GLOBAL-IS-ASIAN
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FORESEEABLE PODCAST
FORESEEABLE PODCAST: THE WORRYING CASE OF HONG KONG Jun 19, 2020 • 18 min Featured Faculty: Alfred Wu Assistant Dean (Research) and Associate Professor, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy
China recently passed a national security law* that could completely change Hong Kong’s relationship with the mainland, yet how it will be implemented remains to be seen. The dynamic between Beijing and Hong Kong is what Associate Professor Alfred Wu at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy would call a “centre periphery” relationship. *this podcast episode was published on 19 June 2020
What do you mean a “centre vs periphery” relationship? It means that a central government is making some decisions, but some areas are not actually, quite close to the central government. Maybe they are different culturally. Or they may be different financially, so they [can] not understand each other. In that case, a lot of our problems happen. Like in Hong Kong’s case, Hong Kong’s culture is very different from Beijing. So, you create another problem called, centre and the periphery relations. In China, we have a number of similar problems. One is the relationship between
Hong Kong and Beijing and the relationship between Tibet and Beijing. Mostly that is because of historical reasons. Or sometimes it’s due to a financial reason or [it] could be because of a cultural difference. So, there has been a trend towards more centralised power. And so, this would be the centre taking greater control over the periphery. Is that how you’d say it? Yes. Another issue [which] is a very important thing, over the past 10 years, in 2008, China held the Olympic Games in Beijing. China actually, also has obtained [a] much more important position around
