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The recent mobilization of many Hong Kong youth to engage in what are regarded as radical political activities is not a new area of investigation. Much has been discussed about this growing political activism and localism often giving an impression that Hong Kong youth are radical and disengaged from China as a nation. Yet little is known about the possible antecedents of such disengagement. The purpose of this paper is to identify whether there is empirical evidence of growth or decline in civic trust and national attitudes amongst Hong Kong young adolescents over the ten-year period from 1999 to 2009.

In this study latent profile analyses were used to classify cohorts of Hong Kong secondary students according to the levels of their self-reported trust in civic institutions and attitudes toward the nation. The cohorts were separated by a ten-year gap. Comparisons were made across groups and across the ten-year time span, in order to trace changes in civic attitudes of young adolescents following the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997.

Three distinct groups were identified in both cohorts – Activists, who had negative attitudes to trust and toward the nation, Nationalists who had positive attitudes toward trust and the nation and Moderates who endorsed average responses to the, two variables. The gaps between the groups tended to be greater in the 2009 group compared to the 1999 groups suggesting greater polarization amongst adolescents on these measures.

Young adolescents cannot be assumed to be politically neutral or lacking social values. Citizenship education needs to take this into account so that values can be clarified and major issues can be discussed in a safe and supportive environment.

Political parties in Hong Kong are eager to recruit university students and internship programs are a major recruitment channel for them. However, studies on the influences of political internship programs on university students are few and have mainly been conducted in Western democracies. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore the roles of political party internship programs in encouraging university and community college students to join political parties in Hong Kong, a semi-democratic autonomous region of China.

This study is based on the insights gained from semi-structured interviews with a small sample of former party interns.

This paper found that party internship programs can play three major roles in encouraging students at higher education institutions to join a political party. They are: exposing students to the recruitment efforts of the party, helping students who have no political aspirations to generate a desire to join, and providing an opportunity for those already considering joining to ascertain if the party is really suitable for them.

This paper shows that political internships in semi-democratic regimes like Hong Kong can play similar roles as those in Western democracies to stimulate some university students to pursue a career in politics and help those already considering a political career to ascertain their goals. This paper also shows that these stimulating and confirming effects could also apply to the application for party membership.