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This paper examines foreign involvement in Hong Kong's 2019–20 protests. It focuses on the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) and local supporters' accusations that foreign 'black hands' fomented chaos on the streets of the city. The paper argues that these accusations are partly a consequence of actual external involvement in the tumult. However, this factor alone does not explain Beijing's advocacy of the 'black hands' thesis. The CCP's perceptions of the role of foreign forces in the social unrest have also been shaped by mirror imaging in the context of Hong Kong's Cold War history as an intelligence and covert action frontline, as well as the city's contemporary socio-political attributes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the dynamic performance of subway transportation systems. A three-layer model, consisting of a rail layer, a train layer, and a passenger layer, is proposed to describe the structure and operation of a metro system. Two parameters, namely, time efficiency and maximum load ratio, are proposed to assess the transport efficiency and the train utilization rate, respectively. Case studies of the metro networks in Beijing, Tokyo, and Hong Kong show that the time efficiency decreases nonlinearly with the increase of vehicle resource and passenger demand, whereas maximum load ratio varies in an opposite manner. For the three metro networks under study, the Tokyo metro system has the highest time efficiency when passengers adopt a shortest-path (SP) routing strategy, while the Hong Kong system’s highest time efficiency exceeds the others’ when passengers adopt a minimum-transfer-path (MTP) strategy. In general, the maximum time efficiency is higher when passengers adopt SP routing rather than MTP routing. Moreover, the Beijing metro system has the highest maximum load ratio, regardless of the passengers’ routing behavior. This paper can be applied to a metro network to optimize the train departure interval under a certain passenger entrance rate, with the aim to maximize the time efficiency and maximum load ratio. Our model permits assessment of the operational effectiveness of metro systems, which helps the metro operators to improve the performance and reduce the cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With a comparatively mature state of country park development for China, Hong Kong serves as a model that is emulated by many cities in Mainland China. In contrast, Beijing started to establish country parks relatively late, but along with the nascent "Country Park Loop", achieving scientific and reasonable operation management is now the major challenge facing Beijing. By comparing the differences between Hong Kong and Beijing country park management in terms of positioning, management organization, legal guarantees, supporting facilities and education, this paper explores the factors of social development stage, urban developmental history and planning, the wilderness concept and financial support which are responsible for those differences. In order to achieve sustainable development, this paper shows that Beijing country parks should seek corresponding solutions according to their own characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does repression on opposition protests affect citizens' institutional trust under dictatorships? There has been a burgeoning literature investigating empirically both long- and short-term impacts of protests and their repression on citizens' political preferences in both democratic and nondemocratic contexts. Yet, the literature tells us relatively little about how the above question could be answered. This paper tries to answer this question by taking advantage of a recent natural experiment in Hong Kong when Beijing suddenly adopted the National Security Law (NSL) in June 2020 to repress dissidents' protest mobilization. Our findings are twofold. First of all, the NSL drove a wedge in the Hong Kong society by making the pro-establishment camp more satisfied with the post-NSL institutions on the one hand, while alienating the pro-democracy camp who lost tremendous trust in them on the other. Second, our study also reveals that one's trust in institutions is significantly associated with the regimes' ability to curb protesters' contentious mobilization. The Hong Kongers who had higher confidence in the NSL to rein in protests would also have a greater level of trust than those who didn't. The effect, however, is substantially smaller among pro-democracy Hong Kongers except for their trust in monitoring institutions. As Beijing is transforming Hong Kong's current institutions from within hopes of bringing about a new political equilibrium, our study helps provide a timely assessment of Hong Kong's institutional landscape and sheds light on how likely this strategy can work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dynamic relations between mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan over the past few decades have attracted many scholars to explain and predict this interesting phenomenon using various theoretical approaches. Economic integration theory has received the most academic attention, anticipating that economic interdependence will generate a spillover effect on political integration. However, political reality has illustrated the inadequate explanatory power of this theory. Based on this understanding, the present article develops a new analytical framework derived from the revised social constructivism and argues that Beijing's policy toward Hong Kong and Taiwan is a mixed strategy incorporating three dimensions, namely force, interest and legitimacy; this is labelled the 'divided rules policy'. These three dimensions are working simultaneously and compatibly with different emphases, depending on Beijing's assessment and judgement on the specific political situation in Hong Kong and Taiwan. To elaborate Beijing's policy logic in realpolitik, this article considers two critical turning points that occurred in Hong Kong and Taiwan, the Hong Kong White Paper and 31 Measures, as case studies, and it predicts that the relations of mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan will grow tighter than they were before. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More cities have tended to demonstrate their cultural values in their public environments and facilities in recent years. Among all kinds of facilities in public environments, street furniture play a crucial role. Researchers and practicing designers have considered how different emotions relate to the production and reception of designs of street furniture. Besides its basic physical function, a lot of street furniture is also designed to catch the attention of people, and illustrate and present different cultural meanings. This paper explores feelings and emotional experiences induced by cultural elements. By using empirical findings of a survey, this paper then compares the effect of different cultures on the emotional experience towards the same street furniture. Taking Hong Kong and Beijing as case studies, several kinds of typical street furniture are analysed and the relevant emotion feedback (e.g. feeling) aroused by street furniture of people from different cultural backgrounds are examined. This paper advocates that different cultural factors can arouse users' different emotions even when the users use the same street furniture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper analyzes and compares Chinese name authority control work developed in the Beijing and Hong Kong library communities. The paper includes an evaluative and analytical study of the authority files developed in both Beijing and Hong Kong. The distinctive cataloguing practices, scopes of authority control works, principles of selecting an authoritative name heading, criteria for choosing different forms of headings and descriptive languages adopted by libraries in Beijing and Hong Kong will also be featured. It also introduces general ideas and suggestions for the development of authority control work and formats for resource sharing of Chinese authority data in the future. This research study provides materials for discussions that can generate an increased understanding of the practical manifestations of authority control work implemented in both Beijing and Hong Kong. It is hoped that the research findings featured in this paper can facilitate better cooperative cataloguing and resource sharing of Chinese authority data between the library communities in Mainland China and Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper [1] reports on an ethnographic field research conducted in Beijing in 2007, with an attempt to examine the cognitive and affective orientation dimensions of a group of Hong Kong students toward the Beijing 2008 Olympics and their negotiation of national identity. In 1997, China resumed sovereignty over Hong Kong under the principle of 'One Country, Two Systems,' continuing a long history of Hong Kong people struggling with their national identity. Study tours to Mainland China had been arranged as an extension of national education, with the Beijing Olympics as the main theme. With field notes and focus groups, this study found that the tour provoked in the students an interesting mixture of pride and skepticism and also reinforced their 'insider/outsider' identity crisis. This article concludes that the debate over the use of Beijing Olympics as national education reflects an intrinsic paradox of the principle of 'One Country, Two Systems.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates whether there was a housing price bubble in Beijing and Shanghai in 2003. The existence of a bubble can be interpreted from (abnormal) interactions between housing prices and market fundamentals. This paper introduces an enhanced framework, with the combination of standard econometric methodologies: i.e., Granger causality tests and generalized impulse response analysis, and the reduced form of housing price determinants. A test case in Hong Kong, between 1990 and 2003, is included to test the reliability of our methods because Hong Kong has experienced the formation and bursting of a huge housing bubble around the year 1997. It is found that the pattern and magnitude of the estimated bubbles conform quite well to the discrepancies between the actual and predicted prices. Also, the findings suggest that there appeared a bubble in Shanghai in 2003, accounting for 22% of the housing price. By contrast, Beijing had no sign of a bubble in the same year. The bubble phenomenon, of course, should be taken with cautions. Nonetheless this study has laid the groundwork for further investigations in abnormal housing price phenomena in Mainland China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 1 July 2003, over half a million Hong Kong people staged a mass protest against the poor governance of the post-handover Hong Kong government. The grievances of the marchers quickly snowballed into a widely backed movement for democracy. The subsequent record-breaking support for pro-democratic candidates during the local elections held on 23 November 2003 unnerved Beijing over its possible loss of control over Hong Kong. Beijing swiftly shifted to a hard-line approach, attempting to dampen the local democracy movement. This paper will expound the five fundamental causes of Hong Kong's broad-based demand for full democracy, analyse its type of democratic transition to illuminate its political dynamics, and highlight the parameters impacting its democratic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]