Cambridge Hong Kong Affairs Essay Competition

Cambridge University Hong Kong and China Affairs Society Cambridge Hong Kong Affairs Essay Competition

The Cambridge Hong Kong Affairs Essay Competition is the first essay competition organised by overseas Hong Kong students targeting local secondary school students. The competition aims to raise awareness on socio-economic and political issues in Hong Kong and China among our generation, and to promote critical thinking and forward-thinking thoughts through argumentative writing.

Given the success of last year’s Essay Competition, we continued dividing the competition into English and Chinese sections and modified the format of the competition to having the same questions for both the English and Chinese sections, increasing coherence and allowing all students the opportunity to engage with these topical issues.

The adjudication process this year was divided into preliminary adjudication and final adjudication. Each submission was evaluated based on the originality of ideas, understanding of the contextual knowledge, language and organisation. In the preliminary adjudication, the essays were screened by a panel of Cambridge University students of different disciplines. The best six submissions from each section were then judged by the final adjudicators comprising of renowned social figures and academics in Hong Kong. We are extremely grateful to our final adjudicators, including:

English Section

Dr. Dominic Chan Dr. Rodney Chu Dr. Tim Summers Associate Director, EMBA Programme, the Chinese University of Hong Kong

Chinese Section

Prof. Wilson Wong

Prof. Ray Yep

Assistant Professor, Department of Applied Social Sciences, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University Senior Consulting Fellow, Asia-Pacific Programme, Chatham House

Associate Professor, Department of Government and Public Administration, the Chinese University of Hong Kong Assistant Professor, Department of Applied Social Sciences, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Senior Consulting Fellow, Asia-Pacific Programme, Chatham House

We wish to extend our gratitude to our preliminary adjudicators, including: Mr. Fergus Tam, Miss Adriana Lee, Miss Karina Poon, Mr. Timothy Tan, Mr. Jonathan Mui, Miss Carmen Chan, Mr. Jonathan Mo, Miss Kerry Lui, Mr. Ian Hui, Mr. Jason Chan, Miss Jenny Tang, Mr. Jason Lo, Mr. Bryden Yip, Mr. Mervyn Tong, Mr. George Ho, Miss Mandy Ip, Mr. Jacky Chow, Mr. Jack Lam, and Miss Dora Tse.

The prompts for this year’s questions were as follows:

1. Evaluate the role of Hong Kong in Chinese economic policy and development. 就近期中國的經濟政策及發展，評論香港在當中擔當的角色。

2. With reference to current social and political trends, have Hong Kong’s core values been affected? How can Hong Kong protect its core values as it moves closer to 2047? 試評論目前香港的社會及政治形勢是否影響我們的核心價值。隨著步向2047年，香港可以如何維 護其核心價值？

香港的教育制度在多大程度上能促進社會流動，而又有何改善餘地？

3. To what extent is the Hong Kong education system effective in enhancing social mobility? How can it be improved?

For both English and Chinese sections, students were asked to write an essay of no more than 2000 words/ characters discussing a topic of their choice.