On Hong Kong and the Strategy of Justice

I've always felt that my life is often tangent to Hong Kong.  Many of my friends are Hong Kongers or have something to do with Hong Kong.  Some are doing the difficult work of Christian ministry in the city.  I go to a church that is predominately Cantonese-speaking, with some folks making regular pilgrimages back to Hong Kong.  Yet, I've only been there twice.  The first was for a family vacation, but that was a very short visit; the second was a (very invigorating) conference on Christianity in China that was co-hosted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Ming Hua. As it is with great cities like New York, Taipei, San Francisco, etc., the best parts of the city are not the touristy parts, but the details and the nooks.  The hole-in-the-wall joints. The unknown thousand-year-egg with congee joint.  The roast pork place. 

That being said, I will always be looking at Hong Kong from the outside.  Originally, I had a reflection on the Umbrella Revolution and some theological tangents, but I think the better suggestion would be to purchase this book when the publisher next has its $10 per book sale. You could, of course, purchase it in all of its $100+ glory or visit your local university library. But in all seriousness, my previous reflection focused on what it means if we say "I stand with Hong Kong." Hong Kong, in my estimation, found itself at the crossroads surrounding the Umbrella Revolution and the withdrawn Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Legislation (Amendment) Bill (hereafter, "Extradition Law") because the unfettered, free-market paradise that had even Milton Friedman extolling Hong Kong as a model for how great free markets and minimal government intervention can work has run into an impasse. Indeed, for a long time, examples such as the other Asian tigers, notably Singapore, demonstrate that free markets can coexist with extensive and heavy-handed government intervention in social affairs. So "I stand with Hong Kong" is really a befuddling call for resistance if that resistance does not include a searing critique of market/political fundamentalisms that contribute to why Hong Kong is where it is today.

There is no way that, after the Extradition Law, mainland China will sit back and let things sit as they are. Any assumption of that is naive to the extreme, especially since we live in a political environment in which interventionism of all sorts of intelligences are popular.  Indeed, as I see it, the Extradition Law was Hong Kong's last chance to demonstrate to China that it can accede to its demands without Beijing's intervention. The Law itself, to be sure, was poorly written and, upon its publicization, poorly strategized. (Maybe because poorly written laws are exceedingly difficult to sell well.) The inclusion of extraditing to mainland China should've been flagged by officials as being too controversial by Hong Kong authorities to their Chinese overseers and a compromise mechanism established so that only mainland Chinese citizens who are accused of certain crimes that are criminal in Hong Kong could be extradited. (e.g. homicide suspects cannot find refuge in Hong Kong) Or, at least, that should be the starting point of negotiations. The lack of courage or the inability to reason with Beijing on this matter demonstrates the inability of the Hong Kong government to provide any form of effective leadership. Not that it matters for China. In my view, the withdrawal of the Extradition Law was China's sacrificing of the Rook to position its Queen to checkmate the opponent.  And that checkmate came with the Beijing government's recent security legislation for Hong Kong, which will all but become law and enforced in the coming months.

And I do say checkmate because, in my view, the most effective resistance - the moment the people and activists could've made a historic difference - was in the lead-up to the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration. Hong Kong was never a democratically-led colony or administrative region. Its Legislative Council (LegCo) was always dominated by business interests. The moment to introduce legitimate democracy should have been pursued by activists and democrats.  However, the 1980s was when postcolonial thought began entering public currency.  The British Empire was crumbling; in the two decades prior, Malaysia and Singapore had declared their independence. Edward Said's Orientalism was published in 1978, and Gayatri Spivak's essay, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" in 1983. Thus, anti-colonial sentiment was high. After the handover in 1997, seeing as China did not immediately impose hard-handed policies on Hong Kong, many Hong Kongers identified as Chinese.  All this to say, to pursue democracy would've been a niche cause for justice. Why would the pursuit of democracy be necessary in 1997 when British non-democracy helped it prosper, and when Chinese non-democracy promised to continue its flourishing? The argument that we haven't tried democracy could only go so far.

Looking back, of course, the view is different. In my unstudied estimation, any collective resistance now, not to mention independence, would be costly only for Hong Kong. In 1997, Hong Kong's GDP was more than 25% of China's overall GDP.  In the United States, that would be equivalent to the importance of California, Texas, and New York together.  Thus, China had every economic incentive not to make any changes. Any local resistance can hurt the motherland. But now, the SAR only makes up 2% of the overall GDP. Hong Kong's value to China, GDP-wise, is the same as Colorado's to the United States. Localized resistances would only hurt the local economy. As far as authentic democracy and the preservation of the freedoms of speech and press are concerned, the reality is that those rights now have a shelf life in Hong Kong. The United States' changing of the trading relationship between itself and the SAR is only but a recognition of the small stage Hong Kong operates on the economic scene. Even the UK, made even more irrelevant on the world stage thanks to its withdrawal from the EU, can only shout from the bleachers as China moves the goalposts of the Sino-British Joint Declaration. That is, if it could even shout. Even now the UK, turned inward by its nativist sentiments, is preoccupied with Dominic Cummings' brazen flouting of the nation's stay-at-home order. And for Hong Kongers looking to the United States for any help, the Quixotic Valedictator is fuming at Twitter for fact-checking his tweets while his Evangelical followers - many of whom are conservative Asian Americans - kiss the hoofs of this American Orange Calf. Hope must confront reality - Hong Kong's King, with its global Queen and Knight allies cornered far away on the chess board, cannot survive an opponent who has only lost a Rook.

This, I think, has an important lesson for us, namely, that the pursuit of freedom and justice must be a long-term strategy. How might justice strategy work in 1982? How might workers of justice foresee what may come? My view is that this is where the humanities prove important. Not to say that humanities scholars are soothsayers, but that the humanities are the spheres of human wisdom. Wisdom is an unappreciated virtue. Wisdom is what makes the difference between a lucky investor who struck gold by investing on a whim in Apple back in 1997, and a good investor who could see its value.  Wisdom is what prevents overexuberance and disciplines the individual to analyze matters and issues perspicaciously and honestly, as much as that is possible. Wisdom is what could have cautioned democrats in 1982 that without any democratic structures in place and set in stone, the welfare of the Hong Kong people could only become pawns in a geopolitical battle. History - and historians are, in my experience, the best storytellers - provides us with the wisdom of human experience - that transfers of colonial power have not guaranteed greater freedoms for people. Even in Malaysia and Singapore, arcane punishments such as caning were not local inventions but introduced by the British colonial masters. These should have been important markers, but in the interests of moving past Hong Kong's British-colonial past towards a sunny-looking Chinese-colonial future, these markers were largely ignored. And by the time it became clear that greater democracy and the respect of basic freedoms were not guaranteed by the mainland Chinese government, Hong Kong's pro-Beijing dominated LegCo and its undemocratic, British-established political system and corporate interests who prized economic stability above freedoms of speech and press, stood ill-positioned to provide any remedy.

But more importantly, the pursuit of freedom and justice requires strategy if it aims to have any relevance. A lot of initiatives to increase freedom and justice today is reactionary, a reaction to its rolling back by government officials. But if so, these reactionary pursuits do not change the system that gave birth to forces calling for freedom's rollback. Consider, for instance, how one might address the problem of Black incarceration in the United States. One law or one sympathetic lawmaker will not change the system. To truly address the problem requires revising standard operating procedures and training regimens of law enforcement forces throughout the US, followed by revisioning a humane justice system that punishes justly, fairly, and proportionally for the crime committed and not by factors such as race. Many other changes are needed, but just those two necessary changes would take decades of concerted effort by lawmakers and citizens. To move the problem of racially-biased incarceration in the US in more just direction requires extensive and long-term strategy by activists who must constantly ask important questions that determine their work. How can we continually mobilize voters to take this seriously? How can we maintain our contacts in local, state, and federal government so that they can keep the resolution of this issue from being ignored? What are some strategies other movements have taken? Whom do we call so that we can muster the funds necessary to communicate messages on the issue to the public? How do we pay staff enough for the hard work that they will do? All these questions and more require wisdom and other virtues that are not demanded if justice movements were merely reactionary. 

In short, defensive responses to injustices may be necessary on a short-term basis, but to deal with structural injustice, long-term strategies are necessary so that a constructive alternative can capture the minds and hearts of the people.  In the meantime, I lament that Hong Kong's days as a bastion of liberal values is numbered.  Voices of conscience and freedom in the land of the fragrant harbor may find new outlets in places like Singapore, Taiwan, or maybe the United States, but the fact that native Hong Kongers will soon be unable to responsibly call for greater freedom on their own land without negative consequences will mean that the spirit of Hong Kong will only persist in exile.