Target Hong Kong


Book Description

Brought to life by the personal accounts of six Navy pilots and one British POW, this is the history of the U.S. Navy airstrikes on Japanese-held Hong Kong. Commander John Lamade started the war in 1941 a nervous pilot of an antiquated biplane. Just over three years later he was in the cockpit of a cutting-edge Hellcat about to lead a strike force of 80 aircraft through the turbulent skies above the South China Sea. His target: Hong Kong. As a storm of antiaircraft fire darkened the sky, watching from below was POW Ray Jones. For three long years he and his fellow prisoners had endured near starvation conditions in a Japanese internment camp. Did these American aircraft, he wondered, herald freedom? Trawling through historic records, Steven K. Bailey discovered that the story of the U.S. Navy airstrikes on Japanese-held Hong Kong during the final year of World War II had never been told. Operation Gratitude involved nearly 100 U.S. Navy warships and close to a thousand planes. Target Hong Kong brings this massive operation down to a human scale by recounting the air raids through the experiences of seven men whose lives intersected at Hong Kong in January 1945: Commander John D. Lamade, five of his fellow U.S. Navy pilots and the POW Ray Jones. Drawing upon oral histories, diary transcripts, and U.S. Navy documents, this book expertly narrates the intertwined experiences of these servicemen to bring the history to life.




English Language Testing in Hong Kong


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Widening Income Distribution in Post-Handover Hong Kong


Book Description

Before the handover to China in 1997, Hong Kong’s economic growth was very strong and the unemployment rate dropped to a record low of 2.2 per cent. In recent years, the widening income dispersion in Hong Kong has caught public attention. This book investigates the economic development and changes in income distribution of Hong Kong from different perspectives. Based on latest empirical evidence of Hong Kong, the book examines the relationship between economic restructuring and rising income disparity. Public housing programmes in Hong Kong affect half of the population directly and the other half indirectly. This book assesses the redistributive effect of public rental housing on income distribution. Moreover, Hong Kong embarked on an ambitious expansion programme of tertiary education in 1989. The expansion represents an exogenous increase in the supply of university graduates and the book evaluates the impact on income distribution. It also investigates the income dispersion among and between natives and immigrants. Researchers, politicians and policy makers should be interested to learn about the causes of rising income dispersion in post-handover Hong Kong uncovered in this book. Although economic restructuring is named as the prime suspect that caused rising income inequality, the empirical evidence proves otherwise. The book will be of interest to policy makers whose work has implications for social security systems and income disparity.




Education in Hong Kong, 1941 to 2001


Book Description

It provides comprehensive coverage of developments in formal and informal education in Hong Kong from the end of 1941 to the beginning of the new millennium. As was true of its predecessor, each Part of this book is subdivided into three sections: Commentary, Chronicle, and Evidence. Such an organization facilitates flexible reading. Readers primarily interested in analysis, interpretation, and the identification of themes are likely to focus initially on the Commentary sections and to move, as they feel stimulated, to the relevant entries in the Chronicle and/or items of Evidence. Readers who seek either more encyclopedic understanding or detailed answers to specific questions may well wish to focus primarily or at least initially on the Chronicle sections, and then to search for substantiation in the Evidence section or for amplification in the author's Commentary. At times, some readers may wish to browse through the Evidence sections, reaching possibly serendipitous discoveries. Academic and general readers are likely to be particularly interested in Part I of the book, which deals with education in Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation, a topic that has received only very rare and generalization-bound treatment in other publications. The author offers insights into all levels of education. His conceptual scope incorporates many types of education - including the mainstream academic education, technical education, teacher education, special education, physical education, civic education, education that focuses on morals, that which focuses on culture, and the various sorts of non-formal and informal education.




Target Cost Contracting Strategy in Construction


Book Description

The problems inherent in the traditional design-bid-build procurement method often lead to the adversarial working relationships within the construction industry. Target cost contracts, accompanied by a gain-share/pain-share arrangement serving as a cost incentive mechanism, have emerged in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Hong Kong with the aim of achieving better value for money and more satisfactory overall project performance under a collaborative working relationship. This book presents the underlying principles, practicalities and a series of short case studies of applying the target cost contracting strategy. Principles begin with the fundamentals then cover the development of target cost contracting in major countries/cities, definitions of target cost contracting, perceived benefits, potential difficulties and critical success factors for implementation. Practices include the target cost contracting approach and process in general, the key risk factors, risk assessment model, risk allocation and risk mitigation measures for target cost contracts in particular, together with a conceptual framework for the performance measurement of target cost contracts. Several short real-life case studies from the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand are provided for further illustration. The book will appeal to a wide spectrum of readers from industrial practitioners to undergraduate students, researchers and academics interested in construction contracts and procurement methods.







Lost in the Fifties


Book Description

Wheeler Dixon examines the lost films and directors of the 1950s. Contrasting traditional themes of love, marriage, and family, the author's 1950s film world unveils once-taboo issues and television shows such as 'Captain Midnight' are juxtaposed with the cheerful world of 'I Love Lucy'.




Hedge Funds


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Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World


Book Description

A gripping history of China's deteriorating relationship with Hong Kong, and its implications for the rest of the world. For 150 years as a British colony, Hong Kong was a beacon of prosperity where people, money, and technology flowed freely, and residents enjoyed many civil liberties. In preparation for handing the territory over to China in 1997, Deng Xiaoping promised that it would remain highly autonomous for fifty years. An international treaty established a Special Administrative Region (SAR) with a far freer political system than that of Communist China—one with its own currency and government administration, a common-law legal system, and freedoms of press, speech, and religion. But as the halfway mark of the SAR’s lifespan approaches in 2022, it is clear that China has not kept its word. Universal suffrage and free elections have not been instituted, harassment and brutality have become normalized, and activists are being jailed en masse. To make matters worse, a national security law that further crimps Hong Kong’s freedoms has recently been decreed in Beijing. This tragic backslide has dire worldwide implications—as China continues to expand its global influence, Hong Kong serves as a chilling preview of how dissenters could be treated in regions that fall under the emerging superpower’s control. Today Hong Kong, Tomorrow the World tells the complete story of how a city once famed for protests so peaceful that toddlers joined grandparents in millions-strong rallies became a place where police have fired more than 10,000 rounds of tear gas, rubber bullets and even live ammunition at their neighbors, while pro-government hooligans attack demonstrators in the streets. A Hong Kong resident from 1992 to 2021, author Mark L. Clifford has witnessed this transformation firsthand. As a celebrated publisher and journalist, he has unrivaled access to the full range of the city’s society, from student protestors and political prisoners to aristocrats and senior government officials. A powerful and dramatic mix of history and on-the-ground reporting, this book is the definitive account of one of the most important geopolitical standoffs of our time.




Understanding the Global Shift, the Popularity of Donald Trump, Brexit and Discontent in the West


Book Description

The problem is not President Trump, Brexit, Far Right politicians, racism or Islamophobia. It’s the “Global Shift” from America and Europe to China, India and beyond. As an economist Dr. Mirza is fascinated by the Rise of China from a “dirt poor” country in 1980 to the World’s second largest economy today. This revolutionary achievement has not yet sunk in with Western leaders, economists, the media or the public at large. Imagine living in Europe when Columbus sailed West to find China. European leaders either ignored him or heaped scorn on his bravado. Dr. Mirza believes that Western leaders today are as ignorant of today’s “Global Shift” from West to East as the Eastern leaders of the Ottoman Empire, China and India were, during the 16th-18th centuries of the “Global Shift” then from East to West. This book intends to shed light on that ignorance. It traces the beginning of this “Global Shift” from the Mexican Maquiladoras to China’s SEZs to India’s Call Centres to Indonesia, ASEAN, Brazil and Africa. Dr. Mirza also explains how this “Global Shift” is responsible for the Rise of populism in the West, of President Trump, Brexit and Far Right politicians.