The Barbie movie has dominated the movie industry with record breaking successes: it stands as the highest-grossing film of 2023 worldwide, highest-earning live-action movie directed by a female worldwide, and the 15th biggest movie of all time—truly capturing the kenergy it promised. But the Barbie movie has become much more than a successful film. Barbie […]
Tag: hong kong china relations
Clipping Hong Kong’s Wings: Cathay Pacific’s Downward Spiral, and How Hong Kong Will Suffer
The image of a Cathay Pacific 747 on final approach towards Kai Tak Airport, making a sweeping turn over Checkerboard Hill, mere feet above the sprawling concrete apartments and neon signs of Kowloon, forever remains ingrained in the consciousness of Hongkongers as a symbol of their city. Today, people can no longer witness this sight […]
A New Era of Hong Kong
“Two-thousand and eighty-five votes in favor, zero against, and one abstention. [The bill is] passed!” On March 11, 2021, nearly 3,000 Chinese lawmakers passed the “decision on improving the electoral system of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region” at the Fourth Session of the 13th National People’s Congress (NPC). The NPC, according to China’s Constitution, […]
The Constitutional Dimension of “One Country, Two Systems:” The Interpretation of the Basic Law by Beijing
(This piece is inspired by a podcast episode produced by UPenn Center for the Study of Contemporary China, where Prof. Johannes Chan from HKU Faculty of Law discusses the rule of law in Hong Kong.) China’s resumption of the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong is a historical political experiment, and one challenge is to […]
One Country, How Many Systems?
September of 2014 saw Hong Kong’s gleaming central business district, one of the most important financial hubs in the world, turn into a virtual conflict zone, replete with shouting mobs, police in riot gear, and clouds of tear gas. In an atmosphere of discontent for the national government in Beijing, Hong Kongers took to the […]
The Trouble of Localism in Hong Kong
A giant locust sits perched upon a mountain, the Hong Kong cityscape in the distance. Next to it, bold black lettering asks, “Are you willing to let Hong Kong spend a million Hong Kong dollars every eighteen minutes on bringing up anchor babies?” Spanning a full page, this provocative advert ran in the popular Chinese-language […]