This paper examines the relevance of hybridization to the development of higher education (HE) governance in Hong Kong. It begins by briefly reviewing conceptual issues about HE governance. Based on these conceptual elements, an analytical framework is then proposed to understand the institutional balance of power in university systems and the cultural equilibrium in the academia. Afterwards, an overview of the key features of HE governance in Hong Kong is presented. Three controversial incidents involving the individual academic freedom and institutional autonomy of universities that occurred in Hong Kong after 1997 are also studied. Given that these incidents are linked with the social and political changes in postcolonial Hong Kong, the controversial incidents and associated confrontations in the university sector are regarded as signals of an ongoing hybridization process in the city. Such a process indicates a continued East–West cultural divide in the arenas of HE governance and academic culture.
[Copyright © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.]

This paper critically reviews the thesis of managing globalization, which demonstrates how East Asian states have successfully selectively blended elements of transnational academic capitalism with their pre-existing models of political economy, thereby effectively responding to neoliberal globalization. This paper argues that the thesis overlooks the significance of local politics in understanding the global–local dynamics in higher education policy, thus insufficiently acknowledging the indeterminacy that arises in the transformation of the state. To address this argument, this paper examines the transnational higher education development in Singapore and Hong Kong and explains how political resistance and corresponding policy changes that emerged in these two societies help understand a zerosum opposition between global and local perspectives. This zero-summism shows that the conceptual contestation over globalization versus anti-globalization remains relevant.

This article examines the significance of global trends in higher education (HE) development in Hong Kong between 1997 and 2012. Two trends, massification and internationalisation, are considered key driving forces that shaped Hong Kong’s HE policy during the period. The former refers to government measures to widen participation in HE. The latter is associated with Hong Kong’s regional education hub strategy. Universities in the city revised their governance structure in these contexts. The article first explains why massification and internationalisation entered the HE policy discourse in Hong Kong in the late 1990s, and how they were materialised by neoliberal practices in the 2000s. Subsequently, it reveals how the two trends influenced university governance by examining the development of the University of Hong Kong Group. Based on this review, this article argues that the HE development can be perceived as an extension of structural transformation of the Hong Kong economy.
[Copyright © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.]

This paper explores the changes in the higher education systems of Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China in terms of their ‘Chineseness' as a potentially unifying regional identity that can be counterposed to Westernisation. The recent and polyvalent theme of ‘Greater China' is invoked in this paper to describe and interpret the institutional frameworks, within which higher education is developing in this imaginary region, as well as to establish possible discursive linkages in the continuing transformation and strategic reorientation of higher education and its role in the recent economic, political and socio-cultural developments. In this regard, the interrelated discourses of Chineseness and Greater China have the following functions: they imply regionalism; they enable a break with their imperial and colonial past; and they provide the basis for different kinds of hybridisation between Chinese and Western intellectual, educational and cultural traditions and values.

This argument in this study is that the descriptive dimension of the concept of education hub, which focuses on the importance of connectivity in enhancing the competiveness of a place, is inadequate in addressing the educational values in globalising higher education. Therefore, it attempts to initiate a normative dimension of education hub through an empirical account of the experience of a group of Myanmar university students in Hong Kong and an engagement with the ideas of cosmopolitanisation and the notion of higher education as a ‘transnational’ human right. By considering these stories from Myanmar, this study reveals the adoption of the internationalisation of higher education in promoting transnational justice and development.
[Copyright © 2016 Association for Tertiary Education Management and the LH Martin Institute for Tertiary Education Leadership and Management.]

Interpreting modernisation and globalisation in East Asia as processes of Westernisation creates confusion and discomfort among some academics from the region. To illustrate why such discomfort occurs, this article explores the changes in the higher education systems of Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China in terms of their ‘Chineseness’ as a potentially unifying regional identity that can be counterposed to Westernisation. The recent and polyvalent theme of ‘Greater China’ is invoked in this article to describe and interpret the institutional frameworks, within which higher education is developing in this imaginary region, as well as to establish possible discursive linkages in the continuing transformation and strategic reorientation of higher education and its role in the recent economic, political and socio-cultural developments. In this regard, the interrelated discourses of Chineseness and Greater China have the following functions: they imply regionalism; they enable a break with their imperial and colonial past; and they provide the basis for different kinds of hybridisation between Chinese and Western intellectual, educational and cultural traditions and values.
[Copyright © 2016 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis.]

This article analyses a recent policy change in higher education in Hong Kong to determine the significance of politics in the conceptual understanding of higher education governance. To achieve this objective, the article examines the tension between the global agenda, which is characterised by neoliberal ideology and practices, and local needs, which explain the political interests of governments in higher education policy and justify government intervention in higher education. The article initially delineates neoliberal reforms in the 2000s and subsequently reviews the ideology of governance and the regulatory regime in the Hong Kong higher education system. Then, it analyses the recent policy change. Based on this analysis, the article argues that higher education governance in the city is undergoing a paradigm shift, with which the essence of governance has shifted from managing globalisation to managing the tension embedded in the global-local dynamics of agenda setting in higher education policy.
[Copyright © 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.]

This chapter examines the development of private higher education in Hong Kong since the early 2000s with a focus on the trends of massification and internationalization. It consists of three sections. The first section examines the rationales for privatization of higher education in Hong Kong. The second section delineates the policy initiatives taken by the Hong Kong government to facilitate the development of private education. The third section illustrates the challenges of higher education development at the postmassification stage in the city.