PrawfsBlawg: Are Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Activists Endangering the Basic Law They Want to Defend? How Moral Conviction Destroys Federal Compromise

Rick Hills has a long post about the National Security Law about to be enacted by China's National People's Congress.  It is addressed to Hong Kong which has itself failed to enact such a law.  We have seen Hong Kong paralyzed in recent years as anarchic protests have periodically paralyzed the enclave.
A lot of Western commentary imputes essentially criminal motivations to the Chinese Communist Party.  I do not. That does not mean there are not crimes committed - sometimes by local leaders, and sometimes at the top.  And one must recognize that the paranoia of the CCP is an expression of the fear that something like the Hong Kong protests could occur in the mainland itself - TiananMen '89 redux.
The PRC leaders therefore need to establish the stability which Hong Kong's government has failed to accomplish.  That failure practically forces the PRC to act.
In  a long post sure to provoke controversy Roderick Hills, Jr. has proposed a a "finlandization solution" in which Hong Kong goes its own path with the clear recognition that the City-state within a State is subordinate and will not authorize actions that tend to undermine the stability of the mainland and the CCP's monopoly on political power.
PrawfsBlawg: Are Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Activists Endangering the Basic Law They Want to Defend? How Moral Conviction Destroys Federal Compromise
by Roderick Hill (NYU) 
The news is now filled with denunciations of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for failing adequately to respect the "high degree of autonomy" ("高度自治权") guaranteed to the Hong Kong Special Autonomous Republic (HKSAR) by Article 12 of the Hong Kong's Basic Law（BL), the Chinese statute under which HKSAR is governed. The specific occasion for these denunciations is the proposal by the National People's Congress to enact a new National Security Law ("NSL") that would allow the PRC to crack down on anti-state subversion (An English translation from Jeremy Daum is available here). 
These denunciations all share a larger narrative: The PRC has been constantly plotting for the last two decades to undermine HKSAR’s independence, unprovoked by any behavior by Hong Kongers, and only the vigilance of Hong Kong protestors has deterred such nefarious and illegal schemes. (For examples of this narrative, see this New York Times’ story and this Vox Explainer). Lewis Yau Yiu-man has provided a succinct statement of this narrative in an op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times: “‘One country, two systems’ was a ploy from the outset, a tactic for China to buy time, the better to absorb Hong Kong sooner or later,” he writes: “Preferably sooner, it seems.”

This narrative — PRC plotting to undermine the Basic Law, Hong Kongers’ vigilance in preserving it — is, I think confused and dangerous. If the PRC really wanted to “absorb Hong Kong,” then they sure are taking their good sweet time. Hong Kong has consistently been rated one of the top ten freest societies in the world by the Cato Institute, and even Freedom House, which gives Hong Kong only a partly free rating of 55, acknowledges that, in Hong Kong, “individuals [are] free to express their personal views on political or other sensitive topics without fear of surveillance or retribution.” Evidence that the Chinese Communists are not very energetic about destroying Hong Kong’s civil liberties is contained within Mr. Lau’s own op-ed, which he published while living in Hong Kong: Try publishing that sort of thing while living in Shanghai, and see how long you stay out of “residential surveillance.” If the PRC wanted to squelch this enclave of civil liberty, they could have rolled in the tanks in 1989 or 2003 or yesterday: They have no need of “ploys” where they have unquestioned power, given that they have shown a willingness to use power again and again, international public opinion and international law be damned.

The more accurate account of CCP leaders’ motives, therefore, is probably that (1) the PRC leadership would prefer to preserve Hong Kong as a liberal enclave, albeit not as unconstrained as critics like Mr. Lau would prefer but (2) Communist bigs and Hong Kongers simply have different conceptions of the regime that the Basic Law created, because the Basic Law is extraordinarily ambiguous. As I will argue after the jump, the PRC leaders could reasonably interpret the Basic Law as guaranteeing something like a “Finlandized” Hong Kong. By "Finlandization," I refer to the once-familiar and informal arrangement between Finland and the Soviet Union under which the Soviet Union would not interfere with the Finns' internal affairs so long as the Finns did not allow their territory to be used for denunciations of or organizing against the Soviet Union. The policy involved a significant amount of informal self-censorship by the Finns, not codified in any law but tacitly observed by book publishers, film-makers, and newspapers to avoid negative commentary on Soviet politics. It was not perfect freedom, but, compared to the fate suffered by, say, Czechoslovakia, Poland, or Hungary, “Finlandization” was, as Melvin Lasky put it in 1979, "not the worst fate." By contrast, Hong Kongers regard the Basic Law as guaranteeing them essentially the same raucously uncensored politics as, say, London’s or New York City’s.

*****

My Hong Kong friends assure me that the PRC leadership has to move stealthily out of fear of the bad press that would be generated abroad from the military suppression of Hong Kongers a la Tiananmen. Maybe — but have you seen much evidence that the PRC leadership is much deterred from repression by bad international press in other contexts? In Xinjiang, for instance, or anywhere else in China? If the bosses of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) really thought it was in their interest to get rid of all liberal dissent in Hong Kong, they could have done so long ago the old-fashioned Leninist way, irrespective of treaties, international law, or the Basic Law, with tanks and police “visits for a cup of tea.“ That’s how Leninists traditionally operate, from East Germany (1953), Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1968), Wukan Village, and Xinjiang (2016-today).

The more likely explanation for the PRC’s relatively restrained behavior is that CCP leaders want to preserve a liberal Hong Kong to generate foreign currency, financial deals, decent universities, independent courts attractive to foreign and domestic investors, and an atmosphere of free expression attractive to intellectual talent. The CCP leadership, however, also wants Hong Kong liberalism to be “Finlandized” so that the PRC’s Leninist regime is not threatened by a spark of revolution flying out of Hong Kong and igniting prairie fire on the Mainland. This means that they want to insure that uncensored books in Hong Kong are not surreptitiously smuggled to Mainland China; public protest are free from deliberate insults to symbols of Chinese authority and patriotism (e.g., oath-mocking, anthem-mocking, etc.); and Mainland fugitives (with their money) cannot escape to Hong Kong to flaunt the CCP’s authority.

All of these aspects of “Finlandization” are admittedly serious incursions on freedom as it is enjoyed in, say, New York City or London. But they are magnitudes less serious than the limits imposed on freedom in any Mainland city. If pro-democracy protestors overplay their hand by insisting on a level of freedom that the PRC leadership will not tolerate, then everyone, Hong Kongers and CCP bosses alike, will be left worse off.

5. Ambiguous federal compacts versus passionate moral commitments: The analogy to antebellum United States

If my diagnosis is correct, then CCP leaders and pro-democracy protestors ought to cut a deal in which both sides credibly commit to a specific “Finlandized” mix of freedom and constraint that each is prepared to tolerate. Presumably, the pro-democracy side can extract concessions for civil liberties equal to the sum of (1) the economic value of a liberal enclave for China plus (2) the various costs (e.g., bad PR) of repressing Tiananmen-style mass protests directly with the PLA. Instead, the pro-democracy side is unconditionally rejecting any sort of restrictions (e.g., extradition of Mainland fugitives) necessary to reassure the CCP, in the process unleashing protestor violence that practically invites the NPC’s standing committee to declare an emergency under BL Article 18 to address “turmoil...which endangers national unity or security and is beyond the control of the government of the Region.”