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Authors:Chong Zhang Abstract: There is widespread debate about the nationalistic top-down approach of citizenship education. By using the notion of cultural citizenship as a useful theoretical lens, citizenship education research tends to focus on the process of subjectivity construction among students’ citizenship learning process. The Communist Party of China plays a dominant role in cultivating citizens in the form of ideological and political education (IaPE) in Chinese universities. The research problem thus focuses on the dynamics and complexity of how Chinese university students construct their subjectivities regarding citizenship learning through IaPE. The main purpose of the study is to provide some research directions for understanding students’ citizenship learning today. With the case study of one university in China and interview data from 25 students, this paper examines the ways in which students understand and respond to dominant discourses. The findings revealed there is a deficit of citizenship learning in IaPE, and students felt ideologically pressurized. This study suggests students’ complex subjectivities of active participants but confused minds as a phenomenon in Chinese higher education, in which they must involve in IaPE for personal academic and career development, while they adopted covert strategies for self-conscious citizenship learning expectations. These strategies took the form ranging from obediently completing basic curriculum requirements and distancing away by studying abroad, to actively searching for learning opportunities from other courses and media society. This paper contributes to citizenship education research by recognizing the complexities of how subjectivities are formed in formal university settings. Citation: Social Transformations in Chinese Societies PubDate: 2023-03-14 DOI: 10.1108/STICS-06-2022-0011 Issue No:Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2023)
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Authors:Siu Fung Cheung Abstract: This study aims to examine the symbolic meanings of the local shopping malls inscribed by the shoppers from the sociocultural lens other than merely departing from the economic dimensions. In this research, Kwai Chung Plaza was adopted as the case study. The author interviewed 12 local shoppers through an in-depth individual interview. All interviewees were selected through convenience and snowball sampling. All names of the participants in this paper are kept pseudonymous to protect their privacy. An integrated model, which consists of three major levels, namely, the spatial, individual and community levels, has been formed to show that the shopping mall was not merely a place for buy-and-sell transactions but rather a place that could be understood as an extension of the street, a body of collective memories and a place for Hongkongers. The most significant limitation of this study was the lack of a diversified demographic profile adding that the sample was restricted to the young generation. It is recommended that future research should consider including interviews with middle-aged and old-aged shoppers to ensure the generalizability of results. Future research may also consider examining other small/medium-sized shopping malls for comparison. The findings demonstrated the diversified social roles and functions of the local shopping malls in a community. In addition, the present study, to the author’s knowledge, is one of the few scholarly discussions on small/medium-sized shopping malls from a sociocultural perspective. Citation: Social Transformations in Chinese Societies PubDate: 2023-02-28 DOI: 10.1108/STICS-09-2022-0016 Issue No:Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2023)
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Authors:Bamidele Emmanuel Ola Abstract: Little is known about gender relations in young African migrant families residing in Hong Kong (HK). This study aims to present a first-hand account of daily lived experiences of African international doctoral student couples residing in HK, with special emphases on their Africa–HK migratory motivations, perceptions of female-breadwinning status, the effects of HK Immigration policy on marital power structures and the influence of spousal relative statuses (“breadwinner” versus “dependent”) on couples gender role performances and decision-making participations. This study used ethnographic method involving several indoor family visits, non-participant observations and 21 in-depth interviews in six African student families. Fieldnotes were taken and interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed and interpreted using thematic content analysis. Couples, especially dependent men, had a hard time deciding to migrate to HK for family reunion, unlike dependent women who willingly resigned to join their husbands in HK. Among the male dependents, the main reasons for migrating included anticipated economic returns, while women migrated in response to neolocal cultural expectations. Overall, patriarchy persisted – while men had the final say over key household decision-making domains, women remained primary performers of household chores, but manifested little bargaining power, restraining husband’s ability to spend family income when they are the family’s sole-earners. Women’s relative breadwinning status had very minimal significant impact. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to examine the effects of HK’s immigration policy on married African students’ migration motivations and the effects of female-breadwinning status on spousal gender relations in HK’s African student migrant households. Citation: Social Transformations in Chinese Societies PubDate: 2023-01-25 DOI: 10.1108/STICS-01-2022-0006 Issue No:Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2023)
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Authors:Helen Yin-Kwan Lee, Lawrence Ka-ki Ho, Fredie Pak-Cheung Hung Abstract: This study aims to explore the community strengths/ weaknesses and the opportunities/ threats of the Nepalese communities in Hong Kong that have faced during the COVID-19 pandemic. The infection of COVID-19 among the ethnic minorities (EM) population in western democracies was reported higher, and it was wondered whether it was due to structural discrimination of the underprivileged. This study is situated in Hong Kong during the peak of pandemic in 2020–2021. The authors followed the work of an EM service agency and interacted with their Nepalese clients to explore their reactions in coping with the sudden physical and economic adversities and examined their capacity amid the pandemic. The authors noticed their effective self-mobilization that was strategically facilitated by veteran social workers and thus have strong resilience compared to other EM clusters in the territories. The ways of their interactions offer useful insights for the authors to examine the prevailing strategy for achieving the mission of social inclusion in Hong Kong with 8% of the EM population. Citation: Social Transformations in Chinese Societies PubDate: 2023-01-17 DOI: 10.1108/STICS-08-2022-0014 Issue No:Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2023)
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Authors:Liangliang Zhang Abstract: This paper aims to explore the relationship between ethical self-fashioning and citizenship practices in the ongoing revival of “Chinese Traditional Culture” pursued in tandem by the party-state and by private actors in present-day China. Adopting an anthropological approach, the author draws from three sets of resources: (1) research literature on China’s political history and key texts of early Chinese thought, (2) contemporary state discourses on citizen formation, and (3) participant observation notes and interviews with organizers and followers of the Wu-Wei School (a pseudonym). The author conducts a textual analysis of primary and secondary literature and a critical discourse analysis of the ethnographic data and examines emerging themes. Firstly, the author identifies a crucial dimension in the historical and cultural roots of Chinese citizenship practices: an enduring conception that binds individual ethical self-improvement with socio-political flourishing. Secondly, examining contemporary state discourses on “citizen quality” and “reviving China’s outstanding traditional culture”, the author showcases how party-state authorities call on individuals to self-reform for national rejuvenation. Thirdly, the author investigates how members of the Wu-Wei School construe their individual pursuits of ethical self-improvement as significant for societal progress. Based on these findings, the author demonstrates the ways in which autochthonous conceptions of Chinese citizenship give a central place to private acts of self-fashioning. The author argues that the entanglement between individual ethics and citizenship practices constitutes a crucial but largely understudied dimension of Chinese citizenship. Citation: Social Transformations in Chinese Societies PubDate: 2022-12-20 DOI: 10.1108/STICS-06-2022-0012 Issue No:Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2022)
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Authors:Ying Ma, Ewan Wright Abstract: This study aims to interrogate and expand on the flexible citizenship framework by illuminating students' emergent identities and imagined future mobilities in China's expanding international school sector. In-depth semistructured interviews were conducted with international school students and their parents in Shenzhen, covering their motivations for overseas higher education, experience with international schooling, self-perceived identities and imagined futures. The participants aspired to overseas higher education for both symbolic capital attainment and embodied cultural cultivation to thrive in a globalised world. They expressed confidence that international schooling experiences prepared students for mobility to Western higher education and cultivated globally-oriented identities while not undermining their Chinese roots. They imagined their futures in terms of considerable flexibility, with a rising China viewed as an attractive and feasible option for career development. This research provides an enriched understanding of a new generation of globally mobile Chinese students. The participants held distinctively different outlooks, aspirations and attitudes than depicted in the flexible citizenship framework, which emphasised a one-dimensional and instrumentalist portrayal of Chinese international students. This study discusses cross-generational changes in the desire for overseas education and a global-national outlook among young people in the context of significant social transformations in urban China. The originality of this study is in expanding the flexible citizenship framework with reference to the emergent identities and pathways of students in the international schooling sector in China. Citation: Social Transformations in Chinese Societies PubDate: 2022-09-27 DOI: 10.1108/STICS-05-2022-0010 Issue No:Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2022)
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Authors:Chi Kit Chan, Anna Wai Yee Yuen Abstract: This study scrutinizes the convergence between commercial advertising and the political vision of social movement in media advertisements. This study deliberates how commercial advertisement could be compatible with movement discourses and social resistance. Such hybridization between commercial narration and movement discourses is different from political advertising sponsored by political and civic organizations. This study uses an advertising campaign in Hong Kong which expressed outcry against police search on an outspoken media as a case study to conceptualize advertising activism with the thematic analysis of the movement discourses shown in printed advertisements. This study aims to engage with scholarly dialogue surrounding social movement studies and discuss how movement discourses could hybridize with commercial advertisement. This study examines the discourses and textual features of an advertising campaign initiated by the public instead of political elites and social movement organizations in Hong Kong, in which various individual citizens, anonymous participants, business enterprises and civic organizations expressed their anger over a police search against an outspoken media (Apple Daily) by Hong Kong police. This bottom-up advertising campaign shows how the narration of commercial advertising could be hybridized with the activism for social resistance, which is conceptualized as advertising activism in this paper. Based on the textual features and discourses embedded in the advertisements, this study investigates the printed advertisements mushroomed in Apple Daily since the police search in August 2020 by the thematic analysis under the concept of advertising activism: frame construction, identities mobilization and decentered solidarity. Advertising activism differs from commercial and political advertising from two ways. Firstly, its advertisements are cosponsored by numerous nonpolitically well-known individuals or organizations. Secondly, advertising activism feature with hybridization between commercial narration and political or movement discourses. Discourses of advertising activism aim to mobilize the commercial identity of consumers for noncommercial means by their consumption behaviors. The findings illustrate a hybridization of commercial narration and movement discourses stemming from social movement and identity politics, which is coined by our conceptualization of advertising activism. While commercial and political advertising focus on business promotion and political messages, respectively, advertising activism demonstrates multiple layers of cultural meanings on the consumption behaviors which hybridize with political and movement discourses. The authors hope this study could unleash further intellectual dialogue on the social role of advertising in social movement and how movement discourses “spillover” from social events to the commercial advertisement. Citation: Social Transformations in Chinese Societies PubDate: 2022-09-08 DOI: 10.1108/STICS-04-2021-0006 Issue No:Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2022)
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Authors:Alexander Fedorov Abstract: In the light of intensifying academic discourses on contemporary religious education in Hong Kong, this paper aims to examine how the interreligious model (i.e. that features teaching religious variety rather than a particular faith) is consistent with Hong Kong’s social context. It begins with a theoretical conceptualization that interreligious education originates from certain preconditions and is only understood contextually. Next, the analysis identifies the preconditions within Hong Kong milieus: sociodemographic, sociocultural and legal. Theoretically driven case study. The paper analyses Hong Kong's development toward interreligious education. Albeit most conceptualizing of interreligious education has been conducted in Europe, the study finds the model functional to Hong Kong. Moreover, these preconditions-religious heterogeneity, freedom of religion and secularity – are met, although with their specifics. These preconditions, however, do not imply imperativeness yet rather feasibility if the interreligious model adheres to Hong Kong’s educational aims. This study develops theoretical lenses for interreligious education in Hong Kong. First, it analyzes religious heterogeneity, freedom of religion and secularity within the Hong Kong milieus and reveals Hong Kong’s capacity to implement the interreligious model. It also advances scholarship on interreligious education in relatively underexplored settings (referring not simply to Hong Kong but to Chinese societies and contemporary Asia). Citation: Social Transformations in Chinese Societies PubDate: 2022-09-06 DOI: 10.1108/STICS-01-2022-0007 Issue No:Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2022)
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Authors:L. Nicole Vaughan Abstract: This paper aims to trace the development of Hong Kong's Happy Valley from a space associated with dangerous miasmas to the site of a racecourse, recreation ground and a series of cemeteries for the colony's foreign communities while examining the relationship between the exclusion of Chinese from Happy Valley and the notion of colonial order. This paper makes use of empirical evidence from historical documents, such as newspapers and government records, and applies Michel Foucault's notion of the heterotopia as a theoretical model. This paper provides insights into the relationship between space and power in the colonial setting. It demonstrates that the imposition of colonial order in Happy Valley was a process that involved the exclusion of Chinese and that the various ways in which this order was reinforced, contested and negotiated revealed it to be shallow and incomplete. This paper sheds light on an underexamined but important colonial space in 19th and early 20th century Hong Kong and complicates the notion of colonial control. Citation: Social Transformations in Chinese Societies PubDate: 2022-05-03 DOI: 10.1108/STICS-10-2021-0009 Issue No:Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2022)
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Authors:Holy Hoi-ki Shum Abstract: The influx of mainland capital to different media sectors in Hong Kong has been commonly seen throughout the last decade (Leung, 2019). While the changes in ownership have been shaping the ecology of Hong Kong’s media industry, the rapid development of digital technology such as the internet and social media has also been important in the industry’s transformation. This study aims to investigate how and to what extent technology has shaped the Hong Kong media work culture. Alibaba, the powerful e-commerce conglomerate, has sought to advance its development in the media industry and leverage its technological expertise by acquiring the century-old Hong Kong English-language newspaper, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) in 2016. This essay, by using the SCMP as a case study, focuses on the workers and their use of technologies in their daily work practices, which offers an alternative lens to investigate the influence of a Chinese tech ownership in transforming a Hong Kong media outlet’s culture. This case study illustrates how the implementation of Alibaba work culture at the SCMP through technological application remained minimal over the four years following this Chinese tech giant’s acquisition, whereas a Silicon Valley-style start-up culture and techno-organisational gaze were profoundly found at this workplace and received both acceptance and resistance by the employees. This study results in a revealing unique type of techno-organisational culture change that deviates from the previous Chinese organisational studies within and outside the Chinese contexts. Citation: Social Transformations in Chinese Societies PubDate: 2022-04-18 DOI: 10.1108/STICS-01-2021-0003 Issue No:Vol. ahead-of-print, No. ahead-of-print (2022)
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Authors:Hans Tse, Macau K.F. Mak Abstract: In 2019, civil servants in Hong Kong publicly protested against their government as part of the anti-extradition bill movement. This study aims to understand how civil servants formed their support to the movement despite a deep-rooted bureaucratic culture. The authors argue that moral values (e.g. impartiality and integrity) and aspirations to liberal democracy are powerful motivations that override bureaucratic values (e.g. political neutrality and political loyalty) in the context of social movement. Based on a protest on-site survey (n = 277), this study analyzes the relationship between civil servants’ value orientations and their political demands and actions. Regression analyses show that civil servants’ consideration of moral values relates positively to support to investigative demands, while a more liberal orientation predicts greater support to consequential demands and action intentions. A moderation effect is found in which greater consideration of moral values attenuates the negative effect of bureaucratic values on the support to both types of demands. In addition, the two types of values interact with each other to influence support to consequential demands, which, in turn, predicts willingness to further political actions. This study seizes a valuable opportunity to examine the political participation of civil servants in Hong Kong. As Hong Kong and the civil service system face tightening authoritarian controls, the findings shed light on the dynamics of moral values, bureaucratic values and liberal orientation in motivating resistance among civil servants. Citation: Social Transformations in Chinese Societies PubDate: 2022-02-09 DOI: 10.1108/STICS-04-2021-0007 Issue No:Vol. 18, No. 2 (2022)
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Authors:Ray Yep Abstract: This paper aims to uncover the trajectory of the anti-corruption effort of the Hong Kong colonial Government by identifying its general approach of denial in the pre-War years. It highlights the path-dependence nature, as well as the path-creation logic of the policy process of anti-corruption reform and the anxiety of the colonial administration in maintaining trust of the local population in the post-War years. These insights should enhance the general understanding of the nature of colonial governance. This paper is primarily based on archival materials available at the British National Archives and Hong Kong Public Records Office. The paper intends to go before the “Great Man narrative” in explaining the success of the anti-corruption effort in colonial Hong Kong. Whilst the colonial government was fully aware of the endemic of corruption and the substantial involvement of European officers, she was still cocooned with the misguided belief that the core of the administration was mostly “incorruptible”. The Air Raid Precaution Department scandal in 1941 was, however, a powerful wake-up that rendered the denial and self-illusion no longer defensible. The policy ideas of the 1940s did shape the Prevention of Corruption Ordinance 1948 and other related reforms, yet they were not immediately translated into fundamental changes in the institutional set-up of the anti-graft campaign. The limitations of these half-hearted measures were fully exposed in the coming decades. The cumulative effects of the piecemeal anti-graft efforts of the colonial government over the first century of rule, however, did path the way for the “revolutionary” changes in the 1970s under Murray MacLehose. This is a highly original piece based on under-explored archival materials. The findings should have a major contribution to the scholarship on the nature of colonial governance and the history of anti-corruption efforts of Hong Kong. Citation: Social Transformations in Chinese Societies PubDate: 2021-11-15 DOI: 10.1108/STICS-12-2020-0031 Issue No:Vol. 18, No. 2 (2021)
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Authors:Dennis Ka Kuen Leung Abstract: Against the background of the 2019 anti-extradition bill protests, this paper aims to examine the legal-political negotiations over equal press rights in Hong Kong, focusing specifically on “the rights to newsgathering” – the rights of all journalistic actors to get access to certain places and events to collect first-hand news information, such as on the streets, during protests and in government events. This paper adopts a comparative approach to the question of equal press rights by comparing Hong Kong’s situations with those of Taiwan and Malaysia. Drawing upon secondary sources such as existing studies and news archives, this paper attempts to delineate the legal-political negotiations over equal press rights in the three places in the past two decades. This paper finds that in Hong Kong, there are signs of increasing suppression of press rights amidst the city’s authoritarian backlash in recent years. While the Hong Kong Government was willing to broaden the rights of online independent media a few years back, it has started to tighten its control over them after the 2019 anti-extradition bill protests. Without a constitutional guarantee of equal press rights, it remains to be seen how the online independent media would fare in the future, especially after the introduction of the national security law. While Hong Kong is home to a variety of non-mainstream media, the issue of their press status has remained largely unrecognized by the public. This paper pays attention to this understudied yet important issue. Citation: Social Transformations in Chinese Societies PubDate: 2021-10-13 DOI: 10.1108/STICS-04-2021-0008 Issue No:Vol. 18, No. 2 (2021)
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Authors:Michael Ka Wai Lai, Amy Po Ying Ho Abstract: Whilst the majority of academic studies have focused on the for-profit business-to-consumer type of sharing economy, the community-based peer-to-peer sharing economy is under-studied, particularly the role of social capital, which is essential to sharing behaviours. This paper aims to unravel the role of social capital in developing sharing communities, particularly as to how sharing can establish social capital and community building in community-based sharing economy projects. This paper adopted a case study approach by selecting a local project in Hong Kong, which aims at achieving sharing community. A total of 10 in-depth interviews of major stakeholders were conducted, including founders, active and inactive members to explore how social capital is developed and its impacts on sharing community. The research finding showed that social capital plays an important role in structural dimensions, on social ties building, cognitive and relational dimension facilitates and motivates sharing behaviour and trust, which are essential in building up a sharing community and in developing a sharing economy in Hong Kong. This paper contributes to the current theoretical and empirical discussion that supplements the current study of the community-based sharing economy, from the perspective of social capital, in exploring how a sharing community can be developed. Citation: Social Transformations in Chinese Societies PubDate: 2021-08-19 DOI: 10.1108/STICS-05-2020-0015 Issue No:Vol. 18, No. 2 (2021)
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