Based on critical discursive analysis and empirical studies, this study sheds light on policy initiatives aimed at turning Hong Kong (HK) into a higher education hub. Its findings come from questionnaire surveys distributed to 1060 overseas students who studied in HK universities between 2019 and 2021. Three paradoxical issues are identified: the mismatch between policy orientation and students’ preferences, the segregation of international and local students in university life, and the dilemma of the city's positioning as a talent pool or stepping stone. The case of HK highlights the contrast between the discursive imaginaries and lived realities stemming from its projection as an education hub in non-Western societies. Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This chapter aims to explore the novelty and utility of political economy discourse, termed “neo-statism,” as an analytical lens for comparative research in higher education. Analysis is framed within the context of Hong Kong’s transition from a British colony to a Special Administrative Region under China’s sovereignty, and its shifting academic paradigms from a more or less spontaneous philosophy rooted in liberal capitalist economy to embracing neo-statism, which involves market-conforming and state-sponsored approaches to economic and social restructuring whereby the state regulates higher education in support of national integration and global power projection. The statist regulation depends heavily on its deployment of discursive legitimacy, strategic distribution of resources, organizational synergy, and elite cohesion articulated through higher education policy, research projects, and cross-border academic exchange and cooperation. The Hong Kong case suggests that comparative research in higher education should advance from the methodological aspects of the comparative approach to exploring wider theoretical spectrum, for understanding emerging politico-economic factors shaping academic paradigm in comparative contexts. Copyright © 2024 The authors.

This article examines the meaning and features of ‘internationalisation’ in higher education in the social and historical contexts of Hong Kong. From a perspective of shifting geopolitics of higher education aligned with a historical perspective of evolving academic traditions, this article discerns parallel developments featuring the transition of Hong Kong universities along two pathways—benchmarking Western universities’ internationalisation agenda, and converging with China’s projection for national integration and global outreach. The HK case provides a critique of liberal views of internationalisation of higher education based on the logics of neoliberalism, soft power, global citizenship, and internationalisation at home, suggesting a closer look at statist instrumentalism in conjunction with neoliberalism as competitive strategies in a realistic international higher education community.本文探究“高等教育國際化”在香港的社會和歷史背景下所呈現的含義與特徵。研究視角著眼於高等教育的地緣政治和學術傳統之間的聯繫，分析香港高等學府發展的兩條歷史脈絡：一則參照西方國家的大學國際化範式，二則趨於中國的國家融合和全球拓展計畫。這種發展軌跡反映以國家為中心的工具主義與新自由主義的戰略結合。 Copyright © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Drawing on two surveys conducted before and after the 2014 Umbrella Movement, this paper discusses the dynamics of how Hong Kong (HK) university students constructed their own ideals of citizenship. The former survey reveals that HK university students’ ideas about citizenship were mainly associated with their visceral sense of HK belonging. They aspired to social movements as a site for learning and exercising citizenship. However, the findings of the later survey show that students’ sense of HK pride, identity, attachment, and interest in voting were in decline. Such changes were partially due to their feeling of political exclusion and disappointment, and partially due to their unpreparedness to make informed decisions or judgement in the contested political sphere. I argue that students’ experiences mirrored unresolved problems in HK politics and citizenship education, and have implications for the civic role of HK higher education alongside the global wave of youth activism. Copyirght © 2019 British Association for International and Comparative Education.