17. Conversations About the Book "Hong Kong Between 'One Country' and 'Two Systems': Chapter 16 (Tuesday 17 September 2019) Black Hand [黑手]/ Red List [红名单]: China, Law and the Foreigner; Mutual Engagements on a Global Scale.

Pix Credit HERE

“言有尽而意无穷” [Words and meanings are endless]. 

In the run up to the book launch scheduled for 13 July 2021 (registration required but free HERE), the folks at Little Sir Press have organized a series of short conversations about my new book, "Hong Kong Between 'One Country' and 'Two Systems'." 

About the Book: Hong Kong Between “One Country” and “Two Systems” examines the battle of ideas that started with the June 2019 anti-extradition law protests and ended with the enactment of the National Security and National Anthem Laws a year later. At the center of these battles was the “One Country, Two Systems” principle. By June 2020, the meaning of that principle was highly contested, with Chinese authorities taking decisive steps to implement their own understanding of the principle and its normative foundations , and the international community taking countermeasures. All of this occurred well before the 2047 end of the 1985 Sino-British Joint Declaration (中英联合声明) that had been the blueprint for the return of Hong Kong to China. Between these events, global actors battled for control of the narrative and of the meaning of the governing principles that were meant to frame the scope and character of Hong Kong’s autonomy within China. The book critically examines the conflict of words between Hong Kong protesters, the Chinese central and local authorities, and important elements of the international community. This decisive discursive contest paralleled the fighting for control of the streets and that pitted protesters and the international community that supported them against the central authorities of China and Hong Kong local authorities. In the end the Chinese central authorities largely prevailed in the discursive realm as well as on the streets. Their victory was aided, in part by the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. But their triumph also produced the seeds of a new and potentially stronger international constitutional discourse that may reduce the magnitude and scope of that success. These essays were written as the events unfolded. Together the essays analytically chronicle the discursive battles that were fought, won and lost, between June 2019 and June 2020. Without an underlying political or polemical agenda, the essays retain the freshness of the moment, reflecting the uncertainties of the time as events unfolded. What was won on the streets of Hong Kong from June to December 2019, the public and physical manifestation of a principled internationalist and liberal democratic narrative of self-determination, and of civil and political rights, was lost by June 2020 within a cage of authoritative legality legitimated through the resurgence of the normative authority of the state and the application of a strong and coherent expression of the principled narrative of its Marxist-Leninist constitutional order. Ironically enough, both political ideologies emerged stronger and more coherent from the conflict, each now better prepared for the next.

The book may be purchased through AMAZON (kindle and paperback), 

I am delighted, then, to make available the next in the series of video recordings of conversations about the book with my former research assistant Matthew McQuilla (Penn State International Affairs MIA 2021). Today we discuss Chapter 16 (Tuesday 17 September 2019) Black Hand [黑手]/ Red List [红名单]: China, Law and the Foreigner; Mutual Engagements on a Global Scale.

Pix Credit The Empress Dowager Cixi with foreign envoys’ wives

This chapter serves as a stock taking. It considers some of the normative and theoretical implications of the tropes of foreign interference among two political cultures which for centuries have been known for their extraordinary ability to engage with an absorb foreign ideas, elements, practices, technologies, and sensibilities by naturalizing them and then exporting them again onto the world. Both the US (Roman) and Chinese civilizations have had centuries of practice with the simultaneously held notions of the foreign as something to to embraced and absorbed on the one hand, and feared and guarded against on the other. The foreign produces innovation and internal growth, but it is also corrupting and ultimately threatening to the social-political order and its stability. 

These approaches are much on display in the way n which China and the US approach and mold the theme of the "foreign" in the development of the narrative of the Hong Kong protests. These forms of engagement with the “foreign” has ancient discursive roots in China. It suggests the character of the mutual engagement between China and foreigners (especially foreigners viewed as representatives of equal or dangerous powers) as a form of cultural discourse that reflects an oscillation between caution and utility for which a set of definitive cultural tropes of the foreigner have been constructed with the participation of those foreigners who have embraced or at least utilized these discursive tropes. 

Pix Credit: South China Morning Post 2017

After an Introduction, the chapter examines the discursive rationalization of the foreigner and foreign ideas through the lens of a 1911 essay authored by Edward Capen, an American protestant missionary. Capen’s report suggests the seven archetypes of the foreigner around which engagement is constructed: (1) the missionary; (2) the expert; (3) the sycophant; (4) the colonizer; (5) the expatriate; (6) the entrepreneur; and (7) the company person (or salaryman). Part 3 then suggests internal and external lessons that might be drawn. Internal lessons are first centered on the challenges for those designated to receive and transpose such knowledge—Chinese scholars who serve as the internal intermediaries for foreign knowledge. The second relates to the mechanics for managing acceptable and dangerous knowledge for intermediaries and for the masses.
 

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The video of the conversation about Chapter 16 may be accessed HERE.

All conversations are posted to the Coalition for Peace & Ethics YouTube page and may be found on its Playlist: Talking About the Book: "Hong Kong Between 'One Country' and 'Two Systems'." All conversation videos are hosted by Little Sir Press. I hope you find the conversation of some use. 

 

 

A pre-publication version of some of the book chapters may be accessed (free) on the Book's webpage (here). All videos may also be accessed through the Little Sir Press Book Website HERE.