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Chinese cultural conservatism used to participate in shaping the course of modernization to a large extent. In this paper, I aim to describe a hidden lineage of Chinese cultural conservatism of the twentieth century that is still alive and appears to be more and more influential in mainland China. Relying on several ideas developed by Neo-Confucians of the early twentieth century, Gan Yang's paper in 2007 represented a contemporary revival of Chinese cultural conservatism. More importantly, in recent years, this kind of revival of conservative discourse went through another big change, which not only matters to the self-underpinning of the legitimate basis of the current regime, but also combined with the political conservations related to the Hong Kong protest of 2019–2020 explains why this country is so ideologically different from the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender norms, roles and relations differentially affect women, men, and non-binary individuals' vulnerability to disease. Outbreak response measures also have immediate and long-term gendered effects. However, gender-based analysis of outbreaks and responses is limited by lack of data and little integration of feminist analysis within global health scholarship. Recognising these barriers, this paper applies a gender matrix methodology, grounded in feminist political economy approaches, to evaluate the gendered effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and response in four case studies: China, Hong Kong, Canada, and the UK. Through a rapid scoping of documentation of the gendered effects of the outbreak, it applies the matrix framework to analyse findings, identifying common themes across the case studies: financial discrimination, crisis in care, and unequal risks and secondary effects. Results point to transnational structural conditions which put women on the front lines of the pandemic at work and at home while denying them health, economic and personal security – effects that are exacerbated where racism and other forms of discrimination intersect with gender inequities. Given that women and people living at the intersections of multiple inequities are made additionally vulnerable by pandemic responses, intersectional feminist responses should be prioritised at the beginning of any crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The much-publicized reversion of Hong Kong's sovereignty to China on July 1. 1997. has been hailed as a success by many. Politically, it has been pointed out that Hong Kong has scarcely changed since the handover. Nevertheless, the alleged successful transition has also witnessed a number of economic. social, and political crises. Drawing on systematically collected longitudinal data of public opinion, this paper tries to answer two important questions: first, has the quasi- bureaucratic-authoritarian political structure of the post- transition government experienced a "legitimation problem," i.e., a rejection of the political structure as a whole. And second, does social discontent directed at incumbent government officials represent strong bottom-up pressure for faster democratization? The longitudinal data suggest that even when public confidence in the HKSAR government dropped to its lowest level in June 1998, there was no evidence to suggest the quasi-bureaucratic authoritarian system had a legitimation problem, nor was there strong public pressure demanding rapid democratization. The demand for changing the political system has seldom been treated as an important personal concern during the transitional period. While social and economic issues have been of great personal concern for most Hong Kong people. very few of them have demanded democratic changes as a way of restoring confidence. Pressure for bottom-up democratization remains low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's comments on the articles about planning practices in different regions of Asia, published within the issue. From an essay over the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China he concludes that the planning in the region is suffering due to the influence of bureaucracy over the city's government. The politics in Taipei, Taiwan, he explains, is hampering the national development. The planning system is still under construction in Beijing, China.

Multilevel governance (MLG) has been extensively applied to elucidate the dispersion of decisionmaking across multiple levels of governments—supranational, national, and subnational in the European Union (EU) and its member states. In this paper I attempt to contribute to the literature through the case of Hong Kong (HK) and the Pearl River Delta (PRD) in China. I argue that a pattern of MLG has been emerging since the early 2000s in this subnational-level cross- boundary region, accompanied by the gradual institutionalization of economic integration between Hong Kong and the PRD. Decisionmaking competencies in the HK-PRD cross-boundary region have tended to disperse across multiple levels of governments ranging from the central, Guangdong Provincial, UK Special Administrative Region, to municipal, city, and county level of the PRD, as well as businesses and residents on both sides of the boundary. In response to the lack of an effective regional authority and the unique political framework of `one country, two systems', central government has played a somewhat backstage coordinator role in the transition of the integration mechanism and cross-boundary governance. Previous explanations of the integration and governance of the HK-PRD cross-boundary region need to be reevaluated. A regional level authority, similar to the supranational institutions in the EU, is urgently required to foster and upgrade cross-boundary cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how politics has shaped Hong Kong's education system and the curriculum 23 years after the British handover of Hong Kong to China. Particularly, through the concept of nationalism, the article examines how the education system is being shaped. The article is intended to provide international readers with a perspective of the political and socio-educational dynamics at play in Hong Kong. The central question at issue is: how has political culture and identity been promoted in school education under the framework of "One Country, Two Systems" after the transfer of Hong Kong sovereignty from Britain to China? Two areas--the censorship of curriculum materials and the politicization of nationalism-- particularly reflect the influence of power relationships, and the historical and societal pressures on the formation of students' identity in school education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The two 2018 World Cup qualifiers between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Hong Kong were played out under a politically charged backdrop. Although the politicized atmosphere of these two matches was unprecedented, previous matches between the two teams did trigger two small scale riots, once in Hong Kong in 1980, and once in Beijing in 1985. This essay suggests that, since the PRC and Hong Kong first met in 1975, there have been three different stages concerning the political meanings of matches between these two sides. These three stages reflect the evolving political context and changing identities of the Hong Kong people. In the ongoing third stage, a rivalry between the PRC and Hong Kong has emerged because the fixture now embodies the conflicts between Hong Kong’s localism and the PRC’s nationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hong Kong is highlighting its position as a 'super-connector' to China in the Belt and Road Initiative. Premier Li Keqiang's Five-Year Plan unfurled in March 2016 noted that Beijing will be augmenting Hong Kong's economic position. Many expect the central government's policies towards Hong Kong in the post-19th Party Congress era to remain unchanged since the broad directions to managing Hong Kong have already been laid down. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the fraught political relationship between Hong Kong and China for the last 10 years, China has been attempting to integrate the semi-autonomous region economically and ideologically. This article uses rhetorical analysis to examine how China strategically adapts its nationalist rhetoric in the Hong Kong education curriculum, in an attempt to integrate Hong Kong citizens politically and ideologically in a transnational context. It argues that China's rhetorical and political project in Hong Kong had failed because the Chinese government had underestimated cultural power behind Hong Kong's cultural history and its self-constructed identity as a transnational site. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Explains the origins of anti-partyism in Hong Kong, China and why its anti-partyism was higher in 2000 than in 1998. Impact of social background on anti-partyism; Political context of Hong Kong; Five questions that were raised in the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems to assess the evaluations of the performance of political parties and of the political system in general.