Hybrid regime and civic education: The case of Hong Kong

The assumption of most literature on civic education is that its purposes are largely linked to the democratic regimes and their maintenance. In most cases, civic education is called “democratic civic education” and is usually understood to mean “education for democratic citizens”. Yet global experience has witnessed the emergence and development of civic education in many non-democratic societies. This suggests that civic education does not have to be identical with liberal democracy. Since non-democratic regimes view citizen preparation as important, what kind of citizens do they produce? In what ways is civic education under non-democratic regimes different from democratic civic education? Given these question, the study takes Hong Kong as a typical case to explore the influence of a hybrid regime (semi-democracy) on civic education. It employed qualitative methods to examine the influence of a hybrid regime on the concepts of ‘good’ citizen and how this is reflected in policies, curriculum and students’ personal experiences. The intent was to investigate the extent of congruence between these three levels and to identify the influence of a hybrid regime at different levels. The results shows that Hong Kong’s hybrid regime is a transitional regime, in which democratic and authoritarian forces compete and struggle over two different versions of civic education to develop their expected citizen to support their political claims. As the result, Hong Kong students reflect mixed conceptions of the ‘good citizen’.