The internal contradictions of "one country, two systems" : a study of article 23 legislation controversies, the occupy central movement and the rendition saga in Hong Kong

Abstract

The year 1997 witnessed the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China, and the governing model of “One Country, Two Systems” (OCTS) was correspondingly implemented in the city. Under that governing model, Hong Kong enjoyed a high degree of autonomy and practised economic, social, political and legal systems different from that of Mainland China. However, the model has faced significant challenges ever since it was put into practice. Tensions between “One Country” and “Two Systems” within the OCTS model have manifested at political, constitutional, legal and ideological levels, calling into question the viability of the continued practice of the OCTS model in Hong Kong. This raises a need to understand why and how the current situation emerged from different perspectives.

This dissertation explores the factors that adversely affected Hong Kong’s implementation of OCTS in the context of the internal contradictions of the OCTS model. It is found that the OCTS model, which was formulated in the spirit of pragmaticism, contains several principal internal contradictions. Particularly, contradictions within the structure of OCTS exist between the aspirations for the rule of law, human rights, freedoms and democracy on the part of many Hong Kong people and China’s political system and its socialist ideology. By focusing mainly on three major episodes of civil unrest, which occurred in 2003, 2014 and 2019, this study further revealed that the contradictions inherent in the concept and practice of OCTS — aggravated by the rise of political polarisation and radicalisation of Hong Kong society and the deterioration of Sino–U.S. relations — have a close causal relationship with Hong Kong’s political impasse and turbulence. The 2019 movement marked the culmination of the conflicts between the “One Country” and the “Two Systems”, and finally prompted the “One Country” to respond firmly through “combination punches”, or the introduction of the National Security Law and the electoral changes. This dissertation highlights that the “combination punches” help address the internal contradictions of the OCTS model by impacting and reshaping the expectation management of the people of Hong Kong, but it also suggests that both the Chinese government and the Hong Kong society have paid costly in this regard.

The contribution of the analysis of this dissertation is three-fold. First, it enriches the literature on the difficulties of realising the OCTS model in Hong Kong by providing the very first systematic analysis of the principal contradictions inherent in OCTS. Then, it promotes a better understanding of why Hong Kong and Macau have seen different political and legal developments since their reunification with China in 1997 and 1999 respectively, even though they have an almost identical institutional framework under the arrangement of the OCTS model. Finally, it paves the way for future comparative studies on the extent to which the political dynamics of the territorial autonomies within the authoritarian states are different from their counterparts in Western liberal democracies by focusing on the practice of autonomy in China’s Hong Kong.