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This paper examines the historical process of Hong Kong-China national unification through a crisis-transformation framework. This paper argues that the Chinese unification process between Hong Kong and mainland China is not a smooth process. Instead, it has gone through at least four crises during the 1980s and the 1990s. The institution framework for unification - the so-called 'One Country, Two Systems' policy - emerged out of the first crisis of negotiation in the early 1980s, and this policy has been hotly contested and transformed during the various crises over the past three decades. Previous studies on Hong Kong-China unification tends to focus solely on the political and legal aspects. However, this paper shows that unification needs to be symmetrical on all aspects (legal, political, economic and socio-cultural) in order to make it work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (SEZ) has been the flagship labouratory of Deng Xiaoping’s reform and open-door policy and the forerunner of China’s capitalist transformation. The initiation of the Shenzhen SEZ was driven by the imperative of political and economic survival along the state hierarchy and was informed by the international practices of export processing zones (EPZs). Shenzhen’s capitalist fundamentals, such as the commodification of land and labour, were largely established through imitating its ‘big master’ Hong Kong across the border. However, Shenzhen’s policy learning style has gradually shifted from laissez-faire Hong Kong to authoritarian Singapore, propelled by the aspiration, shared among policy-making party élites across China’s administrative hierarchy, of perpetuating the single-party rule. Theoretically, this paper demonstrates how policy mobility is shaped path-dependently by the pre-structured institutional/ideological regime, in what ways the idiosyncratic geographical/historical conjuncture matters, and why political representation and participation are crucial to policy selection and mutation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the impact which the city of Hong Kong, China has had on manufacturing industries in mainland China, particularly in the province of Guangdong. Hong Kong is said to have played a leading role in the modernization of Chinese manufacturing. The city's evolution from a trading port to an inexpensive manufacturing location to a locus of service providers is analyzed. Hong Kong's financial industry and supply chain services are emphasized. The ways in which technological developments have affected Chinese industrial policy are also discussed.

Producers of speed-intensive goods, e.g. clothing or electronics, face markets that are in constant flux due to changing fashion or technology. Throughout the twentieth century, Chinese business networks have had a comparative advantage in producing speed-intensive goods due to their quick reaction time. This comparative advantage was of relatively little value prior to the Second World War, but since the war, international telephone and air services have made international trade in speed-intensive goods practical. This has caused the demand for speed-intensive goods on the international market to grow at an extremely rapid pace. This growth in demand can explain the post-Second World War economic booms experienced by Hong Kong, Taiwan and finally China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]