The findings presented here are derived from a subset of data from a larger study, the Global Concerns Study (GCS). GCS was a two-year study (1999-2001) that addressed the following question: What do pre-servi ce and in -service social studies teachers in Hong Kong, southern China, and Minnesota consider to be the most important citizenship and environmental issues that need to be addressed in the 21st century? This paper reports and compares survey results from the two Chinese samples., reporting on what a sample of educators in the nearby but politically and economically separate cities of Hong Kong and Guangzhou think are the ideal characteristics of future citizens. With the historical events that divide the two cities, the author finds different emphases, but also a common tendency in both places to emphasizes the less political and controversial elements of citizenship education. Despite some ambiguities, the findings of this study are consistent with other findings of a tendency in both Hong Kong and China to prioritise the non-political dimensions of citizenship education. There is enough congruence in the findings for the two samples to suggest that there are strong common cultural themes that overcome radically different historical experience in the past 150 years. At the same time there is enough evidence of difference in emphasis to suggest that even with cities in such close proximity these historical and social forces have had some impact. Whether this evidence of future divergence or convergence, or perhaps a combination of both, it is too early to say.

In the last ten years or so, the governments in many countries have paid more attention to citizenship education. In fact, citizenship education has become an important element in the primary and secondary schools curriculum of these countries. In Hong Kong the government has paid special attention to citizenship education since the mid-1980s when it was decided that China was to regain the sovereignty of Hong Kong from 1997. In addition, the promotion of citizenship education was also necessary as a result of the start of the process of democratization in the early 1980s. To facilitate the implementation of citizenship education in Hong Kong, two official documents were published to provide guidelines for schools principals and teachers. There are different views regarding the nature and the dimensions of citizenship education. According to Lawton (2000), there are at least two views concerning the definitions of citizenship education. They are (1) passive citizenship view of training for conformity and obedience and (2) educating the future citizenship for active participation in a democratic society. Heater (1990) suggests that citizenship education has three dimensions: elements (identity and loyalty, virtues, legal or civic status, political and social rights), geographical levels (local, nation-state, regional or world) and outcomes of education (knowledge, attitudes and skills). More recently, researchers such as Lee (2004) have also suggested to examine citizenship education from an Asian perspective. The aim of this paper is to examine the problems and controversies related to the implementation of citizenship education in Hong Kong from a comparative education perspective. Examples of these problems include the low status of the subject, the lack of training of teachers and the very crowded curriculum which restricts the inclusion of more subjects such as citizenship education. One further problem is that under the 'one country - two system' there are heated