26. Conversations About the Book "Hong Kong Between 'One Country' and 'Two Systems': Chapter 25 (Tuesday 26 May 2020) For Whom is Hong Kong Home? “One Country-Two Systems,” the National Security Law and the Development of a Patriotic Front

Pix Credit: Guardian

 “言有尽而意无穷” [Words and meanings are endless]. 

From the run up to the book launch of 13 July 2021, the folks at Little Sir Press organized a series of short conversations about my new book, "Hong Kong Between 'One Country' and 'Two Systems'." We continue with that series here.

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 25 (Tuesday 26 May 2020) For Whom is Hong Kong Home? “One Country-Two Systems,” the National Security Law and the Development of a Patriotic Front .

In this Chapter things have already come to a head.  The "One Country" camp has emerged triumphant under the leadership of the central authorities. The question raised, however, is the extent to which this represents new approaches, or rather the application of older patterns and performances now in the context of Hong Kong specifically, and the management (and theory of management) of autonomous regions more generally. The lessons of Hong Kong, then, are likely capable of generalization, and their tropes visible in the management of other autonomous regions.

To that end it is worth considering  the discursive tropes that brought Hong Kong to its then current situation from a number of different lenses. A critical lens is that of the core reflexive perspectives of the Chinese political vanguard.  Here one sees in the actions of the central authorities and their local officials strong echos of the operationalization of the insights of Mao Zedong's  “On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship (30 June 1949).  Nietzsche's dynamic interaction between the Apollonian and the Dionysian provides another lens, one that shifts the gaze from the central authorities to that of the protesters and the international community.

 

Pix Credit HERE

The current situation in Hong Kong has moved toward the culmination of its Dionysian phase That dialectic which is the opposition of the Apollonian and the Dionysian, and the contradiction it embodies, might well have been inevitable under the circumstances of the production of the national security law draft and its dramatic intervention, unbalancing what had been a year of tense equipoise between competing local factions whose objectives played out against the much greater stakes of the contest between Leninist nationalism (One Country) and sovereignty fracturing internationalism (Two Systems). The rapture of the Dionysian state cannot last; once its passion is exhausted it is left to return to the realm of the gods--to the state of stability and prosperity and order, to n Olympian state now reenergized by the spent passion of the Dionysian element of its cultural (and in this case political) dialectic. (Chapter 25).

But there is another, and perhaps more ancient lens as well: a  parable from Han Feizi (韓非子) of the merchant who tried to sell simultaneously a shield that could not be pierced and a lance that could pierce anything. The two could not exist on the same earth at the same time.   And thus the likely lesson embedded within the new national security law for Hong Kong. For patriots, for those who call Hong Kong home, there is the embrace of the heavens. For the others, there is only to bask in the receding warmth of the departing gods. This is an insight Mao Zedong understood all too well: “All the experience the Chinese people have accumulated through several decades teaches us to enforce the people's democratic dictatorship, that is, to deprive the reactionaries of the right to speak and let the people alone have that right.”

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 The video of the conversation about Chapter 25 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.