When Michael C. Davis published Making Hong Kong China: The Rollback of Human Rights and the Rule of Law for our Asia Shorts series in late 2020, the city teetered on the precipice of an uncertain future. Months earlier, the government in Beijing had implemented a crushing National Security Law (NSL) designed to quell dissent and punish those who fought for the preservation of freedoms in Hong Kong. Still, it seemed possible that the vibrant local activist community would continue to defy the Chinese Party-state’s attempts to silence it; Hong Kong had never acceded to Beijing’s control without a fight.
Three years later, Davis has followed up his earlier volume with Freedom Undone: The Assault on Liberal Values and Institutions in Hong Kong, which presents a darker picture of Hong Kong under Party-state control. The NSL is now fully implemented, resulting in the repression of media, political organizations, academia, and more. Activists face the choice of risking imprisonment or leaving behind their homes to fight for Hong Kong from afar. The protests that filled city streets with more than a million participants during the summer of 2019 are historical events, unlikely to be repeated.
In Freedom Undone, Davis provides readers with “an in-depth account of the constitutional journey that both created and repressed this incredible city.” Beginning with 1984’s Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law that followed, Davis lays out the forty-year story of increasing intervention in Hong Kong by the Chinese Party-state. In this, he sees lessons not just for those who live in Hong Kong, or under Chinese rule elsewhere. Rather, Davis warns that Beijing’s penetration of Hong Kong could serve as a model for other autocracies seeking to erode the activities of liberal institutions, even while maintaining their outward structures.
Learn more about the book in my Q&A with Davis below, and register now to join Michael C. Davis, Angelina Chin, Ho-fung Hung, Thomas Kellogg, and myself on Wednesday, February 7 at 7:00pm Eastern Time for the Freedom Undone online book launch.
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham (MEC): Michael, what led you to realize that Making Hong Kong China needed a follow-up? How has your own thinking about the city and its relationship with Beijing changed since finishing that book in 2020?
Michael C. Davis (MCD): The 2020 book was mostly about Hong Kong’s early experience with Chinese rule and the possible implications of the then fresh imposition of a national security law. The central concern at that stage was to predict to what extent human rights and basic freedoms could survive the heavy-handed imposition reflected in the law’s text. Since that publication the city has undergone a total transformation. I use some background material from the first book in Freedom Undone to provide the reader with a comprehensive analysis under one cover. Three years on Hong Kong people find that their worst fears from the city’s handover to China are being realized. It is no longer just a human rights question, but rather a matter of total transformation from a place with a liberal constitutional order, embodied in the Basic Law, to effectively a national security state. While the skeleton of the promised liberal constitutional order remains, the institutional architecture of separation of powers, checks and balances, the rule of law, and public accountability, as sustains an open society, has been hollowed out. A PRC version of national security that touches every aspect of public life, the media, education, political organization, the internet, the courts, public protests, and speech has been imposed. Freedom has literally and comprehensively been undone.
MEC: You state in Freedom Undone that “the intrusion of the NSL is not so much a new behavior as it is a progression of a long pattern of increased intervention and distrust that dates to the handover and before.” To what extent has the Party-state shown a willingness to alter or temper that pattern according to conditions in Hong Kong? What are some of the missed opportunities or pivotal moments that you see when the outcome could have been different?
MCD: The sad truth is that there were many opportunities to listen to popular concerns in Hong Kong and change course. Establishment elites might have better represented these concerns and helped ease Beijing’s hardline approach. But this easing was not promoted, either by the city’s establishment political elite nor by Beijing officials. Early on among the post-handover opportunities for a change of course were the 2003 Article 23 proposals for national security legislation put forward by the Hong Kong Government. In the face of massive protest, officials might have approached the required local enactment of such national security legislation as an opportunity to reform the city’s somewhat draconian colonial laws relating to national security. Local officials could have pushed back against Beijing anxieties and offered reform legislation consistent with the human rights guarantees in the Basic Law and the ICCPR [International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights]. Failure to do so resulted in massive protests and launched a cycle of repressive official imposition followed by popular protests that would continue in the years to come. A similar pattern was evident in the 2012 effort to impose patriotic education, an effort that would have undermined the city’s liberal education system. This pattern was evident again in the 2014 repressive restrictions on democratic reform met by the “Umbrella Movement” protests, and again in the 2019 attempted effort to enact an extradition bill, which led to the largest protest ever. It should have become apparent that a more people-sensitive approach to governance would have obviated this cycle.
MEC: In the years since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, what has his attitude been toward Hong Kong? Do you see Xi as having played a central role in how the situation has turned out, or has he simply continued along a path that was already laid for him?
MCD: Both have been evident. Xi Jinping continued the pattern of distrust and repressive policies toward Hong Kong’s liberal order, but at the same time raised such policies to a whole new level. The Beijing-imposed national security law, patriots-only elections, and ongoing national security expansion under Article 23 proposals appear to come from Xi’s growing paranoia over liberal values as a threat to CCP rule. The mainland has national security policies that purport to address all aspects of life in China. The imposed national security law imports this to Hong Kong. Liberal ideas and institutions are viewed as an existential threat and Hong Kong, with its previous liberal order, was viewed as a western beachhead of such values. That these values were widely shared in Hong Kong and guaranteed in the Basic Law is not respected.
MEC: I’m interested in any generational changes you’ve noticed as a longtime Hong Kong resident and participant-observer in its political scene. Do you see a marked transition in how older figures like Martin Lee and Anson Chan approached the Chinese Party-state, versus younger activists like Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow?
MCD: The older generation believed in the justice of their cause and were committed to promoting liberal democratic values and the rule of law through non-violent strategies. This was a hopeful view. The next generation of democracy leaders, as reflected in the Umbrella Movement, led by such youthful activist as Joshua Wong, Nathan Law, and Agnes Chow, largely continued this non-violent tradition but with the added use of civil disobedience as a strategy. It was only in the 2019 anti-extradition and democracy protest that the level of youthful frustration produced some violence on the margins. But even those youthful protesters continued to demand compliance with Basic Law commitments and democratic accountability, with added specific demands regarding police behavior. In this sense the generations had shared commitments but growing frustration regarding effective strategies and objectives. That frustrations produced a deep sense of having been betrayed by Beijing and Hong Kong elites, but also some fractures within the democracy movement, as protest groups searched for effective strategies to secure Hong Kong’s way of life.
MEC: On page 111, you ask a question that stopped me in my tracks: “Is writing or publishing this book a crime?” This is a sobering idea for any academic to contemplate. How has the NSL changed your attitude toward legal scholarship?
MCD: The problem both legal and social science scholars face is that the NSL seems to mean whatever the government wants it to mean, with the government consistently advancing Beijing’s expansive view. The vague provisions do not tell us what is prohibited and what is permitted. From the track record of prosecutions and all the efforts to regulate national security on university campuses any critical scholarship or media interviews addressing these national security issues, or criticizing the government’s national security policies places the scholar at risk. This has largely meant that the historically vibrant scholarly community in Hong Kong has largely gone silent. With 13 warrants and bounties issued on youthful critics abroad, any former Hong Kong scholar of law and politics abroad who may feel ethically bound to speak up for Hong Kong proceeds at his or her own risk. Critical scholarship has become a form of activism, in the language of human rights, of speaking truth to power.
MEC: In addition to the AAS book launch on February 7, what other events do you have planned where readers can hear you speak about Freedom Undone?
MCD: Freedom Undone book tour schedule:
UK book tour
Feb 12, 5:30 to 6:30pm, UK Parliament, Palace of Westminster, in-person book talk; register now
Feb 14, 5pm, Oxford University China Centre, in-person book talk
Feb 16, 1:00-2:00pm, City University of London, in-person book talk:
Feb 16, 6:30 to 8:30pm, Amnesty International, in-person or online attendance; register now
Feb 17, 3:30 to 4:30pm, Book talk hosted by Hong Kong exile community group Gathering Leaves, Belsize Community Library.
US book tour
Feb 22, 4:30pm, University of Pennsylvania, Center for the Study of Contemporary China
March 19, 12:00pm, Columbia University Weatherhead East Asian Institute, in-person or online; register now
This is an early schedule, with more events to be added later.
MEC: Thanks so much for your time, Michael, and congratulations on your second book as an AAS Publications author!