Most official literature would trace the lineage of China’s contemporary era of reforms to the Third Plenum of the 13th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) held in December 1978, which marked the final ascendency of Deng Xiaoping and his policy of ‘opening up and reform’ which reversed the Maoist path of communism. Within three decades, China has been transformed from a centrally planned economy to a thriving market economy under the so-called ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’. Private enterprises thrive alongside state-owned enterprises which now account for only some 30% of the nation’s industrial product. The central state was restructured through devolution and decentralization. New administrative systems in personnel, financial and assets management were installed. In a gist, the past thirty years of reforms - though implemented in a gradualist manner described by Deng as “crossing the river by touching the stones”, with tensions between reformist and conservative forces, periodic ups and downs, and setbacks and reversals, have nonetheless managed to break up the previous omnipresent party-state built upon the state’s extraction and monopoly of all resources (manpower, finance, properties and natural resources), operated through a party-controlled centralized cadre system, and state-owned production units and enterprises run by central ‘industrial’ ministries. At the gateway to mainland China stands Hong Kong, a British-ruled enclave until 1 July 1997 when this international city was reunified with the motherland. Unlike the mainland, Hong Kong has always enjoyed a British, and hence Western, style of administration. During colonial rule, Hong Kong had a long tradition of pursuing administrative and management reforms as a substitute for more fundamental constitutional reforms, in order to cope with the government’s legitimacy deficit and to be more responsive to public demands. The 1990s marked the heydays of public sector reform, when

Higher education worldwide is undergoing a process of globalization and internationalization. Hong Kong is no exception, supported by both government policy and defined visions of local universities. This process involves not just the recruitment of international students and faculties, but also the transformation of local/national higher education institutions into international higher education institutions operating beyond national boundaries and competing actively in international branding and the international ranking “game”. While internationalization of higher education is a natural outcome of the new globalized era, there are also concerns about the growing commercialization and commodification of education, as well as the marginalization or even loss of cultural and national identities in the name of internationalization. This paper discusses the context and challenges of internationalization, and the tensions between the local/regional and the international – highlighting issues such as: the definition of “international” scholarship; the language and venue of academic publication; the role of “local” knowledge and tradition; the benchmarking of educational achievements; the language of instruction; and the content of the curriculum. It raises some pertinent questions and addresses the fundamental question: Is internationalization necessarily in conflict with a vibrant local/national identity and knowledge tradition?