Hong Kong and China after 1997: The Real Issues - Case Study Example

Academic research papers have some common characteristics. A research paper usually focuses on a thesis or research question and draws out evidences to support or oppose the hypothesis or answer the research question. Research methodology may be based on primary or secondary methods. Primary research tool encompasses questionnaires, telephonic interviews and field survey observations. On the other hand secondary research involves drawing of materials and evidence from already present sources. This paper undertakes the study of two academic research articles - “Hong Kong 1997 in Context” by Priya Raghubir and Gita Venkataramani Johar and “Hong Kong and the China after 1997: The real Issues” by William H. Overholt. The former was published after Hong Kong gained autonomy from the British rule while the later was published before that. The focus of the former article rests on the opinion of the people of Hong Kong about the future of Hong Kong after gaining independence from colonial domination while the author of the second article focuses on the impact of the Joint Declaration of 1984 on the economy of Hong Kong and the trustworthiness of China. For the first article the authors undertake a topical and analytical study while for the second case, Overholt develops an essentially analytical study of the different political, economic and social aspects. There are two categories of analysis – quantitative that deals with numerical data and analysis of the same and qualitative analysis, which incorporate qualitative data or information. The first article titled, “Hong Kong 1997 in Context” incorporates quantitative analysis while the article, “Hong Kong and the China after 1997: The real Issues” involves entirely qualitative analysis. Both articles center on the year 1997 but the issue of research are different. The article “Hong Kong 1997 in Context” by Priya Raghubir and Gita Venkataramani Johar and published in Public Opinion Quarterly in 1999 focuses on the reaction of people from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau about the future of the people of Hong Kong. It came under the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the year 1997 after being free from British dominion. Now, the research method is conducted by taking interviews in three field surveys at Macau, Taiwan and Hong Kong. The idea is to observe and analyze the reactions of people towards the impact of this transition of Hong Kong in the near future. The different attitudes are found to be functions of the order of question and framing the questions. When we consider the order of the questions, one may see it as the impact of responses to certain questions on that of the future questions. The emphasis lies on two different aspects of attitudes – whether the attitudes are stored in memory and if the validity of the attitude is crucial to the respondent. The idea is to predict the impact of order and framing and to identify the most likely occurrence time. The responses may be grouped into part-part and part-whole effects of the order of questions on the attitudes and responses of people. The carryover effect of responses to certain specific questions on the other general questions is also examined here along with the impact of framing the issue of transition as ‘reunification’, ‘takeover’ and ‘handover’ on the attitudes of people on the issue studied here. The question of the research posed for the survey in a broad sense is “What will be the likely impact of the events of July 1997 and on the future of Hong Kong and its neighbors?” The idea is to trace whether the responses can be broadly grouped under positive and negative categories or not. The responses are more than likely to depend on the issues under consideration during the time of response. For instance the people are inclined to give appositive reaction if the issue of consideration is independence from foreign colonial power and a reintegration with people of same ethnic origin. On the other hand the negative responses will find their ground in the consideration of the issue of dominance by a stronger neighbor (the People’s Republic of China) and loss of its own independence or autonomy. The secondary purpose of the article is to analyze the biases that might arise from the order of questions and their framing with respect to the attitudes of people towards the transition of Hong Kong in 1997. Thus the authors cover the aspects associated with the topic or question under discussion in detail and a balanced fashion such that no stone is unturned and every detail is considered before inferring about the survey. The impact of the context is enhanced when the beliefs about the target issue are not the same. In this regard the authors have done a literature survey of relevant works similar to the context in discussion. For instance, as reported by Fung (1997) the people of Hong Kong reported on one hand that the union with their motherland, China was inevitable and on the other hand, they were apprehensive about the human rights and corruption after Chinese rule. Thus the authors justify the importance of the issue under discussion and the relevance of the issue to the context of the survey. Hence three studies are categorically investigated and analyzed with respect to the main issue of research, that is, to trace the effects of the order and the wording of the questions on the attitudes of people towards the future of one’s own nation or other nations as a result of the transition undergone in 1997 by Hong Kong. The first study is about order effects with respect to attitude extremity in Hong Kong with the application of part-part combinations. As suggested by different literature, biases of responses might occur due to the use of survey instruments since the social judgments of people are usually constructed and not stored in one’s memory. Attitude extremity refers to the storage of two or more related attitudes stored in one memory. Under part- part combination the study conducted in with respect to the effect of Hong Kong’s transition on the same and on China. A very sensitive aspect has been captured here by the authors – “Regardless of whether Hong Kong people believe that these responses are correlated positively (e.g., the transition will be good for both or bad for both) or negatively (e.g., the transition will be good for one and bad for the other), responding to a question on one country should activate attitudes toward the other country and result in more extreme responses to the question on the other country. Therefore we expect attitude polarization as a function of question order.” The responses of the people of Hong Kong will tend to be more extreme on the issue of transition if there is a preceding similar question regarding some other nation. This will be the same in the other way round. The methodology undertaken involved a mixed design incorporating three aspects – the issue under consideration (‘reunification’, ‘takeover’ and ‘handover’); the order of question (Hong Kong related questions before those related to China and vice versa) and the response target (Hong Kong and PRC). Qualitative data regarding the opinions were scaled under a one to five scale. The sampling method was random and selection was from the list in telephone directory. The rate of response obtained was 50 percent of the targeted people. The results supported the hypothesis of polarization of attitude. The expectation of people was positive for majority and this could be the result of a political desirability bias, as suggested by the authors. The next study is about the carryover effects in the context of Hong Kong where the responses were obtained through the questionnaire using the similar methods as the first one. The result obtained here does show that the effect of the answers to similar preceding questions on the later questions or the question in discussion is positive but the patter is not obtained systematically. The third study was regarding the framing effects in Taiwan and Macau. This study also proved that the valence of a framework of a question could impact the attitudes of an individual especially when a strong well-formed attitude is not prevalent already. The authors also remember to highlight the different implications with respect to politics and framing or deciding upon policies and hence the scopes for further research. In the second article, “Hong Kong and the China after 1997: The real Issues” by William H. Overholt focuses on the trustworthiness of the Chinese government in its attitude towards forwardness. Under the Joint Declaration of 1984, fifty years of capitalism was promised to Hong Kong by the state. If China cannot be trusted then this agreement becomes invalid. Again, the constitution designed by the government of China for Hong Kong is most likely to be used for curbing or subverting freedom and free market. However if China wanted Hong Kong under its governance, waiting till so long was not a rational act and even in times of crisis, China has protected John. China could have chosen this particular moment to control Hong Kong, especially when the turmoil was even more dangerous with irrational behavior. Yet when the guards came towards Hong Kong, China arranged for them and to be cleared. China even refused to accept sovereignty over Macau when Portugal wanted to give it back. No primary surveys have been used here for answering the research question; rather a very qualitative approach was undertaken. China has made huge investments in Hong Kong especially in terms of subsidizing financial stability there. The republic has not taken Hong Kong under consideration not because of fear or any concern over legal issues, but simply because of its self-interest in maintaining Hong Kong the way it is. The reason lies in the fact that China has always preferred to stay in isolation but doing away with foreigners has not been the solution for the country. Therefore maintaining an enclave system to provide access to the foreigners is an appropriate tool here. Hong Kong has acted as a prime variant in this regard. Despite trying to isolate totally, there have been problems when the question of running the economy without foreign capital and investment was concerned. Hence the communist society of China has become vulnerable and therefore requires their enclaves to expand. This is exactly what China ahs been attempting to do especially where Hong Kong is concerned and hence takes special interests in preserving its stability and prosperity. The author raises a secondary issue here – “whether the government can be trusted to implement its promise of fifty years of post-1997 autonomy and capitalism for Hong Kong” (32). In this respect the author states that China’s commitment towards agreements are strong as ever but there is usually an implicit meaning underlying the agreement formulated. The author also brings in the example of Tibet towards which China’s policy was that of giving autonomy but the secondary implication was that of central leadership. If one is concerned about the fate of Hong Kong, one can be assured from the fact that China’s foreign policy is dependent on the internal political turmoil. In this context China has declared that Hong Kong should continue under the present status where it is free from British domination. Again, the Declaration of 1984 would not hold any longer because at that time Hong Kong was under British rule and it was declared that after 1997, it would continue to be under capitalism but under the British rule itself. Hong Kong has contributed to around 30 percent of the foreign exchange earnings of China and imports from the port of Hong Kong came in at a rate of 85 percent. The author here does not follow a standard pattern of academic research backed by citations, evidence and rather uses his own knowledge and analysis to prove the question under researched. However the paper is not always focused on the question and the author often digresses to the background of Hong Kong, describing it as a successful and admirable colony. There are also certain repetitions. For instance, it has been repeated at least twice that Hong Kong is important for Chinese economy – “it continues to exist exclusively because of its value as an economic utility” (35) and “Third, and most important, China’s vital economic self-interest is at stake” (34). Currently it is under the governance of London through a local governor and therefore structural differences are present between the Chinese and the Hong Kong political structure. While Chinese rulers are averse to judicial autonomy, the British people allow the same. Although it is a part of China, it exists s a separate entity and the policies, growth rates and number of police guarantee its stability. Although China has contributed and invested greatly to the economy of Hong Kong, it lacks the experience of the British people. Hence, the Chinese people of Hong Kong and others fear that even if China takes it under its rule, it might mismanage the country and not handle the resources well. Hong Kong is therefore politically vulnerable. The future concern of Hong Kong rests on the establishment of a ‘one country, two systems’ mechanism for which the following are the major requirements: the autonomous capitalist system of Hong Kong needs to be supported by China, neither China nor Hong Kong should interfere into each others’ political system and Hong Kong needs to govern itself with economic efficiency. The author also analyses the impact on Hong Kong if it is granted autonomy by China. Since autonomy, democracy and high rte of economic growth re interconnected according to the author, self-rule might bring about self-indulgence and democracy might lead to economic mismanagement. This point cannot be blindly agreed upon because there are countries like India, which has its autonomy and is a democracy too, showing considerable improvement in annual average growth rate. The conclusion highlights the risks involved in Hong Kong leading an autonomous government. The indication is that China will maintain Hong Kong the way it is for its own political and economic interests as well as to avoid complicacies that might arise if the republic finally takes the country under its rule. While Raghubir and Venkataramani Johar undertakes a sample survey involving extensive primary research along with quantitative analysis, Overholt determines his research question through some primary news broadcasts and his own analysis. On the other hand Raghubir and Venkataramani Johar undertakes extensive secondary work for literature reviews of scholarly sources along with primary information. The authors here were careful enough to carry out a detailed analysis of the issue under consideration and were even able to identify the loopholes and the scopes for further research areas. As an academic paper, this article (that is, the first article described here deserves more acclaim and credit) however both the articles throws a great light on the background of Hong Kong. In fact, in terms of exposition the second article is more enlightening and interesting to read through instead of going through the pressure of cracking the difficult terminology associated with research and analysis and even looking at data presented in terms of numbers (even qualitative data is quantified using numeric scales). References Raghubir, Priya and Venkataramani Johar, Gita, Hong Kong 1997 in Context, Public Opinion Quarterly, 1999, Vol 63: 543-565 Overholt, William H. Hong Kong and the China after 1997: The real Issues, 1991 Read More