My Take | The controversial German philosopher behind Hong Kong’s national security apparatus
- A Nazi Party member but an original thinker, Carl Schmitt’s anti-liberal legal philosophy has been praised and denounced in the West, and has heavily influenced several of those who helped craft the city’s national security law and constitutional overhaul
If you think a German constitutional scholar of the Weimar and Nazi periods is rather remote from the politics of Hong Kong, think again. At least three prominent mainland figures who have had profound influence on recent political and cultural developments in the city may be labelled as “Schmittian”.
OK, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. Beijing was perfectly capable of coming up with all that on its own, even if Carl Schmitt had never lived. But the fact remains that some influential mainland legal officials and scholars have used Schmitt’s anti-liberal judicial concepts to justify Beijing’s constitutional takeover of the city and craft the national security law.
One is Jiang Shigong, currently a law professor at Peking University. He is generally thought to be the main author of the June 2014 State Council white paper on “The Practice of the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ Policy”, which lays out crucial political criteria that have come to dominate the city’s electoral and constitutional overhaul.
Chen Duanhong, who was the keynote speaker of the city’s first National Constitution Day symposium in December, helped draft our national security law. In 2018, a year before Beijing announced its intention to impose such a law during the violent anti-government protests and riots, Chen, also a university colleague of Jiang, submitted a confidential study to the central authority on the intended legislation.