Concluding Reflections
The Basic Law of the HKSAR was indeed a ‘most uncommon law'.[303] The same can be said of its tumultuous drafting.
Although the adoption of the Basic Law by the NPC Session on 4 April 1990 was celebrated as a ‘creative masterpiece' in Beijing,[304] the event had not alleviated the crisis of confidence in Hong Kong following the June Fourth Incident, partly since the provisions adopted included 24 changes introduced without any further public consultation in Hong Kong, some of which reflected an increased concern of the PRC State authorities over Hong Kong and its administration being the subject of foreign political influence.[305] The several years immediately after the June Fourth Incident were the times when tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents exercised their liberty to vote with their feet.[306] The PRC's objective of demonstrating OCTS as a successful mode for reunifying China was, at that time, dented.
On the other hand, it had to be acknowledged that in spite of Loh's observation of the drafting and consultation processes as a typical CPC operation of ‘from the masses to the masses' for generating an impression of wide support,[307] through communications between the legal experts among the BLDC Mainland members and the BLDC HK members, the Basic Law, enacted with expressions that carried a meaning better understood by Hong Kong legal practitioners, has turned out to be a judicially operable constitutional instrument.[308]
Viewing the history of the making of the Basic Law at the time of the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the HKSAR, one does find, as Chen and Ng had,[309] the period of the drafting and consultation of the Basic Law, which coincided with the British administration's development of Hong Kong's ‘representative government', resulted in the sprouting of Hong Kong's indigenous politics of sectoral interests, represented at first by factions of BLCC members and later by the electoral institution of ‘functional constituencies' endorsed by those members. The local political parties formed afterwards to contest elections before and after 1997 identified themselves by their contentions in the pace of democratic development by ‘direct elections', a matter that the Basic Law had deferred.[310] This political milieu persisted at the expense of ‘deep rooted issues' in economic and social development,[311] as well as fermented radical means to persuade the PRC Central Authorities to accept particular pace and terms of development.[312]
Last but not least, the Basic Law's implementation, particularly since 2014,[313] followed Deng Xiaoping's advice made on 17 April 1987 to the letter.
Deng's observation against weighing down the Basic Law with too much detail was practised by the SCNPC exercising the power of interpretation of the Basic Law to supply the details.[314] Deng's admonition that the country would have to intervene if Hong Kong were to become a base of opposing the PRC was realised with the introduction of the Hong Kong National Security Law and the associated institutions in 2020.[315] Deng's intonation that the administrators of the SAR must be those who love the motherland and Hong Kong was carried through in the electoral overhaul in 2021.[316] Deng's explanation that the OCTS policy was based upon the country's continuing practice of socialism has underlined the PRC Central Authorities' firm position that the upholding of the ‘One Country' principle for safeguarding national sovereignty, security and development interests serves as the prerequisite for Hong Kong to keep the previous capitalist system unchanged for a long time and enjoy a high degree of autonomy. As President Xi Jinping stated on 1 July 2022, the OCTS had been repeatedly tested in practice, ‘[there] is no reason for us to change such a good policy, and we must adhere to it in the long run'.[317]116