One country, two systems in practice : an analysis of six cases

The resumption of sovereignty over Hong Kong by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was unique in the decolonization history of the United Kingdom. For the first time a piece of British colony was returned to another sovereign power without becoming an independent country. For the PRC, the resumption of sovereignty was a natural course of event because China had never admitted that Hong Kong was a colony of the United Kingdom. After initial contacts between Britain and China in the late 1970s, Chinese government decided to take back Hong Kong in 1981. In 1982, the fourth constitution since the founding of the PRC promulgated the notion of Special Administrative Region. The principle of “one country, two systems” was devised to solve the issue of sovereignty of Hong Kong in 1997. In recovering Hong Kong, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) encountered a dilemma: on the one hand, it would like to resume sovereignty over Hong Kong; on the other hand, it would like to maintain the status quo as to preserve prosperity and stability of Hong Kong. Hopefully, the “one country, two systems” could solve the problem. Now fours years after the handover, people would ask the question whether the notion of “one country, two systems” has been successfully implemented. In fact, one could even ask; what is actually the principle of “one country，two systems”? Where is the line between “one country” and “two systems”? The paper attempts to answer these questions by exploring six cases that occurred after the handover. The paper starts with a general discussion on the concept, followed by a delineation of six cases and the implications of these cases for “one country, two systems” would be drawn. In fact, some scholars argued that under “one country, two systems” Hong Kong enjoys a higher degree of autonomy than the local/regional governments under Western federal systems. The paper tries to answer the question by referring to Australian and American federal systems

\u27Super paradox\u27 or \u27Leninist integration\u27 : the politics of legislating Article 23 of the Basic Law in post-handover Hong Kong

Liao Zhengzhi, the late director of the Office of Hong Kong and Macau Affairs, once said that, on the resumption of Hong Kong’s sovereignty, Hong Kong needed only to change the flag and British governor after the Handover. While the press was full of doomsday prophecies about Hong Kong s future, there was another camp of \u27super-paradox\u27 theorists who genuinely believed that Hong Kong s status quo would not changed after the Handover, for an authoritarian one PQ1吵-dominated PRC could absorb a free- flowing Hong Kong without changing the nature of an open society. Contrary to doomsday prophets and \u27super-paradox\u27 theorists, this paper argues that, on the one hand, the doomsday prophecy was groundless, but on the other hand, important institutional changes did take place even though barely noticed. It is argued, by using the example of the legislation of Article 23, that a gradual approach has been adopted by the CCP to change the fundamentals of Hong Kong s polity, a strategy that I call \u27Leninist integration’

Equity vs excellence : a preliminary exploration of Hong Kong\u27s education reform

Although Hong Kong \u27s education system has long been criticized as lacking in creativity and putting too much emphasis on rote learning, on the whole it has served Hong Kong well in the past in that it has bred outstanding business, academic and po1itical leaders who maintained the competitive edge of Hong Kong. The traditional elite schools played a most important role in the process. The education reform, which is still on going, aims to overhaul the entire system by introducing the “through-road” model through changing the existing admission mechanism of Primary 1 and Secondary 1 students, combining different bandings and merging two public examinations into one. We argue that, the education reform may be well-intentioned in eliminating the differences between schools but the social consequence of the reform is the decline of academic excellence and a worsening of the brain-drain problem in Hong Kong

Societal stability and political reform : Chinese politics in the 1990s

On 28 September 1995, Jiang Zemin delivered one of the most important speeches in his tenure as the General Secretary of the CCP in the Fifth Plenum of 14th CCP Congress, which is entitled “To Handle Correctly Certain Relationships in the Process of Socialist Modernization Construction”. On the top of the agenda was the relationships between reform, development and stability. To him, reform, in particular economic reform, must be pursued; development is the enhancing of national strength and stability is the pre-condition of development. Indeed, it is the equilibrium of these three sets of relationships that the CCP leadership strove for that shaped the major forces of dynamics of Chinese politics in the 1990s. The leadership’s overriding concern was stability of the regime. Economic reform, with a temporary haul in the early 1990s, was accelerated and culminated in the accession to the WTO, resulting increasing absorption into world economy. Political reform was considered secondary to economic reform and it was perceived to be an inherently destabilizing process and any measures that would cause controversies within the Party were to be shelved. Learning the lessons from the 4 June crackdown, ideological control was exercised unrelentingly and dissidents intellectuals were punished severely. Administrative streamlining was carried out two times in the 1990s. Grass-root democracy was instituted and anti-corruption drives waged but organized opposition was crushed mercilessly. So were the ideological debates within the Party. The result was that China’s economic growth attained admirable figures and it was rapidly becoming a powerful economic house. However, behind the growth phenomena, lies the abject poverty of the peasantry, massive unemployment, labor unrest, frustrated intellectuals and rampant corruption. Among the liberal intellectuals, the consensus was that only a genuine political reform program could alleviate the problems that the Hu Jintao-Wen Jiabao new leadership is encountering. Despite the political reform in several important area, however, China political reform programs have not surpassed the speech on cadre and leadership by Deng Xiaoping in 1980, supposedly the most comprehensive political reform blueprint in the reform era

Public policy on local administration in Hong Kong : past, present and future

This paper attempts to delineate the historical evolution of public policy on local administration (district administration) in Hong Kong. Development since the 1980s will be dealt with, and finally local administration under the Special Administrative Region (SAR) after 1997 will be envisaged. However, in contradistinction to the current usage of the term, I shall use “local administration” in a broader sense, including not only administration at the distinct level but also at the central level. As Hong Kong is a small city, the representative structures of the local administration is closely linked with the system in the central level

Restructuring the party/state relations : China\u27s political structural reform in the 1980s

This paper deals with the political structural reform policies introduced or initiated by the reformists within the CCP starting in the late 1970s until the 4 June brutal crackdown in 1989. I shall discuss, first, the evolution of the notion of political structural reform in the first half of the 1980s. Second, I shall delineate the substance of the political reform policies and the implications of these policies. Third, the limitations of these reform measures will be analysed. The reform measures will be categorized into five areas that will become the focus of my study: a) democratizing the Party/state apparatus and political process; b) arranging for smooth succession; c) streamlining the Party/state bureaucracy; d) strengthening the NPC; e) liberalizing intellectual life

The political development of China, Taiwan and Hong Kong since the late 1970s : problems and prospects

This paper attempts to sketch in outline the key political development in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong over the last ten years or so, and to probe into the inner dynamics behind these changes and, finally, to discuss their future direction