Discussions and comments on Chinese politics, Chinese culture, and general current events.
世間行樂亦如此
古來萬事東流水
Peter R. Moody is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Notre Dame. He has taught about and written on Chinese politics, Chinese political thought, East Asian political systems, and international relations in East Asia.
The fate of Taiwan is not really tied up with that of Hong Kong in any direct way, although the stronger import of the one country-two systems formula, when it was first introduced, was to convince Taiwan that there would be no downside to a reunification with China proper. Hong Kong was presented with more or less the same formula, and the Taiwanese were told that all they had to do was to look to Hong Kong to see just how benign reunification would be. It is hard to see how, after the events of 2019, people on Taiwan, who, regardless of party or attitudes toward either Taiwanese or Chinese nationalism, had always been leery of pronouncements from Beijing, could ever take the blandishments of the Beijing authorities with any degree of seriousness. The behavior of the Chinese authorities toward Hong Kong may indeed insure the re-election of Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen, whom they detest, even after all she had done to antagonize the strong support she had at the time of her election in 2016. The way the Hong Kong unrest has been handled has perhaps ended any possibility, however remote it had always been, of a peaceful reunification of Taiwan with the mainland.
Yet the behavior in Hong Kong is really not directly relevant to Taiwan, at least if the “formulas” presented to Taiwan are taken literally. Taiwan has been promised, like Hong Kong, full autonomy over its own political, social, and economic systems. But Taiwan, unlike Hong Kong, had a fully developed political system at the time the formula was first elaborated, one which at the time was already becoming increasingly democratic in nature and which has since grown into a fully-fledged democracy. Also, there is a promise that no civil or military officials from the mainland will be sent to Taiwan. Most importantly, Taiwan has been told that it can keep its own autonomous military. All it has to do is to accept the nominal sovereignty of Beijing.
As experience and just about anyone on the island will tell you, there is no reason to take Beijing at its word. But if Beijing tries to push its way in, as it has in Hong Kong, Taiwan, unlike Hong Kong, would have the means to push back. In effect, if the offers of Beijing to Taipei are taken literally, the power relationship between the two sides would remain just as it is now, whatever the nominal relationship. And should Taiwan defy demands from Beijing, Beijing’s only recourse would be war—just as it is now.
COVID-19 accomplished what police repression and threats could not, dampening the public demonstrations. And no doubt by the turn of 2021 there was a sense that public protest had reached the limits of what it could achieve. The spread of the virus in China did lead to a strike by some public health workers, protesting the failure of the Region government to bar traffic from the mainland. But this would probably have been unworkable in any case. With the end of demonstrations came the arrests of some of those who had previously been active in the democracy movement. Maybe Hong Kong was settling into a new normal.
The motives and objectives of the Hong Kong protest are both reasonable and just. There is no reason that China should not abide by the spirit of the original Basic Law; and, indeed, there is no reason China should end Hong Kong’s special status in 2047. For all that, China is unlikely to do other than increase its control over the territory, all the more because of the incalcitrance of the protests.
The rational objective of political action is to make things better (at least for those pursuing the action), rather than worse. In Hong Kong it may have become inevitable that things may become worse than they were before. Justice is a goal of political action, but prudence is the prime virtue in the pursuit of that goal. From the outside it seems that it would have been prudent for the protestors to accept the government’s withdrawal of the Extradition bill, while continuing to press by quieter and indirect means for ever wider guarantees of autonomy.
The November 2019 District Council elections reflect at a minimum the population’s dissatisfaction with the heavy hand of Beijing, and at a maximum the broad sympathy for the protests, violence and all. The problem with counsels of prudence is that the prudent way may not always be what people are prepared to accept, for better or worse (compare the elder George Bush’s “Chicken Kiev” speech). If a people consider a situation unsupportable, it is hard to induce them to accept a compromise. With luck (and with their own considerations of prudence) the Beijing authorities might take the election results as an occasion for them to rethink their approach.
From the outside the situation of the ordinary person in Hong Kong is not unsupportable. After all, the population of the mainland live under even more restrictive conditions and survive just fine. But Hong Kong was promised better, and that promise was made in part to secure the people’s consent to a process over which they had no say and which, had they their druthers, would not have wanted at all. One fears that Hong Kong’s future will be one of an alienated population, giving surly, coerced acquiescence to outside powers whose rule is palpably illegitimate.
When loyalty is strained or unreciprocated and voice is futile, Hirschman believes that people still have the option of Exit: they may leave the organization or territory. This may be overly optimistic. Multinational financial and manufacturing firms may relocate—to Singapore or, perhaps, Taipei—and will also be able to maintain their business ties with China. Many of the well-to-do in Hong Kong have long ago hedged their bets and have established the right of permanent residence in Canada, Australia, England, or the United States; and as things grow bad, those with money who have not already arranged their sanctuary will be able to get out. This is not true for the ordinary person, who will be stuck in a destroyed Hong Kong. Indeed, a sense that there is no future in the territory has been part of the overall sense of depression and frustration that has fed the unrest. For the bulk of the population Hong Kong is like Sartre’s hell: No Exit.
Under the English, technically the people of Hong Kong had no voice—the trade-off for the continued protection of a free way of life. When China moved to reclaim the territory—the lease of the New Territories would expire in 1997 and there was no practical way to maintain those parts of the region which had been ceded in perpetuity without the New Territories; and, in any case, as Deng Xiaoping early made clear to Margaret Thatcher, China could easily take back the colony any time it wanted (it wouldn’t even have to invade: Hong Kong relied on the mainland for its water supply).
The people of Hong Kong could not be certain that the personal and civil liberties they enjoyed under Elizabeth would be able to continue under the PRC. The Chinese side attempted to address this fear. Hong Kong would revert to Chinese sovereignty under the formula of “one country, two systems”—China was one unified country; but Hong Kong (and, potentially, Taiwan) would retain their own social and economic systems: ordinary life would go on as before; the police and courts would continue to function as before; the economy would function in accord with the principles of a free market; the Hong Kong government would have control over foreign trade policy and over the region’s borders, controlling as it saw fit not merely immigration from abroad but from the mainland as well. Hong Kong would be governed by Hong Kong people (that is, not by functionaries sent by the mainland). Deng Xiaoping said that Hong Kong should primarily be ruled by “patriots”—that is, persons who accepted that Hong Kong was part of China and gave their primary political loyalty to China. But, he said, patriots did not necessarily imply “leftists”—that is, pro-communist figures—and primarily by patriots did not mean that everyone had to be a patriot. And, Deng said, none of this would change for 50 years (and, he later added, that did not mean that things had to change after 50 years).
Continue reading SOME SPECULATION ON THE UNREST IN HONG KONG: PART 3–VOICE
The Central authorities, of course, expect the people of Hong Kong to be loyal Chinese patriots. And the Hong Kong population may indeed have a certain identification with the wider Chinese heritage and a pride in being part of that heritage. This does not automatically translate into an attraction to the People’s Republic. Continue reading SOME SPECULATION ON THE UNREST IN HONG KONG: PART 2–LOYALTY
The late Albert O. Hirschman, one of the last century’s more interesting organizational theorists, argued that when members of a particular organization, whether a business, a club, or a country, become unhappy with their position, they have three possible responses. They may quit or leave; they may demand that they be more frequently and meaningfully consulted on how the organization is governed; or they may feel sufficient emotional or rational attachment to the organization itself (for example, a sense of patriotism toward one’s country) that they will (to a degree) put up with the disadvantages. “As a rule, . . . loyalty holds exit at bay and activates voice” (Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970). Hirschman’s model or theory seems to provide a useful way to examine the continuing demonstrations, peaceful at first but increasingly violent, that wracked Hong Kong for much of 2019.
The demonstrations were set off when the government of Hong Kong proposed to pass an Extradition Law which would allow the extradition of persons accused of crime to countries or territories where there currently were no specific extradition treaties. These included (specifically per the 1997 agreement on retrocession) mainland China. Under the proposed law the People’s Republic could seize Hong Kong residents who may possibly have violated Chinese law, but not the laws of Hong Kong (or any other country), to be tried (if at all) by Chinese courts. Sometime earlier, China, in the absence of an extradition law, had apparently kidnapped a couple of Hong Kong bookstore owners who had published works purporting to give the inside dope on various scandals among the Chinese elite, taking them to the mainland. The extradition law would make the process more routine. Although the law was proposed by the Hong Kong authorities themselves, not the Central government, the suspicion was that China had actually demanded such a law, or that the Hong Kong people had proposed it in anticipation of such a demand from the Center.
Ji Zhengju
Deputy Director Central Translation Office and Researcher
LESSONS FROM THE COLLAPSE OF SOVIET COMMUNISM SEEN IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORICAL NIHILISM
December 19 2017
虛無主義
A 2017 document by Ji Zhengju, who works in China’s Central Translation Office (English translation here) attributes the collapse of the Soviet Union to “historical nihilism,” specifically the repudiation of the Soviet heritage by the ruling elite, leading to general social demoralization and a collapse of the legitimacy of the system. The Soviet collapse has an understandable fascination for the Chinese rulers. Only China, along with North Korea and Vietnam, survived the general crumbling of the socialist systems between 1989 and 1992, but given the structural similarities between the Chinese and the Soviet Russian systems, the Chinese rulers have to fear that what happened to the Russians could happen to them. A survey of the various Chinese explanations for the Soviet collapse, taking into account the Chinese context of the time at which they were offered, would be an interesting exercise for a student of comparative politics.
Luo Yuan (罗援, b. 1950), a retired PLA rear admiral, is known for his hardline anti-American views. The speech at an awards ceremony for defense scientists and engineers, translated/paraphrased here, is a reaction to the so-called trade war initiated by US President Donald Trump in the spring of 2018, imposing higher tariffs on various Chinese imports. The action was the product of long-standing American complaints against Chinese practices: overt and covert state subsidies to state-owned enterprises or nominally private enterprises actually controlled by the state; restrictions on foreign firms operating in China; forced technology transfers; casual theft of intellectual property . . . The heat of the conflict was no doubt enhanced by China’s growing economic power, its spreading global influence, and ever-improving military capacity—and perhaps reinforced by certain personality traits of the American president.
Xu Zhangrun (許章潤, b. 1962)，who taught jurisprudence and constitutional law at Tsinghua University (until he was suspended March of 2019), in the summer of 2018 published an extensive critique of recent political trends in China. While not actually mentioning Xi Jinping by name, Xu rakes the general secretary over the coals, tearing down Xu’s program, mocking the “China Dream,” and targeting especially the elimination of “term limits” for the head of state. In the decades prior to the 19th Party Congress in 2018, the constitution limited the head of state (State Chairman, nowadays usually translated “President”) to two terms of five years each. This was removed in the spring of 2019. China’s head of state is pretty much a ceremonial office (the control of government operations is vested in the Premier of the State Council, and the real boss of the regime is the General Secretary of the Communist party, a position Xi Jinping holds as well as his State Chairmanship). The elimination of this term limit is, then, symbolic: it indicates Xi’s intention to remain as top boss indefinitely, perhaps for the rest of his life. Xu takes this as indicative of the end of the reform movement that began shortly after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, a sign that China is moving backwards toward a Stalinist-Maoist totalitarian system. Continue reading Some Reflections on Xu Zhangrun’s “Our Current Fears and Expectations” (July 24 2019)
Li Ruohan, the pseudonym of a writer from northern China, has compared the September 2018 provisional agreement between the Vatican and the PRC with the 1801 Concordat between the Vatican and Napoleon Bonaparte, finding striking similarities–all of them to the detriment to the dignity and independence to the Church: both validate the restructuring of dioceses by the state; both give the state control over religious activities, allowing merely formal recognition of the powers of the Pope; both work to the advantage of clergy that had previously cooperated with the state over those who had resisted the state’s attempts to subjugate and replace the Church.
There are similarities: but Chinese Catholics might be wishing that the agreement resembled the Napoleonic Concordat more closely. Continue reading Chinese Catholicism: The Predicament of the Underground Church