 It's a given Wednesday morning and we have Michael C. Davis, Michael Kernes Davis, if you don't mind on the hookup from Washington. Michael has been on the show many times to discuss Hong Kong and calling this global connections. And we're talking about his new book, which is making Hong Kong into China. I'll have to get him to describe exactly how that works. Michael has a long bio and I'm gonna just tell you a couple of parts of it. He's a professor at Jindal University in India. He's at Columbia. He's at the Woodrow Wilson Institute and there's one other. What was the one I missed, Michael? Well, I was affiliated with the Weatherhead East Asia Institute and the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, DC. And I teach Emory Spring a course in India where I'm a professor of law and international affairs. And you spent decades teaching law in Hong Kong University, which is, which drives us. Professor there now, actually. So yeah, okay. I wanna ask you about that. There's a certain risk attached in teaching at Hong Kong University right now. And maybe thank goodness for COVID. You can do it virtually and that's not nearly the same risk. Yeah, that's right. It's sad if this is the case, but that's why I wrote the book. It's a situation that's very concerning. Let's talk about the book. Maybe we can show a copy of the cover of the book. Yeah. So this is Making Hong Kong, China. And it's about the deterioration of the rule of law, deterioration of the freedom of speech and human rights in Hong Kong, which is a very sad story. And this book, I looked at it. It's an authoritative history and authoritative analysis of what Hong Kong was, was intended to be under the handover and the basic law and how that has slipped and deteriorated over recent years. And so this is an analysis of what happened and why. I don't know if there's a lot of other books, a lot been written about Hong Kong, Michael, but this is very authoritative and very now. So I wonder if you could tell us why you named it Making Hong Kong, China. That's very cryptic kind of title, I think. Oh, yes. And then of course the subtitle is very important to that. The rollback of human rights and the rule of law. So what I'm highlighting in that title is the cost of Hong Kong becoming part of China is the rollback of human rights and the rule of law. And I would argue in the book, of course, it wouldn't have to be that way. It could be otherwise, but it seems that the forces of power are determined to control and dominate Hong Kong in ways that are a problem. Now, you know, some people feel that Xi Jinping and Beijing have to do this. Why? Because there are hundreds, thousands, even cities the size of Hong Kong within mainland China. They are concerned that if Hong Kong prevails in its protest culture, as has been shown over the past few years, that sort of sets up a tinderbox in mainland China, which will be a real handful for Beijing. And therefore they have to do this. They have to suppress human rights, the rule of law, in order to survive the country in general. What's your comment on that? I disagree with it. It's kind of like a husband who beats his wife saying, you made me do it. And this is really a sad, sad kind of way to look at it. They could have done things very differently. I think when it comes to the mainland, if the Communist Party is determined to keep its grip on power, in some ways by doing what it did in Hong Kong and repressing protests and arresting people, it's actually drew more attention to Hong Kong on the mainland. It's made the problems of repression in China. It's put them in the spotlight, the way the regime behaves. So people who may on a comfortable Sunday morning in Shanghai think, well, life's okay. I've got a job and everything. It gets a chance to see just how repressive this regime is. So I think what they've done is actually make things worse. I think before they started using these heavy-handed tactics, most people on the mainland just viewed Hong Kong as someplace else, just like they viewed Japan and New York City as someplace else. And those people do what they do and they have what they have. And I don't think there was a jealousy or anything at all. In fact, people from the mainland, the biggest source of tourism for Hong Kong was the mainland. So they wanted to go there just like another big destination in Japan. They even go to Taiwan. They'd like to go to these places and enjoy those societies. But I don't think, I think if China is going to have a rebellion, it's not gonna be caused in Hong Kong or Japan or New York. It's gonna be caused there. And it's gonna be grievance as people have on the ground. So I just think this argument doesn't fly. Yeah, and this really, you know, that Beijing could have been so much more, what do you wanna call it, tolerant of Hong Kong. Well, Hong Kong, as you suggested, it's kind of a parallel society. It doesn't have to be merged in. It doesn't have to do lockstep with the mainland. It has survived very well in a very, you know, agreeable basis for several years anyway after the handover. And all of a sudden, somewhere along the line, I would imagine it's just around the time Xi Jinping took over, Beijing got very aggressive and started to rattle Hong Kong's cage. And that is what has generated all the enmity, am I right? Well, I think that's what's ratcheted up. And the thing is, as I outlined in the book, the roots of a lot of these problems go all the way back to the handover and before. It's kind of in Beijing's DNA to want to control everything. So they were trying to do that before the handover by rewarding their friends and pointing them to committees and that were in preparation for the handover and isolating their enemies and so on. So all of that was going on when the handover occurs, that gets increased. And then when they write this basic law, which they wrote actually in the late 80s and 1990 when they promulgated it, they built in a couple controls that have been the curse of Hong Kong ever since. One is they made it without any kind of, you know, independent body that National People's Congress Standing Committee had the ultimate power of interpreting the basic law. Now, I read the book back then when I argued that you could have a constitutional court or constitutional committee between the mainland and Hong Kong to resolve disputes in this autonomy arrangement. They created a basic law committee, but then they made the committee basically operate in secret. Nobody supports, submits anything to them except the NPC Standing Committee, which I submit some kind of orders to them as to what they're supposed to approve. And so that was one thing. And so that meant very early on after the handover in 1999, the so-called famous right of a mode case, the Hong Kong court was not gonna refer this court case to the Standing Committee for Interpretation. There's an article in 158 in the basic law that says, if matters involve local central relations with central authority, then the court of final appeal would refer it. The government sought that referral and the court said, no, this is within our autonomy. So it just sort of, it's a ton of, and then the government went around the court to Beijing and got the court overturned. And I think ever since then the court, the independence of the judiciary, the court of a final appeals ability to decide important matters has been under threat. There's always this kind of background idea Beijing criticisms going on about what's happening and sort of pressure put on the court. So that's one fall. And the other one is the basic law promise the ultimate aim of universal suffrage with gradual and orderly progress. Well, there's been no progress gradual or otherwise. And that's because they're using the interpretation power to say, well, no, this is Hong Kong's not ready for this. And we know in 2014 and 15, when you and I talked about the umbrella movement that Beijing had said, well, now you can have this universal suffrage. Except they said it had to be, we choose the candidates and you can vote for which one you like. And so this two interferences have really stuck in the craw of Hong Kong people. Almost every protest in Hong Kong is in one way or another over this, mostly because the Hong Kong government therefore is selected effectively by Beijing, by a Beijing friendly committee that chooses the chief executive each time and then the officials and the government. And so the government is totally beholded to Beijing throughout all of these years whenever there's been protest, it's been because this government is doing things that Hong Kong people feel threatens its autonomy. And the people of Hong Kong are very much aware that the mainland system is very different. And so if they see the mainland system creeping across the border, they're gonna be upset. And so almost every protest in Hong Kong, if you sort of analyze it in depth, you conclude it's about this problem. So what you're saying is right, that in the last two years, this has become dramatically worse, but the roots for it are actually built into the system. And I try to outline that in the book. Yeah, you do. You have a chapter which asks the question whether the basic law is an enlightened commitment or a ruse. And of course, the case can be made that it was never intended in a genuine sincere fashion in the first place. Yeah, that's the problem. And what we don't know, I never tried to go with conspiracy theories, but they were trying to cook the books before the deal was done. Sometimes maybe Doug Champagne was sincere that, hey, this can work. And maybe if there was sincerity, but what I tend to think and when I'm asked about this is that it's kind of in the mainland government's DNA that they don't know how to run an open society. And if they had left it to an elected government in Hong Kong, then they would have been able to do it. I think very peacefully. I don't think Hong Kong people have any fight or with the mainland. They don't want to get involved in that because they can't win that. So basically they would have gone on about their business and if the basic law was carried out as it was promised, I don't think we would be where we are today. So in a way, going back to your first question, a lot of the trouble Beijing has and the examples that therefore are displayed worldwide for everyone to see may cause them more problems at home than if they had just done this thing right. Yeah, maybe so. Well, you have a chapter here calls how the government is taking revenge on the protesters after 2015. And query whether it's revenge or it's just tightening the screws. You have an authoritative, you have a what do you want to call it a autocrat government in the mainland. And they're always, as you say, it's in their DNA to try to tighten the screws and make everybody, you know, subject to their control. Is it revenge or is it just a march to greater control? Well, I think it's both. I think that's how they deal with people that disappoint them. But I think when you listen to mainland rhetoric, you know, they're really disappointed. They don't get why Hong Kong people don't like it. They actually want to be this call for national education which they actually formally pushed the Hong Kong government to do in 2012, which was when all these youngsters finally came out and opposed that, the change in education, they thought it was going to be brainwashing in Hong Kong. And this was all because there was a perception in Beijing that Hong Kongers just don't appreciate the mainland and its history and so on. And they lack patriotism. And you see this running through this Hong Kong battle continuously. And so the more Beijing, you know, tries to press it, it's tough love on Hong Kong, the more people rebel. And I think this is what's produced a kind of Hong Kong identity. That when I first was in Hong Kong way back in the 80s, I think it was funny, I had a class. I think you might have read this in the book. I had a class and I asked him, do you want this in 1985? I asked him, do you want this 1984 joint declaration? And if you had a choice, what would you do otherwise? And this class first refused my question. He said, no one asked us. It's OK, humor me. And their answer was, oh, let's return Hong Kong to China and then hire the British to run it. And this is not an intensely rebellious political community. It's just a community that doesn't really trust the way Beijing runs things. And they know the British how to do it. At the same time, there was an identity with China. I mean, you wouldn't need to return it at all if all you wanted is the British to run it. But there was this identification with China among these students. I don't know how representative they are. They were from middle class and lower working class homes. But what happens is China squanders this good feeling, this lo-ha feeling towards the mainland. It gets squandered over the years by all these tactics and really misleading and aggressive statements and disrespectful ways of treating Hong Kong people. And then as this becomes real pressure with crackdowns and refusals to carry out the basic law or interference in the courts and this and that, resentment builds up. And people start taking more seriously and appreciating more seriously who they are as people. So that's one of the threads. You start out with a kind of a culture that's different than the mainland culture because of the British influence there. Time goes by. Young kids, they may not care at first, but they start caring. They become students and they care a little more. And then it cycles up. And so if you think of those young people in the streets in 2015 and thereafter, they were not even born at the time of the handover. But things have happened in Hong Kong with respect to Chinese attempt to control, to proselytize them, to activate them, so to speak. And you were there. You've seen it accelerate. You've seen that generation accelerate. But let me ask you this though. I mean, it's kind of schizo in the sense that you have the people who are dependent on Hong Kong. That may mean a lot of business people, a lot of Hong Kong companies, maybe international companies, who would like to maintain friendly relations with Beijing. They don't want to be on the wrong side of this issue. And then you have these kids, students, and young. And they're not students anymore. They're older than that. They're in the workforce. And they're very excited and upset about what is going on. Am I right though? Is it not everybody in Hong Kong is a protester? And the protest is a definable kind of demograph. And they're not the same as the ones who would benefit by being friendly with Beijing. Well, this is the thing. When we've had votes, because about half of the legislative council is directly elected. And so the votes that are one man, one vote, or one person, one vote directly elected, the hand democratic or the opposition camp, however you want to call it, tend to win about 50% to 60% of the vote. So that means about 40% or so of the people support the pro-establishment camp or pro-Beijing camp. There's kind of a distinction between pro-establishment being more the business and those kind of people, lawyers and professionals, and pro-Beijing being these a lot more grassroots organized labor unions and things that are their leftist labor unions and rightist labor unions in Hong Kong. So the leftist ones go with Beijing. And we don't know what their sentiment is per se as much as they're well organized. And the Congress parties indirectly able to influence the leaders of these more left side of the political spectrum. And then the so-called establishment, the business elites get rewarded for going along to get along. And so that's the one side of it. But the opposition has always been in the electoral majority. And then when you look at the protest on the street, I was involved with Article 23 concern group years ago when we were again at that time opposing national security laws. And there we had a half a million protesters. I think that even scared Beijing that, wow, these people of Hong Kong are not gonna take lying down whatever we're trying to do to them. And so as time goes on, protest again in the 2012 over national education again in 2014, 15 over democracy. So the protests keep getting bigger and bigger over time. So when we get to 2019 in early June, I think it was June 9th, there was a million people marched on the street on June 16th, 2 million. Now, if you have a population of 7 million people and 2 million of them are on the street and they're mostly young people, then you're talking about someone from probably three-fourths of the families in Hong Kong is out on the street. So the support for the protest is rather dramatic. One person said the 2 million that marched in mid-June might have been one of the largest protests in the history of the world. So it's coming from a city that's locked in. It's like Hawaii, it's there, it's a small territory. So that is, I think an indication that there's widespread support for the opposition camp, but now the crackdown is getting so severe, we don't know what's going to happen. I mean, are people going to immigrate or are they going to quietly protest or try to push back in little by little? What's going to happen? Are they give up? I don't know. That's one of the underlying questions of the book. I mean, what you have is a relentless effort by Beijing, relentless and tough and smart and unceasing to try to undo the democratic trappings of Hong Kong one step at a time, but always doing it. And these kids, these protesters, they understand you have to give them enormous credit for seeing through that, for not accepting it. And I wonder, in this country, whether we're as smart to deal with demagogues and autocrats, they have never stopped. On the other hand, Beijing has never stopped either. And at the bottom, when I get out of the book is it's not a good picture. You have the national security law, and I guess this was published originally in October, October 9th, strikes me. And after the national security law, we've had this recent tragedy about disqualifying four members of the Hong Kong legislature and throwing everything in a turmoil and having other people walk out. And this is not good for autonomy or independent government. So it's actually declining. And I hate to say this, but Beijing is succeeding as we go forward. And that's why we have to see the thread that you have written about. Yeah, no, it's interesting. And I tried to do that in the book to really trace that what's going on has been part of a sort of pattern over time and to try to go through the stages of it as you see in these chapters in the book of what's happening. I don't view the book. I mean, the book is very critical. It's not anti-China. At its best, they would like to see things improve and people understand what's happening. I don't think this had to be done this way as some of your earlier questions suggested that, in fact, the opposite should have happened. And if I have to blame anyone, even my top of my list isn't China, but it's the pro-establishment camp in Hong Kong. I think these people somehow, I guess, viewed that their position depended on pleasing Beijing. So they tended to overdo that part of it and not the part where they find their voice to represent Hong Kong concerns. So in the interim period before this universal suffrage was to be created, these people, in effect, were appointed to represent Hong Kong, but I don't think they did. I think if they had found their voice, I think mainland officials might have been persuadable. And of course, there wouldn't be all this contention on the street, which makes it difficult to persuade the mainland officials. If, in fact, these Hong Kong officials help Beijing to understand how to go about achieving exactly what's in the basic law. And I think a lot of international criticism now of China is not criticism that you have to be like us. It's criticism that you have to carry out your own basic law. Keep your promise. Yeah, exactly. That's the nature of the criticism. Now, this is, of course, always attacked by Beijing because, oh, that's foreign interference. But I think it can be viewed as actually a constructive kind of message, but it seems that it falls on 10 years right now. It's not something that Beijing wants to hear. And I think they probably do think a little like one of your questions suggested that, well, if we give in to anything that everything is going to come falling down on our heads like they do the Soviet Union's experience as one, they don't want to repeat. But in some ways, I feel they're almost repeating. They're using hardline tactics up to the bloody end to the point where people may, if their performance goes down, people may be frustrated with them. History shows us that's not sustainable. You can't do that forever. One thing, Hong Kong is a special place. I don't have to tell you that. And this book and the whole study of what's been going on since the handover is a swirling mix of all these influences in various parts that had never existed in any other place in the world. You have original Chinese. You have the whole English empire. You have the British culture, the English culture that was left there, the English law system, the English bureaucratic system. Then you have China, which has changed enormously in the last, oh my God, in the last few decades. You have the rest of the world watching. You have the business connections that Hong Kong has and the law in Hong Kong and the growing up of these kids. So many factors and variables all at play right now. It's really remarkable. One of the chapters you have that interested me, because you and I have talked about it before, is the international reaction, international support for Hong Kong. I mean, in large part, they have left Beijing to its own devices. Nobody has really stepped in and castigated Beijing for, am I right? For what they're doing in Hong Kong. Well, they didn't until this past couple of years. Of course, then we've got a pushback against Beijing. I think the first part of what you were commenting on too, I'd like to emphasize. In fact, I start the book by saying, imagine a city like New York or London is suddenly taken over by a hard-line regime. You know, and there's secret police and there's a rest of opposition and all of these things. Well, that city exists, it's Hong Kong. And I think Hong Kong is very much in that class. There's two or three cities in the world in this class. Interestingly, New York is not the capital of this country either, right? It's this financial cultural center, this buzzing beehive of human activity that all the world knows about. I went for a walk in Central Park with a friend from India recently and him and his wife and his wife was just thrilled getting pictures taken everywhere. I've seen all these scenes in every movie and she would mention which movies she saw on that scene and so on. It's like the world owns these special cities and there's just a few of them and Hong Kong is one of them. So I think when Beijing destroys or brings that city to its knees, the world feels the pain. And I think that's the extraordinary part of Hong Kong. Oh, I think that's an extraordinary thought, Michael. You know, we're all invested in Hong Kong. It is our city, it is a global city, we all have a piece of it. And now that's being taken away. Yeah, and that's the problem. And so what does the international community do? Well, of course, the big limitation is China is the big elephant in the room, right? It's this huge economy that everyone wanted and wants to participate in. And China, yeah, is an authoritarian regime and that causes a lot of response all on its own without Hong Kong in the picture. You know, how do you deal with this regime? There was hope that it would evolve and become less authoritarian and less autocratic and less imposing of its ideas on the world but the trajectory has been the opposite under Xi Jinping. So, you know, there's this train war, there's this kind of problems in the South China Sea on the border of India and this and that in Xinjiang. So China's kind of doing all it can to offend everyone and in the midst of it is Hong Kong. You know, it's like the most, the jewel in the middle of the puzzle. You know, it's this special place and I think everyone's invested so they wanna do something. So in the US Congress, there's the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, the Hong Kong Autonomy Act and there's the sanctions now. The US is imposing on a list of mainland official and Hong Kong officials, including the chief executive of Hong Kong. She can't come to Hawaii on a holiday for now and those things are going on. And so, and then the British, you know, well, back when they handed Hong Kong over, they only gave Hong Kong people the so-called British Overseas Nationality, right? VNO passports, it's called National Overseas and which does not give them the right to move to Britain and stay there, right? And it was kind of an odd thing because Macanese and Macau who were under Portuguese colonialism were given the full right to go live in Portugal as Portuguese citizens when the handover occurred which created the paradox when the UK was part of the European Union that those Macanese could move to London because they're EU citizens and yet the Hong Kongers could not. So that was the situation until this year. And this year with Beijing's crackdown, the British finally had to come up and put it up and they did, now that these VNO passport holders can all move to the UK. Is it enough, is it enough, Michael? I mean, is it enough to really make the point with Beijing that the world is watching and they really want not to do this? And we do care about Hong Kong. We see Hong Kong as a global city. Can we do more? Can't the international community do more? Can't the US do more? Can't Joe Biden do more? Well, I think they can. It is mostly, I mean, and it is a frustrating thing. I've had conversations about this, lots of people, but I think the Trump, you know, there's this a lot of media report about people in Asia and China dissidents in Hong Kong protesters supporting Trump because they like Trump's bombastic language. They like the image of him standing up to Beijing. Of course, he didn't stand up to them very effectively was the problem. He alienated his allies in Asia and the world at large so he could never form a kind of united front. If he wants to put pressure on Beijing, he didn't have many tools in his hand because he couldn't get along with anyone. So a lot of talk and no action when you really come down to it in the trade war has produced virtually nothing. I read an article just the other day that even the first stage agreement has not been carried out by Beijing. Beijing hasn't delivered as much as two thirds of what it was supposed to buy, you know, in terms of buying. No surprise that they're thumbing their nose at Trump. And that's it. So obviously these protesters who like Trump were kind of misled. So the question is, can Biden do better? Now they worry because they say, well, the United States was always just sucking up to Beijing and letting it get away with everyone wanted. And so they fear, well, if a less bombastic leader takes up the White House, maybe it'll be more of the same, you know, just a little bit of talk but no action. And I hope that's not the case. I think there's a good chance it won't be because when I've been on Capitol Hill, my sense is that people on both sides of the aisle have had enough of the Beijing gang. And so I think there's support for a democratic leader in the White House to take a tough stand on China. And so that's what we're expecting. And then the question, and can he do more? Yes, if he does what I just said, he's very much willing to work with his allies. So Biden could assemble enough agreement among dominant countries in the world to push back effectively, to impose some cost for what Beijing has been doing rather than just all talk and no action. And so that I think is what a lot of human rights people that work on the Hong Kong issue that I've talked to both over here in the US and in Hong Kong, that's what they're hoping for, that they will be a more consistent policy. We should all be hoping for that. So we're getting to the end of our time today, Michael. And I wanted to say that this was very readable. It's not a long book and it has notes. The notes are very impressive. You have notes that are very explanatory and authoritative. So you can look at this book as either a study that everyone can read as sort of a news approach to things or you can look at it as an academic work just as well, completely authoritative. But let's talk about your conclusion because you've been leading up to that now. And I asked you to identify a paragraph you could read to best describe how you want people to think about this and what your recommendations are for the possibilities going forward. Could you? Thank you, Jay. You asked me to read the last one. So I'll try to do that promptly. So it goes as follows, the last paragraph. But finally, supporters of the national security law may argue that I present too dark an image of the risk to Hong Kong society under the national security law and its constitutional order. I have strongly urged that those in charge of these developments change course and return to the original commitments both in letter and in spirit made to Hong Kong's people in the sign of British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law. A second best alternative to prove me wrong in such dark predictions would be for officials and judges at all levels to stand their ground and uphold the liberal commitments to Hong Kong respecting the rule of law, human rights and democratic reform as outlined in the Basic Law. Some may lose their jobs for such actions but sometimes resistance drip by drip is the only path we each have to bring about change individually and collectively. Very wise and it applies not only to Hong Kong but to many other places in the world including in some sense the United States. We all have to do our part. Absolutely. We've all been on the edge of our chairs watching the shenanigans in Washington in some ways we're still on the edge of our chairs hoping somebody will get off and leave the White House. And hoping your book has so many other articles and books we've seen about these issues about how you deal with autocracy. You know, we'll have some lasting effect in various places and especially in Hong Kong. Thank you so much, Michael. It's great to have you on the show. It's my pleasure. We'll talk again. See you next time for sure.