sociopolitical improvements. The findings imply that China faces serious difficulties in turning its economic strength into political charm in societies with strong post-materialist values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigates the episode of Hong Kong student movement in the 1960s to 1970s inspired by the charismatic idea of the Chinese Nation. Unlike most other cases of nationalist politics in colonial societies, Chinese identity politics in Hong Kong not only failed to challenge fundamentally the legitimacy of the British colonial state. It also did not proselytise Hong Kong people towards Chinese national identification and preoccupy Hong Kong society with the Chinese Question thereafter. Propitious colonial modernisation experience acting upon a diasporic population, which found it hard to establish meaningful rapport with the Chinese Nation, had attributed to the eccentric trajectory of Chinese Nationalism in Hong Kong. Local societal and cultural formations were then the eclectic solution to the ideational paradox of colonial modernity and Chinese Nationality in Hong Kong, which, however, remains problematic on its own, and connects closely with the lingering coloniality observed in this post-colonial society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces how citizenship in Hong Kong is constructed via familial tropes that privilege sameness and a politics of identification; this rhetorical representation, I argue, not only perpetuates a jus sanguinis model of citizenship that privileges ethnic blood ties, but also allows the state and the dominant citizenry to justify neoliberal and racist practices that exclude brown bodies. By analyzing the citizenship claims made by the marginalized South Asian community in Hong Kong and the subsequent responses they receive from the mainstream public, I demonstrate that racialized populations face a rhetorical double bind: on the one hand, they must deploy the familial metaphors commonly used by the existing citizenry to demonstrate their sense of belonging, but, on the other hand, such tropes reinscribe them in a power hierarchy that undermines their subjectivity. This case study illuminates that while it is commonly seen as a viable rhetorical tactic for marginalized rhetors to resist and participate, the repurposing and redeployment of dominant tropes have significant limitations as they are constricted by power structures that are staunchly in place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper utilizes the controversies in China’s Hong Kong over the non-ethnic representatives to explore the debates on naturalization and the negotiation of nationality. China disallows split loyalties and all non-ethnics must abandon the passport of their original countries in the stringent process of naturalization. Problematically, Hong Kong, a former British colony and a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People’s Republic of China, has less rigid requirements on citizenship, effectively disregarding a person’s ethnicity. Hong Kong citizenship then gives grounds for non-ethnics to naturalize as Chinese and represent Hong Kong in FIFA tournaments such as the World Cup as holders of Hong Kong SAR passport without an overseas nationality or citizenship. This research takes notes from the interviews with naturalized players and online discussions to explore the arguments favouring or rejecting naturalized representatives in Hong Kong against the background of its complex dynamics with mainland China under the principle of ‘One Country, Two Systems’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Given the fraught political relationship between Hong Kong and China for the last 10 years, China has been attempting to integrate the semi-autonomous region economically and ideologically. This article uses rhetorical analysis to examine how China strategically adapts its nationalist rhetoric in the Hong Kong education curriculum, in an attempt to integrate Hong Kong citizens politically and ideologically in a transnational context. It argues that China's rhetorical and political project in Hong Kong had failed because the Chinese government had underestimated cultural power behind Hong Kong's cultural history and its self-constructed identity as a transnational site. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study investigates Hong Kong primary teachers' perceptions of moral, civic and national education, which may have an impact on how they prepare students to become 'good citizens' through classroom instruction. Moral and Civic Education (MCE) has been an overall goal of Hong Kong's education system since 2001, while Moral and National Education (MNE) was proposed as a new subject in an effort to introduce a patriotic agenda in 2011. Teachers play essential roles in nurturing students to become 'good citizens' because they are the key figures in implementing education and curriculum policies in schools. Therefore, gaining a greater understanding of teachers' perceptions of MNE provides insights into the extent to which teachers are prepared to contribute to the patriotic agenda as part of a revamped civic education curriculum. While there are complex factors affecting teachers' receptivity to curriculum change, an understanding of factors that influence teachers' perceptions of patriotic education could be valuable for school stakeholders (such as policymakers, educators and researchers), not only in Hong Kong but in other places (such as the United States and the United Kingdom), when they consider what can be done to influence students' attitudes towards citizenship. Utilizing pilot data, this study reports Hong Kong teachers' attitudes towards patriotic education through the proposed new school subject of MNE. The findings indicate that 'perceived others' support', 'perceived concerns of MNE' and 'non-monetary cost-benefits' were the significant predictors of teacher receptivity of MNE. The results suggest that when teachers had concerns about patriotic education, they were less likely to support its implementation, while if they had the support of others they were more likely to support implementation of MNE. More importantly, teachers who perceived that patriotic education can cultivate more well-rounded students were more likely to support the implementation of MNE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Hong Kong's reunification with the People's Republic of China in 1997, debates about patriotism have erupted from time to time in Hong Kong. Considering Hong Kong's socio-political background, the feelings and attachment of Hongkongers towards their motherland are unsurprisingly complex. We therefore need a multidimensional concept to capture the complexities of Hong Kong patriotism. Based on survey data, we propose that the term ‘liberal patriotism’ best describes the type of patriotism in Hong Kong society, which is that love of the homeland and the state are qualified by liberal democratic values. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reports the findings the researchers obtained from a study of prominent civic education teachers in Hong Kong with regard to how they perceived national identification and the nurturing of national identification through civic education in Hong Kong schools. A qualitative method of data collection by in-depth semi-structured interviews was engaged. Original quotes are given whenever necessary so that readers can understand how the arguments in the article were derived and can arrive at their own conclusions. The teachers in general believed that national identity is ethnicity-based. But they agreed that national identity should coexist with other local and global civic identities. All of the teachers agreed that their schools worked assiduously in nurturing national identity. However, they also pointed out that a top-down compulsory national education programme, aimed at glorifying the nation, would not work in Hong Kong. Alternatively, students would accept civic education with a fair representation of the nation that allowed for critical judgment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the handover of sovereignty from the United Kingdom to China in 1997, the post-colonial government in Hong Kong initiated a nation-building project aimed at boosting nationalism and patriotism. Drawing on documentary analysis, this article analyses how the dominant bloc subtly manipulates a Chinese identity rooted in local traditions through its national education policy, and how it seeks to foster hegemony via several discursive strategies including normalization, naturalization, homogenization, utilitarianization, glorification, moralization, and eclecticism. This article also draws attention to the alternative discourses by the civil society in opposition to the hegemony project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research shows multiple articulations of national identity by Hong Kong's people since the handover in 1997. An issue of contention is whether the dichotomy of China as the "other" vis-à-vis Hong Kong's local identity still prevails in the context of top-down renationalisation and new developments in transborder spatiality. While the existing literature has illustrated Hong Kong people's steady growth of pride and affinity for national symbols, re-examination of three representative surveys (2006, 2008, and 2010) demonstrates that resistance to these cultural icons is also growing. Furthermore, while previous studies have revealed that a "cultural-economic China" is more welcome than a "political China," the three surveys mentioned above indicate that even the former is meeting growing local resistance. The otherness of China hence should be re-visited in light of the ambivalence of Hong Kong identity. The theoretical and social implications of this sense of the otherness of China are also significant. Specifically, this article argues that the ambivalence of Hong Kong people's articulation of national identity is closely connected to the uneasiness generated by encounters between China and Hong Kong in recent years: controversies and contentions arising from national education, the transborder flow of population, and the provision of goods and public services for non-locals. In this paper, I shall look at the development of local and national identities in some states of contested equilibrium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of Olympic studies focus on the relations of the Olympics with nationalism, globalism, cosmopolitism and Olympism. However, the majority of these ‘-ism’ studies focus on the impact of the Games on national integration in the host countries or cities; its transnational connections contribute to the creation of a transnational society and its global consciousness cultivates cosmopolitism. Most studies do not investigate the ‘colonial (re-)connectivity’ of the Olympic Games, which has the potential to affect people's attitude towards the Olympic Games and the host countries or cities. This study attempts to analyse the concept of ‘imagined community’ by measuring how people in Hong Kong (the colonised) display their awareness, motivation and expectation towards the British community (the coloniser) in hosting the London 2012 Olympic Games at the pre-game level. The results, based on a sample of 312 people in Hong Kong, highlight the multidimensionality of identity among different age groups. The London 2012 Olympics was not capable of creating the ‘imagined community’ to foster a coloniser–colonised reunion, but it somehow provided an identity-neutral platform for Hong Kong people to display situational, conditional or even pseudo-nostalgia for the colonial era. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study, based on analysis of survey data collected in 2011 in Taiwan and Hong Kong, shows that cultural identification explains the choice of country and national identities and that Chinese nationalism emerges as an important factor connecting the minds of people in mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2008, the Olympic Games were held in Beijing, capital city of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). As Special Administrative Regions (SARs) of China, Hong Kong and Macao, despite existing as separate sporting entities under the principle of ‘One Country, Two Systems’, were surprisingly enthused with what Chinese people called an Olympic nationalism. Using a cognitive–affective–conative attitude framework, this paper examines how secondary school students (n=1391) in the two SARs constructed ‘imagined communities’ through their attitudes toward the Beijing Olympics. The average mean scores and Cohen’s Effect Size (d) were calculated between the two groups of students to reveal similarities and differences. The study concludes that, regardless of three different flags under one country, Hong Kong and Macao shared the Olympic spirit and nationalist sentiment with the rest of the Chinese in the motherland. Internal competition within the Chinese community did not necessarily exacerbate division and, indeed, resisted transcending the two systems in a one nation approach. On the contrary, the profound Chinese culture displayed throughout the Games and an appreciation of international solidarity united students in the two regions and provided a watershed in their understanding of their Chinese identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an analysis on the issues of national identity, citizenship, and belonging by investigating the national education debate in Hong Kong, China. It discusses the association between pro-Beijing organisations, educational institutions, and the government. It explains the activism against red indoctrination, which is a rare collaboration between various forces against national education.

This paper examines the use of Chinese traditions for the formation of a felt Hong Kong identity and a national identity among students in the personal and social education curriculum before and after reunification with China in 1997. This paper argues that the addition of China elements to the curriculum after reunification contributes to the continuous ambiguous identity of students, which is consistent with the results of various poll surveys about the civic identity of Hong Kong people in a larger context. This is because the personal and social education reform after reunification assumed a simple correlation between the patriotic feelings of students and their knowledge of China. It does not question how the promotion of an intensely unifying ‘cultural identity’ as political commitment is differentiated from the day-to-day ‘cultural experiences’ of students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on research exploring antecedents of organizational commitment in non-Western contexts. Using identity theory as a foundation, we develop a model which posits that the relationship between the strength of one's ‘national’ identity and affective and normative commitment is mediated by justice perceptions. Using a sample of indigenous Hong Kong employees, we found that perceptions of distributive, procedural and interactional justice mediated the relationship between the strength of one's Hong Kong ‘national’ identity and normative commitment; while perceptions of distributive and interactional justice mediated the relationship between the strength of one's Hong Kong ‘national’ identity and affective commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The present study examined longitudinal changes in Asian (i.e. Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan) school students’ national identity before, during and after the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Participants were 946 secondary students aged 12–17 years from Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. This study revealed that residence, especially the hosting city, acted as the most significant factor in longitudinal changes and contribution to the national identity among the three regions. The time factor (before, during and after the Games) was only significant when it interacted with residence. These findings suggest that residence (hosting city) provided the greatest contribution in national identity before, during and after the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The gambling film in Hong Kong cinema is usually perceived as a highly commercialized genre and receives scant attention in film studies. This article analyses two of the most popular gambling films at the Hong Kong box office, namely Du Xia ZhiShanghai Tan Du Sheng/God of Gamblers III - Back to Shanghai (Jing Wong, 1991) and Du Shen 2/God of Gambler's Return (Jing Wong, 1994). It explores the political allegories in both films, which were produced at a time when there was collective anxiety over the return of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China in 1997 and the search for identity became all the more acute. God of Gamblers III articulates the difficulties faced by Hong Kong people in imagining a national past,prior to the territory's return to its 'motherland'. God of Gambler's Return articulates the liminality and fluidity of Hong Kong identity through its highlighting of the cross-strait tension between mainland China and Taiwan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the construction of Chinese nationalism through song performances on China's national network, China Central Television (CCTV), with a particular focus on the accommodation of Hong Kong singers. It contributes to the body of knowledge on televised musical performances in Asia, a subject on which there is limited research. I examine two performances by Hong Kong singers on CCTV's travelling programme The Same Song in 2007, the year China celebrated ten years since the end of British sovereignty over Hong Kong. I argue that singers who are identified as hailing from Hong Kong perform different but overlapping ideological roles for Party-state television. They appear to offer audiences a sense of freshness and modernity, and therefore help the Party-state project an image of open-mindedness and inclusivity. In addition, their songs serve to ease audiences into paying attention to the more overt ideological messages presented through the programme's dialogue segments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both ongoing practice and the theory of interaction ritual chains imply the significance of the contribution that ritual makes to group solidarity, such as national identification. This contribution is in need of empirical examination as in this study, which surveyed 1,788 schoolchildren in Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China. The results show that, controlling for earlier national identification behavior (within the previous year) and other predictors, ritualized interaction in an activity for national cause (within the previous 6 months) manifested both linear and quadratic positive effects on current national identification sentiment. The effect was stronger for children who previously displayed lower national identification behavior. These results favor the use of ritual to promote national identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Prior to the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, the civic education were characterized by denationalization and depoliticization. After the Joint Declaration, many of the conflicts emerged between the national interests advocated by the nationalistic camp and the Hong Kong interests promoted by the Liberal camp in the newly politicized Hong Kong not only unfolded that citizenship and national identity conceptually compartmentalized into unrelated ideas but also redefined civic education in such a way as to juxtapose and include both citizenship education and national education.. The teachers' paradigms of the "China Today" module were explored because the module is directly related to both citizenship education and national education. Aim: This study is to examine teachers' paradigms of the 'China Today" module through their national attitude and their implementation in informal and nonformal education. Sample: One secondary teacher taught the module of "China Today" a year ago and three secondary teachers are teaching the same module. As for methods, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were used to assess the teachers' perception and practices. Results: Data revealed that the national attitude of the CSS1 teacher can be described as a cultural patriot; the CSS2 teacher, critical patriot; the CSS3, teacher, cultural nationalist or cultural patriot, the CSS4, critically cultural patriot. Conclusion: The critical and cultural stances are not unrelated. "Critical" implies something about the evaluative framework of the teachers, while "cultural" understood in Confucian, World citizenship, Democracy or their combination terms, could be the philosophical foundation of an evaluative framework. In other words, the CSS1 teacher predominantly adopted the Confucianism as his evaluative framework in patriotism and world citizenship in nationalism; the CSS2 teacher, the concept of world citizenship in both patriotism and nationalism; the CSS3 teacher and the CSS4 teacher, Confucianism in both patriotism and nationalism. Only the CSS2 and CSS3 teachers carried out the informal and nonformal education. Thus, motivational and behavioral components of citizenship as volition are not yet part of the CSS1 and CSS4 teachers' (cognitive) evaluative frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language-in-education policies within post-colonization, nationalism, and globalization are currently key concerns of the sociology of language as they impact language teaching and learning in multilingual contexts. Despite these concerns, studies of educational language policies for ethnic minorities, in this case, those of South Asians in Hong Kong, are rare. This paper looks at colonial and post-colonial language policies in education with an eye to shedding light on continuity and change of linguistic capital for this group. Given the complexity, contextuality, complicity, complementarity, and continuity of the approach, the research analyzes the influences of educational language policies concerning South Asians, especially at primary school level, in pre- and post-colonial times. It argues that while English linguistic capital predominates during both pre- and post-colonial periods, this predominant status has begun to be shared by Cantonese, which has emerged as the ‘high’ language in post-handover Hong Kong and forms the main barrier for South Asians to learn Chinese as a second language to enable upward mobility in Hong Kong society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the return of sovereignty to China in 1997, national identification with China has been a priority in Hong Kong SAR government's educational policy agenda. There are increasingly more national education activities which aim at cultivating a Chinese national identity. Academic literature about national identity has pointed to identities change in relation to evolving events and circumstances. Based on perception studies in education, this study employs case studies of how primary school teachers perceive their national identity since 1997, and how they teach national education. Qualitative research methods of in-depth interviews on target samples of Hong Kong's primary school civic education coordinators and examination of relevant National Education school documents in their respective schools are employed. The findings reveal that under the proclamation of a Chinese national identity, there are differences in emphases on their national identity and they have diversified teaching strategies on National Education. These findings have implications for understanding the meanings of national identity and teaching of National Education in Hong Kong in this global era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper [1] reports on an ethnographic field research conducted in Beijing in 2007, with an attempt to examine the cognitive and affective orientation dimensions of a group of Hong Kong students toward the Beijing 2008 Olympics and their negotiation of national identity. In 1997, China resumed sovereignty over Hong Kong under the principle of 'One Country, Two Systems,' continuing a long history of Hong Kong people struggling with their national identity. Study tours to Mainland China had been arranged as an extension of national education, with the Beijing Olympics as the main theme. With field notes and focus groups, this study found that the tour provoked in the students an interesting mixture of pride and skepticism and also reinforced their 'insider/outsider' identity crisis. This article concludes that the debate over the use of Beijing Olympics as national education reflects an intrinsic paradox of the principle of 'One Country, Two Systems.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The year 2008 marked the 11th anniversary of Hong Kong's return from the UK to the People's Republic of China. In this decade, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government has repeatedly emphasised the importance of the development of national identity and patriotism in school education, and has at the same time introduced diverse cultural values into the school curriculum. This article explores the dynamics and complexity of the relationships between the state, globalisation and nationalism in Hong Kong that are re-shaping music education in response to contemporary socio-political changes. It argues that Hong Kong school music education has made a gradual cultural shift towards globalism and nationalism, and away from the Westernism that has dominated Hong Kong music education since before the change of sovereignty on 1 July 1997. The article concludes with a discussion of how music education might juggle two pairs of relationships in the curriculum: between global and national cultures; and between the education of cultural values and nationalism in Chinese music. There is pressure to rethink teacher education in terms of the need to be aware of the socio-political environment in which it operates, and within which it makes music education socially relevant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nationalistic songs are not rare in the pop music tradition of Hong Kong: from the anthemic, heroic-sounding songs as well as sentimental, folkish ballads, generally known as ' minzu gequ', in the 1970s and 1980s, to what I would call the neo-minzu gequ reinvented in trendier R&B or rap numbers during the turn of the century. For me, a cultural studies student and a cultural producer (lyric writer), the power of minzu gequ lies precisely in its tendency to privilege a particular performance of Chineseness by the tactic of excluding the marginal, be they foreign (mostly imperialistic) enemies or domestic dissidents, as well as the possibility of cultural resistance it offers. In 1980 I sang one; in 2005 I penned one. This essay is an inquiry of how 'I' have been dealing with issues of Chineseness through the pop lyrics I have created during the 're-nationalization' process of Hong Kong. Employing the tactics of writing against the grain and writing with a twist, I try to trouble dominant narratives on Chineseness. A central theme of this essay is to resist simplicity, to resist certain political or ideological attempts to simplify and nullify complexity into certain dominant narratives - by mobilizing the autobiographical 'I', in this case, embodied in the duality of cultural studies student-cum-producer. An autobiographical approach is adopted as a response to two major issues of cultural studies: the danger of theoreticism and the question 'What do cultural studies do'. This essay is a chronicle of how I, a lyrical writer, try to write what I have read from cultural studies into a cultural product. It is also an occasion to interpellate me, a cultural studies student, to read the product back into cultural studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background/Context: For centuries, the notions of citizenship and citizenship education have been associated with the nation-state and civic elements. However, since the late 20th century, these traditional notions have been challenged by globalization. In the discourse of globalization, citizenship, and citizenship education, some scholars suggest a simplistic replacement or shift from national citizenship to global citizenship, regional citizenship, or local and group identities. Against these simplistic, single-leveled approaches is the argument for both the continuing importance of nation-specific characteristics of citizenship and the strong need to diversify the nation-state-oriented and civic-specific framework to form multileveled and multidimensional ones. They accommodate individuals' engagement in the various domains of human activities and their memberships at various levels, ranging from individual to community, local, national, and international or global ones. Some scholars have advocated a multidimensional model of citizenship education by regrouping human relationships and activities into four major dimensions--personal, social, spatial, and temporal--which can intersect with various levels in the multilevel polity. However, these general, static frameworks are not backed by strong empirical evidence and do not explain the complexity of interplay among different actors at the same level and/or between levels. Purpose: The purpose of the article is twofold. First, it aims to provide empirical evidence for the general framework of multileveled and multidimensional citizenship education by assessing students' views of citizenship in a multileveled polity with reference to Hong Kong and Shanghai in China. Second, with the help of the comparative study, the article is intended to supplement the general framework by proposing a theoretical framework that explains the complex interplay of different actors in their choices of citizenship elements from a multileveled polity. Setting: The study took place in three public junior secondary schools in Shanghai and three aided secondary schools in Hong Kong and assessed their students' views of the global, national, local, and personal-social domains of multiple identities in a multileveled polity. Research Design: The study adopted a mixed methodology of observations, questionnaires, and interview surveys to collect data. Data Collection and Analysis: Data are drawn from questionnaires completed by 1, 402 students attending Grades 7-9, and 38 interviews with principals, teachers, and students from both societies between 2002 and 2003. Conclusions/Recommendations: The study shows that although students of Hong Kong and Shanghai were aware of having multiple citizenships, some of their views of the relative importance of and the interrelationships among, four dimensions of citizenship differed. The patterns of their perceptions of multiple citizenships reflect similarities and differences in the organization of citizenship education between schools in Hong Kong and Shanghai, the nation-state's influences on local citizenship curricula, and local governments' development considerations in remaking collective identity. With the help of the comparative study, the article supplements the general framework by proposing a theoretical framework for interpreting citizenship and citizenship education as dynamic, context-bounded, and multileveled social constructions reinvented through the intertwined interactions of different actors in response to social changes, including globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of enduring cultural differences between Hong Kong and Mainland China, the development of Hong Kong peoples' national identification since the handover has not been a straightforward process. Under this situation, sport becomes an important arena in which Hong Kong people negotiate their preferred understandings of nationalism and national identification. This essay argues that the values and ideals of modern sport constitute resources for Hong Kong people to construct normative conceptions of sporting nationalism, in which local values and general understandings of nationalism are embedded. Empirically, the essay examines an online discussion following a prominent soccer match between China and Japan in 2004. Online discussants constructed a vision of civilized sporting nationalism to critique the behaviour of the 'nationalistic' Chinese fans. But this vision was also contested by others. The implications of the findings on national identities in Hong Kong and the relationship between sports and nationalism are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hong Kong is a paradox in democratization and modernization theory: it has a vibrant civil society and high level of economic development, but very slow democratization. Hong Kong's status as a hybrid regime and its power dependence on China shape the dynamics of civil society in Hong Kong. The ideological orientations and organizational form of its civil society, and its detachment from the political society, prevent civil society in Hong Kong from engineering a formidable territory-wide movement to push for institutional reforms. The high level of civil liberties has reduced the sense of urgency, and the protracted transition has led to transition fatigue, making it difficult to sustain popular mobilization. Years of persistent civil society movements, however, have created a perennial legitimacy problem for the government, and drove Beijing to try to set a timetable for full democracy to solve the legitimacy and governance problems of Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hong Kong has long been seen as a racially harmonious and ethnically homogeneous (predominantly Chinese) global city in spite of the hundred-year British colonization. But since 1997 its ethnic front may have gradually changed. It is not simply because the new Chinese nationalism promoted by the state has led to the (re-)emergence of ethnic antagonism that had been suppressed by the colonial racial segregation and hierarchy in the past. The negative feelings of Hong Kong local Chinese towards the new mainland arrivals have been on the rise. The influx of immigrants from mainland is Beijing's conventional policy to stabilize its regained territory. On the other hand, Hong Kong Chinese are (un-)consciously positing themselves or being positioned as 'ethnic minority' in relation to China. Being given a high degree of autonomy and other privileges as do ethnic minority groups in the mainland, postcolonial Hong Kong is anxious to preserve its own cultural uniqueness by distancing itself from other Chinese cities. Meanwhile, after a decade of debate, the draft legislation of race discrimination was introduced in the end of 2006 to make racial discrimination, harassment and vilification unlawful and to prohibit serious racial vilification. Being far from encompassing and with too many exceptions, the bill may, however, uncover deep-rooted bigotry in the society and even intensify the city's internal otherness which could be constitutive of a new sense of identity for postcolonial Hong Kong. This paper studies the implicit assumptions and attitudes about ethnicity found in post-1997 Hong Kong gangster films by recasting what these texts have said so as to reveal the ideas about ethnicity that are always already there (that is, the language of boundary-setting, differentiation, and discrimination). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay is a general overview of Hong Kong's historical and cultural developments from the vintage of 2007. It first discusses Hong Kong's identity question in light of the city's recent history, analyzing its origins and formation after the early 1970s (but the issue subsided after 1997). The second part of the essay deals more speculatively with Hong Kong future in relation with its past and present in terms of a conjunction of regionalism, nationalism, globalism, and cosmopolitanism - and their competing claims. It concludes by evolving several possible scenarios and a course of action based on Hong Kong's collective memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the visceral level, Hongkongers have an unmistakable sense of their identity and rooted common culture. But the colonized mind suppresses the local mind to think outside of borrowed terms when it comes to 'rationally' describing the big picture of Hong Kong. They often revert back to rehearsed cants - Hong Kong is a place where east meets west, an island of barren rocks turned economic miracle, a free economy, a modern city ... This is the colonized mind of myopic self-congratulating winners. From the cold war era to the age of neo-liberal globalization, the colonized mind had internalized uncritically all tenets and values of modernization, westernization, developmentalism, free trade globalism, Thatcherism and, increasingly prominent after 1997, Chinese nationalism. By the early 1980s, neo-liberalism had already trumped late colonialism, not only neutralizing but also normalizing the latter. The colonial government was regarded as a commendable surrogate on borrowed time. Coloniality was no longer fore-grounded. The colonized mind turned subtlest at this point and was all the more untouchable. As a result, in spite of a strong identity and a vibrant local culture, Hong Kong has not developed its own theoretical language of self-articulation and that has impeded its self-understanding. A decolonized mind would entail, simultaneously, dampening Hong Kong's enthusiasm to think in terms of received ideas that have either been flattering or humiliating; broadening its cosmopolitan outlook to be more inclusive and trans-cultural; deconstructing or critically canvassing all pre-packaged discourses that have been mobilized to describe Hong Kong from the outside; casting a wider net for new and alternative thinking to feed its changing needs, and from its mongrel viscera constructing its own problematics and language of alterity. That could be messy. It challenges the neat neo-liberal self-understanding that has purported to explain its past successes, and it piques the jealously guarded nationalist discourse of an overwhelming sovereign power. It is a contestation Hongkongers may feel hesitant to commit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay draws on the author's experience as a cultural consumer and cultural producer in the field of popular music in Hong Kong. Inspired by the author's earlier exposure to minzu gequ, the essay explores the complex relations between such nationalistic pop songs and the performances of identity, particularly in the context of the political hand-over of Hong Kong to Beijing. The author continues to reflect on his own entanglement with constructions of Chineseness when he, as a professional lyric writer, was asked to reproduce on similar nationalistic themes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at how Hong Kong theatre is expressing the city's relationship to globalization and its own position within a changing international framework. The performances feature the city responding to challenges of globalization and nationalism by resorting to various means of global connectivity. The impact of globalization on presenting the ultralocal, the national, and the global on stage will be examined. These are responses to internal factors such as Hong Kong theatre history and conventions, as well as reactions to external factors such as the resumption of sovereignty over Hong Kong by the People's Republic of China in 1997. Hong Kong theatre dexterously negotiates the conflicting claims of localism, nationalism, and globalism to create a unique Hong Kong identity as a capitalistic Special Administrative Region within the communist People's Republic of China. Vignettes of the Chinese diaspora can also be found, with people converging in and diverging from Hong Kong, trying to respond to calls for modernity and globalism without loosing Chinese identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the resumption of Chinese sovereignty in 1997, the Hong Kong Government has introduced a new national education project which aims at building nationalism and patriotism. With an active involvement of the state and civil society in promoting national education in recent years, there have been certain drastic changes in the school system - reforms in the curriculum with more weight to national identity and China's topics, more nationalistic or patriotic extra-curricular activities and rituals, and more training for teachers to conduct national education. Informed by a Gramscian notion of hegemony, this paper analyses the advent of and struggles over the national education policy and illustrates the collaboration and contests among various groups in the nation-building project - with the controversies over display of the national flag and liberal studies curriculum as examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to describe the Hong Kong (HK) school curriculum, especially the general curriculum for civic education and other social subjects, in relation to the political events of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, the 1989 Tiananmen Square Incident, and the return of HK's sovereignty from the United Kingdom (UK) to the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1997. This paper will argue that since 1984, the school curriculum of HK has been marked by tensions brought about by political cultures shaped by the UK and the PRC, the bureaucratic mechanisms of which are used to make sure that those curriculum contents that are judged to be politically correct are taught in school. Over the last two decades the school curriculum has been depicted as being shaped by the emergence of the nation-state and the transfer of sovereignty. Granted that political and national education forms part of the school culture, the question of how to shape students to be patriotic through the curriculum will continue to be contentious. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the representation of Chinese identity in museums in the People's Republic of China, comparing this briefly with the portrayal of local and national identities in Hong Kong and Taiwan. In particular, the article looks at the implications for museums of the shift in emphasis within state ideology from socialism to patriotism - a shift that has been particularly marked since the early 1990s. Museums in contemporary China are officially designated as 'bases for patriotic education', but the content of the 'patriotism' that they are meant to promote remains in many respects vague or problematic. One of the key tensions here is that between a deep-rooted assumption of equivalence between 'Chinese' and 'Han' culture and history, and the multicultural reality of the contemporary People's Republic - including as it does a range of non-Han groups such as Tibetans, Uighurs and Mongols. The progressive abandonment of socialism has in some ways exposed these contradictions more starkly in recent years. Meanwhile, the homogenous and totalising official vision of Chinese identity in general, and Han identity in particular, is contested either at the popular or the official level (or both) in the largely Han communities of Hong Kong and Taiwan. In a rapidly commercialising and modernising China, the promotion of a state-centred patriotism has become a key instrument for the regime in its efforts to preserve its legitimacy, and museums represent a key element in this strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facing the trend and pressure of globalisation, the history curricula of Hong Kong and Shanghai have been undergoing reforms in order to better equip the youth for coping with rapid contextual changes. At the same time, there have been attempts to reposition nationalism in the changing contexts. This paper aims to compare and contrast how the forces of nationalism and globalisation affect, and are re-presented in, the contents of the junior secondary history curricula of the two cities, with a view to exploring the convergent and divergent trends of development in the two systems (capitalist and socialist) within one country. It is expected that the findings will shed light on the continuities and changes in the junior secondary history curricula of the two cities, and explore possible alternatives for the improvement of history education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author looks at the cinematic representation of Chinese nationalism in the works of director Tsui Hark of Hong Kong, China. He argues that Tsui's depiction of Chinese nationalism is influenced by Hong Kong's mode of living. This thought is used to eternalize the illusion that there is always a kind of natural or innocent form of national devotion, identification or attachment.

Argues that an analysis of the current popularity of Hong Kong's low cuisine, which includes traditional village food and homestyle eating venues, contributes to understanding how local residents have reacted to cultural, economic and political change and how they have refashioned identities in the post-handover society. Examination of two different kinds of low cuisine, puhn choi or basin food and si fohng choi or private kitchen food; Discussion of changing foodways in Asia and in Hong Kong society; Significance of the life histories and changing situations of these southern Chinese low cuisines.

The mass pro-democracy protest in Hong Kong for the first time raised doubts about the "one country, two systems" model that was adopted by Deng Xiaoping to unite Hong Kong with mainland China in 1997. This has considerably alarmed the People's Republic of China (PRC) whose nationalist ideology is underpinned by its policy of successful reunification not only with Hong Kong but, in the future, with Taiwan. In fact, the rise of a distinct Hong Kong identity contests the "one China" principle. This exposes the weakness of the notion of Chinese nationalism which defines the current ideology of the PRC and gives the Chinese party-state its legitimacy and enables it to survive. This study looks into how a Hong Kong identity has emerged and contests the notion of Chinese nationalism today. It also examines how China attempts to impose its notions of nationalism on the Hong Kong identity. The present crisis in Hong Kong thus represents a clash between Chinese nationalism and the Hong Kong identity. In essence, what China needs is a new definition of nationalism which, instead of submerging the "other," can try to build a plural identity in which competing identities coexist and do not clash. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the People's Republic of China used Hong Kong's reversion in 1997, a reluctant project at first, as an opportunity to articulate its national aspirations in the post-Mao era. Of special interest is the shift of the Chinese view of Hong Kong from one of ideological degradation to one of kinder, gentler and more contextualized appreciation. Chinese attempts to refashion Hong Kong's image in the 1980s and 1990s attested to two salient features of Deng Xiaoping's reform regime: the decline of Marxist ideology and the resurgence of nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]