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The Significance of Sovereignty and China's "One Country, Two Systems"

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The Significance of Sovereignty and China's Bard College Bard Digital Commons Senior Projects Spring 2020 Bard Undergraduate Senior Projects Spring 2020 Why Can't We Be Friends: The Significance of Sovereignty and China's "One Country, Two Systems" Harrison R. Malinowski Bard College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2020 Part of the International Relations Commons, Models and Methods Commons, and the Other Political Science Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Malinowski, Harrison R., "Why Can't We Be Friends: The Significance of Sovereignty and China's "One Country, Two Systems"" (2020). Senior Projects Spring 2020. 234. https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2020/234 This Open Access work is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been provided to you by Bard College's Stevenson Library with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this work in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights- holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Why Can’t We Be Friends: The Significance of Sovereignty and China’s “One Country, Two Systems” Senior Project Submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College by Harry Malinowski Annandale-on-Hudson, New York May 2020 Acknowledgements First, I would like to thank my advisor, Rob Culp, who has been assisting my research and writing for almost a year. Thank you for your advice and comments and helping me make sense of the complicated relationships between China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. The evolution of this project is proof enough of how complex a topic you have guided me through. You told me during one of our first meetings that you were a historian, not a political scientist, but I think your guidance and suggestions this year have proven you to know more on politics than you’re willing to admit. I would like to thank Michelle Murray, for her help as one of my board members and one of my past professors. The classes I took with you have provided part of the basis for this project, guiding me to the interesting and complicated world of sovereignty and states. Your comments during the midway board in the Fall helped shape how this project has evolved over the Spring semester and how it has become a project exploring the theory beyond the cases discussed here. Finally, and most importantly, I would like to dedicate the project to both of my parents for their unwavering support as I have worked through this project, the past four years of college, and my life preceding that. Bard has been a transformative experience for my life and education, and without you I would not have gotten the chance to attend Bard. I also want to thank all my close family members, especially those not with us anymore, for all that you have done. A dedication cannot begin to cover my appreciation and gratitude, so all I can say is thank you and I love you. Table of Contents Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 1 Hong Kong and “One Country, Two Systems” .......................................................................... 9 Formulating the Model ............................................................................................................................................... 11 The Sino-British Joint Declaration ......................................................................................................................... 17 China’s Experiments with Capitalism .................................................................................................................. 18 The Drafting of Basic Law ......................................................................................................................................... 22 The Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region ............................................................ 25 Patten’s Reforms ........................................................................................................................................................... 30 China’s Response to Reforms ................................................................................................................................... 33 The Hong Kong Government .................................................................................................................................... 36 Taiwan and the Battle for Sovereignty ................................................................................... 41 Domestic Political Control ......................................................................................................................................... 42 Economic Sovereignty ................................................................................................................................................ 52 International Recognition ......................................................................................................................................... 60 Negotiating “One Country, Two Systems” .......................................................................................................... 63 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 73 Bibliography .................................................................................................................................... 82 1 Introduction In 1949, the Chinese Nationalist Party/Kuomintang (KMT), fled to the island of Taiwan and established the Republic of China on Taiwan (ROC/Taiwan) after suffering a crushing defeat on mainland China at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. In 1981, the Communist Party, having formed the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, reached out to Taiwan with a proposal for reunification. “One country, two systems” was rejected by the Taiwanese then, and the government has continued to refuse unification under that model. Failing with one region, the PRC turned their attention to Hong Kong and Macau. For almost all the 20th century, Hong Kong and Macau had been under the control of the British and Portuguese Empires, and by the end of the century, the PRC were pursuing a policy of complete unification. The goal of the PRC was to return all land that was formerly under China’s control back to China. The failure with Taiwan did not discourage the PRC from pursuing unification under the “one country, two systems” model, however. Instead, they took that idea and applied it to Hong Kong and Macau, with retrocession of the two territories occurring in 1997 and 1999. In the years following unification, many scholars have examined the nature of “one country, two systems,” and what it means. The model was representative of a new form of governance that the rest of the world was not familiar with. Though it vaguely resembled the colonial system of the past, with a semi-autonomous region being overseen by a larger power, the model was ultimately different. The model implemented in Hong Kong showed a system in which a territory was meant to function independently and be self-sufficient. Additionally, the Basic Law designed for Hong Kong allowed for the formation of a semi- 2 democratic system to govern the territory, completely different from the authoritarian political system of mainland China. Many scholars have asked what this system is, what it has meant for Hong Kong, what it means for Taiwan, and more importantly, what it means for the broader international community. “One country, two systems” represents an idea of a hybrid/shared sovereignty, where the PRC is the “sole representative” of China in international organizations and the general global community, yet Hong Kong, as a global city and economic center, holds a separate seat in various international organizations and has its own currency, independent judiciary, and citizenship documents. What does hybrid sovereignty mean? How can a sovereign country function with shared sovereignty between more than one political institution in that country? Though the United States of America has multiple states, all ultimately subservient to the federal government, those states do not have seats in international organizations like Hong Kong does. How does this country function when one body is recognized as the sole legal representative, but is clearly not the sole international representative of that country? What does this mean for the future of regional disputes, like we have seen in the Korean Peninsula, or (and this is rather different) the Arab-Israeli conflict in the Middle East? If China’s model of unification works, then a system of shared sovereignty may be applicable to other conflicts that are still struggling to find an answer. All these questions, and many more come from discussions on the status quo between Hong Kong and China, but the most intriguing question to me concerns why Taiwan has never accepted the model, even as a beginning for negotiations, and how the model would work in Taiwan – could it ever work for Taiwan. Taiwan has developed very differently from Hong Kong, perhaps most importantly because of its 3 political independence
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