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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]