Hong Kongers Living on the Mainland: A Force for Integration?
Monday, November 14th, 2011
| Date | Time | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Monday, November 14, 2011 | 2:00PM - 4:00PM | External Event, Richard Charles Lee Canada-Hong Kong Library, 8th floor, 130 St. George St., University of Toronto |
Series
East Asia Seminar Series & Hong Kong Seminar Series
Description
Integrating Hong Kong, a open capitalist society, into authoritarian China is no easy task, but since 1997, that process has been underway. While economic integration has gone smoothly, less is known about the impact of the reversion of sovereignty on the identity of the Chinese people who inhabit Hong Kong. As of 2004, over 240,000 Hongkongers were living and working on the Mainland. The number of Hong Kong students studying on the Mainland has also increased, so the overall numbers remain small.
But what is the impact of living on the Mainland on the identity of Hong Kong people? Is it a force for integration? Do they feel more Chinese and less like a Hongkonger after moving there? Their feelings may have important significance for the future of Hong Kong, the Mainland and relations between the two territories.
This study reports the findings of a major research project funded by the Central policy Unit of the Hong Kong government which was conducted in 2008-09. The survey interviewed 250 Hong Kongers working in Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing, as well as 230 students Hong Kong students studying in Beijing, Shenzhen and Guangzhou. We also compare their attitudes to people in Hong Kong who have never lived abroad.
Dr. David Zweig received his Ph.D. in Political Science from The University of Michigan (1983). He is currently the Chair Professor at the Division of Social Science and Director of the Center on Environment, Energy and Resource Policy at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). He is also the Associate Dean at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, and this is his second term. He is also EMBA and MBA lecturer in the School of Business Management. He was Adjunct Professor at the National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, Hunan from 2009-12. He is the author of four books: Internationalizing China: domestic interests and global linkages (Cornell Univ. Press, 2002); China’s Brain Drain to the United States (Berkeley: China Research Monograph, 1995); Freeing China’s Farmers: Rural Restructuring in the Deng Era (M. E. Sharpe, 1997); Agrarian Radicalism in China, 1968-1981 (Harvard University Press, 1989).
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