Teaching national identity in post-handover Hong Kong: Pedagogical discourse and re-contextualization in the curriculum.

This article examines how Chinese national identity has been pedagogized in Hong Kong’s civic and citizenship curriculum guidelines from 1997 to 2022, focusing on the post-handover period under the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government (HKSARG). The study finds that curriculum documents prioritize an ethno-cultural sense of "Chineseness" and frame national identity as a duty for Hong Kong students, often positioning them as passive recipients of this identity while offering limited connection to their local lived experiences. The curriculum emphasizes legal and patriotic obligations tied to the PRC Constitution, Basic Law, and the "One Country, Two Systems" framework, with less attention to civic rights or Hong Kong’s multicultural population. The article suggests that future curriculum development should better integrate students’ local contexts, acknowledge their rights alongside duties, and address Hong Kong’s cultural diversity to foster a more meaningful and inclusive national identity education.