24. Conversations About the Book "Hong Kong Between 'One Country' and 'Two Systems': Chapter 23 (Sunday 19 April 2020) The COVID-19 Accelerator Effect: The Situation in Hong Kong and the Virtual Conflict Between the United States and China.

 

Pix Credit Hong Kong Free Press 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),  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 23 (Sunday 19 April 2020) The COVID-19 Accelerator Effect: The Situation in Hong Kong and the Virtual Conflict Between the United States and China.

In this Chapter one begins to see how COVID-19 has not merely changed the playing field, but how each of the parties has sometimes more and sometimes less successfully have sought to use the challenges and opportunities afforded by the pandemic to advance their positions.The trigger here is the April arrests of key figures in the protests by the authorities for actions taken in 2019. The response of both the central authorities and the international community then draw in shape focus the transformation in Hong Kong brought about through the realities of pandemic. 

 

Pix Credit: Hong Kong Free Press HERE

For those without the necessary imagination to connect the dots and draw the intended picture, the West provides a substantial set of sources of appropriate explanation to drive home the point, one which is then underlined by the US line adopted in the wake of the Hong Kong arrests. One cannot understand the international position on Hong Kong without understanding the contradictions between internationalization for Hong Kong, and the re-nationalization of home state communities by the very liberal democratic states advancing internationalist policies. The arrests of high profile protest leaders or influencers, the controversy over the projection of central authority opinions within the policy bailiwick of local officials and their characterization as “foreign” interference within the Two Systems principle, and the liberal democratic simultaneous policies of decoupling with China and engaging (within international parameters) in Hong Kong suggest a set of criss-crossing vectors of actions and policies that inevitably weaken the approach of the internationalist camp. Here, then, is the advantage to the Chinese approach to One Country that is now likely to be pressed and intensified. Against this, the internationalists appear to offer little effective resistance--only concepts. 

 

It is in this context that one can usefully consider recent actions undertaken in Hong Kong, as well as the power of the international reactions it might produce. Those together will then be even more purposefully fitted together within the larger framework of the construction of the meaning of the global order from the narrative spinning of its Chinese and American makers. None of this is spectacular or new--what makes it interesting is the way that it might be used to understand and define the characteristics and modalities of the COVID-19 Accelerator Effect on inter-imperial systemic relations.

 

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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.