Governance crisis in post-1997 Hong Kong: A political economy perspective

China Review

Volumn 7, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 1-34

  Lui, Tai Lok ^a   Chiu, Stephen W K ^a  

^a CHINESE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG   (Hong Kong)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 36849021524     PISSN: 16802012     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (59)

1. Siu-kai Lau, "Tung Chee-hwa's Governing Strategy: The Shortfall in Politics," in The First Tung Chee-hwa Administration, edited by Siu-kai Lau (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2002);
2. Ming-kwan Lee, "Class, Inequality and Conflict," in Indicators of Social Development: Hong Kong 1999, edited by Lau Siu-kai et al. (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2001);
3. Mark Mitchell, "On to the Streest," Far Eastern Economic Review, 27 July 2000;
4. Po-san Wang and Timothy Ka-ying Wong, "Social Conflicts in Hong Kong: 1996-2002)," Occasional Paper, No. 156, Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, Ile Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2005;
5. on statistics of petition and rally, see Oriental Daily, 20 January 2001.
6. Tai-lok Lui, "Under Fire: Hong Kong's Middle Class after 1997," in The July 1 Protest Rally: Interpreting a Historic Event, edited by Joseph Y. S. Cheng (Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong Press, 2005), pp. 277-301.
7. Ibid.
8. See, for instance, the "Hong Kong Core Values" campaign launched by local professionals in 2004. For details, consult http:// www.hkcorevalues.net.
9. A good survey of the performance of the Hong Kong SAR government is Ming K. Chan and Alvin Y. So (eds.), Crisis and Transformation in China's Hong Kong (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe Inc., 2002).
10. Also see Governance Reform Group SynergyNet, Hong Kong Deserves Better Governance: An Evaluation of Hong Kong's System of Governance and Its Performance (Hong Kong: SynergyNet, 2003).
11. Siu-kai Lau, "Xingzheng zhudao de zhengzhi tizhi" (An Executive-led Political System), Xianggang 21 shiji lantu (A 21st Century Blueprint for Hong Kong) (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2000), pp. 1-36;
12. "Tung Chee-hwa's Governing Strategy: The Shortfall in Politics," in The First Five Years of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, edited by Siu-kai Lau (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2002), pp. 62-79.
13. Lau is not totally unaware of the issue of diversity of interests. He discusses the impacts of the political transition, particularly the emergence of the China-centred networks, on the fragmentation of elite politics. See Siu-kai Lau, "Political Order and Democratisation in Hong Kong: The Separation of Elite and Mass Politics," in Towards a New Millennium: Building on Hong Kong's Strength, edited by Gungwu Wang and Siu-lun Wong (Hong Kong: Centre of Asian Studies, 1999), p. 68. However, his discussion is largely confined to the cleavages created by the decolonization process. Diversity in class interests is basically ignored.
14. Eliza W. Y. Lee, "Governing Post-Colonial Hong Kong," Asian Survey, Vol. 39, No. 6 (1999), pp. 940-59.
15. Ibid., p. 941.
16. Lau, 2000 (Note 6).
17. Anthony B. L. Cheung, "New Interventionism in the Making," Journal of Contemporary China, Vol. 9, No. 24 (2000), pp. 291-308;
18. James T. H. Tang, "Business as Usual: The Dynamics of Government-Business Relations in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region," Journal of Contemporary China, Vol. 8, No. 21 (1999), pp. 275-95.
19. Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1980);
20. Alvin Rabushka, Value for Money (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1976), p. 9.
21. Cheung (Note 11), p. 300.
22. This is an extended and repeated debate over the nature and practice of the state in Hong Kong. For early attempts to challenge the view of Hong Kong as the last stronghold of laissez-faire capitalism, see A. J. Youngson, Hong Kong: Economic Growth and Policy (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1982);
23. Jonathan Schiffer, "State Policy and Economic Growth: A Note on the Hong Kong Model," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Vol. 15, No. 2 (1991), pp. 180-96;
24. Catherine R. Schenk, Hong Kong as an International Financial Centre (London: Routledge, 2001).
25. Tang (Note 12), p. 294.
26. Cultural analysis of Hong Kong politics promises to go beyond class analysis of politics. See Agnes S. Ku, "The 'Public' Up Against the State: Narrative Cracks and Credibility Crisis on Postcolonial Hong Kong," Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 18, No. 1 (2000), pp. 121-44. Ku argues that "[in the case of the bird flu crisis in Hong Kong] the challenge was powerfully presented not so much because of capitalist forces or class interests but because the crisis became a dramatic moment of meaning reconstruction through ironic narration and democratic encoding in the public sphere." (p. 122, original emphasis) Despite reference to Gramsci and his notion of hegemony, nowhere is it clear that the widening of narrative cracks and credibility crisis are grounded upon and are made possible by realpolitik and contest of meaning and interests carried by political actors with specific interests in a certain course of development. The civil service has long been bureaucratic and institutionally not accountable to the public. Why and how there was a narrative displacement to facilitate the rise of a hegemonic discourse on the civil servants and then why and how the same civil service was de-heroized are questions left unanswered. As a result, conjunctural analysis becomes free-floating cultural construction of politics.
27. Colin N. Crisswell, The Taipans: Hong Kong's Merchant Princes (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1991).
28. Tak-Wing Ngo, "Money, Power, and the Problem of Legitimacy in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region," in Politics in China: Moving Frontiers, edited by Françoise Mengin and Jean-Louis Rocca (London: Palgrave, 2002), p. 112.
29. Norman Miners, "Consultation with Business Interests: The Case of Hong Kong," Asian Journal of Public Administration, Vol. 18, No. 2 (1996), p. 246.
30. Richard Hughes, Borrowed Place, Borrowed Time (London: Andre Deutsch, 1976), p. 23.
31. John Rear, "One Brand of Politics," in Hong Kong: The Industrial Colony, edited by Keith Hopkins (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 72.
32. G. B. Endacott, Government and People in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1964).
33. S.G.N. Davies, "One Brand of Politics Rekindled," Hong Kong Law Journal, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1977).
34. Ibid., p. 71.
35. Ibid., p. 70.
36. Ibid., p. 66.
37. Ibid., p. 69.
38. Benjamin K. P. Leung, "Power and Politics: A Critical Analysis," in Social Issues in Hong Kong, edited by Benjamin K. P. Leung (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 21.
39. Ibid., pp. 21-22.
40. It would, of course, be overly simplistic to assume that the colonial government had not made changes in its ruling strategy in dealing with social and political changes in Hong Kong. On the move from selecting the old rich in Hong Kong to absorbing the younger and emerging professionals and managers since the late 1960s, see Lung Wai Stephen Tang, "The Power Structure in a Colonial Society - A Sociological Study of the Unofficial Members of the Legislative Council in Hong Kong (1948-1971)" (Unpublished senior thesis, Department of Sociology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1973).
41. Gilbert Wong, "Business Groups in a Dynamic Environment: Hong Kong 1976-1986," in Asian Business Networks, edited by Gary Hamilton (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1990), pp. 87-113.
42. Ibid., p. 93.
43. Ibid., p. 94.
44. Ibid., pp. 96-97.
45. Ibid., pp. 103-104.
46. Ibid., pp. 106-108.
47. Mang-King William Cheung, "The Applicability of Four Theoretical Perspectives of Economic Power to the Corporate Market in Hong Kong" (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Sociology Department, University of California, Los Angeles, 1994).
48. Tak-Wing Ngo, "Changing Government-Business Relations and the Governance of Hong Kong," in Hong Kong in Transition: The Handover Years, edited by Robert Ash, Peter Ferdinand, Brian Hook and Robin Porter (London: Macmillan Press, 2000), pp. 26-41.
49. Ngo (Note 40), p. 32.
50. A similar argument could be found in Stephen W. K. Chiu, "Unravelling the Hong Kong Exceptionalism: The Politics of Industrial Takeoff," Political Power and Social Theory, Vol. 10 (1996), pp. 229-56.
51. One crucial difference between ours and previous ones is that by the late 1990s, a new type of director was appointed to the corporate boards, namely, the "independent non-executive directors." As they are "outsiders" to the management team, an interlock involving this kind of director should have a much less significant impact on the networking relationship between two companies. Under the current listing rules of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, at least three independent non-executive directors must be appointed to the boards of listed public companies. As the number of this type of directors increased quite dramatically between the three time points, from 0 to 503 in 1997 and 855 in 2004, and they are typically found among the directors with the most multiple memberships, we have decided to exclude them in our analysis of the 1998 and 2004 panels in order to control for their presence over time. For a definition of independent non-executive directors in the context of banking, please refer to the HKMA website: http://www.info.gov.hk/hkma/gdbook/eng/i /indept_nonexec_dir.htm.
52. Leo Goodstadt, Uneasy Partners: The Conflict Between Public Interest and Private Profit in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005), p. 121.
53. Ngo (Note 40), pp. 108-109 has an account of the series of events in the Cyberport incident.
54. See, for example, "Tycoons Urge Cyberport Tender," South China Morning Post, 19 March 1999;
55. "Pressure to Block Cyberport Funding," South China Morning Post, 12 May 1999.
56. Ngo (Note 40), p. 109.
57. The claim came back to the political scene in 2005, prompting the government to release 24 letters between the government and the PCG to prove an absence of collusion with the business sector. See "Tung Faces Cyberport Pressure," South China Morning Post, 3 February 2005.
58. "Developers Step Up Campaign over Electricity Charges," South China Morning Post, 12 November 2002.
59. "Inside the Business Groups' Ambush of the 'Superman'," Next Magazine, 21 November 2002 (in Chinese).