The Basic Law, a law of the National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China, plays a fundamental role in the life of Hong Kong people, As Gittings (2013) recently explained: As the highest law with practical effect in Hong Kong, it sets the framework for Hong Kong’s system of government, how its courts operate, and the rights and freedoms enjoyed by its residents, to name just a few examples. Yet the school curriculum does not deal with these major civic issues in any great depth. As Chinese citizens, the city’s youth need to be aware of what defines their citizenship in legal terms, how they can take on their responsibilities as citizens and how they can make a productive contribution to Hong Kong and the nation. This paper will draw on the Basic Law Education Project that has been funded by The Education University of Hong Kong. It will describe the five domains of study that have been identified (Rule of Law, Rule by Law, Historical Contexts of the Basic Law, How the Basic Law was Made, Changing the Basic Law), compare and contrast these to other law education projects both in Hong Kong and internationally and indicate pedagogies that can be used to enliven Basic Law Education in Hong Kong classrooms.

Purpose Political parties in Hong Kong are eager to recruit university students and internship programs are a major recruitment channel for them. However, studies on the influences of political internship programs on university students are few and have mainly been conducted in Western democracies. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore the roles of political party internship programs in encouraging university and community college students to join political parties in Hong Kong, a semi-democratic autonomous region of China. Design/methodology/approach This study is based on the insights gained from semi-structured interviews with a small sample of former party interns. Findings This paper found that party internship programs can play three major roles in encouraging students at higher education institutions to join a political party. They are: exposing students to the recruitment efforts of the party, helping students who have no political aspirations to generate a desire to join, and providing an opportunity for those already considering joining to ascertain if the party is really suitable for them. Originality/value This paper shows that political internships in semi-democratic regimes like Hong Kong can play similar roles as those in Western democracies to stimulate some university students to pursue a career in politics and help those already considering a political career to ascertain their goals. This paper also shows that these stimulating and confirming effects could also apply to the application for party membership.
[© Emerald Publishing Limited 2017]

This paper provides an overview of government policies and major challenges of refugee education in selected Western European and Asia-Pacific countries. The findings show that refugee education in Western European and Oceanic countries is in general better than East and Southeast Asian countries although many problems and challenges remain. Lastly, this paper also discusses the policy and practical implications of the findings on the improvement of education provision for refugee children in Hong Kong, an Asian international city and a special administrative region of China hosting to more than 10,000 asylum seekers, of which about 500 are school age children.

Internationally there have been serious efforts to identify effective modes of delivering civic education for preparing youth for the future challenges of citizenship. This article addresses the research question, 'why is an independent subject not preferred in civic education by Hong Kong civic education teachers?'. It starts with a brief review of international debates and of the development of civic education policy in Hong Kong. Then it moves on to discuss why teachers tend to reject civic education as an independent subject based on the findings from an interview informed research study. The findings reveal that teachers' misunderstandings of the nature of civic education are the major reasons. Treating civic education as comprising educational activities involving the nurturing of attitudes, values and skills of students with little content knowledge, the teachers consider that civic education is best accomplished through, for example, extra-curricular activities and not as a subject that demands time slots in the school timetable. It is argued that these misunderstandings will have negative impacts on the effectiveness of civic education, which is unfavourable to the nurturing of democratic cultures necessary for the development of the democratic system in Hong Kong and has to be rectified. Lastly, some recommendations for rectification that relate to civil society are discussed. Hopefully, this article can shed light on the understanding of the preferences towards the modes of implementation of front line practitioners in schools internationally, since this phenomenon is common in some other nations.
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