Reproduction of Elites in Hong Kong through the Hong Kong Jockey Club

This chapter will show how the Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC), a sports, gambling, and charitable establishment, filled the institutional void in colonial Hong Kong, an embryonic civil society. It gives new insight into the potential of a civil society organisation to form an institutional base for the elite. The HKJC provided a platform for the elite to build and facilitate interrelated networks, revealing the integration and more specifically the reproduction of the elite in Hong Kong society. The elites played multiple roles as social and economic leaders-cum-politicians in the oversimplified state-society dichotomy, also bridging the gap between the ruling regime and society. However, in the run-up to the handover of Hong Kong in 1997, the elite formation and composition and political situation in Hong Kong society started to change, thus challenging the role of the HKJC in contemporary society.