D. Chan et Kh. Mok, Educational reforms and coping strategies under the tidal wave of marketisation: a comparative study of Hong Kong and the mainland, COMP EDUC, 37(1), 2001, pp. 21-41
It has been a global trend, since the 1980s, that the process of marketisat
ion has been influential in the decision making of social policies around t
he world, and that this tidal wave is now crossing over to the Asia-Pacific
region as well. Education policy, as one of the important social policies
for many developing countries, has been influential in the forefront of nat
ional development in terms of manpower training, as well as in other arenas
of economic and social developments. In this way, these countries are tryi
ng to improve the quality of their educational services so that they can be
more competitive in order to cater for the demands in the international ma
rkets. One of the outcomes of this global trend is the international qualit
y assurance movement in streamlining the educational institutions as well a
s in using different coping strategies to promote quality education for all
concerned. For the Chinese mainland, it seems that the central government
is adopting a policy of decentralisation in getting local governments to us
e multiple channels of resources and other methods to provide for their own
educational services. Hong Kong as a Special Administrative Region (SAR) o
f China, however, has adopted quire a different approach by employing the p
rinciple of managerialism in order to enhance its competitiveness in provid
ing quality education to meet the increasing marker demands. Hence, the pre
sent study is to compare and contrast the educational reforms and coping st
rategies that have been adopted by the socialist mainland, on the one hand,
and the capitalist Hong Kong SAR, on the other hand, in order to face this
new challenge of marketisation.