National Rejuvenation

The Chinese dream of national rejuvenation, introduced by Xi Jinping at the start of his first term as General Secretary and President of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 2012, remained the central theme of his speech delivered at the Nineteenth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on 18 October 2017: ‘our compatriots in Hong Kong and Macao will share boThthe historic responsibility of national rejuvenation and the pride of a strong and prosperous China’. Xi also made it very clear that the development of Hong Kong and Macao would be closely tied to that of the mainland: ‘We will continue to support Hong Kong and Macao in integrating their own development into the overall development of the country.’ In line with this, Xi underlined Beijing's policy to ‘formulate and improve policies and measures to make it more convenient for people from Hong Kong to develop careers on the mainland’. After the Nineteenth National Congress of the CCP, Beijing had plans to roll out new policies to integrate the Special Administrative Regions (SARs) into the mainland, and Hong Kong's reconfiguration would result in an increasingly marginal, minor position in Beijing's new blueprint. At a press conference during the Nineteenth National Congress, Zhang Hongsen, Deputy Director of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT), echoed Xi by saying that ‘[Xi] clearly pointed out the new direction for building stronger cultural selfconfidence and helping socialist culture to flourish. The film industry will follow the guiding principles of the 19ThCPC National Congress’. Xi's pronouncements have since had a profound and unprecedented impact on cross-border collaborations. In this context, it is paramount for researchers to explore the relationship between Hong Kong's cultural industries and their mainland equivalents, thereby disclosing the ways in which their political economies interact.

It is against this critical backdrop that this book was conceived. As it builds on two of the author's previous books, it is necessary to recount some of the points made in those works in relation to this project.