De-Universalizing Hegemonies: Chinese School Policies in Postwar Singapore and Hong Kong

Using the concept of hegemony, this article compares the policies used by state authorities of Singapore and Hong Kong to handle Chinese schools in the two postwar decades. After the war, Singapore transformed from a colony into an independent nation and Hong Kong became entrapped in the conflict between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Chinese schools, imparting students with a Chinese nationalistic outlook, threatened political stability in both territories. These factors prompted the Singapore and Hong Kong governments to put Chinese schools under tighter control. The strategy of the Singapore regime is institutional incorporation without cultural accommodation: The ruling elites absorbed almost all Chinese schools into directly state-run or fully government-funded institutions, but they sought to remove elements of Chinese culture from the curriculum of these institutions. In sharp contrast, the hegemonic practice in Hong Kong was partial institutional incorporation with cultural accommodation: The ruling regime only transformed some Chinese schools into state-sponsored institutions, but they incorporated Chinese culture into the official curriculum and then remake it into a form agreeable with colonial rule. This paper analyses the genesis and ramifications of these two different approaches in Singapore and Hong Kong. Its finding suggests researchers should equip with a comparative perspective and refine the notion of hegemony into the dimensions of institutional incorporation and cultural accommodation when using this concept for education research.