University of Hong Kong

This course offers an overview of China's various ethnic minorities and government policies toward these groups. The PRC officially recognizes fifty-five ethnic “minorities”, such as the Uyghurs, Tibetans or Mongolians, based on a Soviet definition of ethnicity. This course focuses on the historical and current traits of these groups, the assimilation policies undertaken by the Chinese government, and how minority groups have negotiated their social and cultural positions in the PRC since 1949.

The course is divided into 3 parts, and delves into the topic of cultural sociology. It begins with mapping the elusive concept of culture and engaging in both classical and contemporary sociological debates over culture. The second part examines the relations between culture and social inequalities, and the last part focuses on the role of culture in everyday lives, such as fashion and body, economic activities, and collective action. Assessment: participation and activities, positional papers, group project presentation, midterm.

“The Orient” has always held a dual attraction of romance and danger outside Asia, and this tradition has since been reinforced by Hollywood. The allure of wealth, trade and exoticism that brought millions of Americans across the Pacific provided rich material for movie drama. This combination of geographical attraction and cultural appeal was further reinforced during the wars the United States fought in Asia. War, violence and romance fill America's movie screens, pulling in vast crowds and in the process shaping and mis-shaping America's view of Asia. Asking what is Asia and how far it extends, this course explores cinematic representations of the continent and its people as constructed by Hollywood during more than a century of selling romantic myths to a public that often has no first-hand experience of Asian culture and no firm grasp of its history.

Many students in the Faculty of Arts tend to think of “science” and “technology” as irrelevant to them. Typical reactions range from “I am not a science major,” “science is boring,” or “it's too technical.” However, science and technology actually interact with the contemporary history and society of China in significant ways. For example, how many of you are using Lenovo laptop computers? Do you know the history behind Lenovo, IBM, and the entrepreneurial initiative of the Chinese Academy of Sciences since the 1980s? When you go grocery-shopping at a local supermarket, do you actively accept or reject genetically modified foods? How do new health and reproductive technologies (vaccines, new drugs, contraceptives) transform the healthcare system in China, for better or worse? These are some of the questions explored in the course. This course will introduce students to the multiple ways in which science, technology, and society mutually shape one another in modern and contemporary China. Instead of giving a celebratory history of science and China (i.e. China is so great now because of science), the course will take a balanced approach to discuss the beneficial as well as destructive powers of science. The key is to develop the ability to critically understand the good and bad aspects of science and technology. Instead of asking “why do I need to understand science?” as some of you might ask, I want students to consider “how could we understand contemporary China without science?” This course offers a general foundation for China studies majors, minors, and students in other faculties who are interested in thinking the intersection between science, technology, and society in contemporary China.

The economics of uncertainty and information has permeated virtually every field in economics. This course develops the basic tools that are used in the study of behavior under uncertainty, and introduces some standard models of imperfect and asymmetric information. The first part of the course studies the expected utility theorem and the concepts of risk aversion and stochastic dominance, and the value of information. The second part applies these tools to analyze moral hazard, signaling, adverse selection, and mechanism design problems. Fluency in elementary optimization techniques and probability modeling is important for doing well in this course. Students should be prepared to work extensively with models. This course may be regarded as an advanced undergraduate course in microeconomic theory. Students must have completed the intermediate level Microeconomic Theory course as a prerequisite.

This course examines the role of translation in Hong Kong's public administration procedures and business activities and how it is used for local and international communication. Students practice translating papers related to negotiation, administration and the law arising from such contexts, and explore suitable translation techniques in the process. Assessment: 100% coursework.

This course is for foreign students as the second semester of a beginning Chinese course. It covers four main areas: speaking, listening, reading, and writing which require pinyin-word processing and actual writing and reading of simplified Chinese characters. A greater emphasis is placed on oral drills and listening comprehension. Students are exposed to 800 frequently used Chinese characters, which are used to form expressions related to various aspects of life in China. Upon the completion of the course, students should be able to write approximately 500 Chinese characters and an essay of 200 characters. Students are also exposed to various aspects of Chinese culture and history in learning the origins of Chinese characters and idioms.