19. Conversations About the Book "Hong Kong Between 'One Country' and 'Two Systems': Chapter 18 (Sunday 20 October 2019) Students at the Center and the University Response --CUHK Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Rocky S. Tuan's Open Letter 中大校長段崇智教授公開信

 

Pix Credit: Hong Kong protests: Sit-in held for student shot by police during National Day chaos, school refuses to condemn use of force

“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 18 (Sunday 20 October 2019) Students at the Center and the University Response --CUHK Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Rocky S. Tuan's Open Letter 中大校長段崇智教授公開信. 

Pix Credit: HERE

This chapter points to a pivotal moment in the development of the discursive position of the protesters and the elite communities (in this case universities) in which they were then significantly embedded.  It speaks to the way that universities saw themselves as bridges, and as both within and outside the political turmoil swirling around them in which their students (and some of their faculty) were assuming increasingly visible and prominent roles. To some extent the discursive position adopted in response reflects the way that Hong Kong universities were deeply embedded in global elite university cultures along with their sensibilities and the way in which they saw the world and their place within it. The position was internationalist (or at least transnational), networked, and to some extent deeply inculcated in the values of globalization and global discourse.  From the perspective of the central authorities, that enthusiastic engagement and embedding, so important to the rise of Hong Kong universities in international intellectual communities, might also have (discursively certainly) suggested a detachment from the core nation centering political-economic model of China and its principles, deeply embedded in Chinese Leninism.  By embracing the international, the discourse also suggested a measure of naturalization of liberal democratic and internationalist sensibilities that might not align well with the political objectives and sensibilities (including its projections abroad) of the central authorities.  The university, then, served as a site of deep suspicion.

Pix Credit: HERE

The focus of these insights was a fairly remarkable open letter produced at a very delicate moment in the relationships between local authorities, students, universities, and the international community. The Letter can be read both as a declaration of solidarity with international norms and expectations, and at the same time a challenge to the discursive trajectories of the central authorities, especially respecting the role of the university in the development of societal and political consciousness. The Open Letter first asserts the responsibility of the university for the well-being of its students int he course of the protests. The  University seeks to serve as a Western style human rights defender against violations by the state authorities of their own self-imposed legal constraints and must use its own networks to provide students with necessary resources to protect against violations by state authorities. To those ends the university has a duty to intervene--to interpose itself between the political and police authorities and students to ensure compliance with rule of law. The University, finally, has the duty to protect it own "territories" and protect that space for open debate, even, perhaps, as against the authorities, but under law.  As we will see, this divergence will not stand long and by November the local authorities will not be able to resist the temptation to intervene.   But that is a story for another essay.

 

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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.