Drawing on archival materials, Michael Ng challenges the widely accepted narrative that freedom of expression in Hong Kong is a legacy of British rule of law. Demonstrating that the media and schools were pervasively censored for much of the colonial period and only liberated at a very late stage of British rule, this book complicates our understanding of how Hong Kong came to be a city that championed free speech by the late 1990s. With extensive use of primary sources, the free press, freedom of speech and judicial independence are all revealed to be products of Britain's China strategy. Ng shows that, from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, Hong Kong's legal history was deeply affected by China's relations with world powers. Demonstrating that Hong Kong's freedoms drifted along waves of change in global politics, this book offers a new perspective on the British legal regime in Hong Kong.

This book examines the Hong Kong media over a forty year period, focusing in particular on how its newspapers and TV stations have struggled for press freedom under the colonial British administration, as well as Chinese rule. Making full use of newly declassified material, extensive interviews and specific case-studies, it provides an illuminating analysis of the dynamics of political power and its relationship with media censorship. Overall, this book is an impressive discussion of the evolving face of the Hong Kong media, and is an important contribution to theoretical debates on the relationship between political power, economics, identity and journalism.

Introduction: straddling the handover: colonialism and decolonization in British and PRC Hong Kong / Gary Chi-hung Luk -- Part I. British colonial legacies -- The Comprador System in nineteenth century Hong Kong / Kaori Abe -- Government and language in Hong Kong / Sonia Lam-Knott -- A ruling idea of the time? The rule of law in pre- and post-1997 Hong Kong / Carol A. G. Jones -- Part II. Hong Kong, Britain, and China(s) -- From Cold War warrior to moral guardian: film censorship in Hong Kong / Zardas Shuk-man Lee -- The roots of regionalism: water management in postwar Hong Kong / David Clayton -- Economic relations between the mainland and Hong Kong: an 'irreplaceable' financial center / Leo F. Goodstadt -- Part III. Decolonization, retrocession, and recolonization: new perspectives -- At the edge of empire: Eurasians, Portuguese and Baghdadi Jewish communities in British Hong Kong / Felicia Yap -- Reunification discourse in between Chinese nationalisms / Law Wing Sang -- From citizens back to subjects: constructing national belonging in Hong Kong's national education center / Kevin Carrico

Drawing on archival materials, Michael Ng challenges the widely accepted narrative that freedom of expression in Hong Kong is a legacy of British rule of law. Demonstrating that the media and schools were pervasively censored for much of the colonial period and only liberated at a very late stage of British rule, this book complicates our understanding of how Hong Kong came to be a city that championed free speech by the late 1990s. With extensive use of primary sources, the free press, freedom of speech and judicial independence are all revealed to be products of Britain's China strategy. Ng shows that, from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, Hong Kong's legal history was deeply affected by China's relations with world powers. Demonstrating that Hong Kong's freedoms drifted along waves of change in global politics, this book offers a new perspective on the British legal regime in Hong Kong.

This book critically assesses the implementation of the "one country, two systems" in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) from the political, judicial, legal, economic and societal dimensions. The author contends that there has been a gradual process of mainlandization of the HKSAR, meaning that Hong Kong is increasingly economically dependent on the People's Republic of China (PRC), politically deferent to the central government on the scope and pace of democratic reforms, socially more patriotic toward the motherland and more prone to media self-censorship, and judicially more vulnerable to the interpretation of the Basic Law by the National People's Congress. This book aims to achieve a breakthrough in relating the development of Hong Kong politics to the future of mainland China and Taiwan. By broadening the focus of the "one country, two systems" from governance to the process of Sino-British negotiations and their thrust-building efforts, this book argues that the diplomats from mainland China and Taiwan can learn from the ways in which Hong Kong's political future was settled in 1982–1984. This is a book for students, researchers, scholars, diplomats and lay people.

This book offers a perspective on the constitutional and administrative experiment that has been taking place in Hong Kong, based on a substantial period under Chinese rule.

Analyses the politics of policing in a range of regime types across East and Southeast Asia.