Xi Jinping’s liberal birdcage: Democracy’s form and future in Hong Kong
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702020930745 |
| Published date | 01 June 2020 |
| Date | 01 June 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Policy Brief |
Policy Brief
Xi Jinping’s liberal
birdcage: Democracy’s
form and future
in Hong Kong
Steven Holloway
Department of Political Science, Dalhousie
University, Canada
Abstract
As street demonstrations remain unresolved in Hong Kong (HK) and continue into
2020, this paper assesses the protesters’ demand for universal suffrage and governance
reform in general. It recounts the path to the current stalemate on political rights for
HK’s liberal authoritarian regime and, using Freedom House data, traces the growing
threat to civil liberties posed by Beijing’s covert extra-legal activities. Finally, the paper
enumerates the restraints that make direct military intervention unlikely, and suggests
how the current demonstrations might end in the coming months. One innovation of
this analysis is to add in the forgotten political variable of the Chinese Communist
Party’s leadership, especially the role of the 2012 transition from Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping.
Keywords
International Relations, Hong Kong, democratization, extradition crisis, Xi Jinping
The extradition bill introduced by the Lam Hong Kong Special Administrative
Region (SAR) government in April of 2019 triggered one of the largest and most
violent mass demonstrations for greater democracy yet seen in the SAR since the
Corresponding author:
Steven Holloway, Department of Political Science, Dalhousie University, Henry Hicks Building, 6299 South
Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, B3H 4R2.
Email: shollowa@stfx.ca
International Journal
2020, Vol. 75(2) 259–269
!The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0020702020930745
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