ALC Seminar: Tolerance and Rights in Asia Hong Kong and Taiwan

• Report rights infringement
• published: 10 Dec 2015
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SEMINAR: TOLERANCE AND RIGHTS IN ASIA: HONG KONG AND TAIWAN 17 August 2015 Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne Presented by Mr Antony Dapiran, Partner, Davis Polk & Wardwell, Hong Kong and Professor Jiunn-rong Yeh, Chair Professor, National Taiwan University, Taiwan ** The “Umbrella Revolution” of 2014 brought Hong Kong to the attention of the world after police officers fired teargas into crowds of umbrella-wielding anti-government protesters, spurring mass demonstrations and a 79-day “occupation” of the heart of the city. While the Umbrella Revolution protests were the largest Hong Kong has seen, they were not unique, forming just the latest chapter in a long tradition of political protest. This presentation will explore the history and background to the culture of protest in Hong Kong as an important means of political expression, and assess the prognosis for rights in Hong Kong as we approach the twentieth anniversary of the “handover” to Chinese sovereignty in 2017. Antony Dapiran is a partner of international law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell, based in Hong Kong. His practice focuses on securities offerings and cross-border mergers and acquisitions. Antony has advised on many of the largest and most complex initial public offerings in the China market, on transactions raising in aggregate more than US$70 billion, including the IPO of Agricultural Bank of China, the largest ever Hong Kong IPO. Educated at the University of Melbourne and Peking University, Antony is admitted as a legal practitioner in Hong Kong, New South Wales and England & Wales. Antony has been resident in Beijing and Hong Kong for twenty years, and is fluent in Mandarin Chinese. Antony is currently working on a Penguin Special about the history of protest in Hong Kong, to be published by Penguin Books Australia. ** In the context of democratic transitional constitutionalism, institutional changes often go in tandem with rights recognition, in the forms of unconventional judicial rulings, interim quasi-constitutional statutory or political solutions to facilitate transformation. In the context of democratisation in Taiwan, vibrant and resilient civil engagements have been the primary driver for institutional change and rights recognition. With the recent influx of new immigrants from China and Southeast Asia, the existing demography of aborigines/Han, Mainlanders/Taiwanese and their divides, aided by the weak formation of “we the people”, have intensified the engagement of a dialectic rights movement with democratic tolerance: articulating identity and differences on the one hand and belonging and marginality on the other. Professor Jiunn-Rong Yeh holds a distinguished University Chair at National Taiwan University, where he specialises in Environmental Law, Constitutional Law and Administrative Law. Professor Yeh has published in English and Chinese in leading journals and published collections, including both the Routledge and Oxford Handbooks of Comparative Constitutional Law. His recent edited book includes Asian Courts in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Professor Yeh has held invited positions in leading international law schools including Columbia, Toronto, Harvard and leading Chinese schools in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Professor Yeh has had considerable practical experience in government, including ministerial positions for government reform and sustainable development. ** 185 Pelham Street, Carlton, Victoria, Australia INFO: law-alc@unimelb.edu.au