The mandatory use of mother tongue education in Hong Kong after 1997 met strong objections from the local community. While the government put forward a comprehensive educational agenda to justify the implementation of the policy, this paper raises the question of whether the change in language policy was mainly driven by an educational agenda, or whether there were other underlying agendas. To address the question, the history of the medium of instruction in Hong Kong is reviewed, and the experience of three decolonised Asian countries, Malaysia, Singapore and India, is discussed. The paper suggests that the political agenda has always played an important role in language policy formulation and implementation. In view of the important role that language plays in nation building and social reconstruction, it is inevitable that Chinese medium instruction will become more and more important. How the government will balance the need to strengthen the national identity of Hong Kong people and the need to maintain the international out look and economic development of Hong Kong will have a major impact on there view of the new medium of instruction policy in 2001.
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This paper reviews the Chinese culture in Hong Kong curriculum from the mid-1880s to 1980. The author finds that British administrators and Hong Kong educators use Chinese culture to foster an abstract Chinese identity and a sense of being on the periphery of both Chinese and Western worlds in students. The author regards that these attitudes help consolidate outside rule.

After the resumption of sovereignty in 1997 mother tongue education in Hong Kong, though it began with the good intention of national reintegration, politi-cally, socially, culturally and educationally, has escalated the tensions and contradic-tions of the politics of bilingualism in its implementation. The government policy of bi-literacy and trilingualism addresses, rather than resolves, the problems of hegemonic struggle among different social groups in the society, and between the indigenous elite class and national ruling elites at both the local and national level. A reproduction analysis is conducted to examine the events pertinent to the language shift of English as a medium of instruction (EMI) to Chinese as a medium of instruction (CMI), with particular emphasis on controversial issues such as parental choice, antagonism of elite classes, and group politics in the face of the internationalisation of English under globalised developments of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT). English, a colonising language in the past and now a world language for changes in ICT, remains problematic for Hong Kong's language policy undergoing decolonisation and internationalisation in its early post-transitional years. Putonghua, the national lan-guage of China, challenging Cantonese, the regional dialect, as the formal and high Chinese language of the society, has added complexities to the discourse of polemical mother tongue education under the 'one country, two systems' framework practised in Hong Kong.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0305792032000107786]

Hong Kong's school history curriculum is unique worldwide in that it consists of two entirely separate subjects--'History' and 'Chinese History'--which differ not only in content, but also in terms of their pedagogy and their assumptions concerning the nature of history as a discipline. The distinct subject of 'Chinese History' was first created in the 1950s, largely in response to the colonial government's desire to limit the politicisation of local schools. However, there was subsequently little interference by the government in the development of curricula for the 'two histories'. The pattern of curriculum development for history in Hong Kong over the past few decades does not support conventional theories concerning the impact of colonialism on education. On the contrary, it suggests that the relationship of colonialism to curriculum development may in Hong Kong's case be better understood in terms of a mutually convenient collaboration between the government and local educational elites.
[Copyright of Comparative Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03050060120103865]