After earning his PhD, he joined the Department of Sociology of CUHK in 1970. In 1974, he was promoted to Senior Lecturer, in 1979 to Reader and in 1983 Professor of Sociology in CUHK. From 1977 to 1985, he served as Head of New Asia College and in 1989 he became Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the university before succeeding Arthur Li. In 2002 he was appointed Vice-Chancellor of CUHK, and retired in 2004. He is now a Professor of Sociology in the CUHK, teaching the courseIndividual and Society. King has written essays; Cambridge Musings, Heidelberg Musings and Ever in my Heart. He is also a calligrapher.
Research focus and contributions
His research interest are modernisation and modernity of China, and the role of tradition in social-cultural transformation. He employed the theoretical framework of Max Weber to study the development of Chinese culture in the process of modernisation. He also tried to measure the costs and benefits of modernisation after the breakdown of the old Chinese dynastic orders and clan systems in the late 19th century. He wrote theses on Hong Kong society, including The Administrative Absorption of Politics in Hong Kong, which argued that the British cooptation of local elites would lead to "synarchy", a form of joint rule; Social Life and Development in Hong Kong ; The Special Character of Hong Kong's Polity and its Democratic Prospects ; One Country, Two Systems: An Idea on Trial ; and Hong Kong: A City with the Most Traits of Modernity in Chinese Societies. He held that to understand Hong Kong, one cannot overlook two important threads, namely, colonial rule and capitalism. He introduced the administrative absorption politics model in 1975. When he visited Cambridge University in 1975, he wrote his first essay on university education, entitled Two Cultures and Technological Humanism. In 1983 he published The Idea of a University, a work that was the fruit of many years of reflection and study. In 1994, he was elected a Fellow of Academia Sinica in Taiwan, and in the following years he has been honoured by many universities.
State Confucianism and Its Transformation: The Restructuring of the State-Society Relation in Taiwan and The Transformation of Confucianism in the Post-Confucian Era: The Emergence of Rationalistic Traditionalism in Hong Kong
"Confucian Traditions in East Asian Modernity", 1996, edited by Tu Wei-ming. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Chinese Society and Culture, 1992, London: Oxford University Press
From Traditional to Modernised, 1992, London: Oxford University Press
