The accommodation and resistance to the decolonisation, neocolonisation and recolonisation of higher education in Hong Kong

Abstract

On 1 July 1997, sovereignty over Hong Kong was returned from the UK to the People's Republic of China (PRC). This article identifies the impact of such a political transition on the Hong Kong higher education system during the transitional period between 1982 and 1997. The struggles among the departing and incoming sovereign powers and local groups are also examined. The article argues that, during this period, three related colonial transition processes - decolonisation, neocolonisation and recolonisation - co-existed in Hong Kong higher education within the framework of 'one country, two systems'. These processes can be seen as resistance to each other: for example, neocolonisation as resistance to decolonisation and recolonisation as resistance to neocolonisation. They are further complicated by the spectra of their accommodation and resistance by the three major actors. On different occasions, the local government and groups played different or even contradictory roles as decolonising, neocolonising or recolonising agents. They selectively participated in the three processes so as to create facilitating conditions for and obstacles to the control of higher education by the incoming ruling power in the post-1997 era.