ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to examine how policymakers of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Hong Kong use Chinese language education as a key tool to promote citizenship education. This chapter presents a historical overview of policies on Chinese language and citizenship education in the PRC and Hong Kong, which fosters nation building, nationalism, and national identity in Mainland China and Hong Kong. The literature review alludes to the differences between the socialist system in the PRC and the capitalist system in Hong Kong as they attempt to assimilate their educational programs. The PRC tends to teach students to be patriots with a distinguished sense of social responsibility for socialist modernization. However, Hong Kong has adhered to the Western democratic model since the colonial period, which cultivates a local/ethnic identity. Since teachers and students in Hong Kong and the PRC have different interpretations of patriotism, national education, national identity, and nationalism, the divergences lead to different views and practices in the implementation of language socialization. It is concluded that language education and policy has been linked to the notion of nationality in political intentions.
