Towards governmentality with Chinese characteristics: higher education policy discourses in post-colonial Hong Kong and Macao

This article examines the intertwining and evolution of neoliberal and nationalist discourses in post-colonial Hong Kong and Macao, arguing that their combination reveals the dual layers of political rationality in the dynamics of higher education policymaking. It suggests a move towards governmentality with Chinese characteristics, marked by gradual and continuous shifts towards decolonisation and re-Sinicisation within the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ framework. This perspective contrasts with existing literature on Hong Kong that emphasises the maintenance of the colonial status quo and points out abrupt changes due to the 2019 protests and the 2020 National Security Law. By analysing the reconfiguration of governmentality in the higher education systems of these post-colonial Chinese societies amid changing political landscapes, the article sheds light on both the incremental changes and significant moments influencing the trajectory of higher education development in Hong Kong and Macao.摘要本文檢視新自由主義和民族主義論述在後殖民時代香港和澳門的交織與演變，認為它們的結合揭示了高等教育政策制定動態中政治理性的雙重性。研究表明，具有中國特色的治理性得以發展，其標誌是在「一國兩制」的框架內逐步、持續地向去殖民化和再中國化轉變。這一觀點與強調維持香港殖民現狀，並指出了2019年的抗議活動和2020年的《國家安全法》所帶來的劇變的現有文獻形成鮮明對比。本文透過分析這些中國後殖民地社會不斷變化的政治格局中高等教育體系治理性的重構，揭示了影響香港和澳門高等教育發展軌蹟的漸進變化和重要時刻

The role of university leaders in a political crisis: Students' perspectives from Hong Kong

University students actively participated in the 2019 Hong Kong protests. In this context, the students expected that their universities would support their political stance. Drawing on data from interviews with student leaders, this article documents and examines students' expectations for their university heads, how they interacted and negotiated with university management and how university leaders variously responded to the students' expectations during the social movement. Noting the difficulties in reconciling conflicts over the positioning of the university amid strong political polarisation and social divisions in the society, this article argues that university leaders can only passively adapt to political unrest, and that such passive adaptation exemplifies university's vulnerability to political crises

Hong Kong universities: navigating in unknown waters

Since mid-2019, Hong Kong society was shaken by a social movement, which divided the society of Hong Kong into two sides. The social movement results from a mix of political, economic, cultural, and social tensions that have been gradually building across the years. As intense clashes between protesters and police occurred on university campuses, people have an impression that university students played an active role in the protests. In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the territory, later the world, affecting universities as well. How did these changes influence the stability, characteristics, enrollment, and development of universities in Hong Kong? This paper argues that demonstrations were not new to the territory, and that Hong Kong universities even benefited from them. It also argues that the two crises – the social movement in 2019 and the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in opposing impacts to Hong Kong universities. Finally, the paper suggests that Hong Kong universities are expected to remain resilient in the future, but critical values of Hong Kong universities need to be preserved to ensure the continuation of their current prestige, internationalization, and networking centrality in the region

Reimagining the notion of Hong Kong as an education hub: National imperative for higher education policy

This article examines the evolving concept of Hong Kong as an education hub, with a focus on the influence of the Greater Bay Area (GBA) strategy on higher education development. It begins by reviewing the impacts of the policy of developing Hong Kong into an education hub on the city’s educational landscape and global competitiveness. Subsequently, the article investigates the GBA’s role as a subnational higher education region, highlighting the heightened strategic cooperation between Hong Kong and the Chinese Mainland in the higher education arena. The cases of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Guangzhou are examined as examples of cross-border education in the GBA, shedding light on their role in fostering research collaboration and knowledge exchange. The article reimagines the notion of an education hub, underscoring Hong Kong’s transition from a gateway to a radiator, and discusses the implications of this shift for the city’s global and national positioning. Through this analysis, the article examines the dynamics and future prospects of education hub in Hong Kong, particularly within the context of emphasising integration with the Chinese Mainland

Identification of tenuis of four French Polynesian <i>Carapini</i> (Carapidae: Teleostei)

Four species of adult Carapini (Carapidae) occur on Polynesian coral reefs: Encheliophis gracilis, Carapus boraborensis, C. homei and C. mourlani. Samples collected in Rangiroa and Moorea allowed us to obtain different tenuis (larvae) during their settlement phases or directly inside their hosts. These were separated into four lots on the basis of a combination of pigmentation, meristic, morphological, dental and otolith (sagittae) features. Comparison of these characters with those of the adults allows, for the first time, taxonomic identification of these tenuis-stage larvae

Learning to Communicate using Contrastive Learning

Communication is a powerful tool for coordination in multi-agent RL. But inducing an effective, common language is a difficult challenge, particularly in the decentralized setting. In this work, we introduce an alternative perspective where communicative messages sent between agents are considered as different incomplete views of the environment state. By examining the relationship between messages sent and received, we propose to learn to communicate using contrastive learning to maximize the mutual information between messages of a given trajectory. In communication-essential environments, our method outperforms previous work in both performance and learning speed. Using qualitative metrics and representation probing, we show that our method induces more symmetric communication and captures global state information from the environment. Overall, we show the power of contrastive learning and the importance of leveraging messages as encodings for effective communication

Global pedigree and national imperative:Hong Kong universities’ response to China’s grand strategies

Literature offers a theoretical framework exemplifying the inherent tensions between “becoming Chinese” and “remaining global” in the evolution of the international status of Hong Kong. Adopting this framework, this paper examines the global position of Hong Kong’s higher education through an investigation of universities’ participation in China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Greater Bay Area development plan. Specifically, drawing on data from interviews about universities’ engagement with the two Chinese grand strategies, the paper discusses university leaders and academics’ experience and perception of Hong Kong’s global status against a policy context that foregrounds a deeper integration with the Chinese national development. This discussion offers a theoretical dialogue that reveals different but overlapping scenarios for the future of Hong Kong’s higher education and sheds light on the link between the changing geopolitical contexts and international higher education