Social media have been widely credited for facilitating young people’s political engagement, most notably by providing a conducive platform for political expression. There has been comparatively little attention, however, to the possible pitfalls for young people when they engage in politics on social media. In this study, we seek to redress the overemphasis on the strengths and connectivity of social media by attending to how young people negotiate their drawbacks and disconnectivity. Through in-depth interviews with young participants of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement, we examine the choices and motives regarding mediated (non-)participation among a group of politically active youths. Our findings revealed that these young people’s social media ambivalence emerged from the major participatory experience. Despite their active and open informational sharing and political expression on social media alongside their in-person participation during the eventful protest, many young participants became wary of such expressive use owing to their perceptions of de-energization, disconnectedness, and disembodiment. Instead of completely withdrawing from political activities on social media, these politically inclined and technologically savvy youths embraced “disconnective practices” – passive engagement (lurking), selective expression (moderation and exposure- limitation), and offline participation (embodied collective action) – to avoid the overwhelming, fractious, and inauthentic conditions of mediated participation.

This study deployed a systematic method to develop and validate a measurement for the identity of Hong Kong people, reflecting the emerging localistic attitude in the city. Drawing on a two-dimensional identity model, a combination of cultural and civic domains, an operationalization for Hong Kong identity was derived to differentiate between ‘HongKongese’ and others with stronger Mainland-Chinese oriented identity. Cultural attribute, such as language and choice of technology products, is found to be of paramount importance in identity confirmation. Anti-authoritarianism and proactive political participation are the two major discriminatory features in the civic domain. Social distance from Mainland Chinese is positively associated with these key components of the scale, supporting the scale’s construct validity and confirming the nativist tendency of certain groups
of Hong Kong localists.

Using Care Store as a case study, this research examines the innovative development and value penetrations of workers’ co-operative societies in Hong Kong. Care Store operates through the practices of equality and mutual care, in the unfriendly neoliberalist social order of Hong Kong. The society penetrates the dominant models of labor organization and consumption process. But the penetration of structural inequalities is limited, because the female workers of the society remain low-income laborers, social boundary and exclusion still take place, and the workers internalize their cultural inferiority. In comparison with innovative organizations in other regions, workers’ co-operative societies in Hong Kong have little opportunity to rely on or collaborate with the public and private sectors, and they explore a more progressive path of penetration in development. Practices strengthening this path can not only sustain these young organizations but also enrich the understanding of the true potentials of the nonprofit sector.

Open Science is an umbrella term that involves various movements aiming to remove the barriers to sharing any kind of output, resources, methods or tools at any stage of the research process. While the study of open science is relatively advanced in Western countries, we know of no scholarship that attempts to understand open science in Hong Kong. This paper provides a broad-based background on the major research data management organisations, policies and institutions with the intention of laying a foundation for more rigorous future research that quantifies the benefits of open access and open data policies. We explore the status and prospects for open science (open access and open data) in the context of Hong Kong and how open science can contribute to innovation in Hong Kong. Surveying Hong Kong’s policies and players, we identify both lost research potential and provide positive examples of Hong Kong’s contribution to scientific research. Finally, we offer suggestions regarding what changes can be made to address the gaps we identify.

Hong Kong is characterized by very low fertility. However, over a period from 2000 to 2015, both the total number of births and the sex ratio at birth (SRB) increased and then declined dramatically. We analysed the increases in a 2013 paper in this journal, where we largely ascribed them to a rapid growth in the number of ‘transient’ mothers from Mainland China disproportionately giving birth to boys in the territory. In 2012, policies were implemented to halt this ‘maternity migration’. Here, we explore the impact of these policies, both on births and the SRB in Hong Kong. We conclude that the rises and falls in births and SRBs in Hong Kong can, indeed, be broadly ascribed to the reproductive behaviour of transient Mainland mothers. However, the role of the Hong Kong government’s policy interventions is much less clearly defined.

The existence and dilemmas of metropolitan fisheries have been overlooked in research on the resilience of
coastal marine socio-ecological systems. Yet, they could produce a model of sustainable fisheries with significant
global impact. To fill that research gap, this study investigates an inshore fishery population that has sustained
itself within Hong Kong's rapid urban development, seeking to understand the reasons for its survival. The results
indicate that the values of self-reliance and entrepreneurialism exacted by fishing enabled the fishers to make
necessary adaptations and reposition themselves in mariculture and service industries. These new ventures,
while retaining marine-based livelihoods, draw the fishers away from fishing activities. The paradox of this
value-based resilience of a metropolitan fishery is discussed for its potential to generate policies to strengthen
linkages among the fishers’ business activities and to create a sustainable fishery model useful in other contexts.

The Umbrella Movement, which took place in Hong Kong between 26 September and
15 December 2014, was indisputably a defining moment in the former colony. The authors
argue that the Umbrella Movement was not a single, contingent political incident. Rather it
represented a structural change in Hongkongers’ perceived relations with the Chinese government,
which was deeply connected with the change of specific cultural, economic and political factors
pertinent to Hong Kong society in the past three decades. In conclusion, the authors suggest that
Hongkongers’ cultural perception of the closing-in of the central government’s power is a key
determinant of the perception of Hong Kong–China relations.

Hong Kong has resisted the global trend toward electricity market restructuring and deregulation, and maintains two vertically integrated utility monopolies. However, the regulated market achieves impressive performances with relatively low tariffs, rare electricity disruptions, and quick service restoration following outages. This research examines electricity reliability and resilience in the context of Typhoon Mangkhut in September 2018, with a particular focus on how the regulatory framework of the Scheme of Control Agreement (SCA) shapes planning, operating, and investing decisions. The SCA quantitively establishes financial incentives for utilities to achieve high-quality service and guard against potential political influence on utility decision-making.

Despite the concern that partisan selectivity in the political use of social media leads to mass polarization, the empirical evidence is mixed at best. Given the possibility that these inconclusive findings are attributable to moderators in the process that have not been adequately studied, this article elaborates the roles played by different forms of social identities. By analyzing three datasets collected in Hong Kong, where Chinese and Hong Kongese identities are constructed in a nonmutually exclusive way, this study demonstrates that (1) partisan selectivity in media use is reliably detected among those with single Hong Kongese identity, but not among those with dual identities of Hong Kongese and Chinese, (2) the political use of social media polarizes the attitudes and affects of single identifiers, whereas it has depolarizing effects on dual identifiers, and (3) these contrasting effects on polarization between single and dual identifiers have downstream consequences for political participation.

This paper examines the implementation of ‘one country, two systems’ (1C2S) in the two former Western colonies, Hong Kong and Macao, as a policy innovation
in managing inter-governmental relations of a large, diverse country like China. 1C2S embodies internal tensions because the Hong Kong and Chinese
governments have multiple and often incompatible goals. After 20 years, these two special administrative regions (SARs) of China are gradually being absorbed.