"Super Paradox" or "Leninist Integration": The Politics of Legislating Article 23 of Hong Kong’s Basic Law

Liao Zhengzhi, the late director of the Office of Hong Kong and Macau Affairs, once said that on the resumption of Hong Kong’s sovereignty, Hong Kong needed only to change the flag and British governor. While the press was full of doomsday prophecies about Hong Kong’s future, there was a camp of "super-paradox" theorists who genuinely believed that Hong Kong’s status quo would not change after the handover. The authoritarian one party-dominated PRC, they asserted, could absorb a free-flowing Hong Kong without changing the nature of an open society. Contrary to doomsday prophets and "super-paradox" theorists, this article argues that while the doomsday prophecy was groundless, important institutional changes did take place even though they were barely noticed. It is argued, by using the example of the legislation of Article 23, that a gradual approach has been adopted by the Chinese Communist Party to change the fundamentals of Hong Kong’s polity, a strategy that I call "Leninist integration.”