"Conceptualizing the Emerging Structure of Transnational Governance in the Age of Divided Sovereignty: The Hong Kong SAR 2019-2020" Presentation at the 15th European China Law Studies Association Conference

 

 

I was delighted to be able to participate in this year's 15th Annual Conference of the European China Law Studies Association, this year offered in hybrid form bit situated at the University of Warsaw (with thanks to Piotr Grzebyk.  For more information about ECLSA 15 see HERE.   My presentation is part of an excellent panel: "New Actors and Dynamics in Transnational Law: Moving Borders and Changing Concepts of Borders, Demos and Territory" and includes presentations from  (1) Dini Sejko (Chinese University of Hong Kong) Investment Screening Mechanisms as guardians of economic sovereignty; and (2)  Joel Slawotsky (IDC Hezilya) US-China Hegemonic Rivalry’s Impact on the Emerging Architecture.

My presentation, Conceptualizing the Emerging Structures of Transnational Governance in the Age of Sovereignty — The Hong Kong SAR 2019-2020, build on themes that I discussed in my recently published book, Hong Kong Between 'One Country' and 'Two Systems'  (Little Sir Press, 2021) (more information and free chapters, video interviews and order information HERE). 

The focus of the presentation is sovereignty.  More specifically it considers how the protests in Hing Kong from 2019 and the responses of the protesters, of the Chinese central authorities, and of the international community, has contributed to potential changes, some substantial, in conversations about the meaning of sovereignty and the expectations of behaviors around the concept.  More specifically, Hong Kong's protests highlighted the way that sovereignty has acquired a perhaps new dimension of contestation. I examine three distinctive approaches to sovereign governance (and their implications) that played a role in the narrative battles around the Hong Kong protests of 2019-2020. The first centers on internal sovereign partitioning under or within a superior national constitutional order. The second looks at the emergence of external sovereign partitioning under or within international law or norms. The third shared sovereign in a post-global hybrid order of states and global production. Each has consequences for the way in which the protests in Hong Kong could be understood and each suggests the opportunities and constraints that follow (for territorial sovereigns, for autonomy seeking local populations, and for the international community).

The PowerPoint of the presentation follows. and maybe accessed HERE