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Abstract
Since 2004, the Hong Kong government has sought to build a regional education hub and develop an education industry. However, the rationales and intentions behind this move and the implications these have for the nurturing of local human capital and economic capacity are not always clear. This article seeks to contextualize Hong Kong's economic development within the global economy. Various related official policy documents are examined to decipher the role of the Hong Kong government and to ascertain how the development of a regional education hub and an education industry features in its plans. It is analysed that up till 2009, the goal of attracting foreign and Mainland human resources and talent, as a way to facilitate the inflow of human capital into Hong Kong, has overridden the goal of a viable and self-sustaining education industry. The article questions whether such a policy orientation is in the best interests of Hong Kong and whether developing Hong Kong into an education hub should be mainly seen as being a way of upgrading and revitalizing local higher education in order to better serve the local economy, which is under pressure to transform into a knowledge-based economy and to develop new growth poles.
Notes
1. Hong Kong, for instance, faces intense competition in the Pearl River Delta region in air transport with four international airports already constructed within the region, including, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Macao. Although Hong Kong still maintains a certain edge over Guangzhou in container throughput, however, since airports and container ports are land-intensive, Hong Kong is losing out in services that involve physical movement of cargo, including shipping, air freight, trucking and warehousing (Sung, 2008; S.K. Tsang, Citation2007). Shenzhen's container ports have also rapidly developed with Hong Kong investment, and Shenzhen has now superseded Hong Kong in terms of container throughput (Sung, Citation2009).
2. The other three segments are private commercial and specialty schools, corporate training and executive education and preparatory and boarding schools (ERC, Citation2002).
3. The Hong Kong SAR government in its first five years of establishment had been consistent in its emphasis on education. In 2000, “total spending in education amounted to $54.4 billion, which was an increase of 43% compared to that before the reunification” (Tung, Citation2000). Such an investment was all encompassing and involved all sectors of education from pre-school to higher education as well as vocational and continuing education.
4. The other six initiatives were manufacturing, high-tech industries, creative industries, local community economy, international asset management and environmental improvement. While the four core industries (namely financial services, producer services, logistics and tourism) have remained more or less the same over the years, when discussed in the post-1997 policy addresses, exactly which ones are the new economic engines is not consistent in the policy addresses over the years.
5. It is a maximum of HK$80,000 per annum for a 3- or 4-year full-time undergraduate programme, HK$40,000 per annum for a 2-year part-time postgraduate programme and HK$45,000 per annum for a 2-year full-time sub-degree or diploma programme (Hung et al., Citation2005).
6. “The average annual student unit cost of UGC-funded programmes for the 1998–2001 triennium is HK$235,000 for undergraduate programmes, $241,000 for taught postgraduate programmes and $156,000 for sub-degree programmes” (Hung et al, Citation2005, p. 56).
7. Facilitating the inflow of talent has been consistently featured in policy addresses since 2001. For instance, “attracting talents and investment from outside Hong Kong” was first discussed in the 2001 policy address, attracting talent from the Mainland was specifically mentioned under the heading of “human resources development” in the 2002/2003 Policy Address, and between 2004 and 2008 “attracting talent” from both Mainland and overseas had been consistently presented as one of the solutions to solve the economic ills of Hong Kong by either directly boosting economic development and creating jobs (D.Y.K. Tsang, Citation2006; Tung, Citation2004, Citation2005) or as a way to optimize human capital (D.Y.K. Tsang, Citation2007, Citation2008).
8. The Task Force on Economic Challenges (TFEC) was formed in late 2008 to help identify growth engines in the local economy in the wake of the financial tsunami and threat of global recession. It was composed of university senior academics, eminent local business leaders, professionals and opinion leaders with the Chief Executive as the chair, and revisited “the role of the government” in promoting economic development. As the effects of the financial tsunami were more subdued than anticipated, the Task Force was disbanded in June 2009.
9. The international school sector is expected to provide 5,000 new enrolments in the next few years. The number of self-financing degree-awarding institutions has increased to four and will be accepting 11,000 students. In March 2010, three more institutional sites that provide self-financing degree programmes were launched.