The Research Grants Council (RGC) recently announced the results of the Strategic Public Policy Research 2009/2010 exercise. Out of the 12 research project applications submitted by institutions funded by the University Grants Committee, four projects were selected with a total funding amount of $9.3 million.

Dr Pun Ngai, Associate Professor of PolyU’s Department of Applied Social Sciences, received the largest share of funding of $3.8 million for her project “Forging new trans-border links: social/community economies in Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta”. The project will be conducted in collaboration with Sun Yat-Sen University and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

The 3-year project is about rethinking space, economy and community in a trans-border context. It is more about strategically placing Hong Kong in the new development of the Pearl River Delta that endeavors to move beyond the planned and the market economy.

The global financial crisis has provided a valuable lesson for the researchers to re-examine the neo-liberal economic development thinking which dominates Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland for a few decades. The major objective of this research project is to explore alternative social development models of community economy in Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta in the context of the global financial crisis.

This project, far from providing a negative review on the role of market and economy, is mainly concerned with how a long term sustainable economy could strike a balance between economic growth and social development. We aim to build creative community economies which take into serious consideration the core principles of 3 “E”- Ecology, Economy and Equality. Cross border development is a new challenge not only in the areas of finance, trade and industry, but also food safety, health, pollution, labour rights and poverty alleviation in both regions.

The focus of the project is on how economy and community development can be reconnected; how free trade can be supplemented by fair trade; how giant and monopolized corporations can be replaced with social enterprise and co-operatives, and hence how an “embedded” market can be created to uphold the principles of economic development, social equality and environmental protection.

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