Studying Hong Kong

20 Years of Political, Economic and Social Developments

This book captures the essence of Hong Kong's development in the past two decades from 1997 to 2017. It is broken into four parts — economics, society, politics and culture.

Hong Kong's role remains as a gateway for global trading houses, businessmen, investors and traders. Hong Kong continues to be an open economy and has stuck to free trade policies, as one of the former four successful "tiger economies" in East Asia. In the political and international relations realm, this book examines Hong Kong's relations with China, other major powers and the world at large. It also covers domestic developments, including legal developments. Other chapters in the book examine cultural developments in Hong Kong from specific case studies of iconic animation character to trans-boundary popularity of Hong Kong popular culture in China.

With contributions from Alvin CAMBA, Henry CHAN, Yoshihisa GODO, Wing Lok HUNG, Sean KING, Tuan Yuen KONG, Tai Wei LIM, Carol MA, Samantha MA, Parama SINHA PALIT, Zhengqi PAN, SIM Japanese Culture and Gaming Society, Hiroshi TAKAHASHI, Ghim Yeow TAN, Katherine TSENG, Elim WONG, Kai Keat YEO and Chun Wang YEUNG, this book provides a snapshot of Hong Kong in the past twenty years and is a fascinating read.

Readership: This book is intended for students as well as professionals and the general public interested in understanding Hong Kong culture, history and politics.
Key Features:

• The book is timely as it deals with a topic that is in the news in 2017. The future of Hong Kong has been debated and scrutinized intensely since the 2014 Occupy Central and 2012 National Education protests. Since then, Hong Kong has been forging a new relationship with a new administration in Beijing
• It has regional and international implications. Hong Kong's "One Country Two Systems" served as a model for possible reunification with Taiwan. Regionally, observers are using Hong Kong as a barometer for the future of Chinese governance. Internationally, Hong Kong's international financial center makes it an important node in the globalized world
• Very often, Hong Kong's popular culture is left out of academic analyses on the city state. There are macro and micro case studies examined by different scholars in this publication and they explain the popularity of Hong Kong popular cultural characters like the animation McDull and also classic cop films that resonate with an East Asian and even international audience
• The diversity of scholars in this volume makes it exciting, with contributions from Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. Their multidisciplinary backgrounds also contribute to the value-add of the volume. There is a strong attempt to include individual scholars of different political orientation, background, training, professional experience and expertise to present a balanced view of Hong Kong's development