10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17147
Drawing on a case study on Hong Kong government policymaking, this paper identifies a potentially fruitful intersection between science and technology studies (STS) and policy studies whereby the latter would benefit from conceptual resources originating in STS. Hong Kong has sought stronger economic ties with the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region of Mainland China since the late 1990s, using social and economic indicators to promote increased investment in the region. During this process Hong Kong effectively expunged uncertainty (creating a “certainty trough”) while constructing a definitive representation of the PRD region to serve as a social technology in public policy discourse. The paper argues that the government exploited a form of interpretive uncertainty – ambiguity – to attract potential investors, suggesting that STS concepts, such as the coproduction of social technologies and MacKenzie’s (1990) “certainty trough”, could be effective tools for analyzing social and economic policymaking.
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Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Pearl River Delta
Exploiting Uncertainty and Ambiguity in Policymaking. Hong Kong and Investment in the Pearl River Delta Region
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Naubahar Sharif
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Exploiting Uncertainty and Ambiguity in Policymaking. Hong Kong and Investment in the Pearl River Delta Region
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4
                                                                                  Essay

Exploiting Uncertainty and Ambiguity in
Policymaking
Hong Kong and Investment in the Pearl River Delta
Region

Naubahar Sharif
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
	
  
       Abstract: Drawing on a case study on Hong Kong government
       policymaking, this paper identifies a potentially fruitful intersection between
       science and technology studies (STS) and policy studies whereby the latter
       would benefit from conceptual resources originating in STS. Hong Kong has
       sought stronger economic ties with the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region of
       Mainland China since the late 1990s, using social and economic indicators
       to promote increased investment in the region. During this process Hong
       Kong effectively expunged uncertainty (creating a “certainty trough”) while
       constructing a definitive representation of the PRD region to serve as a
       social technology in public policy discourse. The paper argues that the
       government exploited a form of interpretive uncertainty – ambiguity – to
       attract potential investors, suggesting that STS concepts, such as the co-
       production of social technologies and MacKenzie’s (1990) “certainty
       trough”, could be effective tools for analyzing social and economic
       policymaking.

       Keywords: uncertainty; ambiguity; policymaking; Honk Kong; Pearl River
       Delta.

       Corresponding author: Dr. Naubahar Sharif, Room 3372, Division of
       Social Science, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear
       Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR (HK) – Email: sosn@ust.hk




1. Introduction

   Sheila Jasanoff suggests that science and technology studies (STS)
would benefit from interdisciplinary “conversations” with scholars in
other areas (Jasanoff 2004, 2) and in this paper I identify one site at which
such a conversation might fruitfully: a case involving the construction of

TECNOSCIENZA
Italian Journal of Science and Technology Studies
4 (2) pp. 5-26 - ISSN 2038-3460
	
  
www.tecnoscienza.net                                2013

	
  
6                                                           Tecnoscienza - 4 (2)

social indicators by the Hong Kong government to promote investment in
and stronger economic ties with the neighboring Pearl River Delta region
(PRD) in China’s Guangdong province. As STS scholar focusing on in-
novation systems and economic development who tracks Hong Kong’s
interest in expanding its economic relationship with the PRD, it occurred
to me that, although there were no material technologies or scientific is-
sues at stake, some useful concepts and principles established in STS –
emerging in particular from the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) –
might be applied to the relationship between experts and economic poli-
cymakers in the Hong Kong government.
    My work in developing a case study of the Hong Kong government’s
policy towards the PRD region suggested to me a pattern in the produc-
tion of technology familiar to STS scholars, involving factors through
which key actors construct certainty from uncertainty in the course of
producing scientific results or technologies. Such results, which are pro-
duced through social relationships involving negotiation, contestation,
and interpretation, came to be known in SSK as social technologies. In the
case at hand, the social technology in question – a representation of the
PRD region that would attract business investment – was, as Theodore
Porter (1995, 229) terms it, a representation of the PRD region involving
“public forms of knowledge [...] shaped for policy purposes”. Moreover,
in producing its PRD construct, the Hong Kong government disregarded
or otherwise disposed of myriad sources of uncertainty.
    In this paper I explain how an iconic STS/SSK hypothesis that is
commonly depicted in a figure known as the ‘certainty trough’ (MacKen-
zie 1990, 370-372; see figure 1) may be usefully applied to a non-STS con-
text, providing a model of the process through which uncertainty was
eliminated and of the relationships between actors who were involved. In
this way, I hope to identify a juncture at which a conversation such as Jas-
anoff mentions would benefit scholars interested in policymaking by
making STS conceptual resources available to them.




                        Figure 1 – The Certainty Trough
Sharif                                                                                                                                                                                                                             7
2. Social Construction of Technology

    The proposition that technology and scientific knowledge are socially
constructed has become common in STS. Scholarly work has revealed
how ambiguous and even contradictory results from scientific and tech-
nological tests, calculations, and experiments become established as
acknowledged facts1. Historical and ethnographic case studies have ex-
posed how such uncertainties and contingencies are in effect set aside and
thereby transformed into certainty2.
    According to this social constructivist tradition, those who produce
scientific or technological results, familiar as they are with theoretical,
empirical, and statistical sources of uncertainty, tend to downplay the cer-
tainty of their results, in order to preserve their credibility in case uncer-
tainties are later revealed. Those who eventually put the results to use,
however, tend to accept the science or technology as bedrock fact. In
many cases opposition groups materialize, comprising actors opposed to
the particular use of the scientific or technical results in the given case,
and in their discourse the uncertainty returns and tends to be even more
pronounced than it had been among the producers.
    To illustrate this phenomenon, Donald MacKenzie, while studying the
social forces that shaped the development of nuclear missile guidance
technology, posited a figure with a somewhat irregular “U” shape form-
ing a trough: the abovementioned certainty trough. MacKenzie argued
that, in the production of new technologies as in the production of sci-
ence (as had been previously argued by Collins 1985), facts are construct-
ed (by ‘producers’) amidst acknowledged uncertainty that is effectively
ignored by those whom he identified as the ‘users’ of technology. He then
posited that the ‘alienated’ would re-open debate about the uncertainty
and possibly identify new sources (e.g. Pollack 2012 [2007] situates the
alienated in the political class).
    The trough figure represents the degrees of uncertainty involved, with
the trough itself representing the certainty that users attribute to what is
produced. In this paper, I revisit this argument as it applies to the use of
data relating to the PRD region by the Hong Kong government. The re-
sult of this effort was in itself a social technology, produced through so-
cial processes engaged in by experts and policymakers, who used public
knowledge – in part by exploiting the uncertainties involved – to con-
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
1
  The canonical literature in which these social constructivist insights have been
achieved includes Fleck (1935), MacKenzie (1981), Knorr-Cetina (1981), Camp-
bell (1985), Lynch (1985), Latour and Woologar (1986), Collins (1987), Pinch
and Bijker (1987), Wynne (1988), MacKenzie (1990), and Shapin (1994).
2
  Key studies include Star (1985), Bijker, Hughes, and Pinch (1987), Bijker and
Law (1992) and Pickering (1992). More recent studies that have continued this
tradition include Collins and Evans (2002) and Lahsen (2005), as well as Mac-
Kenzie (2006, 2009).
8                                                           Tecnoscienza - 4 (2)

struct a representation known as the PRD region. In calling the PRD con-
struct a social technology, I use the concept of a social technology intro-
duced by Pinch (1987, 2), according to which a social technology in-
cludes: “processes [...] or procedures (or combinations of these) which
are built around or have embedded within them a systematic attempt to
change human behavior”. Clearly the PRD construct is intended by Hong
Kong’s chief executive to change the behavior of business interests in
Hong Kong by persuading them to invest in the region. In this sense, it
constitutes a form of technology.


2.1. Uncertainty and Ambiguity

    In my study of the use of data to promote investment in the PRD re-
gion, I found a pattern similar to the certainty trough, in which uncertain-
ty arising in the production of those data was purged when the data were
presented as settled facts (intended to constitute an attractive target for
investment). I observed two forms of uncertainty: technical uncertainty,
associated with the statistical and other techniques of measurement on
which the data are based; and interpretive uncertainty, both in the course
of collecting the statistical data and in the application of those data in
practice. Technical uncertainty occurs, for example, in almost any process
to which statistical methods apply, or in which degrees of tolerance must
be taken into account, in short, in which it is inherently difficult or im-
possible to obtain perfect accuracy in measurements or predictions. In-
terpretative uncertainties occur whenever decisions or choices not dictat-
ed by technical or quantitative findings or measurements had to be made.
Interpretive uncertainty might involve choices about how to apply a tech-
nology; or about which of several possible results of a calculation under
varying conditions to accept; or about the meanings of terms or con-
structs that are involved in reporting or making sense of the results of
tests or calculations.
    I found the technical/interpretive distinction helpful in tracing how
the Hong Kong government used data to identify social indicators on
which to base its case for investment in the PRD, as this case was present-
ed with no reference to such uncertainties. The real work of eliminating
uncertainty here exploited another type of indeterminacy: technical and
interpretive uncertainty created ambiguity – a form of uncertainty in its
own right – that had to be eliminated in identifying or defining the entity
that was to count as “the PRD region”. My study identifies, then, a high-
er-level form of uncertainty – ambiguity – that arises in the production
process and is exploited to construct a definitive representation of the
PRD region, which lies at the bottom the certainty trough, for the gov-
ernment’s rhetorical purposes.
    Before analyzing Hong Kong’s promotion of investment in the PRD
region, I should clarify an important point. The literature in which the
Sharif                                                                                                                                                                                                                             9
social construction of scientific knowledge was conceived bears a some-
what oblique relationship to my central argument. New scientific
knowledge and related technologies that have been analyzed by STS and
SSK scholars typically involve highly specialized work in what Collins and
Evans (2002) call “esoteric science”, areas characterized by a wide gap in
scientific and technical expertise between the producers and the users.
The gap in the Hong Kong PRD case is quite different, as the indicators
in question do not rise to the level of complexity or technicality involved
in, say, climate modeling (see, for example, Lahsen 2005). The technical
uncertainties involved in producing these indicators are in principle man-
ageable because they can be easily quantified (Baker et al. 2013). Never-
theless, in the process through which the government obtained these in-
dicators, that uncertainty was transformed into certainty. Although eso-
teric uncertainty exists in both cases, it stands at several removes from the
policymaking arena here.
    In summary, then, my argument is that the Hong Kong government,
led by successive chief executives and relevant bureaus, exploited a
source of ambiguity (namely, uncertainty inherent to the production of
key social indicators) in order to create a rhetorical construct (the PRD
region) which represents an attractive environment for investments on the
part of business actors in Hong Kong.


3. Methodology

    The material on which this paper is based was collected through doc-
umentary research, including interviews of Hong Kong government offi-
cials, data from official Hong Kong government statistics, statistics from
Hong Kong government-sponsored agencies and Chinese government,
plus newspaper articles. Former Hong Kong chief executive Tung Chee
Hwa’s annual policy addresses from 1997 to 2003, additional policy
statements made by his successor, Donald Tsang Yam Kuen, and other
members of the Hong Kong government in 2008 and 2009 (as well as a
major conference on the Pearl River Delta held in Hong Kong in 2002)
were the major sources of documentary information pertaining to Hong
Kong’s top-echelon political leaders. The context within which to inter-
pret these findings was established in part through interviews conducted
with officials within the executive branch of government and with offi-
cials and consultants associated with government-sponsored organiza-
tions3.
	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
3
  Officials included then-chief executive Tung-Chee Wha and his personal secre-
tary, Vivienne Chow. The two Hong Kong government-sponsored organizations
are the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) and Invest Hong
Kong (InvestHK). The HKTDC is charged with promoting external trade. It also
creates and facilitates opportunities in international trade, especially for small and
10                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Tecnoscienza - 4 (2)

    Data analysis involved examining both governmental and quasi-
governmental sources of statistics and comparing the results to uncover
interpretive uncertainties and to determine from which sources Hong
Kong ultimately drew its figures. The content of speeches and newspaper
reports on government statements was used to indicate the government’s
emphasis on the PRD as a site for business investment. Regarding the in-
terviews, although I was able to make out the broad outlines of the pro-
cess through which the indicators were determined, I did not interview
members of the government with the certainty trough in mind. When I
began to explore the applicability of the certainty trough to the case, I
hoped to be able to develop an ethnographic account of the process.


4. The Pearl River Delta Region

    The PRD region, situated within Guangdong province, is named for
the Pearl River, which flows just south of Guangzhou and then spreads
east and south to form a large estuary between Hong Kong and Macao.
The river links the city of Guangzhou to Hong Kong and the South China
Sea and is one of China’s most important waterways for trade.


4.1. Hong Kong’s Investment Policy

    Since 1997, Hong Kong has expended considerable effort in promot-
ing the expansion and intensification of its economic ties with Guang-
dong, and in particular with the PRD region. The Asian economic crisis
of that time added to Hong Kong’s motivation to increase its role in the
Chinese economy4.
    In a conference focusing on the region’s prospects held in Hong Kong
in July 2002 entitled: “Forging a New Economic Force”, Tung (the chief
executive) vowed to “break down the barriers” with Guangdong by im-
proving infrastructure links and expediting customs clearance5. “Hong
Kong’s potential can only be fully realized if we work together with the
Pearl River Delta”, he said (Tung 2002). Christopher Cheng, then head of
the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, echoed these sentiments

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
medium-sized enterprises. InvestHK provides information, assistance, and guid-
ance regarding direct investment opportunities.
4
  In addition to Hong Kong's motivation to increase its role in the Chinese econ-
omy, the Asian economic crisis also drove new initiatives promoting innovation
and technological development in Hong Kong (Sharif 2006).
5
  The conference (2002, 4-5 July) was jointly organized by the Hong Kong Gen-
eral Chamber of Commerce and the South China Morning Post, sponsored by
Mainland Headwear Holdings Limited.
Sharif                                                                          11
at the same conference: “As China’s economy grows and changes, new
ways are needed to take advantage of the growth in China” (Cheng 2002).
    In the abovementioned speech, the chief executive stressed that Hong
Kong can offer regionally unique business and economic benefits to the
PRD region – strong rule of law, sound market principles, and good cor-
porate governance. Hong Kong also offers overseas market contacts and
an institutional framework within which to raise foreign capital. It also
represents competitive advantages in trade, transport, and logistical sup-
port, as well as a thriving professional services sector. Conversely, Tung
outlined what the PRD has to offer Hong Kong – an abundance of land, a
high-quality inexpensive labor force, excellent infrastructure, ample in-
vestment opportunities for business, and a huge consumer market (Tung
2002).
    The new chief executive, Tsang, maintained this pro-PRD investment
posture, arguing in a speech given in October 2008 that:
             To stand out in the face of severe competition, we need to
         broaden our horizons and intensify economic integration with the
         Pearl River Delta (PRD) Region [...] [taking] the lead in building a
         Hong Kong–Shenzhen international metropolis as well as
         strengthening co-operation with the [PRD].
    Later in October 2008, Hong Kong’s financial secretary, John Tsang,
advocated for several large-scale infrastructure projects, including a
Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link and another railway
connecting Hong Kong International Airport and Shenzhen Airport with
a 29-kilometre bridge spanning Hong Kong, Macau, and Zhuhai. Ad-
dressing these major infrastructure projects, transportation and housing
secretary Eva Cheng (2008) noted that their “timely implementation [...]
will [...] reinforce Hong Kong’s position as a premier gateway to the
Mainland”.
    By the beginning of 2009, the pro-investment approach regarding the
PRD region had been thoroughly institutionalized into government poli-
cy, as noted by chief executive Tsang in a January speech, in which he ar-
gued that Hong Kong “has a vital part to play” in the Chinese govern-
ment’s reform program, which targets Guangdong and the PRD for rapid
development. Thus has Hong Kong pledged itself to a massive program
intended to bring to fruition the intentions of a policy it has been pursu-
ing since 1997.
    Having established the priority that Hong Kong assigned to expand-
ing and intensifying its economic relationship with the PRD region, I now
examine the governmental rationale behind this policy, specifically its use
of social and economic indicators of the potential return on investment.
Although these indicators are subject to well known sources of uncertain-
ty, Hong Kong exploited the resulting ambiguity to create a social tech-
nology to attract investment in the PRD region.
12                                                           Tecnoscienza - 4 (2)




5. Finding the Pearl River Delta: Uncertainty, Ambiguity,
   and Public Policy

5.1. Uncertainty in Leading Indicators

    In promoting investment in the PRD region, Hong Kong relied on
several social and economic indicators to fix that entity as a rhetorical ob-
ject or social technology. These included a specification of the area of the
PRD region and population figures. Determining values for these indica-
tors involved inherent sources of uncertainty, but apparently government
officials considered them to be largely irrelevant.
    This is perhaps easy to understand with respect to technical uncertain-
ty. Scientific and technical test procedures inevitably involve some degree
of technical uncertainty, that is, uncertainty with respect to statistical or
other formal parameters that are measured in making a given factual de-
termination or designing a technological artifact. Here I am extending the
notion of technical uncertainty to scientific data with political, economic,
and social significance. For example, modern census-taking methodology
involves sampling and projection over populations, with measurable de-
grees of uncertainty. Counting a very large population with perfect accu-
racy is in any case practically impossible, yet governments eventually de-
termine populations with figures that are presented as though every
member of the population has been counted.
    STS is of course not the only area of scholarship interested in uncer-
tainty, which also figures in policy studies. Among the issues related to
policymaking this literature addresses the difficulty of presenting
knowledge based on statistical intervals (Manski 2013) and economic data
(Walker and Marchau 2003; de Vries et al. 2010), and difficulties in-
volved in communicating uncertainty in public policy discourse (Aikman
et al. 2010).
    In practical terms, interpretive uncertainties tell us more about how
the PRD region became a social technology for policy purposes than
technical uncertainties. Interpretive uncertainties in esoteric science and
technology constitute uncertainties about how to apply statistical or
mathematical results. McKenzie (1990, 216) observed: “MIRV [rockets
carrying multiple warheads that deploy differentially at multiple points
over the course of their trajectories] [...] was a technology that displayed
remarkable ‘interpretive flexibility,’ not simply meaning different things
to different ‘inventors’, but also being seen by different groups as a solu-
tion to quite different problems”. The interpretative flexibility that Mac-
Kenzie observed is an instance of what I call interpretive uncertainty. In
the case of the social and economic indicators now under consideration,
however, analogous interpretive uncertainties pose considerable challeng-
Sharif                                                                                                                                                                                                                             13
es because the terms in which the outcomes must be determined and
communicated are ambiguous and, in many cases, they can be disambigu-
ated only arbitrarily. In examining the context in which Hong Kong de-
fined the PRD region, I discovered that these interpretive uncertainties
suffer a fate similar to that of analogous uncertainties in esoteric science
and technology.


5.2. Quantitative Representation of the PRD Region: Persuasive
     Indicators

    The effort to promote Hong Kong business investment in the PRD
begins with some basic yet necessary questions: What exactly is the PRD?
What geographic area does it cover? What is its population? How big is
its economy? Social and economic indicators are required to illuminate
these key characteristics to support judgments about where in the region
to invest, how much to invest, and in which industries. InvestHK states
the case as follows:
                                               There must be a clear understanding about the basic facts
                                           concerning the Pearl River Delta and its development [...]. Only
                                           then can they be clearly communicated to the multinational com-
                                           munity. (Invest Hong Kong 2002)
   Quantitative indicators are desirable because quantitative evidence
accords prestige and power. As Porter (1995, ix) argues:
                                               Quantification is a technology of distance [...] [that] exacts a
                                           severe discipline from its users, a discipline that is very nearly uni-
                                           form over most of the globe.
                     Porter continues:
                                               In public [...] uses, though, mathematics [...] has long been
                                           almost synonymous with rigor and universality. Since the rules for
                                           collecting and manipulating numbers are widely shared, they can
                                           easily be transported across oceans and continents and used to co-
                                           ordinate activities (Porter 1995, xi).
    It is exactly such portability that the Hong Kong government is striv-
ing to achieve in attempting to represent the PRD region with numbers.
Only by doing so are they able to convey and “sell” the attractiveness of
the region to Hong Kong’s populace and overseas investors – particularly
to those segments of the public who may be skeptical and lacking in inti-
mate knowledge of the PRD region or trust in the government6. Most sig-

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
6
  Given the poor state of the Hong Kong economy following the Asian Crisis in
the early 2000s, regular polls had shown an alarming drop in confidence in the
government, and in particular in the leadership of its then-chief executive, Tung
14                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Tecnoscienza - 4 (2)

nificantly, by characterizing the region in terms of quantitative determi-
nants, the government is seeking to manufacture: “a highly disciplined
discourse [...] to produce knowledge independent of the particular peo-
ple who make it” (Porter 1995, ix). This is especially true in areas of poli-
cymaking that are subject to political pressures, and surely Hong Kong’s
economic policies are such. As Porter (1995, 229) puts it: “not science,
but politics, demands narrow rigor. [...] The enormous premium on ob-
jectivity [...] is at least partly a response to the resultant pressures”.
    Yet, as Manski (2013) notes in recent work on the treatment of uncer-
tainty in public policymaking, couching values in numerical terms is sub-
ject to uncertainty that policymakers typically resist sharing with constitu-
ents. Manski posits the following formula to represent the broad outline
of a policy analysis process such as the Hong Kong chief executive led in
constructing the key indicators to represent the PRD: “assumptions + da-
ta → conclusions” (Manski 2013, 11). His point is that data alone do not
suffice to justify a given policy. The two terms on the left side of the equa-
tion, “assumptions” and “data”, are both subject to uncertainties, the
former primarily of the interpretive type and the latter primarily of the
technical type. The goal for the policymaker, according to Manksi, is to
achieve “incredible certitude”, by which he means that the policymaker
must convince constituents of the credibility of the data involved while
knowing that such data is subject to uncertainty. This creates a powerful
incentive to establish the certitude of data, which in turn leads policy-
makers to prefer what Manski (2013, 4) calls “point predictions” over
“interval predictions”, providing a definite quantitative value rather than
a range of possible values. As I will show, this analysis applies to at least
one of the two indicators that I discuss here.
    In order to show how Hong Kong treated interpretive uncertainties
underlying key indicators, we review Hong Kong’s determination of two
such indicators (others were involved but these suffice to illustrate my
point):

                           −                          the boundaries, and hence the area in square kilometers of the
                                                      PRD region
                           −                          the population of the PRD region

   Note that determining the area means determining the boundaries;
and that determining the population also requires determining the
boundaries. Note also that an area with a higher population is likely to
seem more attractive to investors because it represents a larger market for
goods and services.


	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
Chee Hwa. The economy rebounded significantly in the second half of the 2010s,
but was hit again by the global recession of 2008–2009.
Sharif                                                                              15
5.3. Interpretive Uncertainty and Ambiguity: Key Indicators

    5.3.1. Determining the Boundaries and Area of the PRD

     A main source of interpretive uncertainty relating to the PRD is the
absence of consensus on the boundaries of the region. In the aforemen-
tioned July 2002 conference, Hong Kong’s chief executive mentioned
improving the flow of people and goods across the border, improving
transportation links, enhancing customs, immigration, and clearance ser-
vices, developing express cargo services and passenger ferry services to
connect ports, building regional express rail lines, and so on. But where
are express rail lines to be built? Which ports are to be connected by fer-
ry? Which airports are planes meant to use? Where do transportation
links need to be improved? The answers to these questions depend on the
geographical area that constitutes the PRD region: what is the exact area
of the PRD region, and which parts of Guangdong province does that ar-
ea cover?
     The chief executive, Tung, had mentioned the PRD in 1999, when he
asserted: “...the 50,000 sq. km. region encompassing Guangzhou, Hong
Kong, Macao, Shenzhen and Zhuhai will become a more integrated re-
gional economy”. While Tung spoke glowingly about the region’s poten-
tial, he did not delineate its borders or boundaries.


 Hong Kong chief executive                      50,000 sq. km

                              Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macao, Shenzhen, Zhuhai

 Provincial government of                       45,000 sq. km
 Guangdong
                             Bolou County, Dongguan,Gaoyao, Huidong County,
                              Huiyang County, Huizhou urban district, Jiangmen,
                             Shenzhen, Sihui, Zhaoqing urban district, Zhongshan,
                                                   Zhuhai



    Table 1 – Varying Figures on the Size and Boundaries of the PRD Region


    This ambiguity in the definition of “the PRD region” exists even
though, in 1994, Guangdong officially defined the PRD Economic Zone
as covering “the areas of 14 cities and counties, including all or parts of
Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Jiangmen, Dongguan,
Zhongshan, the urban district of Huizhou, Huiyang County, Huidong
County, Boluo County, the urban district of Zhaoqing, Gaoyao, and Si-
16                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Tecnoscienza - 4 (2)
                                                                                                                                                                  7
hui” (Invest HK 2002, 5) . According to this definition, the PRD covers
one-quarter of the area (or 45,000 sq. km.) of the province of Guang-
dong.
     Figures and geographical components representing the area and
boundaries of the region are summarized in Table 1, making it clear that
the boundaries vary depending on who defines it. I refer to these figures
to show that the chief executive might have defined the PRD region dif-
ferently. Two main trends can be identified. First, the chief executive uses
a higher estimation of the area than the provincial government. In other
words, in Hong Kong’s version of the PRD region, the boundaries extend
further southward. If, however, Chinese government statistics are to be
used, the area of the PRD region is more clearly stated and the bounda-
ries of the region exclude Hong Kong and Macao.
     It is telling that Hong Kong did not adopt what would seem to be the
official designation of the PRD region, but its motive for doing so is quite
apparent, since a larger area will have both a larger population and con-
sequently greater potential for economic development. Hong Kong was
able to cite a greater area than the Guangdong government because of the
interpretive uncertainty involved in specifying the components of the
PRD region. There are, to be sure, technical uncertainties involved in set-
ting out boundaries. For example, land areas determined by satellite-
based imagery are subject to discrepancies related to pixel counts. If
boundaries are to be determined by the use of a survey map, technical
uncertainty arises because accuracy varies with the scale of the map (see,
for example, Maynard 2005).
     To estimate the land area and boundaries of the PRD region, howev-
er, it is understandable that such technicalities would play almost no role
in shaping how Hong Kong sought to apply the concept of the PRD re-
gion. For its rhetorical purposes, defining the PRD region was essentially
arbitrary, because the term “PRD region” was ambiguous. Any number
of agencies or other actors might speak about “the PRD region” without
being committed to a specific quantity or configuration of square kilome-
ters. Yet the chief executive not only seems to have ignored the technical-
ities or interpretive uncertainties, he did not specify PRD boundaries at
all, preferring simply to provide a large round number that was greater
than that provided by the Guangdong provincial government.


                     5.3.2. The population of the PRD Region

    Whenever a population for a given polity is cited, the figure is in effect
a point prediction (a prediction of the figure such that, if it were possible
to count every person on a given day, the count would yield that figure),

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
7
       2002 Guangdong Statistical Yearbook, 541, as contained in Invest Hong Kong.
Sharif                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              17
whereas in reality population is, statistically speaking, always an interval
prediction because populations change every day. Depending on the vari-
ables that apply to a given population, that interval will be wider or nar-
rower.
    In his 2001 Policy Address, Tung stated: “[w]ith a population of 40
million and many affluent consumers in a number of areas, the PRD is an
enormously attractive market”. Yet several months later he spoke of the
PRD region and Hong Kong as having “a population of over 50 million”
(Tung, 2002).
    Given that Hong Kong’s population was 6.7 million (Hong Kong
Census and Statistics Department 2001), and that of Macao was 0.44 mil-
lion (Government Information Bureau of the MSAR 2003)8, and given
that the chief executive includes Hong Kong and Macao in his definition
of the PRD region, this means that the population of the PRD (excluding
Hong Kong and Macao) amounts to at least 42.86 million. The Hong
Kong Trade and Development Council states the permanent population
of the PRD to be 30 million (InvestHK 2002, 31) whereas a second gov-
ernmental institution – InvestHK – puts the figure at 23.37 million (based
on the figure from the 2002 Guangdong Statistical Yearbook). Finally,
the population figures contained in China’s 2000 census stated the popu-
lation of the region to be 40.77 million (InvestHK 2002, 8). See Table 2
for a summary of the differences.


                  Hong Kong chief executive, 10/2001                                                                                                                                                                                40 millions
                  Hong Kong chief executive, 07/2002                                                                                                                                                                               42.86 millions
                  Hong Kong Trade Development Council                                                                                                                                                                               30 millions
                  InvestHK (Guangdong Statistical Yearbook)                                                                                                                                                                        23.37 millions
                  Fifth National Chinese Census, 2000                                                                                                                                                                              40.77 millions

Table 2 – Varying Figures on the Population of the PRD Region (excluding Hong
         Kong and Macao)

    Why this rather large discrepancy? The main reason, explains In-
vestHK, is that the census population includes the PRD migrant and
floating populations, whereas the sub–40 million figures do not. As the
PRD has begun to prosper economically, large numbers of individuals
from provinces far and near have flocked to the region seeking higher in-
comes9. It is difficult to obtain accurate counts of either the migrant or
the floating populations. Those in the floating population have no resi-
dence associated with them and many avoid being counted for fear of be-
ing sent back to their home areas (Liang and Ma 2004). The migrant

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
8
       Figure rounded off to the closest 10,000.
9
       There are 23 provinces in China, 5 autonomous regions and 4 municipalities.
18                                                           Tecnoscienza - 4 (2)

population is difficult to count because of China’s longstanding house-
hold registry system. Urban migrants typically have migrated from rural
areas, but their household registrations remain tied to their rural origins.
The complex rules pertaining to the registration system, which depend on
time spent away from the residence of registration, create interpretative
uncertainty because there are gray areas within which it is difficult to as-
certain the correct location for census purposes.
    Clearly the Hong Kong Government would like to use the highest
possible figure to make the region attractive to those considering invest-
ing there. The motive here is the same as the motive to present the largest
possible geographic area for the PRD region. A larger population means
cheaper labor for manufacturers; a larger market for manufacturers,
wholesalers, and retailers; a larger workforce for multinationals; and so
on. Yet if the rationale for the higher figures is utilized, the question im-
mediately arises whether they represent primarily a labor force or pri-
marily a consumer market and, if so, what kind of consumer market, giv-
en that most migrant workers tend to repatriate the larger portion of their
earnings back to their homelands or home provinces. There are, then, a
range of uncertainties – technical and interpretative – involved in census
taking of which the Hong Kong government has made no mention in
promoting investment in the PRD region.


6. Discussion: Eliminating Uncertainty and Exploiting
   Ambiguity

    The pattern we have seen in Hong Kong’s policymaking approach re-
garding investment in the PRD region is no doubt repeated in policymak-
ing circles across the globe. Following this pattern, technical and inter-
pretive uncertainties that are characteristic of the processes through
which various government agencies collect data and make calculations to
support their policy initiatives are in effect ignored, allowing the policy-
makers to assert with apparently total confidence that their policies will
succeed. In so doing, the inherent social scientific uncertainties suffer the
same fate as that of analogous uncertainties in the production of esoteric
science.
    I turn now to a seminal figure in the social constructivist canon –
Donald MacKenzie – to provide a reference point that illustrates the
aforementioned pattern, by which Hong Kong policymakers selected data
that were subject not only to standard sources of technical and interpre-
tive uncertainty, but also to ambiguity. To promote investment there,
Hong Kong arbitrarily gave a specific meaning to the term “PRD region”,
creating a social technology for attracting such investment. We can see
this social constructivist pattern in MacKenzie’s certainty trough, which,
in spite of having been devised some 20 years ago, continues to be cited
Sharif                                                                          19
in the recent literature (see e.g., Collins and Evans 2002, 287; Lahsen
2005, 896; Evans et al. 2010).
    This is not to say that the Hong Kong chief executive and his advisors
were aware of themselves as negotiating uncertainty away. What they
wanted was an attractive construct – the PRD region – to sell as a target
of investment. As I was gathering data to build a case study illustrating
Hong Kong’s policy, I realized that the PRD region was likely construct-
ed through a social process similar to the one MacKenzie analyzed in pos-
iting the certainty trough. If I am right, policy scholars would have much
to learn by treating policy instruments as social technologies and examin-
ing their development using the techniques pioneered in STS and SSK.
    Although I did not conduct the sort of research that would reveal the
social relations and processes through which Hong Kong policymakers
and their government experts constructed the PRD region for investment
purposes, such a study would likely reflect important elements of the co-
productionist framework that has attracted close attention from Jasanoff
and other STS scholars. In Jasanoff’s terms, co-productionism is an “idi-
om” through which to understand that:
         scientific knowledge [...] embeds and is embedded in social prac-
         tices, identities, norms, conventions, discourses, instruments and
         institutions – in short, all the building blocks of what we term the
         social. The same can be said even more forcefully of technology.
         (Jasanoff 2004, 3)
     Moreover, the co-productionist framework provides a means of ex-
ploring “how knowledge-making is incorporated into practices of state-
making [...] and [...] how practices of governance influence the making
and use of knowledge” (Jasanoff 2004, 3). Such an emphasis suggests that
co-productionism might prove very useful to policy studies scholars ex-
amining cases such as the one at hand. Here we have a public knowledge
construct, the PRD region, which in this light seems very aptly described
as co-produced by the two main actor groups involved, expert analysts
and data gatherers on the one hand and executive policymakers on the
other, with the result being a social technology that policymakers use to
persuade the Hong Kong business and financial communities to invest in
the PRD region. To paraphrase Jasanoff, the PRD region had crystalized
over the course of the production process into objectified knowledge.
     In broader STS terms, an object that had emerged in recent decades
as its own entity through its distinctively local mix of population, culture,
proximity to Hong Kong and other variables had now stabilized into a
definite entity through co-production in the hands of the abovemen-
tioned actors. Jasanoff posits four “sites” of co-production: “making iden-
tities, making institutions, making discourses, and making representations”
(Jsanoff 2004, 6, emphasis in original). While I would suggest that in the
Hong Kong–PRD case the actors were involved primarily in making a
representation of the PRD region by creating an identity for it, it is clear
20                                                           Tecnoscienza - 4 (2)

that more generally any of these four sites of co-production might be in-
volved in a given policymaking process, and that this would not be re-
stricted to science and technology policy.
     In making the case for the co-productionist idiom, Jasanoff notes that
STS has traditionally paid too little attention to relations of power and the
influence such relations have on the social construction of technology.
Yet, as she notes, the “dynamics of politics and power [...] seem impossi-
ble to tease apart from the broad currents of scientific and technological
change” (Jasanoff 2004, 14). This would seem all the more true of eco-
nomic and social policy, providing yet another juncture at which STS re-
sources might serve policy scholars well. In discussing the work of the po-
litical scientist Benedict Anderson, Jasanoff reports that on his account
“nation-making crucially depends on deploying persuasive representa-
tions” and that among the instruments involved are the census, which we
have seen played a critical role in our case (Jasanoff 2004, 26). While
Hong Kong’s construction of the PRD region may not seem like nation-
making, and Hong Kong is now part of greater China, it seems reasonable
to suppose that it might have the effect of expanding Hong Kong’s foot-
print as an entity in the region. As I note below, issues involving political
and economic power played into the Hong Kong-PRD case as opposition
to the policy coalesced around concerns that infrastructure projects asso-
ciated with the policy would disadvantage low-income citizens. Let us
now, however, return to the certainty trough to see how we can map the
Hong Kong-PRD case onto the figure.
     The certainty trough posited by MacKenzie (1990, 372) to illustrate
how technological communities experienced typical adjustments to tech-
nical and interpretative uncertainties in the course of developing working
missile guidance systems for government agencies or contractors, with the
latter communities adopting these technologies as though they were sub-
ject to very little uncertainty. The concept suggests that, within the scien-
tific and technological communities that were involved in these efforts,
considerable uncertainty attached to their results. These communities, as
I have noted, constituted the producers of the technology. The govern-
ment agencies and contractors who would apply the technologies in the
construction of nuclear-armed devices, the users, descended abruptly into
the trough seen in the figure, essentially ignoring the uncertainties. Later
in the process, MacKenzie observed, some interested parties formed an
opposition community, in which uncertainty about the technologies rose
to new heights as the alienated sought to plant seeds of doubt.
     To apply the analogy explicitly to the Hong Kong case, we would
identify as the producers those agencies that gathered and analyzed data
and calculated figures that constituted the indicators that stabilized the
PRD region as a social technology. The executive branch, the users, then
used that social technology to persuade investors in Hong Kong to invest
in the PRD region; the alienated consisted of groups within Hong Kong
who opposed the policy. This configuration of actors can be mapped on-
Sharif                                                                       21
to MacKenzie’s certainty trough without much distortion, although there
are of course some notable differences. For one thing, the alienated are
not rival statisticians or economists who would correspond to the rival
scientists who preferred another MIRV technology. In the Hong Kong-
PRD case the opposition raised doubts about some quantitative forecasts,
although not to my knowledge the population or geographical indicators.
    Thus to complete our mapping of the Hong Kong-PRD case onto the
certainty trough, we identify an opposition even if it does not consist of
figures comparable to the producers. That is to be expected if we are to
extend the use of the certainty trough figure to public policies that are
not informed by esoteric science, where the opposition of the alienated
class is more likely to reflect political objectives, particularly when there is
a question of distribution of power or resources. Indeed there is in Hong
Kong a political party, the League of Social Democrats (LSD), which has
publicly opposed the pro-PRD investment policy. Its opposition arises
within a broader agenda of economic equality and redistribution of
wealth, and the LSD’s opposition role is perhaps best seen in its opposi-
tion to the abovementioned high-speed rail link. The LSD argues that the
link’s benefits will elude the lower classes and, more directly, will not
prove cost effective in light of its environmental impact (I have no data
indicating whether the LSD enlisted experts to support its claims).
    Thus, while the LSD’s opposition to the rail link – which we have seen
is among the key infrastructure investments meant to support increased
business investment by Hong Kong interests in the PRD region – rested
primarily on political grounds, it also took issue with a type of quantifica-
tion involved in making the case for business investment, by suggesting
that it would not be cost effective. In criticizing such quantification,
which Porter regards as a social technology in its own right, the LSD was
in effect impugning the objectivity of Hong Kong’s representation of the
PRD region. As Porter (1995, 215) says: “no matter how rigorous” is the
result of quantification, a set of actors “cannot make strong objectivity
claims when it has strong rivals”. This is not to suggest that the LSD rep-
resents a major threat to the configuration of power in Hong Kong, alt-
hough it remains active to this day. More generally, if STS conceptual re-
sources are to be applied in studies of social or economic policymaking,
opposition classes are all the more likely to reflect political opposition.
    Moreover, the case at hand does not turn on esoteric science, although
of course data of the types that were involved are assumed to have some
basis in scientific fact. Nevertheless, the result to be produced was, in ef-
fect, a definition of the PRD region to be used by policymakers in com-
munications with investment communities in Hong Kong and elsewhere
(for more on how producers and users co-construct meaning, see
Oudshoorn and Pinch 2005). In order to use these data as constitutive of
the PRD region qua social technology, Hong Kong’s government not only
set aside the technical and interpretive uncertainties, they exploited am-
biguities to construct, somewhat arbitrarily, an entity that would be
22                                                          Tecnoscienza - 4 (2)

known as the PRD region for the purposes of attracting investment there.
There were no “facts” providing a precise definition of the PRD region so
the government was able to depict the PRD region unambiguously as an
entity ripe for investment.
     The analogy between this process and the scientific and technological
processes involved in the phenomena that MacKenzie studied under-
scores the important role that interpretive uncertainty plays. In referring
to the interpretive flexibility involved in the MIRV case, MacKenzie
(1990, 260) argues that the technology involved was in effect interpreta-
ble as applying to a range of possible outcomes, and while the social indi-
cators cited by Hong Kong as constitutive of the PRD region involved
several types of interpretative uncertainty, it is arguable that the term
“PRD region” also exhibited interpretive flexibility, rendering it suitable
to the government’s efforts to make the case for investment. More pre-
cisely, the term “PRD region”, having no determinate a priori meaning,
exhibited ambiguity that played into policymaking deliberations, whereby
the government was able to select from a range of possible interpretations
of what would constitute the region.
     A recent study carves out a more prominent role for ambiguity in
studies of government rationality and international relations. Best (2008,
360-361) argues that even the best efforts to control uncertainty and risk
fail to account for ambiguity, because: “even if we [...] resolve such un-
certainties [...] we would still be faced with the challenge of interpreting
[...] that information”. In the context of Best’s analysis of the concept of
ambiguity, then, the construction of the PRD region to serve as a social
technology clearly exploited the ambiguity, or interpretive flexibility, of
the area, population, and GDP of the region (while ignoring the technical
uncertainty). This is particularly clear insofar as Hong Kong included
both itself and Macao within the PRD region, something that the provin-
cial government of Guangdong has so far avoided, but which enhances
the attractiveness of investment in the PRD region.
     If we now return to Figure 1 and the certainty trough, we see that alt-
hough the technical and interpretive uncertainties of the data-collection
processes involved in determining land areas, political boundaries, popu-
lation, and GDP may have fallen away as the PRD region was construct-
ed, another form of interpretive uncertainty came into play at that point.
Within that region of the figure, the government made rhetorical use of
the ambiguity inherent in the multiple sets of figures that various agencies
produced in order to construct a version of the PRD region that was con-
ducive to making its case. For example, Hong Kong included both the
floating and migrant populations in the figures that it cited. That these
figures were inaccurate from a census-taking standpoint was not much at
issue; populations change constantly. What mattered was that Hong
Kong chose a figure that could be defended only if those populations
were included, and thereby disambiguated the concept of the PRD region
that was the object of its policy. From a set of alternative versions of the
Sharif                                                                     23
PRD region, Hong Kong chose the one that best supported its position.
In Best (2008, 356) terms, this was a case of “government through ambi-
guity”.


7. Conclusions

    The case of Hong Kong’s promotion of investment in the PRD region
illustrates how uncertainty can be ignored or exploited in policymaking. I
have showed how technical and interpretive uncertainties are eliminated
as policymakers move a construct into a certainty trough. That is, in
Hong Kong’s promotion of investment in the PRD region, the sources of
uncertainty and ambiguity inherent to the processes through which it de-
termined what would count as the PRD region are not explicitly
acknowledged as the government presents the case for investment, but
they provide the flexibility the government needs to justify its policy.
Since there is no definitive PRD region, the government’s version cannot
be rejected as inaccurate, providing it with Manski’s incredible certitude.
Groups such as the LSD might object, but to do so effectively they will
need to produce their own analyses, which are similarly subject to uncer-
tainty and ambiguity.
    Admittedly the government’s conduct here is neither surprising nor
earth shaking, nor is its behavior particularly contemptible. What I found
interesting about this, from my STS perspective, is that the same pattern
that emerged from SSK analyses on esoteric science and technology pro-
duction processes is replicated in policymaking for economic develop-
ment. Economic and social policymakers have their own certainty trough.
No such analysis has hitherto been applied to this region. The compari-
son is possible, however, because in STS terms, the PRD region construct
that emerged from policy deliberations is a co-produced social technolo-
gy; the fate of uncertainty in the two domains – policy-relevant esoteric
science and policy-relevant social science – bears a range of interesting
similarities and differences. This is, of course, only one example of social
or economic policymaking that might be illuminated by the analytical re-
sources of STS, and it is likely that other cases will involve other variables
and social dynamics.
    I leave to other scholars the task of applying the methods of STS from
which the concept of the certainty trough emerged to further study of
policymaking processes in government agencies. As I discovered, it can
be difficult to study social processes among government actors. Neverthe-
less, ethnographic studies of policymaking cultures might shed additional
light on the degree to which uncertainty or ambiguity are consciously ig-
nored in policy debate or simply do not arise once the issues involved
percolate up the decision-making chain. The results of such work would
seem able to inform studies in a range of disciplines that might include
24                                                                Tecnoscienza - 4 (2)

sociology, political science, policy studies, and international relations –
several of which are mentioned by Jasanoff as appropriate sites for con-
versation between STS and other disciplines – while opening up new are-
as of study, not just in STS.


Acknowledgements

     The author gratefully acknowledges funding support provided by a School-
based Initiatives (SBI) grant from the School of Humanities and Social Science
(SHSS), The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), Pro-
ject No.: SBI13HS03.


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