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The purpose of this paper is to study the development of one country two systems of Hong Kong over two decades and examine its challenges and prospect. One country two systems is pragmatic and compromise principle and social arrangement for Hong Kong under China sovereignty. It has served to resolve some issues related to the future of Hong Kong after the end of British Colonial rule since July 1, 1997. There are lessons to be learnt as the merits and flaws of the system have been identified in the study as perceived from the perspective of social development.

The paper is based on quantitative methodology. Data of public opinion polls conducted by various local universities on the development of one country two systems of Hong Kong have been employed in the study. Based on the data obtained from the relevant survey, different aspects of social development of Hong Kong under one country two systems has been examined and explored. Data are current and up-to-date to reflect the social mood of Hong Kong people toward one country two systems over the years.

The challenges and prospect of one country two systems of Hong Kong over two decades since the change of sovereignty have been identified in this paper. Hong Kong has remained the moist free market and the third financial center in the world. However, the high degree of self-autonomy as stipulated in the Basic Law has been fading way. There is social discontent of Hong Kong people on social and political grounds and there are high sense of mistrust to both Hong Kong SAR (HKSAR) government and the Central government in Beijing. This will provide a guideline to the government for improving the situation.

The study is based on data obtained from various public opinion conducted by several local university on the development of one country two systems and how Hong Kong people feel about it. The data are current and up-to-date. However, there will be variation of findings as social mood and perception of Hong Kong people toward one country two systems may change due to the changes of social and political events. With these limitations, one needs to be careful while drawing the conclusion. Yet, the over trend of social development of Hong Kong can be seen.

The study will provide an overall view and assessment of one country two systems of Hong Kong over two decades after the change of sovereignty since July 1, 1997. The findings and discussion of social mobility, quality of life, income disparity, social and political movement and ethnic identity and its changes in recent years of people in Hong Kong are rather revealing. It will provide a reality check and yardstick for people who are concerned about Hong Kong society and its people under China sovereignty.

The study and its findings will provide a useful guideline for people who are concerned about how Hong Kong people live under China sovereignty. Hong Kong to most of Hong Kong people is on longer a borrow place living under the borrowed time. The former British Colonial rule has been replaced by HKSAR government rule under China sovereignty. There is a high degree of mistrust toward both HKSAR government and the Central government in Beijing. People in Hong Kong keep fighting for democracy and high degree of self-autonomy. Hence, Hong Kong is still a free and open society under China sovereignty.

The paper contributes an original study on the development of one country two systems of Hong Kong under China sovereignty as perceived from the perspective of social development. There are important findings on social mobility, income disparity and issues of ethnic identity of Hong Kong people. The lessons of Hong Kong will provide an interesting case for people who care concerned about how people living in a former British colony has transformed the society into a thriving civil society under China sovereignty.

The majority of Hong Kong filmmakers have pursued co-production with China filmmakers for having the Mainland market at the expense of local styles and sensitivities. To many critics, the two-part series of Ip Man and Ip Man II provide a paradigmatic case of film co-production that sell the tricks of Chinese kung fu, regurgitating the overblown Chinese nationalism against Japanese and kwai-lo. The purpose of this study is to rectify such observation of the Ip Man series.

The authors read the series deconstructively as a postcolonial text in which Hong Kong identity is inscribed in the negotiated space in between different versions of Chinese nationalism.

The analysis points to the varying subversive features in the series from which Hong Kong’s colonial experiences are tacitly displayed, endorsed and rewritten into the Chinese nationalistic discourse whose dominance is questioned, if not debased.

This paper advances new research insights into the postcolonial reinvention of kung fu film and, by implication, the Hong Kong cinema in general.

This paper aims to challenge the longstanding cosmopolitan interpretation of Hong Kong, particularly why this global city fails to absorb China equally through its great inclusiveness and flexibility as before. On the contrary, rising tensions, conflicts and resistance could be founded between Hong Kong and China these days.

By using Hong Kong cinema as an analytical lens, this paper seeks to throw light on the cinematic landscape of post-1997 Hong Kong and, by implications, the overall destiny of postcolonial Hong Kong under Chinese rule.

The postcolonial Hong Kong, although lacking a symmetric status and equal weight, remains an active player with Chinese hegemony that appeals to the newfound market power to consolidate their systemic control on the city. By acting upon itself with the subjectivity and reflexivity from itself, postcolonial Hong Kong takes many actions to do justice that criticizes the political and ideological correctness and challenges the contemporary national authority from one-party rule.

This paper demonstrates a new in-betweenness in the relation to the making of postcolonial Hong Kong. This paper advances insights into a postcolonial reinvention of the politics of disappearance that remains underexplored.

This paper aims to provide data on the self-perceived state of sustainability consciousness of first-year Hong Kong students.

Within a mixed-method research design framework, the authors conducted 787 questionnaires and collected 989 reflective narratives of first-year students of a university in Hong Kong, who were enrolled in the General Education course.

Attributed to students’ immersion in compulsory sustainability education modules within liberal studies programs in secondary through higher education (HE), the quantitative results revealed an increase in the self-perceived knowledge and behavioral aspects of sustainability consciousness of Hong Kong students and their low engagement in sustainability-related civic, campus or action groups. However, qualitative results revealed three aspects of the students’ sustainability consciousness: intentionality to make a difference; engagement with complex questions about identity, society and nature; and eschatological perspectives, which included imaginative, future-oriented and action-oriented approaches to critical reflection, supported by the rhetoric of hope, promises and commitment for better future.

The study provides insights into the challenge of implementation of the United Nations-based sustainable development model in the Hong Kong educational system through the formal liberal studies curriculum. It advances the field by constructing a momentum for conceptual changes in sustainability education research toward design of the non-linear and culturally sensitive frameworks for sustainability implementation in HE. This allows to utilize universities’ unique capacities for fostering students’ sustainability consciousness in a continuous and systemic way.

This chapter discusses the social mobility and the political consequences of three education events in Hong Kong: the extension of free and compulsory schooling in 1978, the construction of universities after the Tiananmen repression amid popular unrest, and the creation of two-year degree programs after Hong Kong became a Special Administrative Region. The chapter shows the repercussions of these events for civil society organizations and political parties. The chapter first reviews the historical context for state-society relations created by the current Special Administrative Region and the former British Crown Colony. It presents two alternative perspectives on the impact of higher education for civic development and social mobilization, perspectives rooted in neo-functionalist and in neo-Weberian sociologies of education. Next, the chapter discusses the actors and agents of political change in Hong Kong. Inferences are drawn about the social integration of new immigrants from Mainland China, as well as the opportunities for women and for lower-income students, based on analysis of 35 years of Hong Kong Census data (1971–2006). The chapter concludes by raising questions about the future ability of governments and parties to define the postsecondary policy agenda, an agenda that now threatens to escape from government control and become a flash-point of popular mobilization.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the cause and nature of the 2014 Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong and the role of the youth in the movement.

This paper analyzes the relationship between the serious social and economic problems in Hong Kong, of which the youth often feel the greatest impact, and the demands for a real democratic system made by the Umbrella Movement. It examines the structural roots of the Movement and the role of youths in it.

The Umbrella Movement is not simply a movement of anger and frustration, but also a movement reflecting some of the serious and legitimate concerns of the people of Hong Kong, especially the youth, who have a high and growing sense of local identity and citizenship. The movement links the major policy and social problems of the post-Handover era to its root cause, which is an undemocratic political system combined with crony capitalism. Unfortunately, the approach taken by the government toward the Movement has been to emphasize its illegal nature and to attempt to divide the opposition by adopting “united front” strategies that pay no serious attention to the problems the Movement has raised. Eventually, this approach will only lead to an outcome of “strong government, weak society” where strong government action in opposition to reformers will weaken the cohesion of society and expose the actual weakness of the state that has no popular legitimacy, going on to create more chaos as a result of its weak governance.

This paper will help both scholars and policymakers to understand the structural and root causes of the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong and explain why Hong Kong is suffering from a serious problem of weak governance.

As far as governments are concerned, it is the nationality of a person, usually reflected in a passport, that shows whether the government has a duty to protect that individual and whether the person owes obligations to the state. Hong Kong is unusual in that for many people there, passports are primarily seen as documents that offer safety and security. It is not unusual for people to possess two or more passports. The purpose of this paper is to examine attitudes toward passports on the part of Hong Kong people, formed by their unique experience.

This paper analyzes key documents, such as China’s Nationality Law and a little known document, “Explanations of Some Questions by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress Concerning the Implementation of the Nationality Law of the People’s Republic of China in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.” The paper also looks at the Loh case of August 2016, involving a Canadian man who wanted a Hong Kong passport for his 11-year-old Canadian-born son, and the Patrick Tse case, where Hong Kong tried to strip a teenager who possessed German nationality of his Hong Kong passport.

The convenience of travel to China with a Home Return Permit seems to outweigh any sense of loyalty to an adopted country in the west, or the realization that the use of a document identifying its holder as a Chinese national means that she/he would not have any consular protection. It is also ironical that the Hong Kong Government should maintain the difference between nationality and ethnicity at a time when the Chinese Government is doing the very opposite, playing down the status of nationality while magnifying the importance of so-called “Chinese blood.”

This paper examines a topic that has not been widely studied but is likely to become more important in the years to come as China’s impact on the rest of the world increases. The nationality status of ethnic Chinese will increasingly become an issue as the flow of travel between China and other countries rises and Chinese immigrants continue to take up foreign nationality. While this issue is of special importance to Hong Kong, its impact will extend to countries around the world, in fact, to wherever Chinese persons are to be found.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the curriculum developments of civic education in three emerging Chinese societies: China and two Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macao, which are increasingly under the impacts of globalisation in this information world.

The analytical method is used and the following are identified: active and global civic education-related learning units and key themes and main contents in official curriculum guidelines and updated textbooks related to civic education.

A major finding is that elements of both active and global citizenship, such as participation in the community and understanding about the world and thus forming multiple identities, can be found alongside their emphasis on enhancing national citizenship. Thus, ideas of global citizenship and multiple levels of citizenship from local, national to global start to develop in these three Chinese societies.

The implications of such findings of both active and global citizenship, as well as multiple identities, found in these three Chinese societies could be huge for informing civic literature and sociological point of views, in particular, pointing to the next generations receiving a broadened and transcended notion of multiple levels of citizenship, apart from local and national citizenship.

The significance of this paper is that it argues that ideas of active citizenship in terms of community participation and global citizenship have been found in China, Hong Kong and Macao civic education curriculum and textbooks because of the expectations placed on students to compete in a globalized world, though national citizenship and patriotic concerns have been primary concerns. Globalisation makes the world society by impacting on these three Chinese societies for active and global citizenship, though they still retain their particular curricular focusses.

The key concepts to be explored in this article include the blurring boundary between “indie” and “pop”; the significance of digital media in contemporary music industry and the distinctive socio-political nature of indie music in Hong Kong. To a large extent, it discusses the social functions of music – a subject discussed by Simon Frith (2007), a leading scholar in popular music studies.

In order to expound on some observations of the connections between music cultures and socio-political development in Hong Kong, a selection of musical works by indie musicians will be looked into closely.

A focus of discussion will be given to the difference between mainstream Cantopop and indie music in a way that the latter mentions socio-political matters overtly while the former downplays sensitive political issues, particularly in the post-colonial era after the handover of Hong Kong to mainland China in 1997.

Originality of research can be evidenced by the author's textual analysis of the musical styles and lyrics produced by various local indie artists' musical works through primary sources.