Politics and Public Administration

No one can deny the centrality of politics and public administration to the history of any place. The government is always of most resources to make possible any act of governance and to initiate change or reform in the community. The same is true with Hong Kong. In the historiography of Hong Kong History, politics and public administration of the Hong Kong government is a dominant theme. In 1999, Lau Siu-kai (劉兆佳), Wan Po-san (尹寶珊), and Shum Kwok-cheung (沈國祥) edited a massive volume of 630 pages entitled Hong Kong Politics: A Bibliography, in which they identify six subthemes, namely (1) general works, (2) political system and institutions, (3) organisation and process, (4) external relations, (5) regime transition, and (6) others that include biographies and personages, as well as commentaries. The bibliography alone lists over 5500 items. Of these, some are not historical studies but time has made them relevant to historians. Moreover, the list has grown quite substantially in the past twenty years. Hence, this chapter cannot do the full justice to either list or comment all of these works. Rather, it would make sense of the general trends and salient features. It should be noted that the post-handover developments are thoroughly discussed in the volume edited by Brian C. H. Fong, namely Hong Kong Politics: In Search of Autonomy, Democracy and Governance under this “Hong Kong Studies Reader Series.”