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In the last two decades of the twentieth century, interactions among Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China have undergone extensive change, moving from intensified confrontation to closer economic exchange. After Taipei legalized travel to the mainland in November 1987, new economic opportunities were opened up to both sides of the Strait. This change aroused plenty of discussions, with the main discussion centered around the possibility of an economically integrated Greater China . The great volume of trade across the strait and the huge amount of investments on the mainland by Taiwanese entrepreneurs have created a dense economic relationship that is potentially beneficial to further integration. In view of this, many scholars and political elites in the region have expressed their optimistism on the formation of Greater China through many of their discourses. The usages of terms such as “Greater China,” “Chinese Economic Area,” “Common Chinese Market,” or “South China Economic Sphere” all reflect these scholars’ eager expectation. However, the concerns for each side’s security, sovereignty, and domestic politics hinder such development, and the expected spillover from economic corporation into a higher level of integration has not yet appeared. In this paper, I would try to answer why the economic integration is unlikely in Greater China. And I would like to argue that the current economic interaction and given cultural similarity cannot lead to economic integration in the absence of political understanding. On the surface, comparative advantages come from complementary economic development on both sides of the Strait , geographic proximity (reducing transportation costs) and cultural affinity (reducing transaction costs in investment and technology transfer). However, fundamental sovereignty and identity differences remain. In the first part of this paper, I would like to apply Keohane and Nye’s framework, interdependence, to argue that the growing trade and investment volume flowing across the Strait does not imply interdependence. Since interdependence is a necessary antecedent to economic integration, integration is unlikely without any interdependence. Even if the ongoing trend can lead us to cross the threshold of interdependence, the political concerns are still able to undermine further institutionalization. In the second part of this paper, I would like to focus on the concept of cultural affinity which is supposed to be a plus for integration. However, given current political considerations, what we have are perceived hostility and alienated identification, and these factors reverse the plus to a minus for integration. In the third part, I would like to emphasize contested sovereignty, identity, and security tensions which can be seen as the prerequisites for the progress of economic integration. According to Joanne Gowa, security matters, however, enlightened by David Laitin’s study on leadership, I argue that the government/leader’s political concerns towards sovereignty and identity can play the most important role in hindering the progress of negotiation, furthermore, the future process of integration. I would like to conclude that since the political issue, especially sovereignty and identity issues, is not settled yet, it is too optimistic to expect the spillover effect that brings the current thriving economic interaction into a more institutionalized economic integration in the Greater China region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mutual help, a concept consisting of giving help and seeking help, is considered one of the most important aspects of social capital which contributes significantly to controlling social problems such as poverty, unemployment, crime and delinquency, and others. This paper explores and describes the culture of helping, seeking help and mutual help in Hong Kong and Shanghai which are two major cities of China. Initial findings showed that Hong Kong citizens scored alarmingly low on the indexes of helping, seeking help and mutual help. In Shanghai, it is observed that the situation is similar, but for different reasons. To build a community with mutual care and mutual help, individuals, professionals and the government have important roles to play. It was proposed that polices in building social capital, developing social enterprises, encouraging tripartite partnerships among the business, government and the community should be reviewed; the school curriculum may include the promotion of mutual help; more resources should be allocated for the development of existing and new mutual help groups; and public education on helping, seeking help and mutual through the mass media should be implemented. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the outbreak of SARS, the Hong Kong Government has been harshly criticised by its citizens. When responding to these criticisms, some government officials, especially those at the managerial level, defended that the tragedy caused by SARS should not be ascribed to the Government. They argued that the efforts to control this severe epidemic had been greatly affected by the ‘crisis’ nature of the disease. .x000d..x000d.Through investigating Hong Kong’s infection control policy from the perspective of resources distribution, the paper aims to find out whether the officials' argument is correct. In other words, is it true that in the policy domain of infection control, the nature of a disease is an important factor with substantial impact? When the nature of disease changes, will the dominant pattern of coordination in the aspect of resources distribution be affected and consequently change? With the research findings, the paper will show that, when the knowledge of the nature of a disease gradually increases, the activities of, as well as the linkages between, the infection control institutions will be correspondingly adjusted. As a result, the dominant pattern of coordination will be different. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on corruption often assumes that economic agents misuse public office to advance their economic interests. It ignores the possibility that the government may also have an incentive to use public office to buy economic agents’ support. This paper is intended to tease out these convoluted causal mechanisms by examining Hong Kong firms’ political connection and financial performance. Hong Kong is an interesting case to study because it experienced a change of sovereignty in 1997. The birth of a new regime provides a natural experiment that allows us to identify and track the evolution of the government-business relationship in a society. With rich financial data on all listed firms in Hong Kong over a period of ten years, I perform various statistical tests, which show that political connection does not lead to better firm performance, though good firm performance does predict whether a firm can become part of the government’s ruling coalition. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the major factors behind the rise of legal mobilization against the post-colonial Hong Kong government. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The administrative structure in Hong Kong appears to be overly stable in the face of changing circumstances, yet punctuates occasionally by substantial volatility or accumulated problems, which is unexplainable by incentive structures alone. This paper applies and extends the punctuated-equilibrium theory to analyze the distributional patterns of administrative reorganizations in post-war colonial Hong Kong. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, town planning in Hong Kong serves the primary task of promoting economic growth. This strategy and the philosophy behind it had come under attack since the 1970s for failing to afford sufficient protection to the city's heritage, but decision-makers did not address this perceived "deficiency" until the 1990s when, having ignored calls for heritage preservation for decades, they suddenly felt not only compelled to listen to the conservationists, but also to make new laws in favour of the conservationist agenda. Before a major institutional change in 1991, bound together by dense, interlocking ties, the dominant consensus was highly resistant to alternative agendas throughout the 1980s. Rapid unravelling of this structure in the 1990s substantially weakened its capacity to withstand such challenges and, in fact, created opportunities for advocates to bring down the "monopoly" of growth-oriented thinking in town planning. The case study shows that network structure has an instrumental role in deciding how alternative views are received in policy communities. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What role does teaching in democratic theory have in a democratizing nation? Using the example of Hong Kong, we develop a framework for teaching and analyzing democratic theory in democratizing contexts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the year 1997, the United Kingdom officially ceded control of Hong Kong over to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), establishing Hong Kong as a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the PRC. Being distinguished as a SAR gives Hong Kong a fifty ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides empirical assessment of the source of corruption by using panel data of 11 East Asian economies. I also review the anti-corruption strategies in Hong Kong and Singapore to explain the anomalous features of these two economies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]