Constructing a decolonized world city for consumption: discourses on Hong Kong Disneyland and their implications.

The paper argues that, under the globalized economy, state power is far from diminishing. I study how the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government officials in 1999 developed 'competition-development' discourse and 'disappearing-world-city' discourse to persuade the public to approve the unequal and non-transparent Hong Kong-Disney deal for setting up the Hong Kong Disneyland (HKDL). I also examine how newspaper reports have circulated and have reinforced these two pairs of political discourses in wider popular discourse. I further reveal, in the post-colonial context of HongKong, how the HKDL project functions to accomplish decolonization tasks and to reshape Hong Kong as a consumption-based tourist spot instead of a citizen-based participatory community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]