Since Lin Zheng took office, the words “national” and “central government” have never ceased to be used. “Forty-one times, someone asked, “Is this the country report or the Hong Kong Policy Address? When talking about the subject of Liberal Studies, it was said that in order to cultivate students’ understanding of the “country”, the “Constitution” and the “Basic Law”, it is necessary to “understand the country” first. The Constitution requires it”.
After all this talk about “country”, what does Lam Cheng not tell Hong Kong people about “country”? In fact, in all of China’s propaganda, the people are not clearly told what the “state” is.
The state, in its universal meaning or just according to common sense, is an entity composed of three elements: people, land, and sovereignty. The order of priority of these three elements, according to Mencius, is: “The people are the most important, the country comes second, and the ruler is the least important. Sovereignty is a manifestation of the right to rule, or sovereignty. Mencius’ classic statement is: “The people are the most important, the land comes second, and sovereignty is the least important”. The first sentence of the U.S. Constitution reads: “We The People”, which means that the Constitution was established by the people. In modern Western civilization, the legitimacy of governing power, i.e., sovereignty, is derived from the mandate of a popular vote every few years. This is the system of sovereignty of the people: of the people, by the people, for the people, and with maximum individual rights for the people.
The Basic Law of Hong Kong, while based on Article 31 of the Chinese Constitution, is fundamentally different from the Chinese Constitution. Article 51 of the Chinese Constitution states that “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China may not infringe upon the interests of the state, of society, or of the collective in the exercise of their freedoms and rights. ……”. This is a provision to maximize the power of the state. There is no such provision in the Basic Law. The Chinese Constitution, in the chapter “Fundamental Rights and Duties of Citizens,” lists many duties of citizens, including the duty to practice family planning, the duty to safeguard national unity, the “duty” to perform military service, and a host of other prohibitions against this and that. There is only one “duty” in the Basic Law chapter “Fundamental Rights and Duties of the Residents,” and that is the duty to abide by the laws of Hong Kong. Contrary to the Chinese Constitution, which stipulates that citizens have the obligation to practice family planning, the Basic Law of Hong Kong, in Article 37, states that Hong Kong residents have the right to raise a family voluntarily. In the former case, the people must obey the state, and in the latter case, the people are endowed with human rights. Article 39 of the Basic Law, concerning the two Covenants, requires that any legislation on the rights of Hong Kong residents must be limited to the extent that it does not contravene the two Covenants. Therefore, the Basic Law can be considered a human rights constitution, a statute that maximizes the rights of the individual.
If the Basic Law, which maximizes individual rights, is not applied as an exceptional statute to the Chinese constitution, but is subordinated to the Chinese constitution, which maximizes the power of the state, then deeper and deeper contradictions will arise, which will become more and more acute. The more the chief executive emphasizes the “state,” the more acute and superficial the contradiction becomes with citizens who are obsessed with individual rights.
How to define the “state” in China, where the state power is maximized? The Chinese dictionary published in China follows the Leninist explanation: “the organization of the ruling class to carry out class oppression and rule”.
Who is China’s current ruling class? Who are the oppressed? What will Hong Kong look like if the Chinese Constitution overrides the Hong Kong Basic Law? There is no clearer explanation than China’s unguarded Article 51 of the Constitution and the Chinese Dictionary.
In a country where individual rights are maximized, when it comes to patriotism, the people understand that it is based on the individual rights guaranteed by the Constitution. In an interview with me in 1987, writer Bo Yang said, “This country can’t be loved anymore; if we love it any more, we will love it to death,” because “almost everyone loves this country the way they harm it, and loves this nation the way they harm it.
Under her “patriotic” governance, Hong Kong’s status as an international city gradually disappeared, and developed countries began to ban high-tech products exported to Hong Kong. China’s position as a major foreign investor is declining, and Hong Kong is losing its value to China. What Lin Zheng is doing is to love this country as much as to harm it. If we continue to love, Hong Kong will die and China will be loved to death.
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