Amending the Hong Kong Basic Law: Within and Outside the Rules

Abstract

This Chapter, part of the Asian Comparative Constitutional Law Volume 2: Constitutional Amendments (Hart Publishing, 2024) project, examines the rules of amendment in the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the two occasions of amendments that occurred in the course of the 25 years of implementation of the Basic Law. Noting that only one tranche of amendments were made by applying the amendment rules in the Basic Law and that the other tranche of amendments were achieved by the Central Authorities of the PRC applying specified provisions of the PRC Constitution, the Chapter illustrates the contested interactions between the Chinese Central Authorities, the Hong Kong Government and Hong Kong political parties on the constitutionally deferred matter of the evolution of the political system of the Special Administrative Region that the amendment rules had served and the constitutional bases and justifications for the Central Authorities eventually applied to depart from the amendment rules. The Chapter concludes with reflections on the fundamental question of how much the Basic Law qualifies as a self-contained constitutional instrument for China's Hong Kong.