A SPECIAL POST-OCCUPY ELECTION … With Not-So-Special Results
The post-Occupy sequence did not hold. That sequence linked Hong Kong voters with the pro-democracy activists who shut down major Hong Kong thoroughfares for over two months in a show of political defiance against Beijing. The grievance then, in 2014, was the central...
read moreTHE LATEST BLOW: Candidate Certification
Since 1997 when Hong Kong's new Basic Law mini-constitution went into effect, Chapter III on Fundamental Rights and Duties has held out the promise that permanent residents "shall have the right to vote and the right to stand for election" (Article 26). Also since...
read moreON THE FRONT LINE: Hong Kong Judges Do a Re-Think
The question will no doubt remain forever unanswered, but it should be asked all the same. If Hong Kong's 2014 Umbrella-Occupy democracy movement had not registered so great an impact, and the protest over re-sentencing three young leaders had not reverberated both...
read moreTHE DISQUALIFICATION OF AGNES CHOW … and Edward Yiu’s Reprieve
The special by-election to replace four of six empty seats in Hong Kong's Legislative Council (LegCo) is scheduled for March 11. But unless the government does a speedy rethink, one name will not be on the candidate lists. Agnes Chow Ting was the choice of all the...
read moreSTRAW POLLING: Another Unexpected Outcome
As the blows continued to rain down throughout 2017 … from Beijing, the Hong Kong government, and the local courts … democrats and sympathizers worried openly that their movement might not be able to survive with its energy and integrity intact. They worried that the...
read more2018: ANOTHER YEAR, ANOTHER DEFIANT START
By the end of 2017, the political themes here were all doom and gloom (Dec. 28, 2017 post). Democracy movement activists worried that they and the wider concerned public would not be able to absorb the accumulated blows suffered during the past year and survive with...
read more2017: PESSIMISM WINS
Further on that favorite question everyone was asking last July when Hong Kong was celebrating the 20th anniversary of its return to Chinese rule: the question was whether people should be optimistic or pessimistic about the future and what the next 20 years might...
read moreDRIVING THE MESSAGE HOME: Political Study for All
The political scene in Hong Kong today, following President Xi’s 19th party congress confirmation of Beijing’s cross-border intentions, is reminiscent of events soon after the first big anti-Beijing protest march on July 1, 2003. That was when half-a-million people...
read moreAT HIGH SPEED: ANOTHER ROUTE ACROSS THE HONG KONG-MAINLAND DIVIDE
Everyone else saw the 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), held in Beijing last month, as the culmination of Xi Jinping’s rise to power. By reason of the posts he holds and the dominate position he occupies, as President of the People’s Republic and...
read moreHONG KONG’S FUTURE IN THE WORDS OF XI JINPING
China’s leaders have had a lot to say in recent months about Hong Kong: what they like and what they don’t, and what they want to do about it. The most authoritative version of the Hong Kong problem as Beijing sees it comes from the number one leader himself. Xi...
read moreINTRODUCING A NEW CHIEF EXECUTIVE
Hong Kong now has a new Chief Executive, duly selected last March and formally sworn into office by Chinese President Xi Jinping on July First. Having served her first 100 days in office, she delivered her first formal speech to the Legislative Council on October 11....
read morePATRIOTISM vs FREE SPEECH
The incumbent American and Chinese presidents have a lot in common. Maybe that’s why they seemed to hit it off so well at their first meeting earlier this year. Both want more than anything else to make their countries great again. President Xi Jinping is evoking...
read moreMACAU UPDATE: A Different Kind of Role Model
For Hong Kong democrats, the news from the other side of the Pearl River Estuary has provided a modest morale-booster. With six pro-democracy legislators already disqualified in the oath-taking saga, several others awaiting the same fate, 16 political activists...
read moreTHE RETROSPECTIVITY TRAP
The title is confusing. Better to call it “the mainland-ization of a common-law principle.” The subject deserves that title because it refers to the unusual legal process whereby six newly-elected members of Hong Kong’s legislature have been disqualified from office...
read moreHONG KONG’S FIRST POLITICAL PRISONERS?
Officials and legal authorities both here and in Beijing have taken great exception to the international condemnation of a high court ruling on August 17 that sent three young activists to prison. The three are Joshua Wong- Chi-fung, Nathan Law Kwun-chung, and Alex...
read moreNEITHER OPTIMISTIC NOR PESSIMISTIC
A favorite question during the July 1, 2017 holiday celebrations here last month was whether people were optimistic or pessimistic about Hong Kong’s future. It was also a favorite question 20 years ago, ahead of Hong Kong’s July 1, 1997 return to Chinese rule. If...
read moreAN INDEPENDENT JUDICIARY MASTERS ITS BASIC LAW LESSONS
Hong Kong’s oath-taking saga has been on-going since October 12, 2016. As a result of what happened that day, six-newly elected Legislative Councilors have been disqualified and expelled from the council. At least two others are seriously at risk. Seven others...
read moreA 20th ANNIVERSARY … for Better and for Worse
Like beauty in the eye of the beholder, judging the pros and cons of Hong Kong’s fate during the past 20 years since British colonial rule ended depends on prior expectations and present perspectives. If the perspective is official, whether Chinese, British, or...
read moreHONG KONG AND MACAU: A Tale of Two Ex-Colonial Cities
(Originally published by the Japan Policy Research Institute as JPRI Occasional Paper No. 54, June 2017: http://jpri.org/publications/occasionalpapers/op54.html ) In early May this year, Zhang Dejiang spent three days visiting the former...
read moreJUNE FOURTH: A Message from Hong Kong to Beijing
Posted: June 8, 2017 Observers and onlookers keep asking if Hong Kong’s democracy movement is now in a state of terminal decline. They wonder how anything so diverse and fragmented can withstand the official barrage being laid down by the central and...
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