Comparative Constitutional Politics in the Chinese Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macau

Abstract

Hong Kong and Macau are cosmopolitan former Western European dependencies in East Asia that became autonomous Special Administrative Regions of the People’s Republic of China toward the end of the twentieth century. The Basic Law and the Lei Básica, Hong Kong’s and Macau’s contemporary constitutional charters, were designed to serve as jurisdictional firewalls that prevent the dissolution of the minuscule Regions into the far more powerful and populous Chinese mainland, whose Leninist polity officially rejects almost every fundamental value shared by English and Portuguese constitutional law that has been indigenised into the Regions. Notwithstanding the striking resemblance of the Basic Law and the Lei Básica, constitutional politics in Hong Kong and Macau could not be more different. This chapter identifies the root of this discrepancy not just in history and political culture, but also in two oft-overlooked differences between the charters in relation to electoral reform and the executive-legislative relationship. Both Regions, for all their autonomy, are not sovereign states; their relationship with mainland China critically shapes their divergent trajectories of constitutional development. The chapter closes by explaining why assimilating the Regions into the mainland, turning them into little more than two of China’s over six hundred cities, is neither supported by the law, nor in the ultimate political interests of the People’s Republic.