Tai-Lok Lui

Hong Kong : becoming a Chinese global city

Introduction 1. Global Connections: Centre of Chinese Capitalism 2. An Industrial Colony 3. The Building of An International Financial Centre 4. A Divided City 5. Decolonization, Political Restructuring, and Post-Colonial Governance Crisis 6. The Return of the Regional and the National 7. A Chinese Global City?

Revisiting the golden era of MacLehose and the dynamics of social reforms

The so-called “MacLehose era” has been fondly remembered as a period marking the turning point in colonial rule in Hong Kong and its socioeconomic development in the postwar decades. This article, however, argues that it was London’s initiatives summarized in the document Hong Kong Planning Paper that accounted for the acceleration of social reforms in the 1970s. Contrary to popular perception, MacLehose, who was beholden to local constraints, appeared to be a reluctant reformer. His inclination to defend his vision of the colony’s interests brought him into heated exchanges and debates with British officials who were driven by different political calculations and strategic concerns back home. The altercations uncovered in this article reveal that the colony’s perimeter for action is certainly defined by the position of the sovereign; yet, the outcome of the process was hardly preordained. Beneath the facade of subservience and accommodation, colonial administrators had stubbornly defended their vision of local interests and tried to implement the reforms at their own pace. They appeared not to be swayed by the asymmetry of power in constitutional terms.

A missing page in the grand plan of “one country, two systems”: regional integration and its challenges to post-1997 Hong Kong

Abstract The design of “one country, two systems” was an outcome of political compromise and there are several hidden assumptions in its conception and reception. Such assumptions prepare, or more accurately under-prepare, Hong Kong for its integration with China. Indeed, prior to 1997, Hong Kong was expected to be largely secluded from China in the sense that while its manufacturers were free to invest in the Mainland and to make the best use of resources across the border for economic purposes, flows of capital and population from the other side of the border into the special administrative region would be significantly restricted by the two places’ institutional regulations (e.g., the requirement of an entry visa for Mainlanders to enter Hong Kong. This rather unbalanced traffic of flows of socio-economic activity between Hong Kong and China had simply not been raised as a question on the feasibility for the practical operation of “one country, two systems.” From 2003 onwards Hong Kong has been exposed to issues and problems that were not fully anticipated by the above conception of the former colonys political future. Tensions and conflicts arising from regional and national integration are quickly reshaping the relationship between Beijing and Hong Kong.

The Structuring of Social Movements in Contemporary Hong Kong

cle&dquo; of the 20th century (Lau 1982, p. 1). In a recent review of the study of social conflict and collective actions in Hong Kong, Leung notes that &dquo;[a]lthough a rapidly modernizing society under colonial rule, Hong Kong has been exceptional in having been spared the frequent turmoil and instability that have plagued other countries of a similar socio-economic and political status. Since they have not been a particularly salient feature of the society, social conflict and social movements have rarely been the subject of inquiry in studies of Hong Kong&dquo; (Leung 1996, p. 159). Of course, few observers of Hong Kong politics would deny the existence of social conflict and social movements in contemporary Hong Kong. Rather, they argue that &dquo;conflicts will be confined in scale because, under normal conditions, it is extremely difficult to mobilize the Chinese people in Hong Kong to embark upon

Beneath the Appearance of Gentrification: Probing Local Complexities

In Gentrification in Hong Kong? Epistemology vs. Ontology, Ley and Teo examine what they find to be the absence of identification and naming of gentrification in Hong Kong. They argue for the need to look at urban redevelopment in non-Anglo-American cities, those in Asia Pacific at the very least, in a different light. They query the extent to which the concept of gentrification has been overly stretched to explain urban processes falling outside Anglo-American cities. This essay is a response to their argument. It presses for further and closer examination of local complexities and greater critical-theoretical reflection on the transferability of analytical concepts to different socio-economic contexts. Ley and Teo have raised some important questions for serious theoretical reflection and discussion. Yet they seem to have fallen into the problematic positions that they critique. Without sufficient attention to the part played by historical and local context in shaping the urban landscape, they have wrongly associated the absence of any identification of gentrification with the hegemony of a property-related ideology of social mobility. The unpacking of the different social and political processes and mechanisms in urban redevelopment in different stages of urban growth in Hong Kong alerts us to the complexities of the local. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

GBCS: an answer in search of a question

In this response to ‘A new model of social class?’ by Savage et al. (2013), I take issue with their claim of carrying out an inductive, data-driven approach to the construction of a new class scheme. They emphasize that theirs is not just another occupational- or employment-based class schema. Rather, their objective is to illustrate how cultural and social boundaries are drawn up. Their class classification is multi-dimensional, with the combination of economic, social, and cultural capitals to delineate distinctive class boundaries. My main concerns fall into three areas: (1) what are the problems of their proposed inductive approach? Can we draw up class boundaries without going back to a political economy analysis of contemporary capitalism? (2) How successful have they been in introducing new social classes to their classification of class? Do their descriptions of the seven classes in their class scheme add up in ways that present us with a sociologically meaningful analysis of a class structure of contemporary Britain? (3) And, finally, how useful is their framework for conducting comparative class analysis? Drawing upon the case of contemporary China, it is suggested that it is important to recognize that the effects of social and cultural capitals vary, both quantitatively and qualitatively, according to the wider institutional environment. In each of the above areas, the approach suggested by Savage et al. is found short of fully satisfactory answers.