Choosing GCS as your Second Major (For EdUHK Students)

This course is designed to provide students with a comprehensive introduction to the study of Greater China. All aspects of Greater China will be examined, including the emergence of Greater China, the concept of Greater China, economic integration within Greater China, Hong Kong and Taiwan popular culture, Greater China and the Chinese overseas. Important recent developments like the economic rise of China and its impact on Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau will also be addressed. rnrnIn better understanding Greater China, the course will also explore issues that all states in the Greater China region face, with a special attention to the process of democratization. Finally the course will deal with the role of international actors in shaping Greater China’s development.

This course studies the concepts of governance and its related issues from multidisciplinary perspectives. Various definitions of governance will be discussed, followed by a detailed examination of governance’s relationships with the state, legitimacy, democracy, public accountability, bureaucratic corruption, political reform, administrative decentralization, economic performance, the global political economy, public health crises, and corporate management. While the main theme of this course is to introduce various concepts, issues and perspectives of governance to students, another theme is empirical and focuses on how governance issues are tackled by the states in Greater China at the national and local levels. Case studies of mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau will be used to stimulate students to empirically apply the concepts and issues of governance into concrete examples. After taking this course, students will understand the multidimensional and multidisciplinary nature of the concept of governance, its complex relationships with various policy issues, and the unique challenges of governing Greater China.

The course seeks to provide students with an understanding of China’s changing role in the world affairs since the economic reforms and open door policy in 1978. This requires first of all some historical knowledge of the linkage between Chinese domestic and foreign relations, with an emphasis on the developmental trajectory of China and the associated concepts, ideologies and theories of self-reliance, modernization, democracy, Chinese style socialism and China’s peaceful rise through to the present day. The second part will cover the most recent politico-economic relationship of China with the world, including the impact of globalization on China, the dynamic of China’s domestic developments and international relations, China’s grand strategy and China’s relations with other major powers (US, Russia, Japan, India).

This course enables students to understand the process, dynamics and scope of urbanization, and its implications for policy and governance in the four regions of Greater China–Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. Although the forces of globalization have drawn these different regions of Greater China ever closer together, they remain separate and distinctive. Their differences are reflected in socio-economic, urban development and political governance. This course will equip students with knowledge to examine the causal factors that have shaped the different parts of Greater China as well as forces that are pulling them together.

This course aims to enable students to have opportunities to take an explicitly comparative perspective to understanding major issues related to social development in the Greater Chinese societies. The course will engage students in a critical analysis of key development issues and challenges in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, with particular emphasis on examining policy responses to the challenges in these Chinese societies. With consideration of continuing development challenges, the course aims to introduce students to the question of whether economic growth can contribute to a more equitable distribution of income and wealth, whether and how government policies can expand and improve accessibility to public services (especially for vulnerable groups), and whether and how economic development can be sustainable.

The relationship between the environment and human development has become a major political and social issue, with global interest and attention focusing sharply on the critical challenges faced by developing countries. This course will consider the scientific knowledge required to understand the inter-relations between development and environment in the greater China and international contexts and will prepare students with various transferable skills to facilitate environmental education. Covering a wide range of topics, from global climate change and energy use to biodiversity conservation, an emphasis will be made on understanding approaches in development planning, the environmental conflicts, the need for long-term environmental sustainability and social justice, and attempts to incorporate a deeper awareness of these issues into policy making, planning and management.

This course focuses on several key topics in education and society in Greater China, bringing together issues of education policy and reform, social inequality, diverse populations, higher education, globalization, and economic, political, and social development. The course takes an explicitly comparative approach with each of the issues examined through case studies of different societies within Greater China. Largely student-centered, the course is structured around student-guided discussions of assigned readings, with the goal of encouraging the drawing of conclusions about important educational issues from the comparison of different cases. Through preparation for discussions and their final assignments, students will develop independent inquiry skills to explore the interrelationships between education and social phenomena.

This course is designed to introduce students to the role and function of the politics and law in shaping social transitions in four geographic regions of Greater China, i.e., Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau. The course will familiarize students with the concepts, issues and perspectives essential for understanding the politics and law in Greater China, with focus on the key issues of political authority, political decision making, the rule of the law, law-making machinery, and the relationships among the state, political party, and lawmaking institutions in shaping political and legal issues in the specific social contexts in the four Chinese societies. The course will engage participants in a critical and comparative analysis of these issues and their impact on social transitions in Greater China.rnrnThe course will first examine concepts and theories on political culture and political decision making. The second part will review the historical development of politics and legislation in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau. The third part will compare the similarities and differences in the political structures and legal systems in specific social contexts in Greater China. Based on the comparative analysis, the fourth part will engage students in exploring the role and function of politics and law in shaping social development in the four Chinese societies.

This course explores major social policy challenges and issues confronting the societies in Greater China. Adopting a comparative approach in analyzing policy formation and implementation, this course will enable students to understand the most recent developments related to major social policies like education, health, social welfare, labour and housing policies in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau and other Chinese societies in Southeast Asia. Students will be engaged in comparing and contrasting major social policy issues of selected Chinese societies, and appreciating the complexity of policy formation, implementation and evaluation from comparative perspectives.

This course will scrutinize the historical development, political and economic characteristics and importance of the regional cooperation in Greater China. The course begin by outlining the main theoretical approaches (realism, pluralism, idealism and globalism) that are used to examine the regional cooperation, the existence of different type of regional cooperation, and various strategies for its maintenance and for improving its quality. The second part of the course focuses on the institutional system of the regional cooperation in Greater China, with special attention of the interaction between different actors in the region. The final part is concerned with the challenges facing the regional cooperation in Greater China and how the governments in the region use organizations and policy coordination to respond to the challenges.

This course serves to provide students with a foundational knowledge about the development issues and challenges confronting major societies in Greater China, with particular reference to discuss how different economic development strategies adopted by Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan have affected social development of these societies. Students will be engaged in studying how civil society has emerged and developed in these societies, especially examining how and what major approaches/ measures that the governments have adopted to manage the growing complexity of social problems, the autonomization of society and the changing role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs).