https://www.scmp.com/rss/323138/feed Phil C.W. Chan is a scholar in public law, human rights, international law and global governance. His books include China, State Sovereignty and International Legal Order (2015), Protection of Sexual Minorities since Stonewall: Progress and Stalemate in Developed and Developing Countries (2010), and Equality in Asia-Pacific: Reality or a Contradiction in Terms? (2007). He holds a PhD in international law and Chinese law from the National University of Singapore and law degrees from the... en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com “Grief is the price we pay for love”, said Queen Elizabeth, who died last Thursday at the age of 96 after more than 70 years of reign. There is little doubt Hongkongers around the world join the peoples of the United Kingdom and across the Commonwealth in mourning the death of our “boss lady”. The long, close bond between Hong Kong and the UK has endured after Hong Kong ceased to be a Crown colony in July 1997, even if Beijing and its new regime at Tamar say it never was one. In mourning the... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3192110/commonwealth-and-global-grief-are-testament-queen-elizabeths?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3192110/commonwealth-and-global-grief-are-testament-queen-elizabeths?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 11 Sep 2022 05:50:18 +0000 I wore full yellow at the Hong Kong rallies in London on July 1 and 21 last year. Several Hongkongers were perturbed at my choice of colours. According to them, Hongkongers in the UK should wear black and be invisible lest we upset the apple cart and sully our reputation as perfect, “normal” guests. Not even in Hong Kong after the enactment of the national security law was I told I couldn’t wear this or that colour. I wore full yellow at a Hong Kong police station in October 2019 in reporting a... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3190582/singapores-decision-end-ban-gay-sex-under-section-377a-not?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3190582/singapores-decision-end-ban-gay-sex-under-section-377a-not?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 31 Aug 2022 01:15:12 +0000 Everything in Hong Kong has fallen into its rightful place. John Lee Ka-chiu was elected last Sunday as the next chief executive, by 1,416 of 1,461 patriotic Election Committee members in an election where there was no one else to choose. Of the remaining 45, eight voted against Lee, four cast blank ballots, and 33 did not vote. The notion of choice is anathema to Hong Kong’s stability, as the decades-long battle for universal suffrage has shown. As Lee marks the third devout Catholic out of... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3177065/national-security-law-and-one-man-election-race-show-beijings-plan?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3177065/national-security-law-and-one-man-election-race-show-beijings-plan?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 10 May 2022 22:45:18 +0000 Allegiance and belonging have been at the forefront of my psyche ever since I returned to Hong Kong in September 2019 in the midst of Hong Kong’s political crisis and social unrest when formation of a Hong Kong identity was reaching its peak. As I moved to London a year later as a British National (Overseas), following China’s imposition of a national security law on Hong Kong – not out of fear, but of desolation that Hong Kong’s struggle for what it had been promised was irretrievably lost –... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3174412/hongkongers-uk-championing-cause-back-home-can-speak-themselves?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3174412/hongkongers-uk-championing-cause-back-home-can-speak-themselves?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 17 Apr 2022 17:00:44 +0000 Just before the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Francis Fukuyama pronounced humanity to have reached “the end of history”, with Western liberal democracy triumphant as “the final form of human government”. In the years since, leading scholars such as the late Thomas Franck, Anne-Marie Slaughter and Georg Nolte (now a judge of the International Court of Justice) argued that there was an emerging right in international law to democratic governance, that liberal internationalism was universally... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3171568/hong-kong-canada-do-i-tell-you-governments-risk-trapping-us-covid?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3171568/hong-kong-canada-do-i-tell-you-governments-risk-trapping-us-covid?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 25 Mar 2022 22:45:20 +0000 As she ran for chief executive in 2017, then-chief secretary Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor told Hong Kong people she would transform our city for the better. Her 777 votes were a harbinger of how lucky Hong Kong was to become under her leadership as chief executive. Now, with protests and dissent no longer possible under China’s national security law for Hong Kong and prickly legislators and newspaper editors either in jail or in exile, Lam has indeed transformed Hong Kong in ways no previous chief... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3166498/time-carrie-lam-and-her-reformed-legislature-end-modern-slavery?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3166498/time-carrie-lam-and-her-reformed-legislature-end-modern-slavery?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 13 Feb 2022 06:30:16 +0000 As my British Airways flight was approaching Cape Town last November 25, my neighbour, J.D., said something to me that has stuck to this day. The only unmasked passenger I saw throughout the 12-hour journey, J.D. revealed he didn’t like a mask on his face. Feeling mellow, at heart a libertarian and blissfully unaware South Africa had reported a new coronavirus variant to the World Health Organization the day before, I merely replied that a mask was useful as I was freezing (seated by an... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3163586/djokovic-johnson-hong-kongs-partygate-why-year-youtoo?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3163586/djokovic-johnson-hong-kongs-partygate-why-year-youtoo?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 17 Jan 2022 22:45:15 +0000 For someone who is not a professional journalist, I seem frequently to be blessed with opportunities to look at societies through “fieldwork research” beyond my original intentions. I walked into the lion’s den again as I began a three-month visit to South Africa on November 24. Little did I know South Africa had identified the newest coronavirus variant that has a large number of mutations and has shown, based on preliminary evidence, an increased risk of reinfection, and that as a responsible... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3157766/why-shunning-south-africa-based-covid-19-omicron-variant-fears?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3157766/why-shunning-south-africa-based-covid-19-omicron-variant-fears?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 30 Nov 2021 19:30:12 +0000 With yet another coronavirus lockdown in Britain, one cannot stretch one’s legs easily other than in the supermarket. A brief chat I had with a butcher in a Surrey supermarket in September gave me much food for thought, as I had settled in Britain as a British National (Overseas) émigré a month earlier. The conversation started innocuously – where are you from? As soon as she said she was from China, and I Hong Kong, she asked me a question in Mandarin that had contributed to years of discontent... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3115783/time-hongkongers-eligible-bno-visa-scheme-choose-where-their?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3115783/time-hongkongers-eligible-bno-visa-scheme-choose-where-their?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 30 Dec 2020 22:45:09 +0000 In How to Be a Dictator, a study of eight dictators in the 20th century, Dutch historian Frank Dikötter, chair professor of humanities at the University of Hong Kong and author of a prize-winning trilogy on Mao Zedong’s China, argues that omnipresence, omnipotence, unpredictability and dissembling are critical to a dictatorship. These characteristics, he argues, sow confusion, terror and fear, to produce “docile, atomised individuals”, and transform every sector of society into liars. The... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3112537/beijings-call-judicial-reform-spells-end-hong-kong-system?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3112537/beijings-call-judicial-reform-spells-end-hong-kong-system?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 05 Dec 2020 22:45:07 +0000 Gleichschaltung – the process of establishing comprehensive control and coordination over all aspects of a society – is running at full speed in Hong Kong. While Nazi Germany exemplified Gleichschaltung, it does not necessarily entail mass slaughter of a people on the sole account of their race, or aggression against neighbouring states. Instead, what best epitomise and facilitate Gleichschaltung are the authorities’ resort to the law in legitimising their exercise of power, the complicity of... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3108817/national-security-law-hong-kong-has-fallen-victim-tyranny-rule-law?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3108817/national-security-law-hong-kong-has-fallen-victim-tyranny-rule-law?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 09 Nov 2020 01:30:06 +0000 Since moving back to Britain as a British National (Overseas) a month ago, I have been struck by British news channels’ tendency to focus incessantly each week on one or two small issues, such as the government’s mishandling of school exam results, as if they were major crises. I say to my friends here that they are very fortunate Britain is constantly beset with small problems. An issue that can be fixed, unlike the one that has befallen Hong Kong, is by definition a small issue. Certain... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3101570/why-boris-johnsons-backtrack-eu-deal-moral-mistake?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3101570/why-boris-johnsons-backtrack-eu-deal-moral-mistake?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 16 Sep 2020 01:30:18 +0000 Before it was replaced by “five demands, not one less” last year, “time is money” had long been Hong Kong’s unofficial motto. Visitors and expatriates were amazed at how fast Hongkongers ate or walked, often at the same time. The “umbrella movement” in 2014, the first political movement in the city in which large segments of society took part for an extended period of time, ultimately failed because Hongkongers could not bear the inconvenience and extra time in going to work and going... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3087338/chinas-national-security-law-poses-existential-threat-hong-kongs?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3087338/chinas-national-security-law-poses-existential-threat-hong-kongs?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 06 Jun 2020 01:00:06 +0000 “Never let a good crisis go to waste” is a quote oft-attributed to Winston Churchill in the context of his forging an alliance with Theodore Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin at Yalta in 1945 in carving out a new global order from the rubble of World War II. A major outcome was the creation of the United Nations, and with it the flourishing of international law in governing behaviour among and within states.  When the People’s Republic of China government replaced the authorities in Taiwan as the... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3082446/if-china-wants-use-coronavirus-crisis-burnish-its-global-image-it?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3082446/if-china-wants-use-coronavirus-crisis-burnish-its-global-image-it?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 03 May 2020 01:15:11 +0000 The state of a public broadcaster is intimately intertwined with the health of a nation and the world that it serves. In its purest form, a public broadcaster serves the state by not parroting its officials or apparatuses. It serves the state’s constituent citizenry through disseminating facts and information, and encouraging participation in public life, so that citizens, in the words of the World Radio and Television Council in 2001, can “better understand themselves by better understanding... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3077893/global-coronavirus-crisis-has-made-press-freedom-hong-kong-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3077893/global-coronavirus-crisis-has-made-press-freedom-hong-kong-and?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 02 Apr 2020 00:45:11 +0000 For those of us who had hoped the chaos of the past few years – Brexit, the Trump presidency, North Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear threats, and 2019’s global wave of protests – would fade with the coming of a new decade and a new 12-year zodiac cycle, 2020 could not have begun less auspiciously. With more than 300,000 confirmed Covid-19 cases and over 13,000 deaths in at least 160 countries and regions in a mere four months, the world has not been more rattled since the HIV/Aids crisis in the... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3076166/italys-coronavirus-crisis-lays-bare-our-misguided-belief?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3076166/italys-coronavirus-crisis-lays-bare-our-misguided-belief?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 22 Mar 2020 12:30:10 +0000 Are we finally seeing Pax Sinica 2.0, or is China engaging in a self-fulfilling prophecy that will lead to its doom (again)? Back in 2013, I wrote that China proffered a valid voice that would help maintain and shape the international order in its current form.  My 2015 book China, State Sovereignty and International Legal Order argued that China’s assertions and exercise of sovereignty should not be taken automatically as signs of aggression, or acts beyond the remit of international law, that... https://www.scmp.com/opinion/can-china-learn-lessons-failed-dynasty/article/3044084?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/opinion/can-china-learn-lessons-failed-dynasty/article/3044084?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 31 Dec 2019 09:50:35 +0000 Are we finally seeing Pax Sinica 2.0, or is China engaging in a self-fulfilling prophecy that will lead to its doom (again)? Back in 2013, I wrote in the Post that China proffered a valid voice that would help maintain and shape the international order in its current form. My 2015 book China, State Sovereignty and International Legal Order argued that China’s assertions and exercise of sovereignty should not be taken automatically as signs of aggression, or acts beyond the remit of international... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3043907/china-coming-full-circle-repeating-qing-courts-self-defeating?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3043907/china-coming-full-circle-repeating-qing-courts-self-defeating?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 30 Dec 2019 19:00:15 +0000 Since imperial times, China has had a problem with foreigners. This is, in part, due to a definition of Chineseness that is at once all-encompassing and narrow, flexible and compulsory. Chineseness has never been centred around race or ethnicity, despite Han predominance. Instead, it has revolved around loyalty to the powers that be. While Chinese culture as exemplified by China’s self-conception as the Middle Kingdom is Sinocentric and does not accommodate ideas of “barbarians”, the Chinese... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3040327/if-beijing-cant-quit-blaming-foreigners-its-problems-hong-kong-will?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3040327/if-beijing-cant-quit-blaming-foreigners-its-problems-hong-kong-will?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 03 Dec 2019 22:30:09 +0000 Someone has finally died. Although circumstances surrounding 22-year-old university student Chow Tsz-lok’s fall at a Tseung Kwan O car park on November 4 are still unclear, there had always been a sense of inevitability that a tragedy of this nature would take place after five months of unrest in Hong Kong. As Hongkongers mourn the death of someone so young, we must also mourn what our city has become. While Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor and her team of political yes-men emphasise... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3037504/carrie-lam-has-lit-hong-kong-ablaze-failure-hold-district-council?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3037504/carrie-lam-has-lit-hong-kong-ablaze-failure-hold-district-council?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 15 Nov 2019 01:00:19 +0000 One of the factors distinguishing the ongoing protests in Hong Kong, now in their 22nd week, from the 79-day “umbrella movement” in 2014 is the level of general support protesters continue to receive from residents and non-protesters. This is all the more remarkable considering the duration of the current unrest, the extent of violent actions to which protesters have resorted and the frequent use by the police of tear gas, beanbag rounds, rubber and live bullets, and water cannons. It is this... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3036362/why-hong-kong-protesters-are-forcing-university-leaders-pick-side?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3036362/why-hong-kong-protesters-are-forcing-university-leaders-pick-side?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 06 Nov 2019 01:00:16 +0000 Hong Kong has seen more than four months of increasingly violent protests, prompted by Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s now-withdrawn extradition bill and allegations of escalating police brutality. Predictably, many Hongkongers are looking to emigrate to a happier, freer land.  It therefore strikes me as puzzling that one of the countries Hongkongers, who long for democracy, rights and freedoms, consider moving to is Singapore. Having lived in Singapore, where I read for my... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3034336/singapore-no-alternative-hongkongers-angered-loss-freedoms-lion?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3034336/singapore-no-alternative-hongkongers-angered-loss-freedoms-lion?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 25 Oct 2019 01:00:14 +0000 Born, raised and educated to university level in Hong Kong, I returned to the city on September 27, just before the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, so that I can support my home in person, witness the crisis engulfing the city for five months, listen to views from across the socio-economic spectrum, and gather documentary evidence for my academic and policy research. I also did not want to be a fraud or a coward, commenting on my home in the comfort of a... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3031900/what-choice-do-hong-kong-protesters-have-when-options-are-pla-or?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3031900/what-choice-do-hong-kong-protesters-have-when-options-are-pla-or?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 08 Oct 2019 22:00:05 +0000 Beijing had warned that its tolerance of protests in Hong Kong, now entering their 16th week, should not be taken as weakness. Thanks to Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, Beijing’s hand has been revealed and Hongkongers – and the world – know Beijing cares, quite rightly, about its international reputation too much to intervene by force.  Instead, large contingents of mainland visitors have come in recent days to Hong Kong to sing the Chinese national anthem in shopping malls, with... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3028074/its-70th-national-day-strong-china-can-afford-grant-hong-kong?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3028074/its-70th-national-day-strong-china-can-afford-grant-hong-kong?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 21 Sep 2019 01:00:14 +0000 The year 2019 is meaningful for China and the world in so many ways. It marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China and the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen uprising. It is momentous for another, less celebrated, reason: the centennial of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, formally ending World War I. At the Paris Peace Conference, China demanded the return of Shandong peninsula, which had been surrendered by Germany to Japan. Rejection of China’s demand... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3024696/could-hong-kong-protests-lead-another-world-war-china-and-us-should?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3024696/could-hong-kong-protests-lead-another-world-war-china-and-us-should?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 30 Aug 2019 02:30:10 +0000 Hong Kong society is disintegrating before our very eyes. The furore over the extradition bill has metamorphosed into generalised civil unrest permeating all corners of Hong Kong. At the fundamental level, it is no longer about the bill, or Hong Kong-Beijing relations. It is about Hongkongers’ relationship with our government, which only Hong Kong itself can repair.  An indiscriminate attack by triad members on train passengers in Yuen Long on July 21 and the police’s inexplicable response have... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3021131/if-china-hears-hong-kong-people-it-must-let-carrie-lam-go?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3021131/if-china-hears-hong-kong-people-it-must-let-carrie-lam-go?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 04 Aug 2019 01:00:06 +0000 The continuing political crisis in Hong Kong has reached, in the words of Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, an impasse. The impasse stems principally from the government’s refusal to extend amnesty to arrested protesters whom Lam and the police have deemed rioters (subsequent non-retraction retractions notwithstanding), citing defence of the rule of law. While not acceding to any of the demands of protesters, Lam has pledged to “listen” to the people of Hong Kong more sincerely and... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3018751/amnesty-hong-kong-extradition-bill-protesters-would-heal-society?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3018751/amnesty-hong-kong-extradition-bill-protesters-would-heal-society?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 16 Jul 2019 21:00:10 +0000 The controversy over the exclusion of “localist” activists from the Legislative Council election brings to the fore the meaning of post-1997 Hong Kong identity, and Hong Kong’s place in China and the world. The question over the genuineness of a candidate’s allegiance to the Basic Law is entirely misplaced. As the late psychologist Erik Erikson pointed out, struggles in self-identification are a developmental hallmark of adolescence. It might not be coincidental that it is primarily young people... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2005481/hongkongers-post-1997-identity-crisis-heart-youthful?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2005481/hongkongers-post-1997-identity-crisis-heart-youthful?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 18 Aug 2016 03:46:44 +0000 In an international city famed for its efficiency, the Hong Kong government has managed to turn yet another non-issue into a constitutional controversy. One of the tenets of democracy is that, subject to objective criteria, everyone has a right to stand for office as a legislator. In Hong Kong, such criteria are clearly laid out in the Basic Law and the Legislative Council Ordinance. The Electoral Affairs Commission should ensure all requirements for candidates and elections are met. Its... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2000849/hong-kong-electoral-officials-have-overstepped-their?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2000849/hong-kong-electoral-officials-have-overstepped-their?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 08 Aug 2016 08:30:02 +0000 What is happening to my alma mater, the University of Hong Kong, is saddening and worrying. HKU Faculty of Law gave me the skills, basic knowledge and mindset to become a legal scholar. As head of the law department and later dean of the faculty, Professor Johannes Chan Man-mun extended me enormous help, patience and guidance. However, as the HKU Convocation's extraordinary general meeting a month ago attested, the issues go beyond whether Chan is fine enough a scholar and administrator (having... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1862631/university-hong-kongs-decision-not-appoint-johannes-chan-pro?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1862631/university-hong-kongs-decision-not-appoint-johannes-chan-pro?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 30 Sep 2015 03:45:45 +0000 Recent disagreements between China and Japan are by no means comparable to the rivalry between Britain and Germany that led to the first world war. Any such comparison is ill-conceived. Britain and Germany were engaged in a naval armament race, upping each other in their desires for colonial expansion. Germany was seeking supremacy of the seas and in Europe. Britain was defending its naval supremacy and colonial empire, and the balance of power in Europe. Historians now agree that Germany was... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1414935/spirit-times-china-and-japan-must-seek-peace?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1414935/spirit-times-china-and-japan-must-seek-peace?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 27 Jan 2014 13:00:45 +0000 Following China's vetoes of United Nations Security Council action over Syria, Susan Rice, the now former US ambassador to the UN, expressed disgust about China impeding protection of civilians and enabling mass killings. On whistle-blower Edward Snowden managing to travel from Hong Kong to Moscow, US Secretary of State John Kerry accused China of meddling. Through its territorial claims in the East China Sea and the South China Sea, China also stands accused of aggression towards its... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1294768/china-adds-valid-voice-shaping-international-order?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1294768/china-adds-valid-voice-shaping-international-order?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 06 Aug 2013 16:00:00 +0000