Search

Hong Kong is a small city with a big reputation. As mainland China has become an 'economic powerhouse' Hong Kong has taken a route of development of its own, flourishing as an entrepot and a centre of commerce and finance for Chinese business, then as an industrial city and subsequently a regional and international financial centre. This volume examines the developmental history of Hong Kong, focusing on its rise to the status of a Chinese global city in the world economy. Chiu and Lui's analysis is distinct in its perspective of the development as an integrated process involving economic, political and social dimensions, and as such this insightful and original book will be a core text on Hong Kong society for students.

The idea of ‘national identity’ is an ambiguous one for Hong Kong. Returned to the national embrace of China on 1 July 1997 after 150 years as a British colony, the concept of national identity and what it means to "belong to a nation" is a matter of great tension and contestation in Hong Kong. Written by three academic specialists on Hong Kong cultural identity, social history, and mass media, this book explores the processes through which the people of Hong Kong are "learning to belong to a nation" by examining their relationship with the Chinese nation and state in the recent past, present, and future. It considers the complex meanings of and debates over national identity in Hong Kong over the past fifty years and especially during the last decade following Hong Kong’s return to China. It also places these arguments within a larger, global perspective, to ask what Hong Kong can teach us about national identity and its potential transformations. Multidisciplinary in its approach, Hong Kong and China explores national identity in terms of theory, mass media, survey date, ethnography and history, and will appeal to students and scholars of Chinese history, cultural studies, and nationalism.

Is it just another piece of toy? Or rather, a movement of contemporary design, expressing a sense of playfulness and a touch of urbanism? In recent years, a group of designers, toy shop owners, and collectors, with diverse concerns, interests and motivations, have come to shape and re-shape the toy scene in Hong Kong. They share two commonalities: they want to design their own toys and they are very rigorous about the concept and well as the details of a piece of toy. For some, toy is the form, a way to express more abstract ideas. For others, it is a piece of toy showing their own personalities. Some started their work simply for the sake of self-expression. Others were quick to see the business potentials of these design-driven toys. Either way, the outcome is a wave of creative works with a good sense of humour, a touch of urban sensitivity and a synergy of crossover. Hong Kong has long been famous for toy manufacturing. While Hong Kong manufacturers have been successful in producing all kinds of toys for the world market, their strength lies primarily in manufacturing. The works we are going to feature in this book are truly genuine toys of Hong Kong, figurines designed by local designers and produced under their supervision.

This is the first serious comparative study of two dynamic Asian city-states that are emerging as key regional?indeed global?cities. Providing both historical comparisons and analyses of contemporary issues, the authors consider the patterns, strategies, and consequences of industrial restructuring. They build their analysis around the interrelationships of four institutional spheres: the global economy, the state, the financial system, and the labor market. This leads to a unique emphasis on the distinctiveness of individual NICs, as opposed to much of the literature in the field, which tends to group these Asian dragons together as a single, undifferentiated case.The book addresses three basic sets of questions tied to industrial restructuring in Hong Kong and Singapore: First, what are the basic patterns of restructuring in the two economies? What corporate strategies have manufacturers used to restructure their operations? Are Hong Kong and Singapore diverging or utilizing the same restructuring strategies? Second, how should the process of restructuring in the two economies and the concomitant similarities or divergencies be explained? Third, what are the consequences of the restructuring process for the two economies? How are these processes shaped by the shared histories of Hong Kong and Singapore as colonial port cities, their current status as NICs ?squeezed? between industrialized western societies and the Third World, and their role as important regional cities in East and Southeast Asia?

This book looks at the demand as well as the supply side of the social organization of industrial outwork in contemporary Hong Kong. On the one side, there are small manufacturers struggling for survival in the context of a changing global economic environment. Outworking offers them the flexibility needed for the continuation of labour-intensive production in the face of fierce competition from other newly industrializing economies. On the other side, outworking is an important household work strategy for married working class women. Through a sociological analysis of the interplay between employers' quest for production flexibility and married women's participation in outworking, this study throws new light on the experience of East Asian development.