The Positives of International Joint Effort of Political Science Research in Hong Kong

Dr Edmund CHENG has had a lifelong fascination with state-society relations. Cheng completed his PhD in Government at the London School of Economics (LSE) with a thesis that touched on Chinese grassroots politics.

Cheng’s family emigrated from mainland China to Hong Kong more than three decades ago. Witnessing all manner of changes on the mainland from his new home in the then British colony fuelled his interest in examining societal and political changes. Eventually this interest made him enrol on a programme focusing on political sociology during his university life. His research interests ranged from contentious politics and public opinion surveys to Hong Kong politics and global China.

“When I was about to complete my bachelor’s degree, I struggled between whether I should enter the government department or pursue a law degree,” Cheng says. The young graduate would soon find that his interests propelled him towards the further study of politics, specifically about China. “In China, there is a domain that changes dramatically after opening up after so many years, which has been a timely phenomenon yet to be fully conceptualised.”

Cheng joined several research centres after he acquired a master’s degree at LSE, then returned to the London university for his doctorate, after concluding that there is more freedom in pursuing an academic career than joining a think tank.

“It gives you more flexibility,” he explains. “You can determine your own research agenda, roughly speaking. You can actually travel abroad to meet with other colleagues. The cool thing about Hong Kong is that it is highly internationalised and you actually have good relations and collaboration opportunities with the outside world.”

Charting Human Values Around the World
Hong Kong’s international outreach provides a “so-called gold standard for publishing”, Cheng adds, where you can connect with high-calibre peers and internationally reputed journals and audience. “As a result (local) phenomena that we are studying are theoretically informed and returned to develop some more innovative methods.”

Cheng, who has been the principal investigator of Hong Kong for the World Values Survey since 2017, used the study as an example: “The World Values Survey is the largest survey of human values in the world, covering around 80 countries and regions including Hong Kong. We created this kind of comparable time series data and this becomes some sort of public good not only for academics, but also for officials, journalists or other actors who want to know more.”

As the survey’s principal investigator, Cheng has the opportunity to collaborate with people who provide access to different knowledge, different methodologies and expertise. “We’re living in a very complex world. The relatively peaceful liberal order that we used to live in is facing a lot of challenges. Digitised information technologies also contributed to the spread of misinformation and polarised views. So that is precisely why it is important to study contentious politics comparatively and scientifically. Scholars from different approaches and cultures see things differently and they bring new methodologies to the table.”

Cheng speaks about the “beauty of knowledge exchange and professional ethos” from attending international conferences (which have been reduced to virtual sessions due to the pandemic raging throughout 2020) and volunteering for the academic community. “On average I am reviewing 40 papers, books, and grant proposals per year. So we spend our time with no sort of monetary reward; you don’t get paid for doing all these jobs, such as writing peer reviews and serving in professional associations, and they actually take a lot of time.” This embodies the kind of long-term collaboration that Cheng values.

Recently, Cheng and the Department of Public Policy collaborated with the American Political Science Association and the Department of Political Science at Korea University to co-organise the 2020 APSA Asia Pacific Workshop. Entitled “Contentious Politics and its Repercussions”, the workshop will fund 22 fellows from all over the world to take part in a seven-day workshop. It aims to train the next generations of political scientists and increase the visibility of the College among professional networks.

The Importance of Collaboration and Open-Mindedness
What kind of trajectory can the region’s political researchers, such as himself, expect in the foreseeable future? “There are obviously both opportunities and challenges when global attention is on Hong Kong. It is easier to get into top international journals, draw more people to read our work, and solicit international collaboration. Yet the resilience of our field will ultimately depend on the quality of the output.”

The associate professor also provides commentaries to South China Morning Post and serves as a host in a programme in Radio Television Hong Kong on a regular basis and has offered his views on Hong Kong’s public affairs.

“Hong Kong society has been deeply polarised because of upsurge of socio-political conflicts. Both the government and the opposition seem to believe that there’s a grand strategy on both sides to undermine each other,” Cheng says. His research suggests that this perception is partly amplified by contingent events. “To a degree, that utterly destroyed the trust between the two sides and also created a certain kind of deepening threat among all the populations.”

Having served on the boards of several academic journals, professional associations and non-profit organisations, Cheng is also active in community outreach and research collaboration. He obtained HK$13 million in competitive research grants between 2015 and 2020.

With so many things going on, it is hard to imagine that the political expert commentator has time to do much else. “I think most people in Hong Kong are very busy. It’s always about how you can find something interesting in to be self-motivated, and achieve work-life balance.”

Cheng, who treasures the work ethos in academia, reveals his genuine belief that falsification is crucial to accumulate knowledge. “It is about finding a puzzle and solving it, which can only be made easy through open-mindedness, he says, in terms of attitude and approaches. “The flexibility of thinking slow is some sort of luxury I enjoy.”

“Though politics and public administration are not always the hottest degrees, these are degrees in which people can train their mind to be logical and critical,” says Cheng. “Equip them with good methodology so that they can go into whatever field they like, [whether it is] joining the government, NGOs or some business sectors analysing policies and geopolitics.”