Hong Kong's changing opportunity structures: political concerns and sociological observations

Abstract

Nowadays, the impacts of economic restructuring on the reshaping of the social structure are widely perceived as a cause of growing frustrations and discontents. Recent discussions of the arrival of an M-form society and a shrinking middle class (and thus a decrease in opportunity of upward social mobiiity) in many Asian societies are symptomatic of such growing fears of a major transformation of the opportunity structure of the former newly industrialized economies (NIEs) such as Hong Kong and Taiwan. It is suggested that the earlier developmental drive of these NIEs has been exhausted and a fall of economic growth rate and the maturation of the economy have reversed the trend of a loosening of the social structure and an increase in opportunity for mobility. Informed by the 2006 Social Mobility Survey, this paper is an attempt to examine the above questions in the light of empirical findings. It is contended that there is no sign of a drastic decline in the openness of Hong Kong's social structure. People are still able to climb up the social ladder. The sources of growing anxiety seem to fall not in a decrease of opportunity available for mobility but in the unevenness of new opportunities shaped by Hong Kong's socio-economic integration with China.