Hong Kong has undergone sweeping transformation since its return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. This is a multidisciplinary assessment of the new regime and key issues, challenges, crises and opportunities confronting the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR).

13. Walking a Tight Rope: Hong Kong's Media Facing Political and Economic Challenges Since Sovereignty Transfer -- 14. Postcolonial Cultural Trends in Hong Kong: Imagining the Local, the National, and the Global -- 15. Conclusion: Crisis and Transformation in the Hong Kong SAR-Toward Soft Authoritarian Developmentalism? -- The Editors and Contributors -- Index

Hong Kong has undergone sweeping transformation since its return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. This is a multidisciplinary assessment of the new regime and key issues, challenges, crises and opportunities confronting the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR).

In the tumultuous negotiations of the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984, the United Kingdom willingly signed over Hong Kong's reigns to the People's Republic of China, but with the presupposition that the PRC would faithfully implement the principle of 'one country, two systems' for the following fifty years. Yet since the handover in 1997, the PRC has failed to allow Hong Kong a higher degree of autonomy. 'One Country, Two Systems' in Crisis elucidates how China's intervention has curtailed Hong Kong's civil liberties; how freedom of speech is at the mercy of the government; and how deception has turned the 'Pearl of the Orient' into the rubber stamp of the Chinese Communist Party.

This book examines the government of Hong Kong since its handover to mainland China in 1997, focusing in particular on the anti-government mass protests and mobilisations in the years since 2003. It argues that Hong Kong has been poorly governed since transferring to Chinese rule, and that public frustration with governmental performance, including anti-subversion laws and slow democratisation, has resulted in the regular and massive protests, which have been rare in Hong Kong's past political development. The book then assesses different explanations for Hong Kong's government problems, including lack of social cohesion, incomplete economic restructuring, structural budgetary deficit, severe social inequality, intensifying cronyism and deficiencies within the political system itself. It goes on to discuss the implications of poor governance for legislative elections, civil society and constitutional development, and considers the prospects for the future. It argues that although in the short-term the Hong Kong government has managed to maintain its popular support ratings, in the longer run it is unlikely to be able to maintain its legitimacy in dealing with the fundamental challenges of government unless the current system is replaced by popular election of the government with appropriate institutional capacity and political powers.

The impressive array of penetrating analysis and provocative interpretations afforded by this volume’s 14 chapters sharpen appreciation of the ongoing transformations of China’s Hong Kong since 1997 and the possibilities embedded in its journey toward an integrative merger-convergence with the Mainland by 2047. A unique strength of this volume lies with the wide ranging views and divergent assessments offered by the chapter authors of different nationalities, varied experience, diverse academic/professional disciplines, and of competing ideo-political persuasions. Ten of them are leading academics (economist, historian, legalist, media scholar, political scientist, sociologist) well-published on Hong Kong topics while seven are seasoned practitioners on the cutting edge of Hong Kong’s development (as HKSAR official, legislator, Basic Law Committee member, business leader, think-tank expert, journalist, and US diplomat). Published by City University of Hong Kong Press. 香港城市大學出版社出版。

Describes the social and cultural transformation of seventeenth-century China through the life and work of Li Yu