18. Conversations About the Book "Hong Kong Between 'One Country' and 'Two Systems': Chapter 17 (Wednesday 25 September 2019) The “Five Demands,” the Legitimacy of Force, and the Constitution of the “Two Systems” Principle

 

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“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 17 (Wednesday 25 September 2019) The “Five Demands,” the Legitimacy of Force, and the  Constitution of the “Two Systems” Principle.

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This chapter is particularly significant because it reflects roughly the moment when the constellation of protests movements found their definitive discursive voice. That discursive voice, of course, was grounded in the protesters' "Five Demands." The Five Demands evidences the evolution of the protests from the local to the international, and from the visceral to the ideological.  By the time the central authorities were willing to concede even the small demand touching on withdrawal of the bill, events, had moved far beyond this simple relational binary of protests = extradition bill. Social unrest in the city has since taken on broader anti-government sentiment as protesters push for greater democracy in Hong Kong. Thus, what the "Five Demands" brings into sharper focus, beyond its specific demands, is the articulation of two fundamentally different versions of the "sovereignty" in the context of Hong Kong. The Five Demands sought to translate an internationalist position on sovereignty to the context of Hong Kong. Central to the development of the internationalist position is the notion that sovereignty is not a unitary concept. For this position, the internationalist view embraces the idea that rather than being a binary concept, sovereignty can be understood more like a continuum, or a bundle of different kinds of functions and authority.” The idea here is that globalization and the post-war settlement made obsolete the notions, famously articulated in Hobbs, that the sovereign power may not be divided, a principle central to the Chinese focus on the primacy of the ‘One Country’ part of the principle. Internationalists take the position--sadly poorly articulated--that sovereignty can be divided. More specifically in the case of Hong Kong that sovereignty can be split between a territorial sovereignty (the sovereignty of ‘One Country’), and governance sovereignty (the sovereignty of ‘Two Systems’). 

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This core contest between world ordering perspectives in the political realm has become increasingly clear as what started out as a very narrow (through quite passionate) eruption of anger triggered by what had been perceived as political overreaching by Hong Kongers, has now metastasized into a contest over the legitimating. ordering principles of state and international authority. If sovereignty is inalienable, indivisible, and incapable of error within the organism of the state, then official responses to threats to the sovereign themselves can be understood as harm free, if undertaken in accordance with law. If sovereignty is polycentric and capable of delegation or partition, then acts in defense of the portion of sovereign authority vested in a unit itself is defensible as a against acts of threat. Nothing is ever that simple, of course--except when it comes to the construction of narrative frameworks that are essential for the management of a consensus view of the meaning of the conflicts observed in Hong Kong.

 

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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.