This book provides a detailed comparative account of the development of citizenship and civil society in Hong Kong from its time as a British colony to its current status as a special autonomous region of China.

Despite or perhaps because of globalisation and internationalisation in the contemporary world, the role of education has become more significant in nation formation. However, whereas in the past its function was to create homogeneity and assimilation, today it must deal with diversity and plurality. The modernist premise of “one nation one state” is being questioned and re-constituted with the notion of the plural national-state. This book explores school processes in Hong Kong under these new conditions. The focus is on investigating how the concept of a national identity of the “one country two systems” policy is developing, and is thus a study of that diversity which all education systems now have to address. The policy aims at facilitating national re-integration and consolidation in the face of an insistence on local citizens’ universal civic rights and the values of liberty, equality, democracy and autonomy. The analysis shows citizenship education in the Hong Kong school system is more a locally-oriented cultural and political process than a transmission of a national ideology. Students learn their values, attitudes and perspectives by engaging and interacting with people within and beyond the school community. They acquire a liberal and democratic national identity which is distinct from that of pan-Chinese state-nationalism in mainland China. The book is thus both a case study of Hong Kong and an analysis of change in the relationship of education, citizenship and national identity in the contemporary world.

Hong Kong: Past, Present and Future first explores the "non-national" features of Hong Kong citizenship by analysing its development in relation to three key features: people's identities, uneven political participation, and the development of civil society.The subsequent study explores ideological detachment from ideas of "nation-ness", if English language discourse is to produce a stable model of Hong Kong identity.The authors examine the discourses of young people and older people pertaining to socio-political issues concerning Hong Kong, reviewing major research studies conducted in Hong Kong on young people's attitudes towards the society.The closing review provides an extensive summary on phonetics and phonology research on Hong Kong English in the past two decades, and also discusses how the codification and standardisation of Hong Kong English would aid in its development.

Hong Kong's 'Umbrella Revolution' has been widely regarded as a watershed moment in the polity's post-1997 history. While public protest has long been a routine part of Hong Kong's political culture, the preparedness of large numbers of citizens to participate in civil disobedience represented a new moment for Hong Kong society, reflecting both a very high level of politicisation and a deteriorating relationship with Beijing. The transformative processes underpinning the dramatic events of autumn 2014 have a wide relevance to scholarly debates on Hong Kong, China and the changing contours of world politics today. This book provides an accessible entry point into the political and social cleavages that underpinned, and were expressed through, the Umbrella Movement. A key focus is the societal context and issues that have led to growth in a Hong Kong identity and how this became highly politically charged during the Umbrella Movement. It is widely recognised that political and ethnic identity has become a key cleavage in Hong Kong society. But there is little agreement amongst citizens about what it means to 'be Hong Konger' today or whether this identity is compatible or conflicting with 'being Chinese'. The book locates these identity cleavages within their historical context and uses a range of theories to understand these processes, including theories of nationalism, social identity, ethnic conflict, nativism and cosmopolitanism. This theoretical plurality allows the reader to see the new localism in its full diversity and complexity and to reflect on the evolving nature of Hong Kong's relationship with Mainland China.

Macao, the former Portuguese colony in southeast China, has a long and very interesting history of cultural interaction between China and the West. Held by the Portuguese from the 1550s until its return to China in 1999, Macao was up to the emergence of Hong Kong in the later nineteenth century the principal point of entry into China for all Westerners - Dutch, British and others, as well as Portuguese. The relatively relaxed nature of Portuguese colonial rule, intermarriage, the mixing of Chinese and Western cultures, and the fact that Macao served as a safe haven for many Chinese reformers at odds with the Chinese authorities, including Sun Yat-sen, all combined to make Macao a very different and special place. This book explores how Macao was formed over the centuries. It puts forward substantial new research findings and new thinking, and covers a wide range of issues. It is a companion volume to Macao - Cultural Interaction and Literary Representations.

Written by three academic specialists on Hong Kong cultural identity, social history, and mass media, this book explores Hong Kong's cultural relation to the Chinese nation and state in the recent past, present, and future.

Scouting in Hong Kong, 1910-2010: Citizenship training in colonial and Chinese contexts, originally issued in 2011 as a hardcover book when the Hong Kong youth movement celebrated its centenary, is republished with revisions in 2024 as a paperback and an ebook. The narratives and analyses developed here covered the "what, how, when and who" and the "why and so what" of the development of the Hong Kong Scout Movement from 1910 to 2010, using a large volume of primary sources. It tells the story of Hong Kong Scouting based the theme of citizenship training for youth and its defining categories, esp. that of race, class, gender, and age, both colonial and post'colonial. The book is also richly illustrated with interesting and instructive images, many of which came from the Hong Kong Scout Archives. The study, originally based on a Ph. D. dissertation, is not meant to be an institutional hagiography. Instead, it is a critical study aimed at both general readers and readers with more specific interests, and should enrich their understanding of the histories of Scouting, youth, citizenship education, the colonies, the British Empire, and decolonization, China and Hong Kong.