Elaine Chan’s research while affiliated with The University of Hong Kong and other places

Ten years ago, the development of civil society in the first decade of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) was analysed in terms of three discourses: civil society as a defender of its autonomy; civil society as the third sector; and civil society as a partner in governance. The conclusion then was that Hong Kong civil society had come of age; not only had its agenda been expanded, but there was also a diversification of values. Ten years on, this article updates the state of civil society, which can be described as both turbulent and vibrant. While Hong Kong society is deeply divided as a result of several mass mobilisations and the rise of localism, there has also been a mushrooming of counter forces in the form of social enterprises and informal groups aiming to help the underprivileged. Civil society has assumed a proactive and even aggressive role in protecting its values and autonomy (the first discourse), while its partnership in governance role has been seriously damaged (the third discourse). In its role as the third sector involving social capital (the second discourse), it has continued to flourish. However, there is a growing number of groups which spread ideas of exclusion and intolerance, and engage in practices like verbal abuse and physical violence, that are opposite to the values promoted by civil society. Accordingly, Hong Kong civil society is in urgent need of repair. If the un-civil values and behaviour are not checked, civil society will experience a downward spiral.

Since Hong Kong's reunification with the People's Republic of China in 1997, debates about patriotism have erupted from time to time in Hong Kong. Considering Hong Kong's socio-political background, the feelings and attachment of Hongkongers towards their motherland are unsurprisingly complex. We therefore need a multidimensional concept to capture the complexities of Hong Kong patriotism. Based on survey data, we propose that the term ‘liberal patriotism’ best describes the type of patriotism in Hong Kong society, which is that love of the homeland and the state are qualified by liberal democratic values.

Civil society in Hong Kong has gone through an important period of maturity in the ten years since the handover, with 2003 being a watershed. Around 2003, civil society assumed a separate identity, and from that point on it has been active in various aspects on the policy-making scene. This article discusses how civil society has articulated itself: its identity, roles, agenda and agency. Civil society’s self-articulation of its identity and roles reveals three discourses: civil society as a defender of its own autonomy, civil society as the third sector, and civil society as a partner in governance. While the first and third discourses are popular among civil society actors, the second discourse is used more by the government. There is also a shift in the emphasis: from the self-defense discourse surrounding opposition of the public security bill to the governance partnership discourse relating to an expanded agenda of civil society on environmental, history, culture and heritage issues. The expanded agenda signals a greater diversification of values. In addition to the monolithic capitalist value system, there are now some post-materialist values that stress a sense of belonging, self-expression and quality of life. Civil society’s sense of agency has grown over the years, and it is now acting with increasing confidence in advocacy.

This paper reports a fairly common contradictory view held in Hong Kong society - the support of universal suffrage and preservation of functional constituency at the same time. © 2006 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.

Despite its growing currency in academic and policy circles, social cohesion is a term in need of a clearer and more rigorous definition. This article provides a critical review of the ways social cohesion has been conceptualized in the literature in many cases, definitions are too loosely made, with a common confusion between the content and the causes or effects of social cohesion. This motivates us to propose a refined definition that we hope is clearer and more rigorous. We will show how our definition could be operationalized into a measurement scheme that facilitates empirical work on social cohesion.