The Legal Complex in Retreat: Post-Colonial Hong Kong.

The Legal Complex in Retreat: Post-Colonial Hong KongThe handover of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China in 1997 elevated the rule of law to the touchstone of Hong Kong's liberal - if still undemocratic - society. Before the handover, the legal complex - especially law, lawyers, courts and the judiciary - became highly-politicised. Law became politics by other means. That this has remained the case is mainly due to two factors: (i) the unreformed nature of the Hong Kong polity (non-democratic but with a more distinct, pro-business, authoritarian nature); and (ii) the radicalisation of elements of the Hong Kong Bar. Lawyers - largely complacent for much of Hong Kong's colonial history - are now at the forefront of the territory's pro-democracy activities. However, with the handover has come the emergence of a new strand to the legal complex, the pro-China legal advisers and lawyers. Operating both in Hong Kong and Beijing, they have proved politically influential in their interventions in cases which raise the issue of the status of Hong Kong's courts, laws, and judicial system vis-a-vis the National People's Congress. Tensions between these competing parts of the legal complex reflect competing visions of Hong Kong. Mass resistance against Mainland attempts to re-colonise Hong Kong through law has been regularly demonstrated by large-scale street demonstrations, notably centring on the erosion of the rule of law. The liberal legal complex remains an important check on the illiberal tendencies of the new regime but liberalism in Hong Kong is on the retreat. The character of the legal complex is itself shifting as opposition develops between those parts of the legal complex committed to a liberal rule of law and a pro-Communist legal complex which sees law and an instrument of political policy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]