Competing identities in the Global Age: The case of Hong Kong

In an era of rapid globalization, space and time are seriously compressed. People from different nations, cultures, religions and other backgrounds interact extensively and intensively and have become more and more interconnected. This intensive encounter has aroused the consciousness that identity is multiply situated, which may involve local, national, regional and global identities. Since identity calls for loyalty, multiple identities call for multiple loyalties, which may result in tension among the loyalties. Moreover, tension could also be caused by competing versions of a particular identity. Using Hong Kong as an example, this paper firstly discusses the tension between local identity and national identity in the return of sovereignty to People Republic of China (PRC), followed by the discussion of the tensions caused by competing versions of local identity and national identity, in the context of grand official homogenizing project on national education. Finally, the paper investigates the conflicting global and national identities and the inadequacy of global identity portrayed by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, as revealed by the official documents in educational policy.