Closer Economic Partnership Research Articles

Postcolonial aging, amah, and diaspora in A Simple Life

ABSTRACT Based on the life story of the Hong Kong film producer, Roger Lee, A Simple Life/Taojie (Ann Hui [2011] 2012) is a semi-fictional biographical film about the life of Taojie, an amah (Cantonese migrant domestic servant) who served three generations of Lee's family for more than sixty years. The intervention of this essay is two-fold. First, this essay situates A Simple Life in the burgeoning but understudied journalistic and documentary discourse on aging as a postcolonial condition in Hong Kong since the 2010s. An intertextuality between the film and its adjacent media productions, such as journalistic reportage and TV documentaries, reveals the social anxiety about the lack of holistic and accessible elderly care in Hong Kong's medical and social welfare system and the profit-driven nursing home industry. Second, this essay argues that A Simple Life responds to the postcolonial anxiety of old age by articulating an intergenerational kinship through Roger Lee and Taojjie, a diasporic Asian icon of amah that is localized, nationalized, internationalized under the framework of CEPA (Hong Kong and Mainland Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement). Multiple imaginaries of home, family, and community—Roger Lee's home, a local nursing home, Roger Lee's transnational family, and a new Hong Kong–Mainland cinematic community—co-exist in this film as interconnected and interdependent sites of care, demonstrating how a postcolonial, national, and transnational sense of home and belonging are simultaneously articulated under the framework of CEPA.

The Evolving Esthetics of Hong Kong Films in the 21st Century

Abstract Since the 21st century, great changes have taken place in film co-productions between Hong Kong and the mainland and local films in Hong Kong. Since the signing of the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) in 2003 between the two regions, co-production between Hong Kong and the mainland moved from a state of maladjustment to mutual exchange and integration. However, a crisis of narrative homogenization arose around 2010, but this situation was remedied by anti-homogenization efforts through adding films of suspense genre. Around 2015, a “new mainstream blockbuster” connecting the performance of mainland mainstream values and esthetics emerged in co-productions, successfully carrying out a mainland replacement of extant blockbusters that commonly featured Hong Kong-style humanistic values and esthetics. Hong Kong local films are also undergoing esthetic evolution in the context of the cultural conservation of Hong Kong people. First, a return can be witnessed to classic “Hong Kong’s flavor” films such as gangster and ghost films, inheriting and innovating the traditional “Hong Kong’s flavor” esthetic. Secondly, we can observe Hong Kong society and its changing history from a cultural perspective through a consideration of the changing film esthetic. After many changes, Hong Kong films have entered a new esthetic form.

Trade liberalization and wages: Evidence from the closer economic partnership arrangement between mainland China and Hong Kong

This paper studies the impact of tariff cuts on workers’ wages in a single labor market by examining the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) trade liberalization, in which China unilaterally eliminated hundreds of tariffs on Hong Kong’s goods in 2004. Utilizing five Hong Kong censuses from 1996 to 2016, we find consistent result that a one-sided tariff concession leads to an increase in the monthly wage of affected workers, averaging between 5.75% and 6.84%. Moreover, we explore the possibility that the effects of exposure to CEPA may be heterogeneous along several dimensions. The workers who benefited the most were more educated, in higher-skilled occupations, Mandarin-speaking, near retirement, or just starting their careers. Surprisingly, we found no increase in employment in the treated industries. We conclude that tariff cuts’ wage impact and, hence, their impact on wage inequality, depend on the local labor market composition and structure.

Editorial: Creative industries at the intersection between local agglomeration, national regulation, and global networks

Editorial: Creative industries at the intersection between local agglomeration, national regulation, and global networks

Transborder Film Production Between Mainland China and Hong Kong After CEPA: The Interplay Between Political Orientation and Market Forces

AbstractCo‐production of films entails a variety of transborder mobility and trans‐local production networks, which are further complicated by state intervention through co‐production treaties or arrangements. This paper unravels the process of Mainland China–Hong Kong film co‐production that has been explosive after the promulgation of ‘Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement’ (CEPA). Drawing on the information of all Mainland–Hong Kong co‐produced films between 1998 and 2017, we chart the collaborative networks of studios and creative staffs and examine the commercial and artistic performances of co‐produced films to illustrate the impact of regulatory reform on the evolution of cross‐border film co‐production. We argue that CEPA is among the series of national regulatory reforms to enable marketisation of the film industry and, further, to construct an imagined new identity of Chinese culture at the supranational scale. However, the cultural goals have been given way to the commercial interests of co‐production with the implementation of CEPA policies.

Hong Kong (in China) studies: Hong Kong popular culture as example

“China has become a predicament as well as a condition for Hong Kong culture” in the age of China, especially after the signing of the Closer Economic Partnership Agreement in 2003. This has become even more acute for Hong Kong culture in the integration of the Greater Bay Area, which can be seen as incorporating Hong Kong and Macao’s development into the overall development of the country. At this particular juncture, the issue of integration with the Mainland has become a topic that is of utmost importance for any consideration of the future of Hong Kong culture and the city as a whole. In this special context, the transmission of Hong Kong popular cultures in the Mainland are related topics that need to be explored. For example, what are the implications behind the success of Hong Kong directors and producers who took the helm of immensely popular Mainland television series? After Cantopop crossed the border, to what extent did the singers and the songs that they sang in Mainland music reality shows represent Hong Kong? These would be very good case studies of Hong Kong culture in cross-border ventures, and studying their transmissions would have long-term implications for not only Hong Kong culture in particular but also Hong Kong Studies in general. This essay endeavors to use these cross-border experiences as examples to offer a prolegomenon to Hong Kong (in China) Studies, which will in turn contribute to the possibility of generating a cultural studies response to the new configuration of the Greater Bay Area.

Spatial selectivity and intercity cooperation between Guangdong and Hong Kong

City-regionalism plays an increasingly important role in China’s economic development. This paper analyses new forms of institutional arrangements that promote city-regional governance in the case of Hong Kong and Guangdong. Focusing on implementing the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA), we examine two research questions: Why are Guangdong and cities in the PRD strategically selected to implement CEPA and embed Hong Kong-based circulatory capital? How do governments at different scales build coordinated relationships to implement CEPA? Building upon the literature on state rescaling, we argue that governments have engaged in a scalar division of administration – a form of institutional infrastructure that aims to design and implement state strategies of urban and regional development. Within this division, the national government plays a role in steering and decision-making, Guangdong provincial government in coordination and facilitation, and urban governments in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Zhuhai in actual implementation. CEPA implementation is built upon vertical linkages between governments at different levels in the Mainland and HKSAR government, and horizontal linkages between three free trade subzones (Qianhai, Nansha, and Hengqin) and Hong Kong-based firms and entrepreneurs.

Variance Persistence in the Greater China Region: A Multivariate GARCH Approach

This paper utilizes three Multivariate General Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (MGARCH) models to determine variance persistence in the Greater China region from 2009 to 2014. The first approach applies the Baba, Engle, Kraft and Kroner (BEKK) model and shows that the Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index (SSEI), Taiwan Capitalization Weighted Stock Index (TAEIX) and the Hang Seng Stock Index (HSEI) stock returns are all functions of their lagged covariances and lagged cross-product innovations. The second MGARCH approach applies two methodologies, namely, dynamic conditional correlation (DCC), and constant conditional correlation (CCC) estimations. The DCC model concludes both short- and long-run persistencies between Taiwan’s TAIEX and Hong Kong’s HSEI. Alternatively, the CCC model confirms the initial findings of the BEKK model, and adds that the relationships among these three strong economies are stable in the long-run. The log-likelihood values determine that the DCC model is better in judging volatility dynamics in the Greater China region, because of economic clauses brought by the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA), the Economic Co-operation Framework Agreement (ECFA) and the Hong Kong - Taiwan Business Cooperation Committee (BCC).

Trade Liberalization and Wages: Evidence from the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement between Mainland China and Hong Kong

This study investigates a causal relationship between the adoption of the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) trade liberalization policy and the average wage by exploiting long-term Hong Kong census data from 2001 to 2016. The individual-level analysis shows that the one-sided tariff concession leads to a 9.66% increase in the average wage in the treated industries. The results are robust to various specifications of treatment and consider the impact of financial crisis and contemporary institutional changes. Moreover, we explore the possibility that the effects of exposure to CEPA may be heterogeneous along the dimensions of language skill, age group, educational level, and job skills. We find that the ability to speak Mandarin, a high level of education, and higher-level skills increase the wages of workers after trade liberalization. Therefore, whether trade liberalization increases wage inequality largely depends on the structure and composition of the local labor market.

Policy and creative strategies: Hong Kong CEPA films in the China market

This article examines the creative strategies of Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) films in engagements with the China market under the framework of CEPA introduced in 2004. One of the aims of CEPA for the film sector is to boost co-production between Hong Kong and the mainland. In the past 10 years, CEPA has dramatically changed Hong Kong cinema’s relationship with China in that major film directors have moved to produce CEPA films to tap into the rapidly growing mainland market. This shift has been considered as part of HKSAR’s overall mainlandization and subsequent disappearance of a distinct local identity. This article revisits this view by presenting two case studies to see if indeed Hong Kong CEPA pictures are devoid of Hong Kong elements. The case studies analyze textual elements of two CEPA blockbuster films, The Mermaid (dir. Stephen Chow, 2016) and The Taking of Tiger Mountain 3D (dir. Tsui Hark, 2014). Citing the intertextual allusions to the directors’ old works seen in these two films, the authors argue that the market advantage granted by the CEPA scheme in effect allowed Hong Kong filmmakers to revive and extend signature creative strategies of Hong Kong cinema, despite censorship constraints.

Maritime Politics in South Asia and Naval Compulsions of CPEC for Pakistan

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), highlighted both by Chinese and Pakistani leadership as the flagship project of Beijing's ‘Belt and Road (BRI) Initiative,’ is essentially a long-term plan for closer economic partnership. It promises immense benefits not only for the two nations directly involve but for the entire region, especially in terms of trade, transit and transportation. But at the same time, the development of sea-ports as part of BRI in general and Gwadar as part of CPEC in particular has provided a context to India to magnify its ‘concerns’ and aim for a renewed naval build-up. Chinese larger strategy is also seen by experts in the region and beyond as starting a new maritime contest in the so-called Indian Ocean. In this background, it seems that CPEC would lead toward increased maritime politics and contestations not only between Pakistan and India but would also involve China and US. Islamabad needs to carefully evaluate its options and develop its strategic response accordingly, involving but not limited to continuous development of its naval capability and an even closer maritime cooperation with China.

Impacts of Economic Integration on Stock Market Dependence Without Jump Effects

ABSTRACTThis article investigates the impacts of the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) on stock market dependence between Hong Kong and China. To avoid the influence of unusual events on stock market dependence, the mixed generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic with the autoregressive jump intensity (GARJI) margin model was modified to exclude jump innovations. The t copula was chosen to estimate the unknown dependence break and measure the average dependence level change. The stock market dependence break occurred about one and a half years after CEPA became effective, and the CEPA increased stock market dependence between Hong Kong and China. Moreover, this article shows the influence of stock market jump effects in the case of CEPA.

Promotion Strategy and Economic Effect of an Inter-Korean CEPA

This study examines the necessity and possibility of an inter-Korean FTA in order to expand inter-Korean economic cooperation and economic integration between the two Koreas. In the meantime, inter-Korean economic cooperation has been free of tariffs (zero tariffs) since 1992 in accordance with the principle of domestic transaction, and has been tolerated by the international community. However, as the scale of inter-Korean economic cooperation increases and economic integration is discussed in a fuller context, it is expected to become inevitable for the international community to raise the issue of trade practices. Also in the long run, if North Korea joins the WTO, there is the possibility of a complaint being lodged against South Korea, a member of the WTO, by WTO member countries. In this paper, we propose a Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) as a new development model of inter-Korean economic cooperation that will secure international legal legitimacy and contribute to economic change in North Korea. According to this study, it would be desirable to conclude the CEPA between the two Koreas in the form of an inter-agency arrangement rather than an intergovernmental agreement. Also, given the dynamics of the relationship between North and South Korea, it is important for the two Koreas to secure the irreversibility of agreements reached by defining as much detail as possible during the initial negotiations.

Assessing the gains and vulnerability of free trade: A counterfactual analysis of Macau

Free trade can generate macroeconomic gains but also vulnerability to external shocks for a highly-specialized economy. To test this hypothesis, we evaluate the effects of Mainland-Macau Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) on Macau's real GDP growth rate and its volatility, as well as the costs of exposure to the anti-corruption campaign from mainland China using a counterfactual analysis. Counterfactuals of Macau are constructed by exploiting the inter-dependence among different economic entities and the optimal control group is selected with a leave-nv-out cross-validation method. Our results support the hypothesis. CEPA raised the annual real GDP growth rate of Macau by 20.76% from 2004 to 2007, meanwhile it increased the volatility of real GDP growth rate by 35%, and the anti-corruption campaign reduced the annual real GDP growth rate by 17.54% from 2013 to 2016. Our findings imply that free trade could be a double-edged sword for a small and highly-specialized economy and the gains of free trade can be enlarged by reducing its vulnerability.

Trivisa or Amphetamine?

PurposeSince the launch of the Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) in 2003, Hong Kong cinema is believed to have confronted drastic changes. Hong Kong cinema is described to be dying, lacking creative space and losing local distinctiveness. A decade later, the rise of Hong Kong – China coproduction cinema under CEPA has been normalized and changed the once pessimism in the industry. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how Hong Kong cinema adjusted its production and creation in the first 10 years of CEPA.Design/methodology/approachBeginning with a review of the overall development, three paradigmatic cases are examined for reflecting upon what the major industrial and commercial concerns on the Hong Kong – China coproduction model are, and how such a coproduction model is not developed as smooth as what the Hong Kong filmmakers expected.FindingsCollectively, this paper singles out the difficulties in operation and the limit of transnationality that occur in the Chinese context for the development of Hong Kong cinema under the Hong Kong – China coproduction model.Originality/valueThis is the author’s research in his five-year study of Hong Kong cinema and it contributes a lot to the field of cinema studies with relevant industrial and policy concern.

Relocalising Hong Kong Cinema

This paper seeks to unpack the politics of the local in post-CEPA (Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement) Hong Kong through the lens of Hong Kong cinema as a contested site of cultural production...

The Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) and its impacts on the export efficiency of Hong Kong and Macao

The Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) is a bilateral preferential agreement signed among China, Hong Kong, and Macao which opens up the China market by providing zero tariff after accession. This paper sheds light to the impacts of the CEPA on merchandise trade with an in-depth analysis on export efficiency. Despite that merchandise trade has already been fully liberalized, the estimation results indicate that the efficiency of exports to China has been on the decline since 2000. This implies that the actual value of exports to China has departed from its full potential, and confirms our suspicions on the incapability of the CEPA to boost the exports of Hong Kong and Macao to China. There is also no evidence to support that the CEPA has successfully attracted foreign investment to Hong Kong and Macao for tariff free exports to China.

Mainland China and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement Effect Analysis

Based on gravity model, this paper analyzes the impact of Mainland China and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement by using the data from 2004 to 2013. The result shows that, closer economic partnership arrangement has not promoted the goods export of Hong Kong; the effects on services trade and investment are limited. The main reasons may be the disappearance foundation of the cooperation between the two sides and the limited openness of Mainland China market.

A Special Regional Actor in the World: Conceptualising Macao’s Diplomatic Behaviour

This study examines the diplomatic behaviour of the Macao Special Administrative Region (MSAR) of China, a special substate region, in its external relations. Based on Macao’s experiences, three major diplomatic types have been conceptualised: intrastate diplomacy with mainland China, substate diplomacy as a part of a wider Chinese national polity and quasi-state diplomacy as an autonomous entity in international affairs. Further empirical evidence is drawn from three case studies on the Closer Economic Partnership Agreement, the Sino-Portuguese Economic Forum and the bilateral relations between Macao and the European Union. The diplomatic behaviour of the MSAR is further characterised in terms of its practices, motivations and strategies. The objective of this study is to contribute both conceptually and empirically to a scholarly understanding of diplomacy by a substate region, in the fields of international relations, comparative federalism and China studies.

The Closer Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) between China and Hong Kong SAR: From gesture to commitment

On 29 June 2003, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) and the Mainland China signed the Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement (CEPA) which opened 18 service sectors including certain telecommunications services to Hong Kong investors. However, the response from Hong Kong׳s telecommunications sector has not been enthusiastic. This paper, with the support and sponsorship by the Communications Association of Hong Kong, provides a panorama review of the CEPA within the context of telecommunications and argues that CEPA has been a political gesture of the Mainland to comfort Hong Kong while the future is becoming optimistic as the Chinese central government has been witnessed to change its policy stance from protectionism towards pro-liberalization. The CEPA Supplement XI which has been implemented since March 2015 would be a milestone in opening China׳s domestic telecommunications market to overseas investors.