William Yat Wai Lo
Biographic Data
| ID | 760940 |
|---|---|
| NAME | William Yat Wai Lo |
| GIVEN NAMES | William Yat Wai |
| FAMILY NAME | Lo |
| SIGNATURE | LO W Y W |
| AFFILIATIONS | Education University of Hong Kong |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8091-7745 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 82 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Unpacking the antinomy of student politics: Representation, activism, and (Dis)empowerment amid political turmoil
This paper examines student politics—comprising representation and activism—in Hong Kong during the 2019 protests, a period marked by political turmoil and social unrest. Drawing on interviews with 26 student leaders, it explores how student organisations served as platforms for empowerment while also exposing internal divisions and marginalising dissenting voices. While student organisations empowered politically aligned individuals, they also s…
Trust and tension: Shared governance in higher education amid student activism
This article examines the intricate dynamics of trust and tension within university governance in Taiwan and Hong Kong, where the broader socio-political context – particularly student activism – profoundly influences university operations. Using the ‘grammar of trust’ framework, the article explores how student participation, as a core element of shared governance, presents both opportunities for democratic engagement and significant challenges,…
The role of university leaders in a political crisis: Students' perspectives from Hong Kong
University students actively participated in the 2019 Hong Kong protests. In this context, the students expected that their universities would support their political stance. Drawing on data from interviews with student leaders, this article documents and examines students' expectations for their university heads, how they interacted and negotiated with university management and how university leaders variously responded to the students' expectat…
The emergence of multipolarity in global higher education: The Belt and Road Initiative and African students’ motivations to pursue postgraduate education in China
The past decade has witnessed an unprecedented transformation of China into an important “receiving” nation for international student mobility (ISM), underscored by the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)-tied African countries becoming the main import markets. The emerging China-bound ISM, driven by contextually-specific motivations, necessitates a re-theorisation of the Western-centric, neo-liberal-driven push–pull model within the broader context o…
Towards governmentality with Chinese characteristics: Higher education policy discourses in post-colonial Hong Kong and Macao
This article examines the intertwining and evolution of neoliberal and nationalist discourses in post-colonial Hong Kong and Macao, arguing that their combination reveals the dual layers of political rationality in the dynamics of higher education policymaking. It suggests a move towards governmentality with Chinese characteristics, marked by gradual and continuous shifts towards decolonisation and re-Sinicisation within the 'One Country, Two Sys…
Synergistic effect of relational values in a participatory guarantee system: A case study of an ecoagriculture initiative in Taiwan
Reimagining the notion of Hong Kong as an education hub: National imperative for higher education policy
This article examines the evolving concept of Hong Kong as an education hub, with a focus on the influence of the Greater Bay Area (GBA) strategy on higher education development. It begins by reviewing the impacts of the policy of developing Hong Kong into an education hub on the city’s educational landscape and global competitiveness. Subsequently, the article investigates the GBA’s role as a subnational higher education region, highlighting the…
On the (re)move: Exploring governmentality in post-colonial Macao's higher education
This paper explores the governmentality in Macao’s higher education (HE) by exemplifying how neoliberalism and Chinese nationalism simultaneously inform the governmental rationalities and technologies in the city. Like many other systems, neoliberalism has substantially shaped Macao’s HE. However, owing to post-colonial identity, Chinese nationalism has become a significant driving force in the development of Macao’s HE after the handover. On the…
Departing from hybridity: Higher education development and university governance in postcolonial Hong Kong
This paper aims to explain the path of higher education development and governance in (post-colonial) Hong Kong in light of the concept of hybridity. The paper begins with a historical review, delineating the establishment of major universities in Hong Kong, thereby illustrating how hybridity informs the trajectory of higher education development in the city. Considering the tensions and conflicts that emerged during the post-colonial transition …
Hybridisation and recombination: Perspectives on higher education in Chinese societies
This special issue of Discourse concerns itself with the complex issues about the integration between the seemingly contradictory Chinese and Western ideas of a university in five Chinese societies
Adopting neoliberal values in Taiwan's higher education governance: A Hybridisation Process
This article considers the adoption of Western neoliberalism in Taiwan’s higher education (HE) governance as a hybridisation process in which the influences of political democratisation, social liberalisation and Chinese cultural traditions intersect with contemporary Western norms and values. The paper draws on data from interviews with senior university administrators and education ministry officials to delineate the resistance to the competiti…
Global pedigree and national imperative: Hong Kong universities’ response to China’s grand strategies
Literature offers a theoretical framework exemplifying the inherent tensions between “becoming Chinese” and “remaining global” in the evolution of the international status of Hong Kong. Adopting this framework, this paper examines the global position of Hong Kong’s higher education through an investigation of universities’ participation in China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Greater Bay Area development plan. Specifically, drawing on data from i…
Institutional logic meets global imagining: Kazakhstan’s engagement with China’s Belt and Road Initiative
Theoretical ideas about globalization and internationalization of higher education emphasize the tension among different ideologies of higher education. According to literature, a competition among states, economy, knowledge, and status generates this tension to drive higher education development. This theoretical understanding not only shapes our global imaginations but also permeates the organizational behavior of universities. In this paper, w…
Vulnerable autonomy: University governance in the context of student activism in Hong Kong
A managerial model of shared governance is adopted in Hong Kong’s public universities to uphold university autonomy. However, with the political confrontation characterised by the rise of student activism, the sustainability of the managerial form of university autonomy requires review and re-exploration. This paper aims to examine the influence of political unrest on university governance in Hong Kong. Drawing on data from interviews with univer…
A year of change for Hong Kong: From east-meets-west to east-clashes-with-west
In this essay, I consider the impacts of the pandemic and the recent political challenges to the global position of Hong Kong’s higher education. To reveal the impacts, I examine what makes Hong Kong’s academic model special, and assess the sustainability of this model in a post-pandemic era
Learning to ‘tell China's story well’: The constructions of international students in Chinese higher education policy
This article takes a policy-as-discourse approach to understanding how Chinese policy texts construct international students. This is important given the growth of China as a study destination, and the fact that the majority of the studies on Chinese internationalisation policy are descriptive, and poorly integrated with literature focused on other contexts. Drawing upon a thematic analysis of 19 policy texts, the article reveals that economic ra…
Chasing Phantoms? Innovation policy, higher education and the pursuit of a knowledge economy in Hong Kong
This paper provides a critical account of the role of universities in the development of innovation and technology in Hong Kong.To do so, the paper examines the political economy of Hong Kong's innovation and technology development. It outlines a finance-led regime, under which the vision of long-term innovation initiatives is transformed into short-term finance events, and the development of an entrepreneurial culture in society and in universit…
Globalism, regionalism and nationalism: The dynamics of student mobility in higher education across the Taiwan Strait
This paper aims to broaden the conceptual approaches to understanding the complexity of student mobility in higher education (HE) across the Taiwan Strait, thereby exemplifying a contradictory mix of collaboration and competition that involves interplay among the various forces associated with global, regional and national settings. To achieve this goal, the paper provides an abstraction of ‘trichotomisation’, which explains the significance of t…
Beyond competition: A comparative review of conceptual approaches to international student mobility
The existing literature offers an instrumentalist approach that focuses on how economic rationality underlies international student mobility (ISM). In response to these instrumentalist accounts, a critical approach emerges and reemphasises the importance of humanity and human rights in ISM and the process of internationalisation of higher education. However, this paper argues that these critical perspectives are insufficient to address the non-in…
Hybridization and higher education governance in Hong Kong
This paper examines the relevance of hybridization to the development of higher education (HE) governance in Hong Kong. It begins by briefly reviewing conceptual issues about HE governance. Based on these conceptual elements, an analytical framework is then proposed to understand the institutional balance of power in university systems and the cultural equilibrium in the academia. Afterwards, an overview of the key features of HE governance in Ho…
The concept of greater China in higher education: Adoptions, dynamics and implications
Interpreting modernisation and globalisation in East Asia as processes of Westernisation creates confusion and discomfort among some academics from the region. To illustrate why such discomfort occurs, this article explores the changes in the higher education systems of Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China in terms of their ‘Chineseness’ as a potentially unifying regional identity that can be counterposed to Westernisation. The recent and polyval…
Dancing with global trends: Higher education policy and university governance in Hong Kong, 1997–2012
This article examines the significance of global trends in higher education (HE) development in Hong Kong between 1997 and 2012. Two trends, massification and internationalisation, are considered key driving forces that shaped Hong Kong’s HE policy during the period. The former refers to government measures to widen participation in HE. The latter is associated with Hong Kong’s regional education hub strategy. Universities in the city revised the…
Connectivity for whom and for what? A normative dimension of education hub
This argument in this study is that the descriptive dimension of the concept of education hub, which focuses on the importance of connectivity in enhancing the competiveness of a place, is inadequate in addressing the educational values in globalising higher education. Therefore, it attempts to initiate a normative dimension of education hub through an empirical account of the experience of a group of Myanmar university students in Hong Kong and …
Revisiting the Notion of Hong Kong as a Regional Education Hub
Trends and Developments of Higher Education Research in Hong Kong: In Pursuit of a Cosmopolitan Vision
Soft power, university rankings and knowledge production: Distinctions between hegemony and self‐determination in higher education
The purpose of this article is to analyse the nature of the global hegemonies in higher education. While anti-colonial thinkers describe the dominance of the Western paradigm as an oppression of indigenous culture and knowledge and as neo-colonialism in higher education, their arguments lead to such questions as how much self-determination do non-Western countries have? On what basis can the colonised resist the coloniser? To what extent are non-…
The concept of greater China in higher education: Adoptions, dynamics and implications
Interpreting modernisation and globalisation in East Asia as processes of Westernisation creates confusion and discomfort among some academics from the region. To illustrate why such discomfort occurs, this article explores the changes in the higher education systems of Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China in terms of their ‘Chineseness’ as a potentially unifying regional identity that can be counterposed to Westernisation. The recent and polyval…
Towards governmentality with Chinese characteristics: Higher education policy discourses in post-colonial Hong Kong and Macao
This article examines the intertwining and evolution of neoliberal and nationalist discourses in post-colonial Hong Kong and Macao, arguing that their combination reveals the dual layers of political rationality in the dynamics of higher education policymaking. It suggests a move towards governmentality with Chinese characteristics, marked by gradual and continuous shifts towards decolonisation and re-Sinicisation within the 'One Country, Two Sys…
Learning to ‘tell China's story well’: The constructions of international students in Chinese higher education policy
This article takes a policy-as-discourse approach to understanding how Chinese policy texts construct international students. This is important given the growth of China as a study destination, and the fact that the majority of the studies on Chinese internationalisation policy are descriptive, and poorly integrated with literature focused on other contexts. Drawing upon a thematic analysis of 19 policy texts, the article reveals that economic ra…
Globalism, regionalism and nationalism: The dynamics of student mobility in higher education across the Taiwan Strait
This paper aims to broaden the conceptual approaches to understanding the complexity of student mobility in higher education (HE) across the Taiwan Strait, thereby exemplifying a contradictory mix of collaboration and competition that involves interplay among the various forces associated with global, regional and national settings. To achieve this goal, the paper provides an abstraction of ‘trichotomisation’, which explains the significance of t…
Dancing with global trends: Higher education policy and university governance in Hong Kong, 1997–2012
This article examines the significance of global trends in higher education (HE) development in Hong Kong between 1997 and 2012. Two trends, massification and internationalisation, are considered key driving forces that shaped Hong Kong’s HE policy during the period. The former refers to government measures to widen participation in HE. The latter is associated with Hong Kong’s regional education hub strategy. Universities in the city revised the…
Revisiting the Notion of Hong Kong as a Regional Education Hub
Departing from hybridity: Higher education development and university governance in postcolonial Hong Kong
This paper aims to explain the path of higher education development and governance in (post-colonial) Hong Kong in light of the concept of hybridity. The paper begins with a historical review, delineating the establishment of major universities in Hong Kong, thereby illustrating how hybridity informs the trajectory of higher education development in the city. Considering the tensions and conflicts that emerged during the post-colonial transition …
Vulnerable autonomy: University governance in the context of student activism in Hong Kong
A managerial model of shared governance is adopted in Hong Kong’s public universities to uphold university autonomy. However, with the political confrontation characterised by the rise of student activism, the sustainability of the managerial form of university autonomy requires review and re-exploration. This paper aims to examine the influence of political unrest on university governance in Hong Kong. Drawing on data from interviews with univer…
Chasing Phantoms? Innovation policy, higher education and the pursuit of a knowledge economy in Hong Kong
This paper provides a critical account of the role of universities in the development of innovation and technology in Hong Kong.To do so, the paper examines the political economy of Hong Kong's innovation and technology development. It outlines a finance-led regime, under which the vision of long-term innovation initiatives is transformed into short-term finance events, and the development of an entrepreneurial culture in society and in universit…
Hybridization and higher education governance in Hong Kong
This paper examines the relevance of hybridization to the development of higher education (HE) governance in Hong Kong. It begins by briefly reviewing conceptual issues about HE governance. Based on these conceptual elements, an analytical framework is then proposed to understand the institutional balance of power in university systems and the cultural equilibrium in the academia. Afterwards, an overview of the key features of HE governance in Ho…
Think global, think local: The changing landscape of higher education and the role of quality assurance in Singapore
This article examines how the Singaporean state has reformed the higher education sector in order to co-opt different political and economic agendas at both the global and local levels, utilising quality assurance as a regulatory process of control. The core argument is that quality assurance has been used as an instrument to reshape the higher education landscape in Singapore. The article begins with a review of the literature on the role of the…
Educational decentralization and its implications for governance: Explaining the differences in the four Asian newly industrialized economies
This paper views seeking the optimal balance between state strengths and the scope of state functions for ‘good governance’ as the formation of a homogenization–heterogenization matrix of policy initiatives in different social settings. Homogenization refers to a global tendency for institutional changes and governance framework to change state capacity, while heterogenization refers to the local adaptation of these global transformations. The pa…
Reimagining the notion of Hong Kong as an education hub: National imperative for higher education policy
This article examines the evolving concept of Hong Kong as an education hub, with a focus on the influence of the Greater Bay Area (GBA) strategy on higher education development. It begins by reviewing the impacts of the policy of developing Hong Kong into an education hub on the city’s educational landscape and global competitiveness. Subsequently, the article investigates the GBA’s role as a subnational higher education region, highlighting the…
On the (re)move: Exploring governmentality in post-colonial Macao's higher education
This paper explores the governmentality in Macao’s higher education (HE) by exemplifying how neoliberalism and Chinese nationalism simultaneously inform the governmental rationalities and technologies in the city. Like many other systems, neoliberalism has substantially shaped Macao’s HE. However, owing to post-colonial identity, Chinese nationalism has become a significant driving force in the development of Macao’s HE after the handover. On the…
Hybridisation and recombination: Perspectives on higher education in Chinese societies
This special issue of Discourse concerns itself with the complex issues about the integration between the seemingly contradictory Chinese and Western ideas of a university in five Chinese societies
Adopting neoliberal values in Taiwan's higher education governance: A Hybridisation Process
This article considers the adoption of Western neoliberalism in Taiwan’s higher education (HE) governance as a hybridisation process in which the influences of political democratisation, social liberalisation and Chinese cultural traditions intersect with contemporary Western norms and values. The paper draws on data from interviews with senior university administrators and education ministry officials to delineate the resistance to the competiti…
Connectivity for whom and for what? A normative dimension of education hub
This argument in this study is that the descriptive dimension of the concept of education hub, which focuses on the importance of connectivity in enhancing the competiveness of a place, is inadequate in addressing the educational values in globalising higher education. Therefore, it attempts to initiate a normative dimension of education hub through an empirical account of the experience of a group of Myanmar university students in Hong Kong and …
Educational decentralization and its implications for governance: Explaining the differences in the four Asian newly industrialized economies
This paper views seeking the optimal balance between state strengths and the scope of state functions for ‘good governance’ as the formation of a homogenization–heterogenization matrix of policy initiatives in different social settings. Homogenization refers to a global tendency for institutional changes and governance framework to change state capacity, while heterogenization refers to the local adaptation of these global transformations. The pa…
Soft power, university rankings and knowledge production: Distinctions between hegemony and self‐determination in higher education
The purpose of this article is to analyse the nature of the global hegemonies in higher education. While anti-colonial thinkers describe the dominance of the Western paradigm as an oppression of indigenous culture and knowledge and as neo-colonialism in higher education, their arguments lead to such questions as how much self-determination do non-Western countries have? On what basis can the colonised resist the coloniser? To what extent are non-…
University rankings as a zoning technology: A Taiwanese perspective on an imaginary Greater China higher education region
This paper argues that global university rankings can be understood as a mechanism upholding Taiwan's interests in light of cross-national analysis of university ranking and recent discussion on regionalisation of higher education in Asia. To draw an analytical framework, it begins by delineating a conceptualisation of university ranking, in which ranking exercises are seen as a form of institutions in the globalised field of education politics a…
The Ranking Phenomenon and the Experience of Academics in Taiwan
The Emerging Chinese Institutional Architecture in Higher Education
The article reviews the global landscape of higher education with the anticipation of an emerging Chinese institutional architecture in Asia-Pacific higher education. It starts with a theoretical framework for analyzing the functionalities of values and institutions in international higher education by adopting Joseph Nye's concept of soft power. In particular, it considers the Chinese cultural values and ranking systems/citations indexes as reso…
Globalization and Regionalization of Higher Education in Three Chinese Societies: Competition and Collaboration
Think global, think local: The changing landscape of higher education and the role of quality assurance in Singapore
This article examines how the Singaporean state has reformed the higher education sector in order to co-opt different political and economic agendas at both the global and local levels, utilising quality assurance as a regulatory process of control. The core argument is that quality assurance has been used as an instrument to reshape the higher education landscape in Singapore. The article begins with a review of the literature on the role of the…
Revisiting the Notion of Hong Kong as a Regional Education Hub
Trends and Developments of Higher Education Research in Hong Kong: In Pursuit of a Cosmopolitan Vision
The concept of greater China in higher education: Adoptions, dynamics and implications
Interpreting modernisation and globalisation in East Asia as processes of Westernisation creates confusion and discomfort among some academics from the region. To illustrate why such discomfort occurs, this article explores the changes in the higher education systems of Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China in terms of their ‘Chineseness’ as a potentially unifying regional identity that can be counterposed to Westernisation. The recent and polyval…
Dancing with global trends: Higher education policy and university governance in Hong Kong, 1997–2012
This article examines the significance of global trends in higher education (HE) development in Hong Kong between 1997 and 2012. Two trends, massification and internationalisation, are considered key driving forces that shaped Hong Kong’s HE policy during the period. The former refers to government measures to widen participation in HE. The latter is associated with Hong Kong’s regional education hub strategy. Universities in the city revised the…
Connectivity for whom and for what? A normative dimension of education hub
This argument in this study is that the descriptive dimension of the concept of education hub, which focuses on the importance of connectivity in enhancing the competiveness of a place, is inadequate in addressing the educational values in globalising higher education. Therefore, it attempts to initiate a normative dimension of education hub through an empirical account of the experience of a group of Myanmar university students in Hong Kong and …
Hybridization and higher education governance in Hong Kong
This paper examines the relevance of hybridization to the development of higher education (HE) governance in Hong Kong. It begins by briefly reviewing conceptual issues about HE governance. Based on these conceptual elements, an analytical framework is then proposed to understand the institutional balance of power in university systems and the cultural equilibrium in the academia. Afterwards, an overview of the key features of HE governance in Ho…
Beyond competition: A comparative review of conceptual approaches to international student mobility
The existing literature offers an instrumentalist approach that focuses on how economic rationality underlies international student mobility (ISM). In response to these instrumentalist accounts, a critical approach emerges and reemphasises the importance of humanity and human rights in ISM and the process of internationalisation of higher education. However, this paper argues that these critical perspectives are insufficient to address the non-in…
A year of change for Hong Kong: From east-meets-west to east-clashes-with-west
In this essay, I consider the impacts of the pandemic and the recent political challenges to the global position of Hong Kong’s higher education. To reveal the impacts, I examine what makes Hong Kong’s academic model special, and assess the sustainability of this model in a post-pandemic era
Learning to ‘tell China's story well’: The constructions of international students in Chinese higher education policy
This article takes a policy-as-discourse approach to understanding how Chinese policy texts construct international students. This is important given the growth of China as a study destination, and the fact that the majority of the studies on Chinese internationalisation policy are descriptive, and poorly integrated with literature focused on other contexts. Drawing upon a thematic analysis of 19 policy texts, the article reveals that economic ra…
Chasing Phantoms? Innovation policy, higher education and the pursuit of a knowledge economy in Hong Kong
This paper provides a critical account of the role of universities in the development of innovation and technology in Hong Kong.To do so, the paper examines the political economy of Hong Kong's innovation and technology development. It outlines a finance-led regime, under which the vision of long-term innovation initiatives is transformed into short-term finance events, and the development of an entrepreneurial culture in society and in universit…
Globalism, regionalism and nationalism: The dynamics of student mobility in higher education across the Taiwan Strait
This paper aims to broaden the conceptual approaches to understanding the complexity of student mobility in higher education (HE) across the Taiwan Strait, thereby exemplifying a contradictory mix of collaboration and competition that involves interplay among the various forces associated with global, regional and national settings. To achieve this goal, the paper provides an abstraction of ‘trichotomisation’, which explains the significance of t…
Institutional logic meets global imagining: Kazakhstan’s engagement with China’s Belt and Road Initiative
Theoretical ideas about globalization and internationalization of higher education emphasize the tension among different ideologies of higher education. According to literature, a competition among states, economy, knowledge, and status generates this tension to drive higher education development. This theoretical understanding not only shapes our global imaginations but also permeates the organizational behavior of universities. In this paper, w…
Vulnerable autonomy: University governance in the context of student activism in Hong Kong
A managerial model of shared governance is adopted in Hong Kong’s public universities to uphold university autonomy. However, with the political confrontation characterised by the rise of student activism, the sustainability of the managerial form of university autonomy requires review and re-exploration. This paper aims to examine the influence of political unrest on university governance in Hong Kong. Drawing on data from interviews with univer…
Global pedigree and national imperative: Hong Kong universities’ response to China’s grand strategies
Literature offers a theoretical framework exemplifying the inherent tensions between “becoming Chinese” and “remaining global” in the evolution of the international status of Hong Kong. Adopting this framework, this paper examines the global position of Hong Kong’s higher education through an investigation of universities’ participation in China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Greater Bay Area development plan. Specifically, drawing on data from i…
Reimagining the notion of Hong Kong as an education hub: National imperative for higher education policy
This article examines the evolving concept of Hong Kong as an education hub, with a focus on the influence of the Greater Bay Area (GBA) strategy on higher education development. It begins by reviewing the impacts of the policy of developing Hong Kong into an education hub on the city’s educational landscape and global competitiveness. Subsequently, the article investigates the GBA’s role as a subnational higher education region, highlighting the…
On the (re)move: Exploring governmentality in post-colonial Macao's higher education
This paper explores the governmentality in Macao’s higher education (HE) by exemplifying how neoliberalism and Chinese nationalism simultaneously inform the governmental rationalities and technologies in the city. Like many other systems, neoliberalism has substantially shaped Macao’s HE. However, owing to post-colonial identity, Chinese nationalism has become a significant driving force in the development of Macao’s HE after the handover. On the…
Departing from hybridity: Higher education development and university governance in postcolonial Hong Kong
This paper aims to explain the path of higher education development and governance in (post-colonial) Hong Kong in light of the concept of hybridity. The paper begins with a historical review, delineating the establishment of major universities in Hong Kong, thereby illustrating how hybridity informs the trajectory of higher education development in the city. Considering the tensions and conflicts that emerged during the post-colonial transition …
Hybridisation and recombination: Perspectives on higher education in Chinese societies
This special issue of Discourse concerns itself with the complex issues about the integration between the seemingly contradictory Chinese and Western ideas of a university in five Chinese societies
Political science (31 works) · Sociology (28 works) · Higher education (24 works) · Higher Education Governance and Development (23 works) · Economics (22 works) · Law (19 works) · Politics (18 works) · Economic growth (15 works) · Global Educational Reforms and Inequalities (14 works) · Public Administration (12 works)