The volume starts with the conceptual assumption that Hong Kong as a unit of analysis may not be treated as a physically bounded crucible that contains a particular population at a given time. Instead, various populations relate to the “place” with economic interests, political commitments, social networks, and cultural imaginations that extend far beyond the limited physical space that is administratively defined.¹ Historically, as Elizabeth Sinn stresses, Hong Kong has thrived as “a space of flow.”² Various populations drawn from the Chinese diaspora and a broader regional context have deposited layers of meaning, value, and memory as they moved through...

The 1848 Gold Rush in California changed Hong Kong’s destiny. Tens of thousands of Chinese passed through Hong Kong subsequently, both on their way out of China and on their way home. Hong Kong, which the British had carved out as an open space on the fringe of the tightly bound Chinese Empire, had been intended as a gateway for British merchants entering the Chinese market. But, as it turned out, perhaps to everyone’s surprise, the new colony became also a gateway for Chinese spreading to all parts of the world.

Hong Kong thrived as a “space of flow”.¹ The...

In 1926, a record company called “New Moon” was created in Hong Kong. The following account made by Qian Guangren, New Moon’s founder, was perhaps a typical encounter of a Hong Kong adventurer in the 1920s. It is therefore worth a lengthy citation:

I recall that in August 1925, I went to Shanghai for business. Mr. Lü Wencheng, one of my very best friends, invited me to visit Great China Records. The boss of Great China asked me to sing and tested whether I was qualified to record. Without much preparation I sang a few lines. The boss appreciated my...

As described by Sinn and Ching in this volume, Hong Kong had, in history, facilitated a global flow of talents. How has the region’s translocal process been restructured in the twentieth century since the post-Mao reforms? Hong Kong, as a satellite metropolis of global capitalism, has for many years been serving as the cultural mediator of “Western” consumer ideologies in mainland China. As China moves away from collectivism to market socialism, individual fulfillment has been reprioritized as a legitimate pursuit. With the official Chinese endorsement of consumption, images of Hong Kong’s “Western” and “modern” lifestyles are being powerfully reworked on...

As described by the first few chapters, Hong Kong has been a city of immigrants and emigrants. With institutional and cultural improvisations facilitated by systems of law regarding custom and rights, the city has, over the century, absorbed different kinds of migrants and sojourners. The mobile populations have been driven by diverse individual and family strategies. The postwar years saw continuing ebbs and flows of people across Hong Kong’s borders. Economists Richard Y. C. Wong and Ka-fu Wong use census and other quantitative data to highlight the dramatic changes in the demographic landscape due to the massive population flows from...

Recent studies have demonstrated how changes in the demographic structure have a profound impact on the economy. Bloom et al. (2002) argues that the East Asian “economic miracle” was largely related to the rapid demographic transition that occurred in the region between 1965 and 1990. The term “demographic transition” refers to a demographic regime in which both fertility and mortality rates drop to a low level. At such a time, the demand for human capital investment rises rapidly and economic growth ensues. Policies that improve health, education and job opportunities, in turn, further reduce fertility and mortality rates and create...

As shown in the chapter by Sinn, Hong Kong society has intimate links with Mainland China through decades of border-crossing by their populations. From the census records analyzed by Richard Wong and Ka-fu Wong, these movements have continued, in ebbs and flows, in the post-war decades. In 1996, almost 40% of Hong Kong’s population was born outside the territory.¹ This chapter takes a slice from the census records to examine policies, assumptions, and procedures related to a recent period of in-flow from China, and to assess their impact on Hong Kong’s present and future human landscape. I focus on two...

What makes Hong Kong competitive? In the last 150 years, Hong Kong has developed from a “barren rock with hardly a house upon it”¹ to an international financial centre. The population has grown from a bare 5,650 in 1841 to nearly seven million in 2008. Economically, it has gone through the successive stages of being first a trade outpost in the last century, then a labour intensive manufacturing and industrial city as well as an import-export entrepôt after the Second World War, a service and finance centre since the late eighties, and transformation to knowledge-based economy in the 21st century....

Hong Kong’s reversion to China in 1997 was an historically unique political event which spun off dramatic issues, among which were unusual patterns of migration, the topic of this chapter. As political arrangements were being made for reversion of Britain’s most economically prosperous colony to underdeveloped communist China, large numbers of middle class and business families emigrated.¹ Hong Kong became Canada’s main immigrant source, and an important source for Australia and the United States as well (Facts and Figures 2000; Skeldon 1994b; Skeldon 1994a; US Citizenship and Immigration Services 2001). Their large numbers and compressed arrival dramatically changed the character...

Cultural capital develops within particular institutional environments. The chapter by David Faure shows that a historical approach gives us a more nuanced and less politically charged view of the colonial experiences and the hardening and softening of the territory’s borders. Faure argues that institutional integrity, a proudly flaunted Hong Kong feature, developed from a society and polity that enjoyed an unusual degree of autonomy as a colony. From the nineteenth century on, there was the successful application and propagation of companies and banking legislation, a stock market with repute, a relatively outspoken press, a very high standard of managerial (including...

Hong Kong’s colonial myth has it that British institutions and Chinese hard work created the very wealthy city which reverted to China in June 1997. Like all myths, this one twists partial reality to fit a political end. For just about a hundred years, that is to say, from 1870 to 1967, the British institutions which took root in Hong Kong were British of the colonial variety, and in those days, the Chinese not only worked hard, but most did so very largely within the framework of Chinese institutions. Since 1967, a slow process of withdrawal bred localization, in government...

The professions can be viewed from different angles: as a distinctive way of organizing work, as creators and transmitters of cultural and social capital, as drivers of innovation, as an elite group in the class structure of modern societies, and as occupational communities (Brint 1994; Florida 2002; Freidson 2001; Goode 1957; Krause 1996; Larson 1977; Rossides 1998). These perspectives are neither exhaustive nor necessarily mutually exclusive but it suggests the desirability of starting with a working definition of the professions. I view them as communities of practice that develop and apply specialized knowledge and skills acquired through a lengthy and...

This chapter aims to bring to view the historical role of education in facilitating Hong Kong as a vibrant space of flow and growth. The provision of equal opportunity for education has absorbed, educated and retuned various waves of immigrants as well as the local-born generations, especially since the 1970s. It has allowed them to settle in the territory, pursue their life chances and enjoy social mobility. The integrity of the system has thereby allowed the city to be competitive in the region in circulating and nurturing its needed entrepreneurial and professional talents.

The story of Hong Kong’s education since...

Entrepreneurial spirit is essential to the dynamism of a commercial society like Hong Kong, and Hong Kong seems to have never been short of it. However, this spirit seems to have declined in Hong Kong since the 1980s. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM), which provides an annual assessment of entrepreneurial activity, reports that Hong Kong’s total entrepreneurial activity index scores extremely low. Among thirty-one economies studied, only Croatia, Italy, Finland, Japan, and France’s indices scored less than Hong Kong in 2003.¹ What does this assessment really mean? Does it indicate a want of entrepreneurial skills or weakened entrepreneurial motivation in...

Over the years, Hong Kong has been an open city facilitating a worldwide circulation of people, goods and ideas (though this could be somewhat qualified in light of the discussion in the previous chapters). More recently since the 1990s, the idea of global city has become a most dominant form of urban imagination in the worldwide circuits of signs and space. The idea of global city echoes well with the theme of circulation, but it also entails a more specific urban form with a specific kind of outlook. The process of circulation in general, and that of globalization in particular,...

Identities are often tied to places. In a city like Hong Kong, which aspires to Asia’s “global city,” where is the place of “community”? And how is it constructed?

In recent decades, villages have been used as synecdoche/iconic symbols of the Special Administrative Region and the colony that was its predecessor. This to some extent reflects the salience of “village” in contemporary cultural and social imagination. Such well-known theoretical formulations as those of Marshall McLuhan and Benedict Anderson might be seen as instances of using the village as a metaphor for much larger “communities.” Locally, since early in the transition...