This book aims to provide comprehensive empirical and theoretical studies of expanding fandom communities in East Asia through the commodification of Japanese, Korean and Chinese popular cultures in the digital era. Using a multidisciplinary approach including political economy, East Asian studies, political science, international relations concepts and history, this book focuses on a few research objectives. In terms of methodology, it is an area studies approach based on interpretative work, observation studies, policy and textual analysis. First, it aims to examine the closely intertwined relationship between the three major stakeholders in the iron triangle of production companies, consumers and states (i.e., role of government in policy promotion). Second, it studies the interpenetration, adaptation, innovation and hybridization of exogenous Western culture with traditional popular cultures in (North) East Asia. Third, it studies the influence of popular cultures and how cultural products resonate with a regional audience through collective consumption, contents reflective of normative values, the emotive and cognitive appeal of familiar images and social learning as well as peer effect found in fan communities. It then examines how consumption contributes to soft cultural influence and how governments leverage on its comparative advantages and cultural assets for commercial success and in the process augment national (cultural) influence. These questions will be discussed and analyzed and contextualized through the case studies of J-pop (Japanese popular culture), K-pop (Korean popular culture or Hallyu) and Chinese popular culture (including Mando-pop and Taiwanese popular culture).

This book seeks to survey the role of tycoons in Hong Kong's socio-political and socioeconomic developments. Summoned to Beijing just before the onset of the territory's longest social movement, it highlights the tycoons' symbolic intermediary role between Beijing's elite and the people of Hong Kong. Also investigated is the unwritten social contract between Beijing's elite and Hong Kong society - that the tycoons will be rewarded economically or left alone to conduct their business activities if they remain compatible with Beijing's policy directions (or at least remain neutral in contentious issues) and facilitate policy implementation if necessary.Tycoons in Hong Kong has three research objectives: first, in understanding the roles that tycoons play in Hong Kong, it is necessary to understand Beijing's crafted political and social spaces for Hong Kong's economic elites to exert their influence. Second, it examines the integrated roles that the tycoons play as consultative members of the Chinese one-party socio-political structures. Third, it presents the humanized side of the tycoons, highlights the positive contributions that tycoons make to Hong Kong and mainland China and deconstructs the idea of a hegemonic tycoon class by emphasizing their heterogeneity in the biographical entries section of the publication.

In the past 18 years, after the handover of the former British colony Hong Kong to China, Beijing and the Special Administration Region (SAR) have been trying to work out a mutually beneficial relationship based on pragmatism and a focus on economic prosperity. The Occupy Central with Love and Peace in Hong Kong (September to December 2014) movement represents a significant event in Hong Kong's history of public advocacy for change by pro-democracy residents. It is viewed differently by various groups within Hong Kong, including eliciting counter-reactions from an opposing movement.To contextualize the current discussions, the authors have identified three phases of the movement; and included a historical anatomy of Hong Kong's quest to reach an equilibrium between status quo and changes advocated through its social movements. Though the account does not pretend to be comprehensive, it distils the most significant events in each of the three stages of the movement. Centrist, moderate, and conservative views on Occupy Central, as well as the liberal and progressive positions on the movement are discussed and analyzed in the book.