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Reshaping Education forCitizenship: DemocraticNational Citizenship in HongKongCheuk-Hang LeungPublished online: 28 Oct 2013.

To cite this article: Cheuk-Hang Leung (2013) Reshaping Education for Citizenship:Democratic National Citizenship in Hong Kong, Asian Affairs, 44:3, 510-512, DOI:10.1080/03068374.2013.835461

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03068374.2013.835461

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is a servant in, separated from her daughter, who lives back in the villageshe comes from, and her husband, working in a nearby town. There is thefabric seller who has made so much money from branching out intorunning a small hostel that she has been able to build a huge, butalmost wholly useless, house, back in her home place, despite the factthat almost no one now lives there. And, beyond all of these, there isthe knife sharpener, a man with almost no possessions who spends hisdays on an ancient bike moving between potential customers, awarethat he is part of a dying trade.

Progress lies heavy on these people. As Loyalka says, they live in a sortof neutral zone, participants in China’s immense regeneration efforts butalso disenfranchised from it because of their residency status. For all ofthem, betterment and aspirations are important. They want better livesfor their children, and work with a humbling dedication to achievethis. In giving such vivid colours to their lives and their struggles, thisbook, based on fieldwork over a number of years in Xian, contributesimportantly to our understanding of the many smaller stories oftriumph and defeat which constitute modern China from a group withalmost never gets a proper voice, despite all it has contributed.

KERRY BROWN # 2013http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03068374.2013.835462

Pak-sang Lai and Michael Byram. Reshaping Education for Citizen-ship: Democratic National Citizenship in Hong Kong. CambridgeScholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2012. pp. 257. Hb. £39.99.ISBN 9 7814 4383 5312

Nationalism and democratisation are two common themes in debatesover identity politics in post-colonial societies. Various forces, at bothsocial and governmental levels, often compete for a leading role in inter-preting national identity and democracy in ways that might best servetheir respective group interests and ideologies. Unsurprisingly, the lin-gering impact of a colonial legacy makes education an importantarena with regard to ‘identity construction’, the centre of this battle-ground. In the case of Hong Kong, the summer of 2012 saw a seriesof large-scale protests and demonstrations against the government’s per-emptory attempt to launch a compulsory ‘national education’ curriculumin primary and secondary schools. Against this background, Pak-sang

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Lai and Michael Byram give us a timely update on citizenship educationin Hong Kong.

This book is in more than one sense inspiring and unusual. It is inspiringbecause, firstly, its main theme captures well the essence of a ‘dualpurpose’ citizenship education in Hong Kong – developing a democraticcitizenship and national identity, in a local context. Following its inte-gration into the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1997, Hong Kongbecame a Special Administrative Region (SAR) under Chinese sover-eignty. Yet, there has been an increasingly negative sentiment amongHong Kong people towards the Chinese Communist Party and its Party-State rule, partly because many people believes that the PRC governmentis the main obstacle to Hong Kong’s democratisation process. In thisunusual post-colonial setting, the promotion of a two-tier citizenshipnotion (i.e. democracy and national identity) is challenging and sometimesproblematic, as democratisation and nationalism may not be compatiblewith each other. The authors articulate this complexity by offeringreaders a combination of thorough historical analysis and rigorous theoreti-cal framework in chapters one to three. Through the lens of citizenshipeducation, they clearly point out that the ‘one country, two systems’ prin-ciple, which promises a capitalist system and liberal social environment inHong Kong, is “a composite rather than an analytic notion, more a culturalthan an institutional construct” (p. 4) that allows negotiation andimplementation among different social forces. The promulgation of patri-otism as a form of nation-building supposedly sees schools as agents in thisprocess. However, the authors show that schools in Hong Kong, which aresituated in a generally liberal social environment, would rather act as anagency to work out their own citizenship syllabus that reflects the inter-action between teachers, school management, students and parents.

Secondly, this book provides an unusual yet long-awaited case study ofHong Kong’s secondary schools (chapters four to six). For some time,research on citizenship education has focused on educational policyand quantitative surveys of schools. In this book, the authors providean in-depth ethnographic study which informs readers about what hasbeen happening in the post-colonial secondary school in Hong Kong.They point out that Hong Kong is searching for “a territorialised citizen-ship where local citizenship and national citizenship are structured bydifferent political and social beliefs and values” (p. 2). They suggestthat Hong Kong students find the ‘ethno-China’ identity more acceptablethan a ‘civic China’ one; Hong Kong people would describe themselvesas ‘HongKongers’ prior to ‘Chinese’ in most cases. They explain that

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schools in response would favour adopting a multi-levelled approachtowards reconciling the ideas of democracy and nationalism and ‘invent-ing’ a national identity that is heavily ‘territorialised’ and in which theconcept of ‘China’ is somehow different from the official version. In par-allel, liberal democratic values – a subject that is not encouraged in thecitizenship discourse in mainland China – would play an essential partin constructing the Hong Kong identity. This territorialised citizenshipconcept would aim at simultaneously fulfilling the requirements ofboth the local and the national levels.

This ethnographic study captures well the role of schools as an agency inthe formation of democratic national citizenship. However, since it wasconducted in 2002–2004, it may not reflect the latest mood in schools inrelation to recent events. The 2012 proposal for a compulsory national edu-cation curriculum represented an attempt by the government to initiate aparadigm shift in the struggle over nation-building and a change in itsambiguous stance on promoting patriotism in schools. The fact that thegovernment ultimately withdrew its proposal was mainly a result of masssocial protest. Consequently, it would be overly optimistic to suggestthat schools, whether or not they have the means to implement particularpolicies, can operate as an effective collective agency to negotiate theirown citizenship agenda with the government in the foreseeable future.

CHEUK-HANG LEUNG # 2013http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03068374.2013.835461

Richard C. Bush. Unchartered State: The Future of China-TaiwanRelations. Brookings Institution Press, Washington DC, 2013. pp. x +319. Figs. Tables. Notes. Index. Hb. £25.99. ISBN 9 7808 1572 3844

The continuing existence of the ‘Republic of China’ on Taiwan is one ofthe final great unresolved issues after the revolution of 1949 on the Main-land and the creation of the People’s Republic there. In the last sixdecades, Taiwan has emerged as one of the great Asian economies, andas an authentic, maturing democracy. Its era under martial law ended inthe early 1980s, and since then its society and politics have transformed.

Richard C. Bush was the highly respected director of the American Insti-tute in Taipei for four years over the turn of the millennium, and bringsunique perspectives and insights from this period to his analysis of the

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