Rikkie Yeung’s Book, “Moving Millions”

Corporate mergers normally affect the public only indirectly.  Dr. Rikkie Yeung’s well-received new book, Moving Millions, published by the Hong Kong University Press, examines a merger that has a direct impact on millions of Hong Kong lives on a daily basis: that of the Mass Transit Railway Corporation and the Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation in 2007.

Among other things, the book (315 pages, HK$395) explores how the very different corporate cultures at the two railways – good organization, strong management and sensitivity to public sentiment on the part of the MTRC, versus the bureaucratic mentality of the KCRC – shaped the two corporations and ultimately helped lead to their merger.  The book, Dr. Yeung (JMSC MJ 2002) writes, “compares how the MTRC and KCRC management dealt with the complex relationships with the government, market and community over the last three decades when Hong Kong experienced drastic political and socio-economic changes.”

University professor Leo Goodstadt, chief policy advisor to the Hong Kong government between 1989 and 1997, writes of Dr. Yeung and the book: “With meticulous research, she assesses the political conflicts and the economic and social dilemmas involved.  Dr. Yeung has produced a path-breaking case study of corporate governance.”

Chris Yeung, political editor of the South China Morning Post, says Dr. Yeung’s book “could not be a more timely historical account-cum-comparative analysis of the two railway corporations and a pointer to (their) new challenges.”

In addition to her Master of Journalism degree, Dr. Yeung has received an MBA and a PhD from The University of Hong Kong.  She is currently a consultant and research scholar in public affairs and public policy.  She has also served on the Hong Kong government’s Central Policy Unit and Constitutional Affairs Bureau, and as a member of the Chief Secretary’s office.  She was a visiting fellow at the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at the prestigious Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. in 2006-07.