Painter Stone
Ja-Ian Chong, a professor in political science from the National University of Singapore, came to campus Wed. to speak about the pro-democratic protest in Hong Kong.
Chong’s talk covered most of Hong Kong’s recent political turmoil as well as established context on to how Hong Kong finally bubbled over into protest.
“There is a feeling in Hong Kong … people are identifying less and less with being Chinese,” Chong said. “This has impact because being Chinese has many layers of meaning. When they say that they don’t feel Chinese… my suspicion is not that they don’t feel ethnically or culturally Chinese, but they feel that they are second class citizens in the Chinese political system.”
The tension as to Hong Kong’s ownership started from the city being originally a British colony. When Britain released Hong Kong, they added sanctions to make sure their business investments in the region were safe.
These were laid out in the Sino British joint declaration, which promised Hong Kong’s return to China in 2047. Beijing (China’s capital) in preparation for Hong Kong’s integration back into the country put out what is called the ‘basic law’.
“The Basic Law, in essence, is the fusion of [China and Hong Kong],… and it sets up the principles and functions of the government which is distinct from other Chinese territories,” said Chong.
“Something to note about the basic law, is that it was drafted by Beijing…Judicially its working under the people’s congress, which is Beijing’s legislature… It had members from Hong Kong and China that were selected to participate.”
The basic law also had certain promises that the Chinese government made to the people of Hong Kong. One of these was to preserve the colonial government of Hong Kong.
“… in Article 22 [of the basic law] the article lays out the fact that there are government departments, that cannot intervene in Hong Kong, without explicit permission granted by the state council,” Chong said.
The people of Hong Kong saw an extradition bill passed in response to a man who murdered his girlfriend on a vacation in Taiwan and left her body in a suitcase before returning to China.
“Now, there is no extradition agreement between Taiwan and Hong Kong because China doesn’t recognize the legitimacy of Taiwan, … meaning Hong Kong also doesn’t recognize Taiwan… so getting this guy to Taiwan to face charges trail had been a mission,” Chong said. “So what happened was the extradition administration said ‘okay well to solve this problem, what we will do is that we will amend your extradition law and then we can extradite this guy to Taiwan, but at the same time people outside of Hong Kong could extradite people to wherever it is, including mainland China.”
This was a problem as the bill made Hong Kong citizens fear for their safety. The protest is constantly developing, with breaking news coming in more and more everyday with updates on the protest and the law in Hong Kong.
