Prior to the handover there was much anxiety about academic freedom in Hong Kong under China. As it turned out, there has been little significant change in autonomy in university governance and research. Self-censorship may be found on an individual basis but is not a general collective phenomenon. The relative calm over the issue of academic freedom may be due in part to Beijing's effort to honor Hong Kong's autonomy and in part to the eclipse by more pressing demands from micro-level developments. The efficiency drive that is an international trend reached Hong Kong in the late 1980s and now has a tight grip on institutional life.
Institutional productivity is under close scrutiny.
For the faculty this means high expectations for teaching and research, winning grants, and professional and community service. Of these, research output is of primary importance. Publication in international scholarly journals is generally assigned greater weight than publication in local ones. This has posed a dilemma for academics in culturally oriented fields in the social sciences and humanities. One criterion for awarding research grants is local relevance, yet the distribution of research output in nonlocal channels is more favorably rated.