 connection is how Beijing perfected repression with our old friend Michael Davis. Michael, I feel bad, you know, because I never give you a full introduction. Let's try that now. I remember Jindal University, and I remember you're in a couple of think tanks and you're teaching Hither and Jan. Can you give us a short praise, you know, of all the things you do so that people will know, or if they knew, then they will be reminded? Well, after Hawaii, I was a lawyer in Hawaii long long ago for Native Hawaiian legal corporation. I want to mention that just to shout out for Native Hawaiian legal issues. But when I spent nearly 30, well over 30 years in Hong Kong, I was first of Chinese University, then the University of Hong Kong. And in all that, as a human rights professor, it became somewhat of a public intellectual. So I did a lot of things in the public space. And so when I left Hong Kong a few years ago, first to take up a fellowship at the National Endowment for Democracy, and then later at the Wilson Center, I carried on with a lot of that work. And so I've written a book recently on Hong Kong's political crisis going all the way back to the handover, many of the years when I was there, called Making Hong Kong China the Rollback of Human Rights and the Rule of Law. And I continue as a public intellectual over here. It seems that the local academics and others who might speak up are quite pretty much silenced by the repressive policies going on in Hong Kong. And so the journalists who many of them who were my former students call me all the time and I continue to speak out on issues in Hong Kong and around the world. We recently formed a NGO to try to promote Hong Kong calls called the Campaign for Hong Kong. I'm on advisory board for that. And so yeah, I carry on trying to contribute to a society that I lived in for most of my working life as a professor. So now I'm a global fellow with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington and an affiliate scholar at the Weatherhead East Asia Institute at Columbia University. And I teach in India every spring, this year not because of COVID, but generally I'd be there now. And that's at the Jindal Global University, which is a university we build, a private nonprofit university is now the number one private university in India. And it's really an impressive place. You can Google that and see what they do. It's the Jindal Global University. So let's trip off, let's trip off your article, which was really along the lines of the title of our show, How Beijing Perfected Repression. Can you summarize the article that you have? It's only a few months to go. It's just coming out now, I think. Well, it came out in January. And in that article, I basically addressed what's happened under the National Security Law, which is a law of China imposed on Hong Kong in mid-2020 after the protest over China's failure to implement its promised democracy in 2019. And there were protests over an extradition bill that sort of got it started, but it sort of morphed as the government eventually withdrew that bill, morphed into a protest to demand the promised democratic reform. And it got, you know, I think the young protesters who were at the heart of that were frustrated over years of moderate sort of nonviolent marching and so on. Some of them got a little bit out of hand, but in some ways, their actions were a response to the aggressive approach the police took in 2019 to repressing the protests. And everyone sort of understands that Beijing was sort of behind the scenes. It was a debate in 2019, some of you may recall, whether China would send in the People's Liberation Army to call an end to the protest in Hong Kong. And frankly, they didn't have to. Rather, it seems that the Hong Kong police were up to it. And so they were very aggressive in that every night on the news, Hong Kong people were watching this. And these young people were watching it. And so they engaged in protest. Eventually, over 10,000 of them were arrested. 2,500 to 3,000 somewhere in there have been prosecuted. They're sent to jail. These young people often for harsh sentences or just, you know, public protests, they police use tactics and the prosecutors use tactics to charge them with rioting. So in this article, I'm outlining how all this kind of crackdown is going on. But then China wasn't satisfied with just that national security, excuse me, with those, you know, arrest and prosecutions. But don't forget the people who got beat up and some of them got shot and killed. Yeah, it is a very rough situation. And it is true that protesters sometimes got out of hand throwing rocks and things like that. But it's sort of what happens if the police get out of hand, typically protesters get out of hand. And it sort of goes both ways. And this national security law just takes it to a whole new plateau. It essentially brings an end to the liberal constitutional system in Hong Kong. Virtually all the opposition punk political figures have been arrested. At one point, there was a, the opposition tried to have a primary election so that they could choose the best candidates to run and then promised legislative council election. Eventually, let's go election was canceled and delayed for a year so that Beijing could rig it. But these 47 people are 53 actually were arrested. The 47 are being prosecuted. And under this national security law, there's a presumption against bail. So all of them have been in jail for over a year. These are the ordinary folks that were kind of the most popular political figures in Hong Kong before the crackdown. So they're, you know, they're, they're crime and many meant most of them weren't involved even in these protests. Or if they were, they were preaching nonviolence or trying to encourage nonviolence, which has been a mantra for all of them for many years. So, so they've all been arrested. They're languishing in jail. The publisher of the leading opposition newspaper was arrested. He's been in jail, I think a year and a half now. None of them have been put to trial. It's the national security law outlaws subversion and, and terrorism, I guess I'm trying to think it has a, oh yeah, collusion with foreign forces. My brain wasn't working too well a moment ago. But that means talking to anybody overseas. But yeah, as much as you cannot express in Hong Kong, you can't talk to other people about it. And so if you do something like, I mean, I've done the long way away applies worldwide to anybody, not just Hong Kong people. So advocating that the, you know, the sanctions be put on China or Hong Kong would be a defense under this law. Certainly, I've testified in Congress a couple of times. That's probably not something they would want to happen. And the law is so vague that no one really knows what's, what's allowed and what is not. And so they've largely silenced the society and in this article in the Journal of Democracy, I outline all of this that NGOs that were on the pro-democracy human rights side have all folded. They basically, what happens is an article comes out in one of the pro-Beijing newspapers attacking them. The Beijing owns two prominent Communist Party newspapers called the Da Gong Bao and the One Way Bao. And those, those papers, if you see an article about you in it, then you better look out the police. Then it's like a signal to the local police and they set up a special unit of police on national security, like a secret police. And they also established an office for safeguarding national security where they bring the mainland public security people down to Hong Kong. Now they have a big office and lots of people too. So there's a secret police behind the scenes watching anybody who might voice opposition. It's terrifying. It's terrifying because the national security law also allows them to take you to the mainland and retrain you and put you in a disappearing act somewhere that nobody knows where you are for years. You tried on the mainland and when the publisher I mentioned, Jimmy Lai was arrested, first he was given bail right before Christmas and then the court of appeals overturned the bail and then went to the court of final appeal. Well, the People's Daily then published an article kind of suggesting that if the court of final appeal allowed him bail, then they might exercise the option to transfer his case to the mainland. Jimmy Lai's biggest sin is that he advocates for democracy. He was originally born on the mainland, came over as a young kid virtually, working in factories. No formal education much, but he trained himself. He speaks English. He eventually published a newspaper. He's gone around the world and talked about Hong Kong and he refused to leave Hong Kong. He says, well, they're going to put me in jail. I'm just going to go. And so he's kind of a hero for the pro-democracy camp in Hong Kong. But their threat was they call him a dangerous criminal. So what do you have essentially, and this is of relevance in a global debate over democracy versus authoritarianism, is this China model, if you want to call it that, people always wonder what the China model looks like. It essentially hollows out liberal democracy. Any kind of checks and balances, separation of powers are all hollowed out. So what they did then is they revised the law regarding the Legislative Council's election so that only patriots could run in the election. And they're very thorough about it. The basic law committee is only allowed to have patriots. Then they set up a vetting committee to vet everybody, and then the police will investigate you. So if you declare you're going to run for office, you're subjecting yourself to a police investigation. You could even wind up getting prosecuted if their investigation turns up something they don't like. And so all the pan-democratic camp did not participate in that election that eventually took place. And so they expanded the size of the Legislative Council from 70 to 90, but they shrunk the number of directly elected seats from 35 to 20. And then they vet everybody so the only pro-Beijing candidates run. Someone long ago said, Beijing doesn't mind holding elections as long as it knows the outcome ahead of time. So this is the model. And so I mean, I've been trying to understand is this the model when China speaks of its model? It recently published a white paper in the mainland, another one in Hong Kong, in which they described China's democracy as more superior to liberal democracy, that it's a comprehensive people's democracy. And it's a comprehensive people's democracy where the people have no voice and the party decides who can run. So they've essentially established something akin to that. They don't use formally the Communist Party, but then these bodies they set up in Hong Kong, both the committee on national security for safeguarding national security and the office are set up. The office is totally staffed by mainlanders and the committee has a mainland advisor. And you know, everyone knows this advisor tells the committee what to do. So the situation is very powerless. And if anybody wants to see it change, I guess one would like to see it roll back and sort of stop. But it doesn't, there's no. No, no, it was a dynamic here. And you call it perfecting repression, that perfection, the process, the phenomenon of perfection still happening. They get stronger. You know, you and I have been having conversations about Hong Kong for several years already. And if you know, if you went back on Think Tech and looked at the, you know, the talk shows that we did three, four, maybe five years ago, you would see this extraordinary dynamic even before the umbrella movement, the umbrella movement was something that happened after you and I started following this. So what I find interesting, though, is this connection. It's clear now that they're inventing a model of repression. It's clear that they're getting away with it. Nobody is able to stop them. A lot of people have left. It's clear that they support repression in other places. And it's clear too, that what they are doing is a model for other places to follow. And so we have now several autocrats around the world that are, you know, taking the old autocratic lines, using the technologies, using the techniques of perfecting repression, if you will, the China model, the Chinese model, the Beijing model. And we see it's that what you and I have been talking about for several years, I don't think, at least from my point of view, I don't think that was a global discussion back when. It was a discussion about Hong Kong. Now it's global. Oh, yeah. And this is the thing. It's a model to hollow out because you have to understand that there was a time when the Cold War, there were communist countries that within the Beijing, with the Soviet Union, excuse me, within its red area, and there were capitalist countries, some were authoritarian, some were democratic. But the communist countries were talking about communism, and they would establish communist parties and so on. But that was all discredited. And so even the former Soviet Union, now Russia, has basically the structure that looks like a democracy. Putin was elected. But then the institutions, whether it's courts or whatever, are hollowed out. And Beijing doesn't have that. Beijing retained the sort of lead in the structure of a communist party rule. But it doesn't really need to promote communist party rule in countries that it influences, and it wants to have in its camp. Rather, it's working with societies that have a kind, often a kind of populist leader or some soft authoritarianism, where the institutions of the rule of law and checks and balances and elected bodies and so on exist. But you want to make sure you know the outcome ahead of time in order to keep your friends in power there and sort of form the alliances that you want to form. And so those people who are keen to get along with that camp and to be in that camp and the leaders that want to stay in power can work with the kinds of institutions. There were, you know, in Hong Kong becomes a kind of mini-model, more tidy environment where it can all be put in place without much resistance because the resistance comes at jail sentence. So you basically now have that in place. We don't know the long-term consequence to Hong Kong. COVID right now is rampant in Hong Kong, so all of that is sort of on the side in some sense. People are fleeing Hong Kong as much from COVID restrictions because Beijing's model there was sought to be imposed too, a zero, you know, model. So these things are going on simultaneously right now in Hong Kong. Well, you know, these, the phenomena, they echo in other places. I went to a restaurant on Saturday and it was owned by a Turkish person who fled Turkey, who fled Erdogan, felt that Erdogan was repressive. And indeed, he has been repressive and people are fleeing. People are fleeing Russia. People are fleeing Venezuela. They're fleeing repressive regimes, if they can. Some of them can't. They're fleeing Hong Kong for sure. I think we have a kind of an out-migration from these repressive regimes. It's not perfect. Certainly look at the people trying to get out of Ukraine. They can't all do it. What we have is we have the repression. And yes, I think they do follow the China model as far as they can. And then we have people trying to get away from it. We live in a very strange time where all these places have people who are trying to leave. You have propaganda as we have not seen in our lifetimes. What Putin is doing in terms of propaganda. And I suggest to you that she does the same thing. It's propaganda. You can't trust what the government says ever. Right. So yeah, it's what a lot of the initiative outside of China and Russia itself, our countries where populist leaders have taken over. I mean, Duktarte and the Philippines was hollowing out the protections that would be afforded by things like the Human Rights Commission. Basically when he took over, he got his own guy in the Supreme Court of the Philippines. And the Philippines, that's the first move someone authoritarian minded takes is to get rid of the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. So these are the tools and the tactics that are being used. And they exist in our societies as well. I think a lot of the public debate in America today, the polarization on the extreme ends, and in particular on the right seems to have this again, this populist sort of approach. And in India, I just gave a lecture on this very topic in a Coursera course in India. And again, Modi's, there are accusations in the press of some hollowing out. There's some wiggle room on this and we expect societies to sort of go back and forth a bit on it. But what we need to know in most societies where there are these kinds of concerns is how important liberal institutions are. And the lectures I've been giving was on rather democracy to succeed needs to be liberal. It needs to have checks and balances, the rule of law, and all these things. Would you agree with me that although there's a certain wiggle as a sine curve of sorts, it seems like more and more it's going into the autocratic version. And what is interesting, so interesting about our discussion over Hong Kong is that it is an exemplar. Xi and China, Beijing have done a terrific job in closing down the civil liberties and closing down freedom of speech. They've done a magnificent job at propaganda and repression. Like you can watch it happen, and it's frightening. And it's been going on and it's really good. It's a good job. So what I put to you is, if it is a good job, then people elsewhere in the world, autographs elsewhere in the world are going to follow it. And they're going to do the same things. So the big question is, what is in the future for autocracy, repression in Hong Kong, so as to identify what will happen elsewhere also? Yeah, well, like I said, I highlighted in the beginning, we've seen in Hong Kong the hollowing out of the electoral process by allowing only patriots to run. And basically, that means anybody who opposes the government can't run. Is it over? Is it over, Michael? I mean, in many ways, I think Hong Kong is over. Already, they had an election. It's all the whole entire election body now is like the NPC in China. Basically, there's no opposition to the government in the legislative council anymore. The courts have been put under threat. The national security law specifies that the chief executive of Hong Kong will select judges that can hear national security cases. And so judges who don't get in line are out in a way in the most significant cases going on in Hong Kong. There's certainly their career is not going to be very bright. Will it ever come back? Will the sign curve change? Well, it's interesting because in a way, China has put itself in the headlight. In the past, Hong Kong people could push forward the reforms they want and argue and attack the failings that occur. China was in the background exercising influence, but you could imagine a Hong Kong that was an open society as it was. Without China being an open society. But by in effect imposing its own system in a sort of way on Hong Kong, now it's hard to imagine Hong Kong changing unless China changes. I think of Navalny in Russia. So he was a legitimate opposition and running against Vladimir Putin. But Putin used these really dirty tricks to murder him or attempt to murder him, poison him, put him in jail and trumped up nothing charges where he is now probably he's not long for this world. And so what we have is the end of Navalny, the end of legitimate opposition. We have Putin creating a government that does what he says and a people that does what he says, because if you use the wrong lingo, you go to jail for 15 years. And you know, this is reminiscent, isn't it? Isn't it the same thing? And it demonstrates that you can squash representative government. You can squash civil liberties, freedom of speech, legitimate elections. You can do it. And we have two countries, maybe more, two countries that have effectively done it. In the last two, three years maybe. Yeah, well, you know what happens is to do do this successfully, you don't really have to arrest everybody and fill the jails over capacity. You just have to target individuals. And you send the message by that. Recently, the last chairman of the Hong Kong bar fled the city because they attacked him. They called him in to see the police. They reminds us who know China. They have something where they call you the Public Security Bureau calls you in for tea when in fact the former chairman of the bar who had suggested to his credit that that maybe they should revise the national security law to better adhere to the basic law. And so after he stepped down, they called him into the police to talk to him. And he was on a plane that night. He's back in England. This this chairman, it was a British national is a British national. So what does that say if you're a lawyer? Well, I heard from a reporter today that she says when she interviews defense lawyers in cases, they don't want the reporter to mention their names. So what it means is you only have to terrify the former chairman of the bar. And you might be able to bring the lawyers under under control, make them more cautious, make them less likely to to exercise an aggressive defense, or to make them flee the town. There's a number of them I know now in exile. So this is there's even a website now on the Hong Kong rule of law monitor. So this is the kind of thing that happens. And this is the problem. So you don't have to go after everybody. I would say there's one slight silver lining in the last couple weeks that Putin's excesses have seemed to organize the other side better than they've been organized in years. So we have a more united front from the leading democracies to push back and have sanctions against Russia over its behavior. In some ways, it has the message has gone, maybe not the direction Putin wanted it to. It's kind of conveyed, Hey, we better wake up. This is a serious threat. Well, I think it's actually I admire and that's just the wrong word to use. I'm in awe of what she does in order to perfect this repression and what Putin does. I mean, there was a piece in the paper recently about how he's he's in the schools having rallies with, you know, young children six, seven, eight years old. What does that remind you of life in the 30s in Germany? Well, you don't have to go to Germany the 30s. You can go to Hong Kong. The national security law requires that the government sort of train everybody on national security. So they have their teaching national security, they're requiring the schools see all the way down to eight eight year olds to be taught national security and to be taught a very glossy view of China's PRC's history and so on, such that there's been a flight out of Hong Kong of many families who want their children not to be brainwashed. So they're going abroad, they're immigrating. A lot of them can do so under what's called the British national overseas passport, BNO. So they've 97,000 have already moved to Britain. And they're going there in many cases because of education system now that's being taken over by this national security mandate. And the universities are required to teach the national security. And I'm sure it's not the version of national security I used to teach, I'm sure it would have been respected human rights and free speech. And then the courts, again, this one case, the very first case of the national security law, where a guy was charged because he ran his motorcycle into a police car and he was charged with subversion and terrorism. And his subversion matter, all it was is he had a flag on his motorbike that said liberate Hong Kong revolution of our times. And he was eventually sentenced to nine years in prison. But his case, in spite of the fact that Hong Kong under the national security law is supposed to adhere to the international covenant on civil and political rights. And the interpretation of that has long taken the view that in the shadow of national security, free speech must be protected. And speaking in a way that doesn't threaten violence is protected. But this guy is now in jail for nine years and did not mention human rights in the entire judgment. So this is a kind of intimidation that goes on. And well, it seems like there's it's there already. This yeah, as a momentum to it, I'm reminded of a woman in Moscow a couple of weeks ago who walked around with a blank placard blank that was nothing on it at all. They arrested her because they figured that really meant something in protest. They took her away for a blank placard. And I think people shouldn't be confused that I mean usually these countries like China and Russia mix in with it claims about injustice in the world and the capitalist free countries are you know, abusing their power and so on. Yeah, they do abuse their power and there is injustice in the world. There's poverty in the world. But these guys aren't the champions of that. They're not the champions of that cause, even though they use that rhetoric. And so we should, you know, look down on those issues. We should give importance to those issues of international justice. But we don't have to embrace this kind of repression to do so. Oh, and you know, it's I mean, really, I don't know exactly how you feel. But I imagine you feel a an enormous level of frustration and tragedy over what has happened in Hong Kong. You were there. You saw this all evolve. You saw this perfection of repression happening. And you see it now and it is being perfected more every day, sort of in an algorithmic way because it gets worse and worse. The more successful Beijing is, the tougher Beijing is. And at the end of the day, it's completely repressed. And so I'm thinking that this must bother you personally a lot because you were there. You were teaching it was your home for decades and decades. And now this it's like all gone. It's it's like Ukraine, it's all gone. And the question, you know, is how does this affect your observation of these phenomena around the world? It seems to me that you become more interested in these other places to be sure to speak out so that the same thing doesn't happen in other places. Am I right? Well, it is. And when this a few weeks ago when invasion, the war in Ukraine started, we found I found there's someone who's focused a lot on Hong Kong and China and Asia in my work that I was still getting calls from reporters, even though Hong Kong wasn't the lead lead news story at that time, rather was Ukraine. And there was a perception that one is Ukraine going to become a model for Taiwan. That was one big question. And to sort of, you know, what kind of trouble was Xi Jinping? And now if Putin is vilified, does that include him? Does he get included? Was he in his meetings in early February? Was he colluding in some ways or allowing or accepting or agreeing that Putin should go ahead? What he's doing in Ukraine? We don't know the answer to those questions, but a lot of people were asking those questions. My own personal experience with Hong Kong, of course, is personal in the sense that most of my friends that I had when I was there are in jail. And these some people are some of the people I admire most in the world. You can imagine some of the people in Honolulu that you have such high regard for if they were because they stand up maybe for the Native Hawaiian cause or other civil liberties causes. And now suddenly they're accused of being criminals that hauled off to jail and left there for months and months. So this is the kind of way this takes shape. And so there's a lot of speculation. I mean, if Putin had what his way, he was hoping he could march into Kiev and they would, the defense would collapse and then he would put somebody he likes in charge there. And then he to keep that person there, he would have and if he does succeed somewhere down the road, he has to hollow out the institutions of resistance. Otherwise, that won't be successful. Now people will ask me, well, Putin succeed? Well, I don't think he can succeed anymore because even if he conquers the country, he doesn't succeed. Because now he's such a villain in the country. And there's no win for him now. The best win I think he could get it would be to find a way to end it. But that may not route his taking. Well, so assuming for a moment that Hong Kong, that the days of wine and roses that you enjoyed, the days of vitality, the days of international trade and exchange and all the good things in Hong Kong that we all saw when we traveled there a few years ago, those days are pretty much over. And assume also that there are, you know, a number of tyrants who are growing stronger in the world. Maybe it's not forever, but they're growing stronger for now. And the question I put to you is what needs to happen to return us? That is the global community through a time of civil liberties of human rights. What needs to happen to bring us back? Well, I think one of the things as an American, we should be conscious of is our own democracy. Our democracy has suffered a lot. And when I talk about democracy around the world, as I do, I'm often confronted with the question, well, look at your mess. So one thing we can definitely do is get our own house in order. And I think that involves, it's complicated, because like you and everyone else, I'm sure we all have arguments with friends or relatives that have pretty strange views they pick up in social media and so on. And most people are thinking with their gut and not their brain. So we need to teach our young people to think and understand the institutions that we have, how they work and how to use them. And so they won't be so easily led down a primrose path. So that's a lot of work we have to do at home. And it never ends. Democracy's, Mal had one idea that was right, a continuous revolution. Well, democracies are a continuous revolution that you have to constantly be engaged. So that's something we do. And then if we understand the institutions, and I've tried to write, I've written articles in other articles in the Journal of Democracy on how social movements can be successful. And that involves, when you're involved in a social movement in your country, and us as outside observers or supporters, is to understand these fundamentals and make sure that they're understood by our compatriots who are with us in the social movement. As outsiders, we can be supportive of that effort, although we shouldn't interfere excessively. But we can, the process of education is something that's, I think, inherently good. And so that's something I think we can do. There's no magic wand here. It is work. Yeah. Well, you can perfect repression as she is doing and others. You can also perfect democracy. May I say a more perfect union? And we have to have people like you writing the books and the articles and teaching and also coming on Think Tech Hawaii talking to us. You have to keep on doing that. We are counting on you, Michael. Very good. It's my pleasure. And I, as someone who started all of this work in Hawaii, I used to be a lawyer, as I mentioned earlier, for Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation and so much appreciated the efforts of the Hawaiian community to participate in Hawaii's democracy. Someone who started there, I'm always happy to contribute something in Hawaii. That's home. Thank you so much, Michael. Michael C. Davis joining us yet again. And we'll do this again because there's so much more to discuss. Aloha, Michael. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Mahalo.