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This paper provides the first ethnographic study of spiritual ecology in contemporary Hong Kong. In exploring the life stories of people who wanted to "heal" nature as well as those who were being "healed" by nature through the practice of green living, this paper illuminates the interconnection between self-transformation and social transformation within the green living circle. While the first form of self-transformation occurs when individuals consciously responded to green groups' appeals to cultivating themselves for the environment, the second mode of self-transformation happens unintendedly as people developed an interest in green living. In conclusion, I argue that the spiritual-ecological practices under the umbrella of green living offered people in Hong Kong a means to introspect, re-organize, and even transform their lives during difficult life events and challenging life transition. In turn, the emotional and spiritual experience of self-transformation not only reinforced people's faith in the power of nature, such positive experience was also key to perpetuating their interest and efforts in greening Hong Kong and the world beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Churches in Hong Kong have served as contractors to the state since its British colonization. To secure their political and social privileges, these churches have often been fashioned into apologists for the state. This mentality was not widely challenged until the 1980s. Since the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, some Hong Kong church leaders, theologians, and laypeople have started to articulate a democratic vision for civil society. This paper employs the notion of "religious activism" as an analytical framework to examine the role of Hong Kong Christianity in the pro-democracy movement. The influential voices and actions of Christians in 1984, 1989, 2003, 2014, and 2019 are chronologically summarized. Each political event triggered divergent reflections on the political participation of Christians. This paper offers an analysis of genealogical narratives of Christian activism and offers a prediction on the future of this political participation, particularly under the imposition of the National Security Law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a critical review of the study of masculinity among overseas Chinese. Rather than turning to Confucianism which has been deployed as the "deep structure" for explaining Chinese masculinity, this paper argues that attention should be directed to the Chinese kinship ideology, which will prove to be a more helpful tool in conceptualizing Chinese masculinity. Through ethnographic cases in Taiwan and Hong Kong, I will show how Chinese masculinity has derived from the Chinese kinship system, on the one hand, and how men in Taiwan and Hong Kong ended up expressing Chinese masculinity differently because of the different geopolitics on the other. This paper concludes that the nature and character of Chinese masculinity overseas, after all, hinges upon another two contexts: geopolitics and its relationship with femininity. It follows that Chinese masculinity cannot be studied in isolation but must be considered in relation to contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking the Hongkonger identity as an example of an overseas Chinese identity, this paper reviews the studies of "Hongkonger" identification. The idea of a "hybridized Hong Kong—Chinese identity," raised by media scholar Anthony Fung, is critically examined. I criticize this idea for disregarding the sociocultural context in which it was constructed, specifically the role and political aim of the colonizer, and for overemphasizing the "Other" role of the Chinese. This paper thereby contextualizes the emergence of the Hongkonger identity in the 1970s in the colonial context, examining how the role and political agenda of the colonizer related to the changing consciousness of Hongkongers and the emergence of the Hongkonger identity. In more concrete terms, this paper focuses on how the so-called "MacLehose reform" encouraged the consciousness of the "Hongkonger" as a separate category from that of the "Chinese" by "civilizing" the people of Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between religion and social movements is an important topic in the study of religion and society. This paper uses various textual and online sources to examine the role of Christianity in the anti-extradition bill movement that took place in Hong Kong from April to September 2019. The anti-extradition bill movement, which later evolved into a much wider movement against totalitarianism, has caused churches to grapple with church-state relations in the post-handover era. This paper employs the notion of "public religion" as an analytical framework to examine the process of the "deprivatization" of Christianity in Hong Kong. How does the ongoing contestation, both within and outside the church, reflect the challenges faced by Christianity when entering the public sphere? By answering the above questions, we will be able to explicate the religio-political significance of the protest movement in Hong Kong. 政治與宗教的糾結:香港反修例運動中基督宗教 摘要 宗教與社會運動的關係，是宗教與社會研究中備受重視的課題。本文運用文獻及網上資料，以2019年4月至9月為研究時限，探討基督宗教在反修例運動中的角色。從反修例運動演變成逆權運動，促使主權移交時代的香港教會面對政教關係的糾結。本文以「剬共宗教」作分析框架，檢討香港基督宗教「去私人化」的過程。教會在進入剬共領域時引發的內外爭議，反映出基督宗教面對著何種挑戰?通過回答以上問題，我們將闡明香港抗爭運動中的政治與宗教意義。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor's discourse of motherly love during the 2019 mass protests, examining it in relation to the politicization of Confucianism taking place in China today. This politicization results from a new cult of personality centered on President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan which reinforces patriarchal authoritarianism and familial nationalism through an explicit emphasis on Confucianism and traditional values. Through this process, authoritarian power has been reconfigured and legitimized as Confucian duty, with the result that political leaders are made to appear firm but benevolent parents while the protestors are cast in the role of children requiring discipline. Lam's discourse of motherly love is further complicated by the fact that she is the first woman to assume such a leadership role in modern Chinese history, which further illuminates Hong Kong's struggle against both patriarchal authoritarianism and the gendered legacy of coloniality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though many African and Asian countries share a common history of European colonialism and thus a model of economic development shaped within the aegis of center-periphery analysis, many Asian countries have been able to ride through the burden of center-periphery economics and built more successful political economies than most African countries. This state of affairs has often led many African analysts to point to Asian success stories like China and South Korea for comparative analysis and often see these Asian countries as models of socio-economic and socio-cultural success to emulate. In particular, Africans in the Diaspora, especially Africans in China, tend to compare very frequently the socio-economic and socio-cultural conditions of their host countries with those of their source countries. This paper outlines and discusses how a group of Africans living in Hong Kong and other parts of Asia see Korea and Korean culture through the prism of Korean television dramas, which constitute a popular cultural phenomenon among Hong Kong/Asian youths. Through qualitative and quantitative survey methods, participant-observation, and questionnaire surveys, the paper reports on how African community members of Hong Kong and others think of Koreans. We show that Africans draw a lot of comparisons between Korean and African ways of conceptualizing the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the (re)imaginings of the past by Chinese Americans and their families who came as part of the Hong Kong Chinese diaspora before 1997. Hong Kong is a locale often described as being conflicted with "the politics of disappearance", but the Hong Kong Chinese diaspora provides a rich perspective into complex and nuanced tensions between central and peripheral linguistic and cultural imperialistic fields across time. Drawing upon the sociological work of transnational migration and belonging in Hong Kong, this research explores the discourses of Hong Kong emigres and their young adult and adult children as they discuss their immigration stories, imaginings, and reimaginings of a colonial and post-colonial Hong Kong. The paper focuses on intergenerational conveyance of imagined identities across contexts and languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using empirical and quantitative methods Pentecostal ministers are compared in the three locations of Hong Kong, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. After providing an account of the historical backgrounds of Pentecostal churches in these locations, similarities and differences in the samples may be attributed to environmental or cultural effects. The paper concludes that there is evidence that cultural differences affect the views of respondents in a variety of measurable ways including in their opinion of ecumenical cooperation and in their attitudes to the poor or disadvantaged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the social dynamics in promoting traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) drugs by making them acceptable to biomedical markets. It investigates the Consortium for Globalization of Chinese Medicine (CGCM), an organisation based in Hong Kong in pursuit of advancing TCM, and traces the development of the herbal formula PHY906, a Chinese herbal product intensively discussed at the CGCM that has been tested according to the US Food and Drug Administration's regulation for approval. Departing from accounts on the organisation's success that focus either on its scientific approach or its leader Yung-chi Cheng, this paper argues that it was the synergy between the CGCM and the pursuit of approval for PHY906 that contributed to the regulatory globalisation of TCM. In this process, not only organisations like the CGCM are required to streamline efforts for producing globalised TCM; also researchers are needed who, with cultural commitment, seek for transforming TCM to meet biomedical indications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The link between development and migration has been termed the 'new development mantra'. Studies on the subject have so far mostly focused on economic remittances, and the potential consequences of return migration on democratisation have been rarely touched upon. This article attests the potential of the migration experience to affect migrants' attitudes towards democracy, thus playing an important role in the diffuse support needed for democracies in the stage of consolidation. Based on a survey among 1,000 Philippine return migrants from six destinations, the paper suggests that the migration experience may not only lead to a more critical stance towards the political system of the home country; there are also indicators of lesser support for the principles of democracy when compared to migrants about to leave the country for the first time. The political system of the destination as such seems to be a less decisive factor than the specific freedoms and restrictions experienced by migrants and a potential bias when selecting the destination. The article focuses on return migrants from Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong and Japan, which showed the most distinctive numbers in support of democracy or changes therein when compared to first-time migrants heading for that destination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing countries are increasingly facilitating migration as a way of generating remittances for the home economy. The Philippines serves as a paradigmatic example, inaugurating a labour export scheme in 1973 that has grown each year and resulted in nearly 25 per cent of the labour force working abroad. The institutionalization of this labour export policy, along with changes in citizenship and voting laws, has led to the increasing deterritorialization of the Philippines state, with concomitant implications for democracy and democratization. This deterritorialization presents both opportunities and challenges for the state. Among them are the possibility of securing sustained remittances and the necessity of securing democratic legitimacy from a globalized polity. This paper traces the evolution of this labour export policy and analyzes the effects of state discursive strategies designed to secure democratic legitimacy. To further this analysis I present the results of a survey conducted among Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong (n=691). The responses indicate the discursive strategy of 'national heroes' has been effective in that majorities of OFWs view themselves as 'heroes of the nation.' However, OFWs also view themselves as making sacrifices for the nation and have concerns about government commitments to protect the rights and interests of OFWs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to enrich the literature on East Asian development by focusing on one critical difference between Hong Kong and the other NIEs – Hong Kong's rapid deindustrialization since the mid-1980s. We shall argue that while global restructuring gives rise to upgrading opportunities for various localities, it is the process of capability formation associated with the local business model that determines whether or not a locality is likely to benefit from these opportunities. We focus on the electronics industry as a crucial case and based on archival data and case interviews. We show that a strategic inertia associated with the "subcontractor model" locks Hong Kong firms in the OEM role within the buyer-driven global chain. Analyzing the evolution of local firms clearly illustrates the "imprinting" effect of the start-up environment on internal organizational structure and subsequent strategic choice. We conclude from this restructuring experience that sustainability [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hong Kong's colonial institutions — including its judicial system — have had a profound influence upon the development of the territory during the past 150 years. A factor that has been attributed to Hong Kong's success as a center of both finance and commerce is its well-established common law system, where the Judiciary provides an institutional basis for safeguarding basic rights. Specifically, this included a failure by Great Britain to extend the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights to the territory. It is also evidenced by a similar unwillingness to enact local legislation that would prohibit racial discrimination, which it is obligated to do under the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, which has been in effect since 1969. The paper argues that since the return to Chinese rule in July 1997, the actions of Hong Kong authorities have evidenced a disregard for their obligations under international covenants, as well as for judicial independence.