My interest in exploring theoretical issues and empirical knowledge about the relationship between nationalism, school music education, and social change in an increasingly globalized world is closely related to my journey as a researcher of contemporary Chinese studies. While Hong Kong and Taiwan are subject to claims that they are part of China, both have also been detached from Mainland China for long periods, and in recent years their affairs with it have endured fundamental changes. For example, Hong Kong's relationship with China has become closer as a result of economic integration and the 1997 transfer of political sovereignty. Their relationship has been further intertwined by the Beijing-approved National Security Law (nsl), unanimously passed in Hong Kong on 30 June 2020 (i.e., on the eve of the 23rd anniversary of Hong Kong's handover) and enacted on 1 July 2020. Regarding Taiwan's relationship with China, Beijing regards Taiwan as a Chinese province that will ultimately be part of Mainland China again.

Since the early 2000s, relations between China and Hong Kong have been relatively tense, including different interpretations of the ‘one country, two systems’ principle. These tensions have continued with the mass protests, beginning in June 2019, against a proposed extradition bill perceived as allowing dissidents to be transferred to China, which included a march of two million people (as claimed by the organizers) on 16 June 2019. The bill was withdrawn in September, but demonstrations demanding full democracy in Hong Kong continued in the last quarter of 2019. In April 2020, China's liaison office in Hong Kong called for national security legislation and controversially declared that China had comprehensive jurisdiction over Hong Kong. The draft of Hong Kong's national security legislation was voted on at the end of the third session of the thirteenth National People's Congress on 28 May 2020. It was passed on 30 June. Also in June, the Hong Kong government passed the National Anthem Law, which criminalizes any abuse of the Chinese national anthem. Culture, politics, and selective forms of knowledge have become central coordinating lenses through which to view Hong Kong's school education.

On the other hand, Taiwan's identification as a part of China has become increasingly ambiguous as the process of democratization and localization that began in Taiwan in the 1980s has allowed sovereignty to be practiced through the development of a ‘Taiwan consciousness’ (Taiwan yishi) among the Taiwanese people.