Raymond K H Chan

University of Melbourne | MSD · School of Social and Political Sciences

With a strong adherence to liberalism, the labor market in Hong Kong is character-ized by a low level of external regulation and an emphasis on self-adaptation as coping. The government mainly attend to the quality of manpower supplied meet-ing the market need, as well as peaceful industrial relations. Segmentation of labor is a natural result of t...

Proximity to mainland China places Hong Kong at the forefront of the COVID-19 threat, and it has survived the test most of the time. It appears that public compliance with government advice on preventive measures and social distancing, plus the availability of tests and medical facilities, contributed to the successful handling of the crisis. While...

Hong Kong's public health services gradually developed since the 1950s. They are mainly funded by taxes, supplemented by minimal user fees. In the late 1980s, the government recognized the limitations of this financing model and has subsequently proposed alternative methods of funding. Their proposals have been rejected by various stakeholders, who...

It is commonly believed that, in Chinese societies, respect for the elderly and communal values sustains a generational contract that benefits the older generation. Overt intergenerational conflict appears to be rare, though recent policy reforms have raised concerns about competing generational interests. Drawing on data from the sixth wave of the...

Harnessing the rapid development of mobile internet technology, the sharing economy has experienced unprecedented growth in the global economy, especially in China. Likely due to its increasing popularity, more and more businesses have adopted this label in China. There is a concern as to the essential meaning of the sharing economy. As it is diffi...

Hong Kong's public health services gradually developed since the 1950s. They are mainly funded by taxes, supplemented by minimal user fees. In the late 1980s, the government recognized the limitations of this financing model and has subsequently proposed alternative methods of funding. Their proposals have been rejected by various stakeholders, who...

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between school-based global learning education (GLE), knowledge, family income, and global competence, which consists of global perspective and intercultural literacy. Based on a survey of 599 high school students in Shenzhen, it finds that school-based GLE has direct positive effects on inte...

In China, the correlation between environmental space and drug use by gay male sex workers remains an under-researched public health concern. Drugs are commonly used to enhance sexual performance as well as provide feelings of euphoria but they also increase the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV. The spatial and environmental factors...

The concept of a double burden of care, in this case, refers to the burden of caring for the older generation (parents) as well as the younger (children) simultaneously. While previous studies have focused on the impact of these two types of care separately, this chapter examines the burden of those responsible for both types of care. Based on surv...

This chapter summarizes major findings from each chapter and explains how care arrangements in a private family interrelate to both national and international politics and economics in a globalized world. Specifically, this chapter focuses on the gendered nature of the state and society that makes women, either locals or migrants, take on a disprop...

This chapter contextualizes the issues discussed in this volume by first outlining the similar ways in which care has been transformed across East Asia. These include the unprecedented degree of demographic change relating to low fertility rates and population aging, increasing numbers of women entering the labor market, changing forms of families,...

Respect for the elderly and hence the associated rights support a generational contract. Nevertheless, the case of the recent debate on the universal retirement scheme in Hong Kong has raised concerns about its strength. We identify relevant items from the sixth wave of the World Values Survey to explore the orientations of different generations to...

This collection provides a comparative analysis of care arrangements in relation to issues of gender and transnational migration, social policy and labour migration in East Asia. Bridging the key topics of migration and gendered cared work through cross country comparisons, it examines how care work and welfare arrangements have been shaped by nati...

Since the late 1950s, Hong Kong's public health services have increased. They are mainly funded by taxes, supplemented by minimal user fees. In the late 1980s, the government recognized the limitations of this financing model and has subsequently proposed alternative methods of funding. Their proposals have been rejected by various stakeholders, wh...

Different life-birth cohorts may experience different life contexts, challenges, and opportunities, and tackled by different coping strategies. It has been suggested that the younger cohorts were facing with greater challenges and uncertainty, more resources supported, but lacking the willpower to overcome these, unable to attain life course tasks,...

Since the 1990s, Hong Kong has experienced increasing economic uncertainty. Middle-aged workers, who often have little formal education and limited skills, have been the first casualties of economic restructuring. Initially, their unemployment was considered transitional. Limited government-sponsored retraining programs were expected to improve the...

As part of minban education, private tutoring agencies have emerged and consolidated in tandem with the development of the market economy in China. Their introduction has been viewed as a product of the paradigms of controlled decentralization and privatization of the Chinese education system.

Minban (private) secondary schools are a new phenomenon in China, which, theoretically, have greater freedom from government control. In practice, however, their autonomy is still limited, as is shown by this in-depth study of eight minban schools, though they have actively pursued strategies to obtain, defend, and expand their autonomy. Four princ...

Family and work conflict (F/WC) has gained prominence in developed economies in Asia as individuals are faced with the increased demands from work and families that are still considered very important. Hong Kong and Taiwan best illustrate the changing social and economic conditions that have given rise to this conflict. In these two societies, peop...

“Life course” refers to the sequence of activities and events in various domains throughout the stages of life. It has been argued that the life course was standardized and institutionalized, but that, since the 1980s, it has become de-standardized or even re-standardized. Various types of risks have emerged and intensified. This paper suggests tha...

Using data from surveys on ‘‘social quality survey questionnaires’’ carried out in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, and South Korea between 2009 and 2011, this study investigates the relationship between trust and social inclusion. The data analysis of 4,807 questionnaires reveals that trust (the general trust, the interpersonal trust and the instituti...

This paper is based on both international and comparative research on intergenerational-caring relationships in which women simultaneously provide care for their frail elderly relatives as well as young children/grandchildren in East Asian societies. The ageing of population, the decrease in average number of siblings and the rising average age of...

In the past few decades, societies in Asia have experienced rapid and dramatic changes in their economic, social and political spheres. Despite the wide diversity among these countries, a few general trends can be observed. Globalization has swept across Asia, bringing intensive economic interactions, with a strong commitment to liberalism and mark...

Studies in Western countries have shown that part-time work is associated with lower work–family conflict and higher job satisfaction, especially in the case of women. The present study addressed three questions: (1) are part-time workers more likely to report a lower level of work–family conflict and higher levels of job satisfaction and life sati...

This chapter analyzes the issue of primary health care utilization in Hong Kong and introduces the case of Hong Kong where a special division between public and private sectors has developed in the field of primary health services. The chapter argues that in the foreseeable future, it is likely that the division of health care between the public an...

This chapter analyzes the issue of primary health care utilization in Hong Kong and introduces the case of Hong Kong where a special division between public and private sectors has developed in the field of primary health services. The chapter argues that in the foreseeable future, it is likely that the division of health care between the public an...

This article compares features of the redistributive, developmental and productivist models of social policy. Using East Asian welfare systems as examples, it illustrates the application of the productivist and developmental models, and describes the contextual factors influencing these models. It argues that each model is an outgrowth of a particu...

Feeling close to fellow citizens in the city is a feature of social cohesion that is worth investigation among East Asian societies for exploring societal conditions for the closeness. Because of the variation of such conditions among the societies, differentials in the closeness among the societies are possible. As the variation of societal condit...

A number of personal and familial stressors are supposedly stressful. However, their individual impacts on the person’s sense of belonging remain largely uncharted. The study thereby examines the impacts of the stressors in general and in relation to personal and familial background characteristics. Such examination adheres to the perspective of re...

Since the late 1950s, Hong Kong's public health services have increased. They are mainly funded by taxes, supplemented by minimal user fees. In the late 1980s, the government recognized the limitations of this financing model and subsequently proposed alternative methods of funding. Their proposals have been rejected by various stakeholders, who re...

Poverty was not a major issue in Hong Kong before the 1990s. After the Asian financial crisis, the government admitted that poverty was growing and demanded attention. While passive assistance was maintained, increasing emphasis was placed on capacity building to promote self-reliance. The Child Development Fund was introduced to combat intergenera...

The privatization of health services is an emerging trend in Asia. China and Vietnam are no exceptions, with their reforms to promote private hospitals gradually developed in early 1990s. As newcomers to the health-care system, private hospitals must achieve legitimacy in a state-dominated system in order to survive and develop. This paper describe...

Focusing on the welfare–work nexus (i.e., the interface between passive-protective welfare policies and the active-productive work policies) in China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, this article provides an overview and analysis of East Asia's social and labour strategies since the early 1990s. While a productivist approach, fuelled by n...

Work and self-reliance are the core values of neo-liberalist Hong Kong society. When the economy was booming, finding a job was not an issue. The real challenges began in the late 1990s due to successive economic crises which led to the adoption of active labour market policies. While social security protection has been provided for the unemployed,...

Hong Kong's health services have shown signs of development in recent decades. The provision of public low-cost universal health services acts as a safety net, but its quality and quantity is sometimes questionable. Citizens' health service needs often must be met by the supplementary private health services, especially the primary health services....

Since the late 1950s, Hong Kong’s public health services have increased. They are mainly funded by taxes, supplemented by minimal user fees. In the late 1980s, the government recognized the limitations of this financing model and subsequently proposed alternative methods of funding. Their proposals have been rejected by various stakeholders, who re...

Trust is an essential element of governance. Lack of trust in government engenders doubts regarding its competence, weakens its legitimacy, and creates difficulties in the process of governing. As suggested, declining trust was related to reflexivity. This article, based on a Hong Kong study, confirms that a lack of competence trust in the governme...

Promoting civic engagement could be a way of strengthening the social solidarity of China's urban population. The drastic socio-economic changes resulting from recent economic reform are likely to have a deleterious effect on social solidarity. Based on a survey conducted in 2010 in the Southern China city of Xiamen, this paper examines a specific...

The present study explored the relationship between Chinese virtues and life satisfaction among Hong Kong sample and the Mainland sample. A total of 729 undergraduate students completed the 96-item Chinese Virtues Questionnaire (CVQ) and Satisfaction with Life Scale. Among the three virtues measured by the CVQ, Interpersonal, Vitality and Cautiousn...

Hong Kong’s health services have shown signs of development in recent decades. The provision of public low-cost universal health services acts as a safety net, but its quality and quantity is sometimes questionable. Citizens’ health service needs often must be met by the supplementary private health services, especially the primary health services....

This special issue focuses on the changing care regimes for children and older people in the East Asian societies of China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong. As a result of dramatic changes in family structures and behaviours, each society has been struggling to reform its care regime. Each chapter addresses the impact of demographic trends on th...

Like other developed Asian societies, Hong Kong has experienced dramatic demographic changes since the 1980s; the rapid decline of the birth rate and the upsurge in the number of senior citizens have had a significant impact on caregiving services’ provisions and strategies. While families continue to play an important role by providing care and fi...

The five Asian societies reviewed in this special issue have exhibited similar demographic trends, which have, in turn, presented similar challenges to their care systems. Various care regimes and arrangements have been initiated to tackle these recent challenges. Care regimes rely on care services from different sectors. While the family retains i...

• Summary: Japanese gender roles are usually constructed according to tradition, and men are assumed to possess a traditional masculine identity. This article examines the aspects of gender role identity and the socio-demographic factors that predict help-seeking attitudes among Japanese men. Data on 265 Japanese males were measured using the GRCS...

A way to clarify the measurement of social capital is the differentiation of its bases on opportunity and exchange. Social capital based on opportunity incorporates organizational participation, network strength, trust, helping and continuing relationships, whereas social capital based on exchange consists of the investment and reciprocation of hel...

The family is the most fundamental unit of society in Hong Kong and the core element of welfare arrangements. Nevertheless, the family system has been challenged by various social forces. Using the concepts of ‘risk’ and ‘individualization’ proposed by Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, this paper examines how family structures and values have become more un...

English This article reports the findings of the first survey of men’s self-help groups in Hong Kong. Group members and social workers felt that these contributed significantly to improvements in interpersonal skills and social networking, but also that men’s services have been marginalized due to lack of societal support and a proper understanding...

The populations of Taiwan and Hong Kong are ageing. There are grave concerns about the well-being of senior citizens and the impact of an older population on society and public financing. While many debates focus on the improvement of welfare provisions, little attention has been paid to promote the employment of senior citizens, as an alternative...

This paper uses the concept of risk to frame an analysis of welfare reforms and politics in Hong Kong following the financial crisis. Recently, the government and the public have been increasingly exposed to, and aware of, risk. The old welfare policies were considered ineffective in coping with new risks and were gradually replaced by new strategi...

Minban (non-state sector operated) education has already established a hold in the Chinese education system. Its development has been viewed as a product of the government's ongoing process of controlled decentralization, together with privatization of education services in the early 1980s. The high importance given to financial decentralization ha...

Social capital, as a comprehensive concept, comprises structural components representing social networks and functional components, which register past and future help, reciprocity, and trust. One assumption is that these various components interact and reinforce one another to enhance an individual's expected achievement. To validate the conceptua...

Increasing attention has been drawn to the risk posed by air pollution, a risk that has wide-ranging effects (on the environment, health, the economy, culture, urban design and politics). New environmental movements and political agendas have emerged in the past 10 years. A growing number of social groups have been formed to express their concerns...

English Community economic development has attracted increasing attention in Hong Kong as a strategy for tackling economic problems. This article analyzes its applications and limitations in Hong Kong. Such initiatives are thriving though the income generated is small. Appropriate business strategies, capacity building, and strong community links a...

In the 1970s and up until the financial crisis occurred in the late 1990s, Hong Kong prospered in a relatively stable social, economic and political context. Since the financial crisis, however, its population has been increasingly exposed to risk: there has been job uncertainty and decreasing capacity for self-reliance, leading to a growing relian...

‘Participatory Welfare’ is the term coined by the current Roh Moo-hyun government to distinguish its welfare reform from the previous Kim Dae-jung government’s ‘Productive Welfare’ policies. While the use of term ‘participatory’ is a convenient extension of its slogan ‘Participatory Government’, the details of Participatory Welfare are still evolvi...

Current debates and initiatives relating to the welfare regime in Japan focus on the contributions of informal and community networks. In this article, we adopt the concept of social capital, which is assessed according to three categories – structural social capital, experiential individual social capital and anticipatory individual social capital...

Hong Kong has a liberal economy, and its welfare regime relies, first, on income through employment and, second, on support provided by family and community members. Although the government has strategically invested in certain social services, generally speaking, its aid is intended to be a secondary, if not the last resort. This system was effect...

The latest period of expansion in the international economy has been characterised by the liberalisation of capital movements, the deregulation of major financial markets and the spread of neo-liberal beliefs in the merits of open and competitive trade, the disadvantages of big government and protectionist policies (Hirst, 1997). The rapid advancem...

From the early 1990s the South Korean government launched a series of structural reforms to liberalize and deregulate the economy and labour market, in line with its globalization strategy. Particularly after the financial crisis, flexible labour market reform was one of the major initiatives to keep the Korean economy competitive in the global mar...

From mid-1970s, Asian societies have experienced unprecedented economic growth, and have invested in the development of their own welfare regimes, which offers support to the individual even though public funding is limited. Welfare development received growing attention in Asia. The financial crisis that began in 1997 signified a drastic change in...

Korea experienced a long period of economic prosperity from the 1960s until the outbreak of the Asian financial crisis in 1997. The Korean government launched a series of economic structural reforms to liberalize and deregulate the economy. In fact, the reforms were initiated in the early 1990s when the Korean government developed its globalization...

We examine the influences of job-search motives and coping behaviours on psychological well-being and re-employment on 104 unemployed Hong Kong Chinese within a longitudinal context. Participants were tested on two different occasions separated by eight months. Results indicated that, at the first survey, use of coping strategies predicted higher p...

Many have referred to globalisation as the world with a 'total system'. The system consists of many elements...(please refer to the Book).

Before the recent economic recession, the rapid economic growth of the East Asian countries has been accelerating for the past few decades... (please refer to the Journal itself).

To work overseas has been a popular phenomenon among Asians during the post-war period...(please refer to the journal itself).

This paper aims to revisit the social work of the twentieth century and look forward to alternative practices in the twenty-first century. The discussion will focus on examining three aspects: the origins and nature of social work, the alienation of social work from its mission in the process of development, and the challenges of globalisation and...

While it has been strongly believed that labor migration is closely associated with a rapid transformation of many industrialised nations, the phenomenon is now increasingly emerging in the other parts of the globe...(please refer to the book itself).

This paper is based on the findings of an empirical study of street sleepers in Hong Kong in late 1995. It is divided into five parts: an introduction, street sleeping in Hong Kong, the research methodology of the project, the findings and the policy implications. Clearly, economic affluence by itself is insufficient to deal with the problems of ho...

The impact of unemployment on psychological health, indexed by the General Health Questionnaire, was studied in 86 unemployed and 79 employed Chinese women in Hong Kong. As with findings reported in the West, the present results showed that the unemployed participants were more disturbed than their steadily employed peers. In addition, the prevalen...

The welfare state is not the monopoly of the West, though it is often perceived as such. A review of Chinese history and philosophy reveals that the notion of the welfare state has long existed in China. The establishment of the People's Republic of China has offered an opportunity of implanting socialist values and ideologies, in the form of Marxi...

Community care has been adopted as the principal service delivery strategy to various target groups, especially the mentally ill, in Hong Kong. The success or failure of community care services depends upon the input and support from the formal sector, the informal sector and the interweaving between the two. This paper reports on youth attitudes,...

This paper explores the foundation of social work. The authors argued that social work has to be defined in terms of its values and knowledge. Two major approaches to social work knowledge- logical positivism and hermeneutics- are compared, It was found that both contribute to social work knowledge building and although they represent two different...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Essex, 1996.

The welfare state is not the monopoly of the West, though it is always perceived to be so. A review of the Chinese history discovers that the notion of welfare state and related welfare system has long existed in China. However, these two conceptions of the welfare state have different value and philosophical bases and, hence, different welfare sys...