Constitutional Additives in China's Hong Kong: Could central constitutional decision-making for a region under a hybrid regime ever be illegitimate?

Abstract This article examines the central-local relation between China's unitary and socialist state and its capitalist Special Administrative Region (SAR) of Hong Kong, and considers that, notwithstanding the centralised system underpinning the relationship, Chinese central decision-making in respect of Hong Kong could raise issues of legitimacy. This article focuses on the decision-making of China's National People's Congress and its Standing Committee between 2016 and 2021, purportedly pursuant to the Chinese Constitution and the Hong Kong Basic Law (the instruments providing for Hong Kong's different systems). Upon examination, this article argues that legitimacy-based inhibition, restriction, and resistance arises in relation to the legal control exercised by the Chinese central authorities over Hong Kong. This is made possible by the ‘conditionality’ of the Basic Law, framed as the implementation of China's policies for the return of Hong Kong on 1 July 1997, and by the nurturing of the perceived pluralistic premise of the policy of ‘One Country, Two Systems’ by Hong Kong's common law judges and lawyers in their interpretation and application of the ‘imposed constitution’ of the Basic Law.