After the handover of sovereignty from the United Kingdom to China in 1997, the post-colonial government in Hong Kong initiated a nation-building project aimed at boosting nationalism and patriotism. Drawing on documentary analysis, this article analyses how the dominant bloc subtly manipulates a Chinese identity rooted in local traditions through its national education policy, and how it seeks to foster hegemony via several discursive strategies including normalization, naturalization, homogenization, utilitarianization, glorification, moralization, and eclecticism. This article also draws attention to the alternative discourses by the civil society in opposition to the hegemony project.
School choice programs have proliferated around the world since the 1980s. Following this international trend, the Direct Subsidy Scheme (DSS) was launched in 1991 to revitalize Hong Kong's private school sector. DSS schools receive a similar subsidy per student to that received by aided schools, but they may charge fees and have greater control over curricula, entrance requirements, and management than their public school counterparts. Drawing on a number of documents and reports over the period 1987-2006, this article centers on the notion of choice and its related arguments. By revealing the discrepancies between rhetoric and reality, it shows how a policy purporting to appeal to choice, diversity, and competition undermines equality, community, and democracy. Under the provision of DSS, the benefits some parents and schools enjoy by being afforded more choices are often achieved at the expense of fewer choices for others.
Ideological indoctrination is explicit and pervasive in China, with the school curriculum used to mould the spirit and character of adolescents, fulfilling ideological and political purposes. But the exact content varies over time. Comparing two versions of textbooks published in 1997 and 2005, this paper depicts the continuities and change in the curricular discourses centred on the notion of 'good citizen'. While keeping the official status of socialism and the Party leadership untouched, the new textbooks soften the presentation and packaging of the ideological content, very much in tandem with the soft authoritarianism practised since the post-Deng era when China has been deeply involved in the processes of marketisation, liberalisation and globalisation. The new textbooks also adopt a stance of greater reconciliation with human rights and global citizenship. While being granted more autonomy and rights, young citizens are still expected to shoulder the mission of national revival and socialist modernisation-very much derived from official policies.
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