Hong Kong In The World: Implications To Geopolitics And Competitiveness

Implications to Geopolitics and Competitiveness

Simon Shen

• Publisher: ICP
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781783269396
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Science General
• Index: Biological Sciences

Hong Kong in the World provides innovative insight into the role of Hong Kong — as a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China since 1997 — in the global context. This book looks into the institutional settings of Hong Kong in exercising its external relations policies, and specific bilateral relations with different political entities.

Written as an introductory text, it is specially designed for undergraduate students interested in Chinese foreign policy, Hong Kong's external relations, and the para-diplomacy of sub-national units.

Part 1

Thematic Issues

Chapter 1

Hong Kong’s External Relations under the Basic Law¹

As a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Hong Kong enjoys many international privileges which other Chinese cities do not have, notably in its ability to participate in international organizations and events independent of Beijing – albeit only with authorization. These affairs are referred to as Hong Kong’s “external relations”, the term being used to differentiate them from “diplomatic relations”, which only sovereign states like China itself can exercise. However, the line which divides the two terms is not clearly defined, and indeed is impossible to define clearly. In other words, whether certain gestures made by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government (HKSARG) have encroached upon the issue of sovereignty is an area fraught with ambiguity, and it is one which deserves greater academic attention. This issue is relevant not only to Hong Kong and China, but also finds resonance in other parts of the world. If the issue is properly managed, not only can harm be avoided to the maternal sovereignty, but benefit conferred on the “motherland” in the global arena from the addition of a subsidiary voice. The outline of the chapter is as follows: in section 1, the special status of Hong Kong is theorized under the concept of paradiplomacy; in section 2, other comparable cases are discussed; section 3 looks at the recent trend in China towards a flexibility in facing sovereignty issues. A brief description of Hong Kong’s potential role in Chinese diplomacy is given as a conclusion.

1.1The Concept of Paradiplomacy

The grey area between Hong Kong’s “external relations” and “diplomatic relations” largely derives from Hong Kong’s position after 1997. The official terminology used by the PRC to describe the status of both Hong Kong and Macau is a “special administrative region”, one which practises “one country, two systems”. However, when foreigners ask to have the difference in status between Hong Kong and other ordinary Chinese cities explained, no universal term can be employed to make the distinction clear. This chapter is thus designed to introduce the concept of paradiplomacy to illustrate the differences between Hong Kong and sovereign states, as well as other ordinary cities.

In the discipline of modern international relations, the concept of sovereignty is attributed to the Treaty of Westphalia. After the Thirty Years War, fought almost 400 years ago, which devastated continental Europe, the great powers reached a consensus recognizing that each signatory to the Treaty was in possession of unrestrained power in its domestic affairs and external diplomacy. Although the original intent of the treaty was purely to establish the independence of Protestant German states from the Holy Roman Empire, it nevertheless had an unintended consequence with enormous implications: it enshrined the Westphalian concept of sovereignty and sovereign states, which includes a state’s unrestrained power of self-determination, geographical territorial boundaries and mutual recognition between sovereign states.² The concept of sovereignty had, however, existed long before the signing of the Treaty in 1648. For instance, the use of the term “sovereignty” by French Philosopher Jean Bodin to conceptualize the absolute and perpetual power of the monarch derived from God is one of the classic studies used to cite sovereignty’s absolutism by regimes like the PRC.³ Classical liberal philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke have also spoken of the sovereign power of the state as necessary for the protection of people’s liberty. Hobbes, in his work Leviathan, for instance, argued that only when people invest absolute political power in a sovereign can society avoid the state of nature.⁴ The realist perspective on international relations is the direct descendent of this Westphalian understanding of sovereignty, which sees the world system as the struggle between states in advancing their respective interests. As argued by Krasner and Buzan, for instance, realism is in essence statism, and thus the concept of sovereignty lies at the heart of realism since it is the only concept that can distinguish what constitutes a state, and thus the unit of consideration under realist world view.⁵

Yet, the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia was by no means the end to the development of the concept of sovereignty. In recent decades, sovereignty’s indivisibility and absolutism have faced several challenges. The first came from the development in international law in the 20th century. International law scholars like Lassa Francis Lawrence Oppenheim have pointed out that it is necessary for sovereign states to give up part of their sovereignty to an international legislative and judicial body in order to maintain international peace.⁶ In reality, this seems to be the case since the Second World War where supra-national and transnational organizations are growing in what has become an integrated world. The emergence of global issues such as environmental protection, cross-border crime and human rights violations have also made international efforts to tackle these problems necessary; this in turn has caused the proliferation of an array of international treaties and covenants that govern the behaviour of sovereign states. In this sense, Westphalian sovereignty, which was once possessed by nation states, has become mere domestic sovereignty, as nation states’ external behaviour is restrained by international institutions.⁷

Another challenge to the Westphalian concept of sovereignty came from the rise of neo-liberalism and globalization in the late 20th century. A term that is usually problematic, neo-liberalism was defined by leftists like Noam Chomsky as an ideology that stemmed from the principle of classical economic liberalism and belief in free international trade, market solution over government solution to economic problems and the resultant privatization of state-owned enterprises.⁸ Krasner also saw the increasing flow of capital, migration and cultural integration as causes of erosion of sovereignty under globalization.⁹ The result of the rise of neo-liberalism has been that the authority of sovereign nation states has been slowly superseded by the power of moving capital in the international market, non-state actors, non-profit organizations and multinational corporations. The emergence of supra-national currencies like the euro has delivered one of the greatest blows to sovereign states.

The challenge to sovereignty also has some less tangible roots, which can be theorized by social constructivism; this sees sovereignty as a concept constructed by the international community, specifically the Western international community. According to Alexander Wendt, one of the founders of constructivism in international relations, man only determines his pattern of action in accordance with the meaning of things and other participants to them; thus social reality is not a predetermined fact, but a result of people’s interaction.¹⁰ As a consequence of these theories, constructivists like Robert Jackson argue that the concept of sovereignty is artificial and historical, and see sovereignty as a product of construction.¹¹ Weber then pointed out that international interventions and arbitrations in the domestic or diplomatic affairs of sovereign states are much more common than might be thought; the matter of legality of these interventions in the domain of other sovereign states is merely dependent on the objective judgement of the international community.¹² The emergence of the social constructivist view on sovereignty has opened up the possibility of a new interpretation of sovereignty beyond the boundary of the Treaty of Westphalia.

In line with this, contemporary political entities which are not sovereign states but which occupy a middle ground in the spectrum of political units related to sovereignty are here divided into four categories: supra-sovereignty, sub-sovereignty, quasi-sovereignty and unilateral sovereignty. “Supra-sovereignty” refers to the power owned by institutions above the state level, such as the European Union, which can be called a “supra-state”. “Unilateral sovereignty” refers to the power possessed by self-declared independent nation states which are not recognized by the majority of the international community, even though these “unilateral states” are in de facto control of their proclaimed territories, such as Somaliland. “Quasi-sovereignty” refers to the substances that are normally shared by sovereign states but are not owned by states, such as the extra-jurisdiction rights once owned by the East India Company. Finally, “sub-sovereignty” refers to the power held by some parts of nation states which normally belongs exclusively to sovereign states, such as the issuing of postage stamps, membership of international organizations, the ability to negotiate and enter into treaties with foreign governments, and the like. Although these new global actors are not sovereign states in the traditional sense, they nevertheless possess a certain degree of autonomy in both domestic and external affairs.

1.2Instances of Paradiplomacy in the World

Hong Kong’s paradiplomatic status is not a unique situation in the contemporary world order, as the following section will demonstrate. Included under the sub-sovereign umbrella are two further identifiable sub-categories: delegative sub-sovereign entities, which are set up by the central government of their maternal states (like Hong Kong), and federal sub-sovereign entities, which voluntarily join the maternal nation states (like Zanzibar). Putting Hong Kong in the category or not, their similarities should be well noted academically.

1.2.1Delegative sub-sovereign entities

As the term implies, delegative sub-sovereign entities derive their sub-sovereign power through delegation or devolution of domestic and external authority from the central government of a nevertheless unitary sovereign state. In other words, the full sovereignty of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Part 1 Thematic Issues
• Part 2 Bilateral Relations
• Index