In this essay, I introduce how and why minority groups and educational equity are understood and approached differently in Mainland China and Hong Kong. I describe how in the past few decades, China and Hong Kong have reformed their education systems to increase educational equity and I summarize the progress achieved. I also discuss the cultural, political, and social issues and challenges that contribute to the complexity surrounding educational equity in China and Hong Kong, elaborate on how educational equity remains a tricky issue in schools, and how different factors intersect to affect students’ access to educational goods. Finally, I argue that schools in China and Hong Kong should continue both to reform their education systems to enhance the academic achievement and social development of marginalized students and to put more effort into empowering teachers and students to recognize and address the long-standing systemic and institutional obstacles.

The U.S. Supreme Court increasingly leverages a rigid interpretation of the Free Speech Clause to strike regulations that address campaign financing, health care warnings, tax disclosures, collective bargaining agreements, and consumer protections. History has become little more than a slogan that the majority periodically invokes but seldom accurately evaluates. That lack of nuance augments the justices’ authority to articulate absolutist-sounding rules to the detriment of legislatures’ exercise of traditional governmental functions. Jurists would do better to rely on a more proportionate and less categorical approach to decide whether laws impose direct or peripheral burdens on communications. The level of safeguards enjoyed by expressions should be gauged by their value to political self-determination, personal development, or informational contribution. The degree of protections that speech enjoys should be balanced against countervailing government interests, alternatives available to speakers, fit between law and public ends, and relevant history.