Colonial government and the mass media : policy towards sex and violence comics in Hong Kong, 1970-1995

The proliferation of sex and violence comics among young readers has been one of the most striking social and moral problems in Hong Kong since 1970. Although the government issued three ordinances to control the proliferation, its effort was far from enough because the ordinances had never been enforced actively and seriously. This thesis employs a policy analysis framework, Grindle's content-context policy analysis model, to evaluate the government's policy on controlling sex and violence comics. This thesis also examines the policy from pluralist, Marxist perspectives and incrementalism to see why the government fails to balance between protection of young people and the profit making of publishers and vendors. This thesis concludes that the government's passivity toward sex and violence in the mass media provided an environment where the sex and violence comics are able to proliferate. This passiveness is in fact a part of the government's moderate mass media policy. Such a moderate policy is a characteristic of colonial governance, which emphasizes the minimal intervention and co-operative interest of the government and the capitalists. This co-operative relationship is the scope of Marxist theories. Moreover, in this case, the Hong Kong government possess a higher power than what the Marxists conceive. Finally, this thesis suggests alternative solutions to the sex and violence mass media and estimates the government's mass media policy after 1997