ACross-culturalStudyofPreferencesforPopularMusic

result of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration,the UK promised to restore HK to China on 1st July1997 as a Special Administrative Region (SAR)with a high degree of autonomy in all matters exceptforeign and defense affairs for the following 50 years.Almost 95 per cent of the 7.4 million populationsare ethnic,Cantonese-speaking Chinese,approximately 90 per cent of which are an eclectic mixture oflocal religions,Buddhism,Confucianism,and Taoism,whilst the remainders are divided almost equallybetween Roman Catholic and Protestant Christian sects.Chinese and English are the two officiallanguages,the latter being more commonly used for business and the former being the most widelyspoken dialect.Besides the international schools and those Chinese schools using English as theirteaching instruction,Cantonese (one of the major dialects of the Chinese language and mainly spoken inthe south-eastern part of mainland China,HK,Macau)is the medium of instruction in school,though,since 1997 many schools switched to using Mandarin.An overview of popular music in HKPopular music is the single most influential factor for many young people in Hong Kong (see Ho2002,2003;So 2002).HK popular music had been dominated by English and Taiwanese popular songssince before the 1980s.During the 1960s and 1970s Western popular songs by the Carpenters,the BeeGees,the Beatles,Simon and Garfunkel,Olivia Newton John,and the Rolling Stones dominated themusic market in HK;and Taiwanese singers such as Yao Su-rong,Qing Shan,You Ya,Tang Yan,Zhang Pi and Geng Li-jun (otherwise known as Teresa Tang)rose to fame in the late 1960s and 1970s.Then Cantonese songs took over the market in the 1980s and 1990s.Several big record labels such asSony,EMI,Polydor,and Philips run the businesses in HK,targeting Cantonese audiences,oftenreissuing British,US-American and Japanese originals.Since the early 1990s HK popular artists havebeen producing both Canto-pop,and Mandarin songs,or Mando-pop,to reach a wider music market inthe greater Chinese communities.The most significant success stories to date were those of WarnerMusic's Sandy Lam and Polygram's Grasshopper.For instance,Polygram,employing similar marketingand recording techniques as Warner Music for their Mandarin projects,sold over 450,000 copies ofSandy Lam's first Mando-pop release "Loving for the Wanderer"(Ebert 1992:41-2).More and moreartists have recorded in Mandarin after the return of HK's sovereignty from the United Kingdom toChina(see Ho 2000;McIntyre et al 2002).The ethno-political situation in ThailandIn 1939 Siam changed its name to Thailand,but it was then changed back to Siam between 1945and 1949.Thailand occupies a central position on the Southeast Asian peninsula,bordered by Myanmarin the west and north,Laos in the northeast,Cambodia in the east and Malaysia in the south.Thepopulation of 63.1 million is divided between central Thai including Bangkok(BBK)(33.7%),northeastern Thai (34.2%),northern Thai (18.8%),and southern Thai