Navigating between empires: the discourses on self-determination in and about Hong Kong

This thesis examines how the discourse of self-determination has been<br>invoked, shaped, and transformed by state and non-state actors in relation<br>to Hong Kong from 1945 to 2021. Moving beyond a positivist framework,<br>this thesis conceptualises self-determination not as a determinate legal right,<br>but as a plural, malleable, intersecting legal-political discourses, which<br>were deployed strategically by the UK, the PRC, the Hong Kong elites, and<br>the counter-elites in moments of territorial and constitutional transitions.<br>Using discourse analysis, archival research, and insights from critical legal<br>theories, the study offers novel perspectives on Hong Kong’s legal status.<br>It traces Hong Kong’s autonomy to the inter-imperial dynamics, the evolving<br>demands of Hong Kong communities, and the territory’s distinctive<br>colonial and decolonial experiences. This study shows how state actors<br>and non-state actors both employed the elastic understandings of selfdetermination<br>to justify conflicting political demands and outcomes, which<br>offers us critical insights as to how self-determination is better understood<br>as authoritative language rather than legal right in ‘inter-imperial zones’<br>that are unlikely to become the focus of international legal adjudications.<br>This thesis makes four arguments. First, on a conceptual level, this thesis<br>challenges international law’s state-centric orientation by examining how<br>international law was applied, interpreted, and contested in practice by<br>intra-state and non-state actors in relation to Hong Kong. It emphasizes the<br>argumentative elasticity of international law and the importance of studying<br>its discursive use beyond judicial contexts.<br> <br>Second, this thesis supplements the current understanding of self-determination<br>by highlighting how its interpretation was shaped by historical,<br>strategically, and ideologically contingent concepts. Seven overlapping<br>discourses are identified: nationalism, self-government, colonial independence,<br>freedom of choice, sovereignty, democracy, and autonomy, each<br>leading to a different understanding of the entitlement, content, and scope<br>of self-determination as a legal right. In Hong Kong, self-determination was<br>employed primarily for justificatory purposes and flexibly interpreted to<br>mean autonomy, sovereignty, self-government, or democracy, discourses<br>that were sometimes complementary, sometimes contradictory. Hong<br>Kong’s autonomy reflects an amalgamate of influences from the discourses<br>of autonomy, sovereignty, self-government, and democracy.<br> Third, through the study of Hong Kong, this thesis proposes a new framework<br>of understanding colonial Hong Kong as a de facto Condominium<br>subjected to two sovereigns, which made Hong Kong unfit for the application<br>of UNGA rules on decolonisation. Despite meeting the UN criteria<br>for a Non-Self-Governing Territory, its path toward self-determination<br>has always been bilaterally negotiated agreements without the participation<br>of the Hong Kong people. As a result, the territory’s autonomy was<br>constructed not as genuine political self-government but as a form of<br>administrative autonomy. While discursively useful for reconciling conflicting<br>expectations, the Hong Kong model of autonomy reinforced a distinct<br>community identity without satisfying political aspirations, leaving the<br>settlement structurally fragile. The example of Hong Kong reveals the inherent<br>instability of imposed and non-participatory autonomy as a ‘palliative’<br>form of self-determination. It also highlights how the inherent ambiguities<br>and elasticity of the term ‘autonomy’ could generate opposing expectations<br>and inspirations that could widen the existing communal differences. The<br>Hong Kong example thus offers us tools to rethink the conditions for viable<br>autonomy and asymmetric power sharing as ways of conflict resolution in<br>the contemporary world.<br> <br>Finally, this thesis also made several new historical findings. This thesis a<br>series of tacit understanding between the UK and the PRC in constraining<br>the development of democracy in Hong Kong even before the signing of<br>the Sino-British Joint Declaration in December 1984. At the same time, this<br>thesis shows a more complex and nuanced diplomatic history behind the<br>PRC’s request to remove Hong Kong and Macau from the Chapter XI List of<br>Non-Self-Governing Territories in 1972, and the interactions between Great<br>Powers leading up to the official beginning of the Sino-British negotiations.<br>Last but not least, this thesis is the first study that systematically studied the<br>extensive influence of the UK behind the drafting of the key provisions of<br>Basic Law. It was revealed for the first time that the use of the Electoral College<br>to select the Chief Executive came from a UK proposal in 1988, and that<br>the PRC had suggested to the UK as early as in 1990 to use the NPCSC’s<br>power of interpretation to resolve inconsistencies between Articles 22 and<br>24 of the Basic Law.<br>