22. Conversations About the Book "Hong Kong Between 'One Country' and 'Two Systems': Chapter 21 (Monday 30 December 2019) Stalemate: The Storm Continues Unabated

 

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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),  book information including free chapters  and the access to all video conversations HERE.

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 21 (Monday 30 December 2019) Stalemate: The Storm Continues Unabated.

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This Chapter serves as the end point of the first half of the development of the protest movements--and the responses it produced--that started in June 2019. By the end of December 2019 Hong Kong appeared to have reached a new equilibrium point. It was an odd one the foundation fo which was the stability of instability. The protests continued, the counter thrusts of the local and central authorities continued, and the efforts, spasmodic as they had tended to be, of the international community also continued. Each of these, however, appeared to have become accustomed to working within sets of constraining parameters. Everyone was pushing, but pushing in now well rehearsed and repetitive ways. Performance of politics in Hong Kong appeared to move towards a new normal--more volatile than before 2019, but stable enough within its now mre predictable dynamics to permit sufficient promise of prosperity to make upsetting the status quo too risky. . . for any side. At the same time December 2019 was the high water mark of the progress of pro-democracy groups within Hong Kong local politics. It appeared that, as the protestors has been suggesting since September, that the indigenous culture of Hong Kong was both assertive and substantially different from that of the Mainland. More importantly that difference was not just growing in size but growing farther apart from the thrust of the ideology and politics overseen by the Chinese central authorities.

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In this stabilizing tumultuous context, the analysis draws on Laotse and the Dao's concept of li [禮] (roughly virtue). By December 2019 Hong Kong's major stakeholders (inside and outside of the SAR) were performing virtually all of the variations of Laotse's incarnation of li. Hong Kong presents us with many actors of superior the man of superior li who have been rolling up their sleeves in November and December. But one wonders where these individuals and institutions of superior li  may also mark actors of inferior virtue and superior justice. Ulterior motive is not hidden by individuals of inferior virtue and superior justice--that is their respective essence. Yet it does provide the context within which such individuals, when exercising their superior li, act without virtue or kindness, but with justice as the great ulterior motive with which li is infused.

 

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 The video of the conversation about Chapter 21 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.