Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Introduction:
In Western theory, welfarism on culture, usually practiced by centerleft government is opposed to privatization on culture, usually
attributed to center-right government. It is bemoaned by some of
the western leftists that there is no more subsidy on arts due to neoliberalisms market-led logic. Although it is true that theres still a
minimal degree of the combination of both, in the current Western
context marketization is usually regarded as being predominant.
However, I would argue in this policy analysis paper that it is not the
case
in
Hong
Kongs
cultural
policy.
Without
parliamentary
Study Approach:
In the first part of the study, the character of Hong Kongs cultural
policy would be analyzed from two main perspectives: the
institutional and the market ones. For the institutional perspective,
Hong Kong was a colony of Britain and thus it allowed historically
limited democratic participation. Culture was always treated by the
colonial government as leisure which helps stabilize society
especially after 67 Riots. Also, the colonial government took greater
initiatives in cultural development since the 80s to counter
communist influence to maintain Western worlds interests after the
handover. After 1997, the Beijing government continued this
bureaucratic tradition, partly due to historical factors and partly due
to new political-economic factors, which include the need of forging
a Chinese identity and the influence of state capitalism of the
Beijing
government.
To
further
exemplify
this,
the
specific
in
Hong
Kong
and
therefore
different
bureaus
and
cultural
consumption
are
largely
advocated
to
attract
other mega events. But at the same time these cultural activities
are also heavily sponsored by the government although they target
the middle class or above. This can be explained by business
sponsorship which bears some of the burden of government
expenditure, but there are also context-specific reasons such as the
heavy presence of tourism and trans-national capitalist class in
Hong Kong which is part of the social antagonism innate in Hong
Kong between local people and foreigners or between upper class
and lower class. Besides, the state capitalism, or what commonly
called collusion between businessmen and government officials,
which is partly resulted from the state-led capitalism of China and
partly resulted from the inner logic of capitalism itself, makes state
subsidy and free market (which after all is an ideology which
disguises the fact that monopoly is impossible in capitalism)
indistinguishable. Moreover, the arts education and development
started rather late here comparing to western countries and thus
the arts market is not as well-developed. Similar to the previous
stage of industrial development, the state plays an important role in
it. Here we have another case of sponsoring the wealthy.
clichs like East meets West and Pearl of the Orient tries to
represent Hong Kong culture but ultimately fails to do so and
actually make it disappear in the end. Hong Kong folk cultures such
as busking are submerged in the end. For example, the clichs of
East meets West (the image of Chinese junk in Victoria Harbor
against a backdrop of tall modernistic buildings) implies the smooth
combination
of
modern
state
administration
and
Chinese
Academic Reference:
Abbas, M. A. (1997). Hong Kong: Culture and the politics of disappearance.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Lee, H. -K., & Lim, L. (2014). Cultural policies in East Asia: Dynamics between the
state, arts and creative industries.