Available in Russian
Author: Roman Ruvinskiy
DOI: 10.21128/1812-7126-2024-4-107-127
Keywords: civic disobedience; Chinese law; people; national security; federalization; centralization
In recent years, Hong Kong, a former British colony and now a region with special status within the People’s Republic of China, has become the object of increased attention from Beijing and the scene of large-scale civil protests. The central government of the PRC has attempted to secure greater control over the region through legislative interventions and neutralize growing political opposition; at the same time, residents of Hong Kong, resisting imposed control and demanding greater democratic participation in regional affairs, are becoming increasingly aware of their own political identity, distinct from that of mainland China. This study analyzes the causes and circumstances of the Hong Kong confrontation; however, its findings focus not on the contradictions in the relations between Hong Kong and the PRC, but on the contradictions of the entire modern constitutionalism and the modern model of statehood — a model based on the idea of popular sovereignty, but in practice reducing this idea to an insignificant fiction. Hong Kong, in the author’s opinion, is the most striking example of a society without constituent power, the rule of law without democratic participation of citizens in lawmaking. Examining the logic and long-term consequences of the centralization of government and the practice of tightening legislation, the author comes to the conclusion that the centralization observed today in China and around the world, as the simplest and most obvious solution, is a symptom and consequence of the aggravation of domestic and foreign policy problems of the respective states. For China, the assault on the autonomy of Hong Kong and the rights of the local population turns out to be a trap: the stronger the pressure, the fiercer the resistance and the more reasons for criticism of the Chinese leadership abroad, but there is no way to retreat, because the liberal otherness of this region is capable of undermining the foundations of the state system of the PRC from within. The author sees an unexpected way out of the current impasse in the federalization and democratization of the entire state, in the return of the subjectivity of the people to the current practice of constitutional relations.
About the author: Roman Ruvinskiy – Candidate of Sciences (Ph.D.) in Law, Associate Professor, Department of History and Theory of State and Law at the Nizhny Novgorod Institute of Management, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), Nizhny Novgorod, Russia .
Citation: Ruvinskiy R. (2024) Gonkongskaya problema: narodnyy suverenitet, tsentralizatsiya i vyzovy krizisnoy epokhi [The Hong Kong problem: popular sovereignty, centralization, and the challenges of the crisis age]. Sravnitel'noe konstitutsionnoe obozrenie, vol.33, no.4, pp.107–127. (In Russian).
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