TikTok, Inc v. Garland, 604 U.S. ___ (2025) Text of Per Curiam and the Separate Opinions of Justices Sotomayor and Gorsuch

Pix credit here

 The Supreme Court has issued its per Curiam decision in TikTok, Inc v. Garland, 604 U.S. ___ (2025).  

The Supreme Court unanimously upheld a federal law requiring TikTok’s Chinese owners to sell or shut down the social-media app by Jan. 19, siding with Congress’s national-security concerns over the platform and its users’ claim that the ban violates the First Amendment. The ruling on Friday means the platform could go dark—at least temporarily—on Sunday, depriving millions of teenagers and other TikTok users of their daily fix of short-form videos that keep them glued to their phones.  President-elect Donald Trump and his allies are trying to find a political path forward to assuage security concerns and rescue the app. Biden administration officials have signaled they don’t intend to enforce the ban on his final day in office and that enforcement would fall to the Trump White House, but that hasn’t been enough to give TikTok comfort. (Supreme Court Upholds TikTok Shutdown)

The per curiam's holding is actually the least interesting part of the opinion. And its politics beyond the authority of the courts. It is likely that some sort of extension, including if applicable, the one provided by the statute will be invoked by the incoming Administration. The object is laudable--to preserve the platform but detach it from its current owners. The most direct route is likely unpalatable and effectively impossible--to nationalize the company, and then either sell it at leisure or figure out a way of  selling its shares on some sort of market. The likely route has already been charted by well meaning if (at best naive elites (no one else is going anywhere near the discussions) that will come up with some sad techno-bureaucratic and institutional mechanism heavy "solution" that provides the necessary appearance of a plausible resolution. All of this is speculation and I am sure that quite brought people working selflessly int he coming weeks will be able to cobble together some sort of fair  arrangement that will  reduce the sense risk of what triggered the enactment of the stature in the first place. Whether it actually reduces risk is another matter entirely, and whether one ought to be risk avers in the context of national security (on the model vigorous adopted by other states) is not to be considered in polite society.  

Pix credit here (Oh Brother Where Art Thou (Movie 2000)

 In a way it doesn't matter.  Certainly a group of TikTok consumers and producers have happily migrated to other platforms that are far more open about the practices of data mining, etc. Perhaps, as a political matter, the American public that matters does not have qualms about anyone helping themselves to their data, that of their contacts, and their own on line behaviors, In a sense that is the future, one in which it will become largely implausible to avoid scrutiny by those with an interest (psychological, political, social, transformative, punitive, etc.) in such behaviors. It will be much more useful for those on a mission to harvest for the purpose of ensuring a more efficient way of managing people, views, beliefs, cognition, etc. But that is a future story. For the moment, the ball has been tossed back in the direction of the political collective.

Nonetheless, the per curiam opinion is rich and worth careful study for the future (jurisprudential) battlefields it describes, the divisions within the judiciary (reflecting in part the divisions already crystalizing among the elites within which the justices are already deeply embedded) preparing for ongoing conflict, the underlying principles and fundamental understandings of "the ideal" against (and through) which all sides are weaponizing (developing) in the usual manner the overgrown garden of their own self-reflections in the form of opinions as malleable within interpretative fields as putty, slime, and goo toys for toddlers.  And, in a sense, one can begin to re-imagine jurisprudence in developed states as different variations of semiotic goo that serves as an important element of providing the objects of signification with which the social collective can build, maintain, order, and protect its ideal vision of itself--and occasionally use it to protect itself.  This is no criticism but an observation of the realities into which this society and its power orders have moved themselves in the service of the ideals and goals each succeeding generation, through its vanguard leafing forces, it "brain trusts and influence leaders, have heloed guide the masses to embrace enough  to make it work.

Pix credit here

Pix credit here

 And yet this is merely describing the ordinary--so ordinary, in fact that one must necessarily become oblivious to its character--its tic-- in order to both affirm solidarity and productively engage in the reality of the practices of the collective. The ceremonials, and the now increasingly baroque analytics of constitutional decision making--and much more relevant, the way in which the Speech rights of individuals now tends to increasing serve as the ordering  premise through which constitutional law is rationalized, and its components ordered and valued and understood, now becomes clearer in the quite stark context of threats to the security of the nation which, in the last analysis has, through the jurisprudence of the court, become a matter of judicial business. Not that it ought not, but its current state might well beg for some discussion at something other than the technical level.  It is hardly  useful to have those deeply invested in the system to talk about the system itself, without inevitably engaging in the performance of the system. Basic collective semiotics.  

For all that, the per curiam, on its own terms, and within the self-reflexive parameters of the system that produced it, is a remarkably clear and straightforward analysis. It is careful; and also careful not to be dismissive. Certainly none of the arguments put forward were either frivolous or put forward in bad faith.  Some would have produced some interesting jurisprudential innovation.  But that is the bread and butter of this sort of practice at this level.  More revealing, and worth reading more closely, are the opinions attached by the justices who just couldn't hep themselves, two with a strong impulse to signal the future and their positions within it. 

Justice Sotomayor's brief bit quite effective concurrence (in part and in the judgment). Justice Sotomayor principal point was managed in four lines of text: "I join all but Part II.A of the Court’s per curiam opinion. I see no reason to assume without deciding that the Act implicates the First Amendment because our precedent leaves no doubt that it does." The rest is explanatory looking forward to future battles. At its limit (and of course no Justice would ever suggest such limits to well intentioned principled positions) the ordering presupposition could be applied to virtually every action and undertaking among individuals in a social collective. The role of the courts, then, would be to order constitutional rights and limits on the basis of a presumption that there is no state act that does not, in some way, directly or indirectly burden speech (broadly construed). Just as the international community increasingly sees the world as a function of human rights (and more broadly sustainability), it is possible to reconstruct the American constitutional order to understand it as a function of speech (constitutionally defined). 

Justice Gorsuch, as is his habit, occupies more textual space. Where Justice Sotomayor is looking at the big picture from which all sorts of actions might be deduced, Justice Gorsuch looks at the applications from which through a process of induction, a bigger picture might emerged which is jurisprudence might serve. His "five points" provide a template for fleshing that out. Buried in the opinion, like the per curiam, is the notion that national security justifications are merely another element of administrative law, and imposed an obligation on the administrator to justify the action by reference and at a level of persuasiveness that is left to the courts. As a limiting proposition is makes sense, but it is certainly an area of jurisprudence that, given the changes in historical context, may require some rethinking.  

Postscript with great thanks to the powerful insights of Alok Tiwari: indeed, while the jurisprudence of this speaks volume to the convolutions and byzantine system of elite managed behaviors (is is a very small club fiercely protective of entry requirements and disciplined by internal solidarity regimes) within the language and sensibilities of law that has become the constitutionalized spaces of American life; one is really engaging here in business. It is the business of the management and exploitaiton of state assets or state assets in and as markets that is at the center. With that as an organizing point, a good starting point is this: wwcd— what would China do under similar circumstances; the US answer is different but the national security imperative is not. So; an acceptable buyer must be found and the program must be firewalled (that may be impossible because US data policy tends to be the inverse of the Chinese) but roadblocks, tripwires and surveillance may be politically sufficient; Mr Trump on the other hand may make a sale more appealing by monetizing the data leakage to China— selling the data to China sanitized to suit its worries. If one can’t stop something one can monetize it and manage its markets; the great lesson of Prohibition! And all of this can be taxed as it goes abroad. Business…….

 

From the American Law Institute: "Principles for Insurrection Act Reform" (April 8, 2024)

Pix Credit New York Times

One of the great sub-texts of the US presidential elections scheduled for November 2024 revolves around the application and consequences of the US Insurrection Act--and with that the ability of factions to defend or destroy the aspirations, ambitions, and political career of Mr. Trump as he seeks (again) the US presidency. This is part of a deeper factional war (there is no better word sadly) among American governing elites and their fight for the hearts and mind of the population, collections of individuals that all factions might be tempted to signify as the purportedly easily categorized variations of "baskets of deplorables" whose votes they both need (1) to secure control of the political offices from which management of the American public and private administrative apparatus is easier, and (2) to manage them through those organs of the state apparatus and their allies in the private sphere. That war has taken not just a narrative turn (my discussion here, here, and here), but also has sought to use the great levers of American reality making through the courts (e.g. here, here, and general theoretical discussion here, and here).

 

Now comes statutory reform. In a Press Release dated 8 April 2024, the American Law Institute made available its guidance for Insurrection Act Reform.

Today, a bipartisan group led by Bob Bauer (NYU School of Law and former White House Counsel to President Obama) and Jack Goldsmith (Harvard Law School and former Assistant Attorney General in the George W. Bush administration) issued “Principles for Insurrection Act Reform.” The distinguished group, convened at the invitation of The American Law Institute, is made up of persons with a range of legal and political views who have a rich variety of backgrounds in constitutional law, national security law, and military law, and have held senior positions in government. A complete list of group members can be found below.

Explaining the impetus for the project, Bauer said, “The Insurrection Act is a centuries-old federal statute that authorizes the president to deploy the armed forces and state militias into action within the United States to address rebellion against the federal or state governments, major outbreaks of domestic violence, and the imminent or actual collapse of law enforcement. It is poorly drafted, replete with vague or obsolete language, and it has been clear for decades that this antiquated law needs serious revision.”

“There is agreement on both sides of the aisle that the Insurrection Act gives any president too much unchecked power,” Goldsmith added. “The Principles for Insurrection Act Reform proposes a set of core standards to guide constitutionally sound, bipartisan reform that aims to address the Act’s flaws while reflecting the need for U.S. armed forces to remain available in extreme cases to respond to domestic threats. These Principles are neutral in design and apply to any president’s invocation of the Insurrection Act.” (Press Release)

At its heart is its conclusion--which also serves as the jumping off point for the textual ecologies they mean to build around it.

A reformed Insurrection Act should:

• Require the president to consult, prior to the deployment of troops, with the governor of any state into which troops will be deployed.
• Require the president to make findings on the need to invoke the Insurrection Act, and to report these findings to Congress, along with a summary of consultations with state authorities, within 24 hours of deployment.
• Establish a time limit on the president’s authority to deploy troops under the Insurrection Act. The time limit should not exceed 30 days absent renewed congressional authorization.

• Establish a fast-track procedure for Congress to vote on renewal of presidential authority under the Insurrection Act. (ALI Principles for Insurrection Act Reform (8 April 2024) pp. 3-4)

Pix credit here

And, of course, in addition to the suggestions for structural reform were suggestions for getting rid of language the problems which which included that (1) people no longer understood the words; and (3) courts had not taken the trouble to build structures of interpretation around them sufficient to solve the problem of linguistic incomprehensibility. Thus, while courts have managed to interpret over the antique words and phrasing of the Federal Constitution, the absent of a similar effort respecting the Insurrection Act necessarily doomed it to reform--like the reform of the King James Bible, perhaps. 

Reform is necessary.  The approach suggested represents a reasonable, or at least plausible, grounding for first steps in the direction of reform--and more importantly for sparking a national conversation about "insurrection" and the power of political officials to direct the military in the protection of the nation (on this case against elements of itself). Ironically that discussion may paralell the (much mocked in the West) discussion of the development of a theoretical framework of "patriots/hostile forces" at the heart of Marxist-Leninist approaches to a similar problem. The answer that thoughtful protectors of liberal democracy will be quite different from those developed in the Marxist-Leninist camp. But those differences can be useful in testing and affirming the principles and expression of liberal democracy in an influential  federal republic.

 

The exploitation of the ALI's reform principles in the current election campaign indirectly (or directly) is onevitable. The exhortation of Congress is theatrical and likely unavailing at least until Fenruary 2025. I suspect we have not heard the end of this given the time left in this current presidential election cycle and the attachment of issues around the application of the Insurrection Act to the likely candidate of the Republican Party. The traditional deference to political decision making at the heart of the act remains respected--the scope of judicial review would remain both unchanged and left to judicial development in case law.

 

The Statement of the ALI Project and identification of the Project's core of leadership follows below.

 

Hannah Harris, Justine Nolan: "Outsourcing the enforcement of modern slavery: Overcoming the limitations of a market-based disclosure model" J. Industrial Relations Online First (December 2021)

 

Pix Credit HERE

Data driven governance is becoming ubiquitous (Backer 2018) and with it the problems central to rule of law based regulatory systems: predictability, clarity, and replicability. Also like other traditional regulatory systems, data driven systems now encounter core issues of coherence and fidelity to the normative objectives for which they are developed and applied. But unlike traditional systems, data driven governance, as a markets (rather than as a politically) driven system produces regulatory challenges that are distinct from those of orthodox state based law systems. 

Rating systems as mechanisms for disciplining behavior have become important instruments of regulatory governance in the non-state sector in the West. They have become especially useful in the context of the management of a framework for enterprise corporate social responsibility (CSR). In this context, non-state actors have begun to develop and implement private systems of rating the CSR performance of large enterprises. The effect is meant to be the same as in other social credit systems—to induce the objects of rating to change their operation and their governance structures to ensure a higher rating. In other systems, that inducement to comportment includes avoidance of criminal charges or access to financial markets. (Backer, Next Generation Law, 158))

As these systems have proliferated the issues have become more acute.  Moreover, the increasing connection between traditional law systems and data based systems, ratings based to a large degree, poses challenges not just for the integrity of such systems, and the coherence across different ratings regimes operating in the same environment, but for the integrity and role of law as well.  This is emerging more clearly in the context of national efforts to more robustly incorporate human rights in economic activity across production chains with respect to which some portion fo which touches the national territory of the regulating state. 

But markets based systems, manifested through national mandatory disclosure regimes that are themselves grounded in the indirect application of international norms, now have begun to dominate the public-private modalities of regulation. The state provides the mandate to report, the content of the report is directed by the state but derived normatively from international norms, and compliance is delegated to the enterprise subject to the reporting mandate.  That entity then hardens international norms through the incentives that mandatory reporting might produce. That, at least is the theory (see, eg here).

These are some of the issues that Hannah Harris and Justine Nolan tackle in their outstanding new article, "Outsourcing the enforcement of modern slavery: Overcoming the limitations of a market-based disclosure model" which appears in the Journal of Industrial Relations  Online First (December 2021). The specific context is the interdiction of modern slavery. The authors argue in the abstract as follows:

Abstract: Recent legislative efforts to address modern slavery emphasise corporate disclosure as the primary regulatory tool. New modern slavery disclosure laws harden the expectation that business will conduct itself responsibly; however, they are founded on a soft approach to enforcement which is essentially outsourced to the market. This paper questions the effectiveness of this disclosure-based enforcement mechanism, which primarily relies on a narrowly defined concept of ‘the market’ as the basis for its regulatory strategy. Drawing on comparisons with alternative legislative enforcement frameworks to counter foreign bribery and illegal logging, this paper highlights the opportunities and limitations of reliance on market forces for regulation and suggests a path forward for enhancing the modern slavery enforcement approach.

Harris and Nolan critique the markets driven disclosure-based model. They note that such an indirect regulatory model--which relies on the institution of private law based reporting systems (and therefore of the monitoring and surveillance systems on which these reports are based), the reporting of which is based on compliance with governmental legal mandates but enforced by the responses of market actors who must somehow respond to these reports, That response is sometimes guides by the construction of (also private) intermediaries who offer their services as providers of analysis and judgment--about the meaning of the reports in the wider reporting context). And thus a self-reflexive markets based accountability compliance eco-system (considered here). 

Yet as Harris and Nolan astutely note, this is an eco-system with substantial gaps built into its conceptual possibilities. More importantly, as the it is one that might profit from the insights of other regulatory approaches. Harris and Nolan do an excellent job of framing those insights in ways that are important for the business of data driven markets based nudging of corporate cultures in respect of modern slavery. Their investigation forefronts as well the great difficulties posed both by markets in regulation, and markets in analytics for the coherence of an approach to the eradication of modern slavery where the problem is global and the solutions remain fractured. 

Harris and Nolan "highlight the importance of clearly and narrowly defining the ‘problem’ that is the focus of the enforcement framework, note opportunities and limitations of reliance on market forces to address modern slavery, and examine whether the modern slavery disclosure model achieves the appropriate balance between collaboration and coercion and between soft and hard enforcement mechanisms." (Harris & Nolan, supra, Introduction). Again, the problem is the market.  But this time one looks at the incoherence in regulation brought by markets for law as well as markets for compliance.  Harris and Nolan show how the definitional issues among disclosure regulatory jurisdictions produces a variation in compliance standards that are augmented by the interpretive flexibility that may be exercised by complying enterprises, much less in the production of markets directed analytics and assessments of the disclosure for the purpose of inducing markets based reactions (and thus of indirect enforcement).

The modern slavery framework relies heavily on regulatory intermediaries, while other frameworks we explore engage intermediaries to varying degrees, in combination with more direct forms of enforcement. We assert that the regulatory framework to counter modern slavery would benefit from adopting some of the structures and tools used in other regulatory efforts. We argue in favour of enhancing the opportunity for a diverse range of stakeholders to act as regulatory intermediaries, while at the same time strengthening the role of the traditional State regulator as an enforcement actor. (Ibid).

I cannot do justice to the richness of the analysis here. The paper is well worth reading for its ability not merely to connect dots among regulatory approaches, but for the way it suggests  that markets appear to serve as the veil behind which states continue to avoid regulatory coherence.  The fracture at the regulatory level is within the state's power to manage.  That they do not suggests either a lack of vision, a lack of political will, or something else.  That something else may well be a product of the continuing power of siloing, that is of considering legal regimes as confined by functional differences in regulatory objects.  The state, and its political drivers, continue to fail to overcome what drove John Ruggie, in part, to the 3 Pillar framework of the UN Guiding Principles--the need to find a way of filling governance gaps in the face of state failure to overcome the consequences of their choices among regulatory alternatives. Harris and Nolan point us in the right direction.  It is the greater pity that states tend to hold close to the principle that there is dishonor in asking for direction. 

 The Introduction follows below.

The Democracy Wars: State Council White Papers--[中国的民主] "China: Democracy That Works" and [美国民主情况] "The State of Democracy in the United States"

 

Pix Credit Xinhuanet 5 Dec 2021

 

"（一）制度痼疾积重难返; （二）民主实践乱象丛生; （三）输出所谓民主产生恶果 ((1) The system's chronic defects are difficult to overcome; (2) the practice of democracy is chaotic, and (3) exporting the so-called democracy produces evil results)" These are the principal judgments elaborated at length in the Chinese State Council White Paper: "The State of Democracy in the United States"  (5 December 2021; Official English translation HERE); [美国民主情况] (original Chinese HERE). 

This judgment is embedded in two fundamental propositions. The first is that the traditional expression of liberal democratic democracy, exercised through elections and plebiscites (exogenous democratic practices) may fatally limit full participation of the people in their government.  The second is that the democratic character of a political system ought to be judged by its own people. 

A functional democracy must have a full set of institutional procedures; more importantly, it should have full participation of the people. It must ensure democracy in terms of both process and outcomes. It must encompass both procedural and substantive democracy, both direct and indirect democracy. It must ensure both people’s democracy and the will of the State. If the people of a country are only called upon to vote and then are forgotten once they have cast their votes; if the people only hear high-sounding promises during an election campaign but have no say whatsoever afterwards; or if they are wooed when their votes are wanted but are ignored once the election is over, then such a democracy is not a true democracy. Whether a country is democratic should be judged and determined by its own people, not by a minority of self-righteous outsiders. ("The State of Democracy in the United States"). 一个行之有效的民主制度不仅要有完整的制度程序，而且要有完整的参与实践，能够做到过程民主和成果民主、程序民主和实质民主、直接民主和间接民主、人民民主和国家意志的相统一。如果人民只有在投票时被唤醒、投票后就进入休眠期，只有竞选时聆听天花乱坠的口号、竞选后就毫无发言权，只有拉票时受宠、选举后就被冷落，这样的民主绝不是真正的民主。一个国家是不是民主，应该由这个国家的人民来评判，而不是由外部少数人来指手画脚。(美国民主情况)

In contrast, the State Council elaborates might might be a system that at least in the Chinese context, comes closer to realizing the democratic ideal of full popular participation, now offered in English as whole process people's democracy (China: Democracy that Works (4 December 2021) official English Translation HERE); 中国的民主 (original Chinese HERE). This is a system of endogenous democracy grounded in consultation. In its "New Era" form it incorporates the insights of the 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party and its notions of consultative democracy (discussed in  Chinese Constitutionalism in the “New Era”: The Constitution in Emerging Idea and Practice). 

The development of "whole process people's democracy" from consultative democracy embeds a number of key concepts elaborated more fully in the State Council White paper. In that elaboration, the State Council tightly interweaves Chinese Marxist Leninist theory with the theory of democratic governance. These include (quoted from Part I of the White Paper original and official translation but note the interesting translation choices): 

(1) "全过程人民民主，是中国共产党团结带领人民追求民主、发展民主、实现民主的伟大创造，是党不断推进中国民主理论创新、制度创新、实践创新的经验结晶。" ( " Whole-process people’s democracy is a creation of the CPC in leading the people to pursue, develop and realize democracy, embodying the Party’s innovation in advancing China’s democratic theories, systems and practices. " ).

(2) "全过程人民民主，充分彰显社会主义国家性质，充分彰显人民主体地位，使人民意志得到更好体现、人民权益得到更好保障、人民创造活力进一步激发。" (" Whole-process people’s democracy, giving full expression to the socialist nature of the state and the people’s principal position, serves to better represent the people’s will, protect their rights and fully unleash their potential to create. ")

(3) "全过程人民民主，具有完整的制度程序和完整的参与实践，使选举民主和协商民主这两种重要民主形式更好结合起来，"(" Whole-process people’s democracy is a complete system with supporting mechanisms and procedures, and has been fully tested through wide participation. It integrates two major democratic models – electoral democracy and consultative democracy. ").

(4)  "中国共产党的领导，是中国发展全过程人民民主的根本保证。在中国这样一个大国，真正把14亿多人民的意愿表达好、实现好并不容易，必须有坚强有力的统一领导。"("CPC leadership is the fundamental guarantee for whole-process people’s democracy. It is no easy job for a country as big as China to fully represent and address the concerns of its 1.4 billion people. It must have a robust and centralized leadership.")

Not that one didn't know this was coming (even in English).  The CPC's journal, Qiushi (求是网 ), had published in English "Implementing Whole-Process Democracy for High-Quality Legislative Work in the New Era" in its July/August 2021 issue (discussing the Organic Law of the National People's Congress in terms of whole process democracy). Indeed, a recurring theme in the speeches of Xi Jinping during 2021 was centered on approaching answers to the question "what should democracy be? [ 民主应该什么样？] (in Chinese 民主应该什么样？习近平这样说 13 October 2021 求是网 (various paths to democratic expression in a curated collection of portions of speeches and addresses)).

Equally important, is the construction of the basic parameters of whole process democracy as a template that is not merely scalable but transposable within all national institutional organs. Whole process democracy is the expression of the from of basic political structure that is replicated not just within the organs of state but also in the constitution and working style of the vanguard itself. It is to the CPC that the system of whole process democracy delegates the leadership role of people centered development that follows the "mass line", that guides intra-CPC democratic practice and its adherence to law based governance of itself and of the nation (summarized in Part I White Paper then elaboredt throughout the rest of the  document).

The contrast could not be starker--or better timed.  Both White papers were distributed on the eve of and to serve as a critique of the United States sponsored Summit for Democracy which is scheduled as a virtual event 9-10 December 2021. It elaborates the emerging core principles of liberal democratic approaches to a democratic order built around individual expression o autonomy, the delegation of authority to officials through processes of open elections, and the accountability of such systems based on judicially overseen rule of law principles founded on the protection of individual human rights.

For the United States, the summit will offer an opportunity to listen, learn, and engage with a diverse range of actors whose support and commitment is critical for global democratic renewal. It will also showcase one of democracy’s unique strengths: the ability to acknowledge its imperfections and confront them openly and transparently, so that we may, as the United States Constitution puts it, “form a more perfect union.” In advance of the first summit, we are consulting with experts from government, multilateral organizations, philanthropies, civil society, and the private sector to solicit bold, practicable ideas around three key themes: Defending against authoritarianism; Addressing and fighting corruption; Promoting respect for human rights. Leaders will be encouraged to announce specific actions and commitments to meaningful internal reforms and international initiatives that advance the Summit’s goals. These pledges will include domestic and international initiatives that counter authoritarianism, combat corruption, and promote respect for human rights. Civil society will be represented on panels and in townhalls as a part of the official program. Their inclusion is based on a variety of factors including geographic representation, political context, and subject matter expertise. (Summit for Democracy)

It evidences  well the working style of 21st century liberal democracy with its focus groups, influencers, and markets driven contests for control of the discursive and administrative machinery of state. It's essence is in fact critique, debate, and eventually resolution in a continuous system of disagreement within (if it works) system stabilizing taboo limits.

In this way, the process of disengagement, of decoupling, between liberal democratic ad Marxist Leninist camps--emerging economic and discursive imperial centers--continues to be perfected. It is most often marked by the evidences of economic decoupling (eg here: Didi shares plunge more than 20% on plan to delist from NYSE). Now even within the liberal camp of liberal democratic organs, the trajectories can no longer be demonized as a fantasy of a much despised (by that faction at least) Presidential administration. With this Summit for Democracy and the two State Council White papers, the normative and discursive decoupling has moved to a more advanced stage as well.  For the est of the world, the consequences are likley more important than for the resident populations of either imperial center.  For them, the projection of these decoupled visions of the world and its better operations will present constant choices and the challenges of navigation, as the periphery is pressured to choose sides and to order and reorder their own operations in the shadow of these choices.  

The two State Council White papers--in the official English translation and in the original Chinese follow below.

Shameless Self-Promotion--Talking Law and Religion With Ravi Prakash and the Folks at MNT News Network (India) Broadcast Sunday 21 November 2021

 

The folks at the MNT News Network (India) were kind enough to invite me to spend some time speaking with Ravi Prakash (Advocate on Record at Supreme Court of India) on a broad ranging set of topics related to religious liberties and their connection with political and economic governance.Great thanks as well to Abhishek Chauhan and Ashish Jiwane for making this possible.

The interview will be aired on the MNT Network. The conversation ranged across a broad range of topics.  These included the construction of the idea of religion by or outside of the state and lawmaking or recognition authority; the tensions between neutrality and  religious accommodation, religion and nationalism; democratic principles and capture by instrumentalities of institutionalized orthodox religions; the tensions between individual religious liberty including the liberty to embrace and leave a faith community and collective religious authority within a state law system; religions and perceptions of decay in liberal constitutionalism, religions and the shaping of economic policies and practices; global production and the normative overlay of religious systems; the universalization of standards for regulation religious and economic systems especially as they may overlap.

I written synopsis of the interview follows below--but the conversation was considerably richer. Please watch this Live Program on any of the links that follow (YouTube; Facebook; Twitter). The interview goes live 8.30 PM Delhi time (10.00 AM New York time).

📱 https://youtu.be/YYmvFckmbPY

📱 www.youtube.com/MNTNewsNetwork

📱 www.facebook.com/MNTNewsNetwork

📱 www.twitter.com/MNTNewsNetwork



🙏📱 Subscribe and Follow MNT News Network 

 

The Chinese State System as a Global Techno-Virus: Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) Hearings--Techno-Authoritarianism: Platform for Repression in China and Abroad

 

Pix Credit HERE

 In an age of pandemic, the most appealing metaphors are viral. This is certainly what the Congressional-Executive Commission on China appears to believe, at at least what may be driving its upcoming hearings: Techno-Authoritarianism: Platform for Repression in China and Abroad. The announcement of the hearing says it all.

Techno-Authoritarianism: Platform for Repression in China and Abroad
106 Dirksen & Virtually via Cisco Webex | Wednesday, November 17, 2021 - 10:30am

Techno-authoritarianism poses a serious threat to traditional notions of privacy, democratic governance models globally, and the future of an open and free internet. The Chinese government’s embrace of mass biometric collection technologies underpins the most pervasive surveillance state the world has ever seen. The Chinese model of extensive censorship and surveillance continues to spread to governments with poor human rights records that repress and control populations through technology made in China.

This hearing will look at the human rights and strategic impact of the technology of mass surveillance and censorship as employed and exported by the People’s Republic of China, including its use in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) and efforts to influence and shape digital and telecommunications rulemaking and standard setting in international bodies. The hearing will be livestreamed on the CECC’s YouTube Channel.

Witnesses:

--Geoffrey Cain, author of The Perfect Police State: An Undercover Odyssey into China's Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the Future
--Samantha Hoffman, Senior Analyst, Australian Strategic Policy Institute
--Yaqiu Wang, Senior Researcher on China, Human Rights Watch
--Jonathan Hillman, Senior Fellow, Center for Strategic & International Studies

Pix Credit: Regional Genomic Surveillance Network

 The thrust of the program is quite clear.  First, Chinese approaches to state coordinated or directly undertaken surveillance  are incompatible with at least the principles of liberal democratic constitutionalism.  Second, the Chinese approach, like COVID, cannot be contained within China (note this undertone which is unmistakable and quite brilliantly used here); this COVID type virus creating a political pandemic is labelled "techno-authoritarianism." Third Techno-authoritarianism is string enough and alluring enough to threaten the (delicate) health of global  (and within liberal democracy more or less traditional) notions of privacy, democratic governance and an open and free internet.  Successful attacks on these three elements of liberal democracy will either weaken or kill its spirit, leaving its body to be re-animated by the demon possessor of techno-authoritarianism. Fourth,  this powerful virus has a well known DNA: (mass bio metric collection technologies underpinning a comprehensive system of surveillance and censorship). Fifth, the virus is particularly potent in governmental bodies with weakened immune systems--governments in conflict zones and governments in weak governance zones. Sixth, in the absence of a vaccine against techno-authoritarianism the COVID protocols of containment, safe distancing, mask wearing and constant hand washing would be necessary, now applied to the virus corrupting the normative basis of healthy government. Seventh, it is to that task that our front line workers--the great liberal democratic vanguard must both better understand the disease, and better protect the community of nations from its ravages.  

From a discursive perspective, this is an excellent approach to putting forward the political project of the United States and its internationalist project. In a way that parallels the ambitions and perhaps the operationalization of  the Chinese Marxist Leninist International project delivered through the bacillus of the Belt & Road Initiative, the United States has not been shy about announcing  its now more global friendly America First policy vaccine:

"Since day one, the Biden-Harris Administration has made clear that revitalizing democracy in the United States and around the world is essential to delivering for the American people and meeting the unprecedented challenges of our time. As President Biden has said, defending America’s democratic values is inseparable from advancing our national interest. "(US Dept of State Summit for Democracy ("Democracy doesn’t happen by accident. We have to defend it, fight for it, strengthen it, renew it." Ibid., Quoting President Biden Feb 2021))  

In its form as  Liberal Democratic internationalism, with the United States as its core of leadership, the U.S. would again its assume its global leadership role, even if, as is becoming clear, it is over a quite distinct imperial jurisdiction that exists beyond the reach of the emerging Marxist Leninist imperial project of the Chinese state organs and its vanguard (The Problem of Data Infrastructure in an Age of Post-Global Empire--The Criminal Litigation Against Huawei for Racketeering and Other Crimes). That project requires sharpening difference (liberal democratic normative values versus Chinese techno-authoritarianism) as much as it suggests the need for a theory of difference (supplied certainly by academics on both sides of the border) in the form of (liberal democratic) theories of "authoritarian constitutionalism" (e.g., here, here, here, here, and here) and its judgment of illegitimacy at least from the perspective of liberal democratic constitutionalism). It is no surprise, then, that in the run up to the December 2021 Democracy Summit hosted by the United States, its apparatus, including CECC would focus on distinguishing the higher order values of liberal democracy from what it sees as the threatening characteristics of a coherent competing system.  In this case that centers on notions of authoritarianism (for which the CECC hearing add a useful element) to corruption, to to the respect for human rights understood from a liberal democratic orientation (see The December 2021 Summit). 

Pix Credi HERE

And yet these differences are much more blurred, and it is not clear that the liberal democratic system itself has not already developing a means of living with very similar viruses of a liberal democratic sort. And the liberal democratic virus is as much a threat to techno-authoritarianism as the other way around.  Western biometric surveillance is not unknown (Automated Law-- Microsoft 's "Insight Computing System,' the Power to Manage Labor, and the Intimacy of Emerging Regulatory Forms). Nor is privatized surveillance foreign to the management of populations in public-private alignments ( Automated Law--Questions and Answers on Data Driven AI Enhanced Governance and the Emerging Instruments of Social Control). Techno-control based on data appears to know no ideology (Automated Law: The Problem of Data Integrity Moves (if only for a Moment) to Center Stage). And crisis appears to make authoritarians of us all ( Automated Law and COVID-19: Data Driven Measures With National Characteristics In China and Israel and the Future of the Law-Governance Complex). To the grand hierarchies of public sector driven techno-authoritarianism, liberal democracy offers the banality of techno-control (Automated Law: The Banalities of Constructing a Social Credit Style Rating System with Western Characteristics, One Well Meaning Intervention at a Time) with an overlay of management by the state (Automated Law--The Empire of European Human Rights Law (May) Strike Back). AT at bottom--however our master and whatever the elegance of the normative systems put in place to make us feel better about it) lies the fundamental issue of control, and of its power (Automated Law: Who Ought to Have the Right to Authoritatively Misread Emotion?). The real fear, then, may be of convergence--one that would neither serve the interests of liberal democracy or Marxist Leninist internationalists in their drive for empire (Automated Law and Social Media Platforms as Private Administrative Agencies: On Amnesty International's New Report--"''Let us Breathe!': Censorship and criminalization of online expression in Viet Nam"). Or perhaps better put--the contests to which CECC (and its Chinese analogues) expend so much energy may in the end be irrelevant to the trajectories of power and its mechanisms ()Data Driven Pandemic and the Ascendancy of Simulated Reality as the New Political Space: The Administration of Disease and the Disease of Administration in the Light of COVID-19). 

This is not to suggest the absence of normative difference.  The gulf between systems is now large and growing again.  But method is another thing altogether.  And the judgement of the character of the toolkits used may be more complicated even as they reflect and are reflected in the normative values of the systems whose interests they serve.  And that may be the most valuable function of these events; not to suggest the obvious, that the Chinese system furthers its norms comprehensively through the application of its political economic model enhanced by the possibilities (sometimes transformative) of tech.  Rather its value lies in its ability to distill and highlight what the U.S: sees in itself in the mirror that is China. And then the hard task begins--the task of aligning the ideal extracted from the insights of difference to its practice within the political economic model of this Republic and those others in its camp (Maya Wang, "China’s Techno-Authoritarianism Has Gone Global: Washington Needs to Offer an Alternative," Foreign Affairs (8 April 2021)).   

 * * * 

  The Congressional-Executive Commission on China was created by the U.S. Congress in 2000 "with the legislative mandate to monitor human rights and the development of the rule of law in China, and to submit an annual report to the President and the Congress. The Commission consists of nine Senators, nine Members of the House of Representatives, and five senior Administration officials appointed by the President." (CECC About). The CECC FAQs provide useful information about the CECC. See CECC Frequently Asked Questions. They have developed positions on a number of issues.

CECC tends to serve as an excellent barometer of the thinking of political and academic elites in the United States about issues touching on China and the official American line developed in connection with those issues. As such it is an important source of information about the way official and academic sectors think about China. As one can imagine many of the positions of the CECC are critical of current Chinese policies and institutions (for some analysis see CECC).

 

Death, Dissonance, and Challenge to Established Orders: Thoughts on the Eve of the Planned Protests in Cuba 15 November 2021

 

EN ESPAÑOL

Transitions produce their own theater.  These are meant to translate what might be complex trajectories of change, challenge, resistance, and evolution, into eminently exploitable simplifications that essentialize contests for control (normative, narrative, political, physical, cultural, economic) into simple to digest tidbits suitable for consumption by those mass elements whose action or inaction is vital for the assertion of control and the proclamation of "victory" however that may be defined in the context of a particular set of contests.  

Death is always a great trigger for action in contexts of transition.  And death is everywhere is Cuba,  People die--or at least pass on into a more or less harmless dotage.  But they may take institutions down with them.  The same applies  outside the vanguard.  The creative class that in the early 1960s could accept the proposition--within the revolution everything; outside the revolution nothing. . . and the revolution is embodied in and expressed through the vanguard--now declare themselves the new vanguard.  Yet it is also a self reflexive vanguard, though one with a ideology and a narrative that is for the moment performance. In Cuba the generation of los históricos is quickly traveling to the end that awaits all human persons. Are they taking the system they built and defended down with them?  More potently, will the founding generation be shrouded in the burial cloth of their own ideology which now discarded effectively serves one last purpose--top wrap the dead and bury both?

Pix Credit HERE

Answers are not easily forthcoming--though all of the protagonists are working themselves (and their target audiences) into a necessary and reductionist hysteria perhaps so that they might be better exploited in the imminent next battlefield or the control of the narrative space--and perhaps the streets.  On the one side stand the state, the party and its organs.  They are the inheritors of a system that is better understood today as  unable to connect the catechism of its ideology to the realities of the current stage of Cuban historical development. A society grounded on principles of socialist materialism hardly succeeds when the only thing to eat are words and ideas. On the other side a motley collection of artists and others, who seizing an opportunity that developed in some sense from their outrage at a loss of their own privileges within that increasingly moribund expression of ideology, were brilliantly able to generalize personal grievance into a movement suitable not merely for inclusion of the hungry, but also that met the approval (and perhaps the support) of a global community who love to say "Marxism" and "Leninism" in their dinner parties within the walls of quite privileged existences, but who are at heart markets oriented cultural entrepreneurs with strong allegiance (one way or another) to the ,markets led liberal democratic order.  Free expression is the lubricant for the inevitable confrontation.  The object is power in all of its manifestations. Thwarted prosperity and development serves as the counterforce.

In Cuba, then, death and dissonance create the perfect space for challenge--from all quarters.  Those challenges become more complicated as both dissident and orthodox camps change internally even as the terrains of their confrontation also change to suit internal and external audiences, potential allies, and the "Norns" of global narrative spinning about Cuba. That is not clear, in part because the system is itself already transitioning in part, even as the society around it transitions but perhaps not in sync. And in a Cuba that has so liked (and controlled) its creative/artistic sector, who better than artists to lead a transitional opposition against a much more slowly transitioning orthodox hierarchy fulled with the dutiful children of the founding generation? 

totentanz

Expanding free expression and engagement will not feed the hungry but may make the state--even a Leninist state--more responsive. Yet in the form it is offered up all it appears to contribute to is the creation of a vacuum into which it is not clear what will step in. Exuberance and expressions grounded on being wronged is a start, but is only a step, an opening, to the more difficult questions of both guiding ideology and a program of implementation that moves society closer to consensus objectives.  On the other hand were the vanguard to take the hint--quite a broad hint considering the thousands in the streets--and actually produce reform now 30 years overdue, they might be able to turn the protests and its focus on expression and engagement into a useful tool for propelling vanguard ideology into the current century.  That requires two quite distinct set of objectives. The first is structural and ideological: the mass line and a clever propaganda department could do much to expropriate the central element of popular protestor objectives and make it the Party's own.  But ideological rigidity stuck in the 1980s Soviet view of the world will prove a more decisive enemy than thousands of people marching through the street of Cuba.  The send is grounded in the central elements of stability and prosperity objectives. Such objectives--especially in the form of grim sacrifice Leninism--cannot remain little more an an "idea." And the Party and its normative basis cannot be reduced to a fetish term (socialism) used to threaten or passify a hungry population. The use of Leninism as a fetish will neither fill the bellies of the people nor provide any proof that 70 or more years of sacrifice have produced much more than the apotheosis of deprivation as the core value of the state and its ideology. 

What is clear from all of this is that a reactive state apparatus, and a purely defensive and reactionary posture by the Party vanguard, without change to both ideology and to the forms of active programs that advance ideologically grounded objectives on the ground and in the everyday lives of the population, will almost certainly guarantee that they will lose--eventually, even when it is possible for them to survive and perhaps win. The missed opportunities from that small but important opening in 2016 may in retrospect prove to be the greatest error of the vanguard in this current era of transition--that and the stubborn cultivation of a reactionary Leninism that does not accord with the times. The belief that time stands still and that the heady days of the 1960s can be projected forward, intact, into an endless future, is remarkably delusional, even for an insular and self reflexive ideological community.  Yet their opponents are no better, locked in their own ideological-temporal loop.

It is in this context that one might better evaluate the moves that are being made by the state and its opposition in the run up to the next show of protestor strength: the planned popular manifestations of 15 November 2021.  This warfare is asymmetric in the sense that on the global stage the odds are greater that whatever the state does to resist the protestors will come at far greater cost than the costs to the protestors of participating in the manifestations. This is the great moment for ideas--as weapons in the hands of the opposition.  But for the state the time for words has long passed--what the population expects to see, and what can diffuse the opposition--is more likely based on pro-active action rather then the usual resort to ideology and suppression tactics (though their total absence will also cost the state dearly).  Very useful reporting by Dave Sherwood and Marc Frank for Reuters follows (Ahead of planned protests, Cuban government and dissidents wage 'battle of ideas'). More after the 15th. It bears remembering that, in cases where two oppositional forces battle themselves to death or stalemate, invariably a third force will sweep them both to the side--a lesson that both Napoleon and Lenin learned well. 

POSTSCRIPT: on 11 November 2021 the leader of the protests in the face of the quite public statements of Cuban officials to anyone who would listen to them that they would not tolerate any demonstrations announced that "he will walk alone, in silence and holding a white rose, the day before the planned march to show the non-violent nature of the movement." (Dave Sherwood, "Cuban protest leader to march alone, white rose in hand, ahead of rallies" Reuters 11 Nov. 2021)

 

Just Published (Electronic and pdf Version): Entangled Legalities Beyond the State (Nico Krisch (ed); CUP) With Links to Contributions

 

I am delighted to announce the publication of Entangled Legalities Beyond the State (Nico Krisch (ed.); Cambridge University Press 2021) (ISBN 9781108914642). Nico Krisch (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva) did a marvelous job of bringing together an extraordinary group of people around a subject that was only vaguely visible on the horizon when we started but which is now a critical element in the way in which jurisprudence is now changing to recognize and rationalize the great transformations occurring around what had once been its settled notions built around the state and politics and expressed through memorialized commands and discretionary decision making of the state's political, administrative, and judicial organs.  Professor Krisch put it nicely at the beginning of the volume:

Law is usually understood as an orderly, coherent system, but this volume shows that it is often better understood as an entangled web. Bringing together eminent contributors from law, political science, sociology, anthropology, history and political theory, it also suggests that entanglement has been characteristic of law for much of its history. The book shifts the focus to the ways in which actors create connections and distance between different legalities in domestic, transnational and international law. It examines a wide range of issue areas, from the relationship of state and indigenous orders to the regulation of global financial markets, from corporate social responsibility to struggles over human rights. The book uses these empirical insights to inform new theoretical approaches to law, and by placing the  entanglements between norms from different origins at the centre of the study of law, it opens up new avenues for future legal research. This title is also available as Open Access.

Contributors include Tobias Berger, Kristen Anker, Larry Catá Backer, Tomer Broude, Machiko Kanetake, Francesco Corradini, Lucy Lu Reimers, Grégoire Mallard, Aurel Niederberger, Antoine Duval, Tomáš Morochovič, Caroline Humfress, Keith Culver, Michael Guidice, Julia Eckert, Ralf Michaels, and Brian Tamanaha.

The book and its contributions are open access.  The book contents along with links and chapter summaries are provided below.

10th Annual Forum on Business and Human Rights--Infirmation and Registration Materials

10th Annual Forum on Business and Human Rights Date: 29 November – 1 December 2021  Location: Geneva, Switzerland Theme: The next decade of business and human rights: increasing the pace and scale of action to implement the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights Register here for Forum: https://indico.un.org/event/35881/ 2021 marks the 10th anniversary of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and this will form the central theme of the 2021 Forum. This milestone provides an opportunity to look back at progress and challenges to-date and, more importantly, to inspire a renewed push for scaled-up global implementation by States and businesses in the decade ahead.  The 2021 Forum also comes at a time when the world is facing a convergence of crises—ranging from the ongoing human and financial costs of COVID-19 to the existential climate crisis, growing inequality, systemic and pervasive gender and racial discrimination, shrinking civic space, and human consequences of technological developments.  Against this backdrop, the Working Group is taking stock of the first ten years of the Guiding Principles and developing a roadmap for the next decade (“UNGPs 10+”). The stocktaking report was presented to the Human Rights Council in June 2021. The roadmap is set to launch in the second half of 2021. The UN Forum provides a key global platform for stakeholder dialogue on how to increase the pace of implementation of the Guiding Principles by States, businesses and other actors. Further information on the 2021 Forum will soon be available below. Resources Concept note (English) in word Contacts Join the discussion on Twitter: @WGBizHRs #UNForumBHR / #bizhumanrights; For general queries: forumbhr@ohchr.org; For logistics and registration queries: registrationforumbhr@ohchr.org More information follows below.

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

 

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

Pix Credit HERE

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.

Pix Credit HERE

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.

 

---

 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.