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Yan-ho Lai, "Legal Resistance Under Authoritarianism: The Struggle for the Rule of Law in Hong Kong" (Amsterdam UP, 2025)
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Hello and welcome back to New Books in Law, a channel on the New Books Network. Jane. I'm Jane Richards and today I'm speaking with senior fellow Yanho Lai, also known as Eric Lai. He's from the center for Asian Law at Georgetown University. We're going to speak about his book today, which is Legal Resistance under the Struggle for the Rule of Law in Hong Kong. And it was published by Amsterdam University Press in 2025, so it is hot off the press. Eric, welcome to the show.
- [02:28]
B
Nice to meet you, Jane, and thanks for inviting me to this podcast.
- [02:32]
C
Oh, the pleasure's all mine. So let's get us started to talk about you and about. Can you just tell me a little bit about yourself and how you came to write Legal Resistance under the Struggle for the Rule of Law in Hong Kong?
- [02:48]
B
Of course, I often say this book was born out of living through one of the most dramatic chapters in Hong Kong's modern history. Coincidentally, this year there's a number of academic monographs published about Hong Kong, including books on the 2019 protest under the discipline of sociology, journalism, as well as contentious politics. But on top of them, my book is really about how lawyers attempted to resist the autocratic rule in different settings, ranging from workplaces to professional bodies that regulate themselves, as well as in protest sites. I started this research in 2017, such as tensions were rising between Hong Kong's legal institutions and the growing political influences from Beijing. But at the same time, I was speaking to people affected by the legal systems of Hong Kong during my field work between 2018-2020, especially during the 2019 Anti Extradition Bill protests. They include activists, journalists as well as lawyers, legal professionals in Hong Kong, including barristers and solicitors, as well as law students and legal academics, and some were retired judges as well. I realized something important when I decided to write my book or to put this research into publishing as a monograph. Lawyers, legal professionals in Hong Kong were becoming central characters in Hong Kong's political stories in the past decades. Even longer when everyone focused on the rule of law, the state of the rule of law in Hong Kong since Beijing imposed a National Security Law in Hong Kong. Actually, my finding seems telling a bigger story since providing a bigger picture because the erosion of the rule of law has long begun, even before Beijing imposed a security law in Hong Kong five years ago. And when I discovered how lawyers have been diligently engaging in public to promote and defend the rule of law, I realized this story needs to be heard not just by academics, not just by legal scholars, but also for people who care about the developments of rule of law and judicial independence in Hong Kong as well as in China and broadly in the common world. So I would say the boat really grew out of two things is both my academic interests as well as my personal commitment as a Hong Konger as a legal academic. And my positionality also helped me to engage in the conversations with my interviewees and my participant observations and eventually made this book happen in publications.
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C
Actually, that's a really interesting point about your positionality. Perhaps you can tell me a little bit more about this. How did your positionality as a Hong Konger help you Engage with the people that you interviewed.
- [06:05]
B
Well, had I not been a Hongkonger, it would be very challenging for me to build trust to talk to my interviewees, especially those who are fully committed to the local community and those who want to be heard to a full extent. Quite often, most of the many of the analysts or journalists observed from the west in the past, they only focused on China. However, only a few people, maybe including Jane, who worked in Hong Kong, who observed and witnessed the deterioration of Hong Kong's legal and political systems, will realize that the story of Hong Kong connects with the bigger picture, with China or the Communist China, or even now, scholars usually make a notion of global China because the fate of Hong Kong is not just about Hong Kong itself. It also tells the world how China will expand its influences beyond its border, beyond its jurisdiction to the outside world. We can find instances in the belt and roll initiatives, and we can also find the influences of the global China. And amid globalizations, the influence of China also happens in the Western liberal democratic world. And now we can see how civil society activists, as well as different policymakers around the world are finding ways to resist the authoritarian reach. And the stories of Hong Kong's struggle for the rule of law, especially driven by lawyers, give helping us to have a broader picture and to have a broader picture on the one hand, and on the other, to provide a more detailed observations of how such contention, such tensions between China and Hong Kong work in a subtle and quiet manner.
- [08:15]
C
Yeah, I do want to get into that later on this idea about the expansion of soft power of China and you know, the lessons that we can learn from Hong Kong through your research and the influence and impact on lawyers and the legal system. But just before we sort of go into that a bit, just to set the scene a little bit, I want to pick up on something you mentioned before. You said you began your research in 2017. And then of course, we know that the National Security Law came into effect in 2025. But you did say that the erosion of the rule of law began before the National Security Law. It began more than five years ago. So perhaps you can just provide a bit more context. Can you explain a bit about how there was this erosion of the rule of law before 2020 in Hong Kong, right?
- [09:11]
B
Well, of course, to answer this question, one has to define the rule of. And in my book, I insist the rule of law must include several elements from a liberal democratic perspectives, including separation of powers, judicial independence, and the prevention or minimization of arbitrariness of executive power. So to contextualize this rule of law understanding in Hong Kong. Although Hong Kong has never enjoyed a full democracy, either under the British colonial rule or under the Chinese authoritarian rule, but it has established a number of robust independent systems that help safeguarding public interests, civil liberties and checking political powers to prevent the abuses. And in particular is the separation of powers as well as the professional autonomy that enhanced the credibility, credibility and integrity of the legal system. And in this sense, one fundamental limitation of Hong Kong's rule of law is that Hong Kong is not. Hong Kong is a community without sovereignty. Hong Kong is a city without sovereignty. Under the one country, two system formula, Beijing is the authoritarian sovereign. It has the final say of the future of Hong Kong. If Beijing does not exercise self constraint or self limit on limiting its interference or intervention into Hong Kong, then the whole power equilibrium will collapse. So such intervention has commenced as such intervention from Beijing from the Communist China has begun even before 2020, before the National Security Law came into power. In my book I document, such intervention has arrived as early as in the beginning of the hand over when Beijing introduced the first interpretation of the Basic Law. I mean the constitutional documents in Hong Kong. And such interpretation has influences or has pressurized the court to succumb to these sovereign decisions and refuted that judicial independence in Hong Kong has a limit. And on the other hand, as we mentioned, soft power or use for. For Chinese study, we usually use the term United Front word. The more cooperation tactics. Such cooperation with legal elites to build a strong ally for China to enhance its authoritarian rule in Hong Kong has begun in 1980s and 1990s, even before the handover and all this United Front's tactic has also enabled China to successfully capture Hong Kong's legal system. And when I say legal system here, it's not just about laws and statutes or legal institutions, not about government bodies, but it's also about legal norms and legal culture. Whether there's a robust ideology or robust cultural norms that support a liberal notion of the rule of law, such as separation of powers, protections of civil liberties as a fundamental principle or judicial independence, as well as limiting government. So in this sense, the erosion or the deterioration of the rule of law in Hong Kong is more gradual rather than a shock. Of course, we will say the National Security Law imposed by Beijing in 2020 has made a paradigm shift, has become the turning point of Hong Kong's political and legal history. But such deterioration did not come out of the blue. There were a lot of hints and there were a lot of examples that help us to know Beijing has been paving the way to control Hong Kong through different forms of legal tactics and legal transplantations.
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C
I want to talk about legal transplantations because that is a really important one of the really key learnings from the book. But just before we do that, can you tell me about the legal norms and legal culture amongst lawyers and the legal system in Hong Kong? Just expand a little bit on that. I do think it's really interesting how, you know, even pre2020 lawyers, the judiciary especially were conscious of this power of intervention coming from Beijing, that it wasn't frequently exercised. But knowing that it's there and that occasionally it will be exercised, I do think potentially has implications or could be argued to have implications in terms of the cases that are brought, how they're argued, the decisions that are made. Can you tell me a little bit about the legal norms and legal culture and what you uncovered in your research in these interviews?
- [14:38]
B
Yes. For scholars in comparative law or as well as in socio legal studies, they often define legal culture as the attitude towards the legal system as well as actors in the legal systems. So scholars would also define legal culture as professional legal culture and popular legal culture. Because for legal professionals or for the professional community, they may have a different view. They may have different views towards judges, towards secular governments, towards the legal systems from the popular observation or from the popular notions? Well, from my field work and from my writings, it's obvious that lawyers are always lawyers. Attitude towards the state, towards the legal systems in Hong Kong is always mixed. On the one hand, they will say the legal system keeps them alive. And to be fair, lawyers, legal professionals are vocations. They are a privileged profession endorsed by the state Otherwise they wouldn't need to be qualified by statutory bodies. So the legal system itself is a fundamental system that keeps this profession keep their career going. But on the other, the lawyers will also be critical of the will be critical towards the system when the system fail them in terms of realizing certain legal principles and ideals. And when they saw the governments were abusing the legal systems, the processes of law or the judicial processes, they would say they would defend the legal system but blame the government as the cooperative of the erosion of the rule of law. At the same time, at least before 2020, before the National Security Law was enacted in Hong Kong, they will also see external factors, including the sovereign power. Beijing served as the greatest threat to the rule of law in Hong Kong because amid the tensions between common law system in Hong Kong and the socialist of sovereign power from Beijing, it seems they could not always uphold power, equilibrium or mutual respect, or at least the tolerance of the diversity or to accommodate the tensions within one country, two systems. And when this equilibrium was broken, then there's no way to limit the sovereign power. Then lawyers will consider the threats to the rule of law doesn't come from within but from the outside. So it's always hybrid. But I guess the Hong Kong remains a special case because Hong Kong Hong Kong has been using common law system alike to the British one for decades. But at the same time Hong Kong is still a special administrative region under the Chinese socialist sovereign power. And this tension has been going on as always even now that how to reconcile or to harmonize their tensions remains a big task. And lawyers have been trying to do it not just within the courtroom, not just by defending a case, but they are also helping engaging in such struggle or such defense of the rule of law in a public sphere. This message may be shocking to many millennials. If you are one, you might want to sit down right now. Loads of people are searching the following on low rise jeans, Holter top, velour tracksuit, Puka shell necklace, disc belt. You likely placed these in the dark of your closet in 2004, never to be seen again. But if you can find it in yourself to dust them off, there are a lot of people who will give you money for them. Sell on Depop where taste recognizes taste.
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C
Maybe this is a good time to talk about some of those examples that come through in your book about the way that lawyers do. You know, continue on with the struggle and do attempt to defend the Rule of law. Because there are loads of examples. How are some of the ways in Hong Kong that lawyers did this? How were they able to do it and were they successful? Especially in the context of this tension, Right.
- [21:07]
B
Well, for most of the Hong Kong lawyers, they always sit at a crossroads. On the one hand, they inherited tradition from the common law world that lawyers should uphold independence, have professional ethics, respect for rights, and in some sense they should serve the court regardless of their political orientations. But at the same time, they're operating under and over territory foreign sovereign that does not appreciate the common law principles of rule of law and judicial independence. And even when we follow the legal and judicial developments in Mainland China, they have official documents that completely disapprove values that Hong Kong lawyers and the legal system in Hong Kong uphold, including judicial independence, separation of powers, civil liberties, etc. So under this tension is to most of the lawyers, they will choose to be apolitical. They will choose to treat their profession as a way for profit, as a way for improving their lives. And for decades, lawyers, just like other professions like medical doctors or accountants, their dreams of the grassroots in Hong Kong as a way for upward mobility. And this was a culture during the British colonial times where people would not have any imaginations or dreams or self determination or seeking political autonomy. And under the Chinese authoritarian rule, when Hong Kong was handed over to China, such political apathy remained at the very beginning of the handover. But as my book also studied, one of the turning points in in the course of the history of Lawyers was the 2014 Umbrella Movement. This movement have awakened many local professionals, including lawyers, to realize that without democracy, without democratic accountability and political self government, they could not uphold their professional belief, their professional prince, their professionalism, not to say their own career future. So following the aftermath of the umbrella movement in 2014, some lawyers, as a critical minority, formed groups, civil associations, to promote the rule of law under the democratic norms, as well as to challenge the state's discourse on authoritarian legality. And they were not afraid of stepping into public life. Apart from engaging in those public education. They also engage in supporting protesters detained in police station to serve them in a pro bono way to define access to justice. And ultimately, some of them realized it's more important to have institutional support rather than individual, rather than only relying on individual efforts. Therefore, some of them decided to run for elections in the Law Society of Hong Kong, as well as in the Hong Kong Bar Associations, hoping to get institutional resources as institutional standing to further engage in the public debate. And to a certain extent to minimize the dominating state driven ideologies that may further reshape how people and how legal professionals understand laws and courts as well as civil liberties in Hong Kong.
- [25:13]
C
This is probably a good time then to talk about this idea of authoritarian legal transplantation. So this is one of the key concepts and unique contributions of your book. So you describe authoritarian legal transplantation as outlining how China's legal and political interventions have reshaped Hong Kong's rule of law, merging colonial legal legacies with authoritarian statecraft. The concept of authoritarian legal statecraft is a key contribution to the book. Sorry, of the book. Can you elaborate on these concepts and explain how it transpired in Hong Kong?
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B
Yes, I will try my best to make it more layman. In a way, legal transplantation has been popular notions in comparative legal scholarships, especially during times before and after the world. After the World War, this was mainly because quite often legal transplantations were used to refer to Columbia. How the colonizers transplanted its legal regimes, legal systems, statutes to the colonized subjects in order to establish the property rights alongside the legitimacy of colonial rule. But after the war, amid the decolonization movement, the idea of legal transplantation was also stretched. They focus on how the Global south has become colonized in a way that they have to adopt neoliberal legal statutes or as legal system to open their market. Otherwise they will not get any international aid or loans from organization like World bank or IMF and such form of legal loan. Lynn was mostly about the power differentials between the global north and the Global South. But in the case of Hong Kong, I would say it's still about the conventional study of legal transplantation. Or someone would call legal impositions or even legal imperialism. Because Hong Kong was. Hong Kong has undergone British colonial rule for more than a century. And after 1997, when Britain handed over Hong Kong to China. Before that, they have made an agreement that Hong Kong will remain its own systems, its own way of life for at least 50 years. So in this sense, after the handover, Hong Kong has remained operating a colonial system. In here, definite British rule, including a civil service administration, a free market, the preservations of a common law system with certain limits. And despite. There are ways to reforming Hong Kong system from a colonial to a more democratic one, that is universal suffrage. But as of now, it has never been realized. So what I tried to investigate and to analyze was how after 1997, Beijing continued to adopt different transplantation tactics to consolidate the political control on Hong Kong's legal systems. To do so, they are not Simply using top down impositions of laws or statutes, such as the National Security Law, or using its power to interpret the basic Law that could influence the court decisions. But they have also been used in many subtle ways to try to transplant socialist authoritarian legal ideologies like the absolute supremacy of sovereignty, disapproving separations of powers and emphasizing the pursuit of democracy and civil liberties are merely Western concepts, et cetera. They did so not just by themselves, but they also built allies and networks with local legal elites, legal professional bodies, law firms, to enhance cooperation or kind of patriotic network in Hong Kong, so that when they impose a new ideology to re engineer Hong Kong, they would have sufficient support from the professional community. Of course, I'm not saying everyone who work in Hong Kong as a barrister or solicitor are merely, merely prophecies of Beijing. But in the past few decades, Beijing has been using a lot of economic and political means to co opt with legal elites, ranging from individual lawyers to law firms and ultimately to legal professional bodies. And that's how I have observed and I have analyzed with the essential experiences of my interview years in Hong Kong.
- [30:40]
C
And then that leads me to my next question, because you mentioned earlier how lawyers, especially after 2014, the Umbrella Movement, and then we see it again in 2019, where lawyers were offering their services pro bono, on the one hand to protesters, and then on the other hand, you've just mentioned, you know, some lawyers who are sort of motivated by this sort of political means and economic means to become more in alignment with Beijing. So there is this sort of potentially or arguably sort of splitting in polarization between some lawyers and others. As a Hong Konger, can I ask, were you able to separate the personal from the professional in your research?
- [31:33]
B
Yes, this is a very important question. I guess not just for my personal refreshment, but but also from academic standpoint that the usual notion of impartiality and objectivity always popped up during my field work. That's why at the beginning I also brought in the idea of positionality. And for me, I was born in Hong Kong and I have lived in Hong Kong for more than 30 years. I was a student, atavist, and later on an academic. But I also engaged in civil society in Hong Kong for more than a decade. At the same time, I'm doing a research on Hong Kong and my book is not just about the stories of lawyers, but also about their stories, their experiences working with civil society actors and defending protesters in mass mobilizations and challenging the authorities from both Hong Kong and from Beijing. So it's A big challenge for me to balance how to remain this book as objective. At the same time to share the voices, the feelings and experience of many of my interviewees as well as my own observations to the developments in Hong Kong. And unfortunately, many of these stories are still unfolding. They are still going on. My book has not certified the state or the rule of law because when I finish it, Hong Kong remains. Hong Kong's legal system are still undergoing different forms of stress tests. We still have a lot of political trials in Hong Kong nowadays. And we can see both Hong Kong and Chinese government are introducing new legal tactics, new legal statutes to further control Hong Kong's different ways of life. But I was also consoled by the fact that the current legal scholarship, especially in socio legal studies, they have started appreciating the positionality of researchers and academics, especially for research focusing on the marginalized groups. And I would recommend also a book out of place, an edited volume edited also by Lin Chua and as well as other socio legal scholars. They also argue being an insider in research subject in the field work also carries many advantages. It's more feasible and effective for them to build trust with the marginalized voices. And it's also important to use this alternative or marginalized voices, emotions and experience to challenge the conventional narratives and to discover new knowledge. And I guess this was also a motivation for me to complete and to publish the book because it would be more important for the academic community to know about the stories. To know about the stories, the voices and the emotions, the sentiments and the witnesses of stakeholders or communities. They are usually being forgotten in a global sense. And I'm quite confident that I've done a good job here.
- [35:18]
C
Yeah, I think that's a really important point. And especially somewhere like Hong Kong, this idea of challenging conventional narratives when there is sort of, perhaps you could describe it as a sort of siloing of outside ideas within Hong Kong now because of the change in narrative that is coming from Beijing. And I do think that comes through in your book. I mean, one of the things I was blown away by was just the sheer volume of interviews that you did. The amount that you did was just such a huge undertaking and it helped. You know, you mentioned your insider status did help you get access to the people that you interviewed. Can you elaborate a bit more about your methodologies? You know, how did you find people to interview and how did you protect anonymity and all of these sorts of things? Tell me more about your methodologies.
- [36:17]
B
Yes, I mainly employed three methods to build up this Qualitative research, I must say qualitative is really. I'm not using statistical data, but more on individual interviews, studies of existing archives, as well as ethnographic research, participant observations to understand the rationales and mechanisms of my interviewees. Engagement with various forms of legal resistance. There are resistance in workplaces, there are resistance in protest sites. There are also resistance in professional bodies, especially during elections of new council members. And all of these methods are aiming to help readers and help the audience to understand the developments of the rule of law from a micro perspective. Quite often legal scholarship focuses on doctrinal legal studies, case law, statutes, legal developments on the test. And these materials are all from the top. They are products of the power holders of those who are in power. But how about the voices or the responses from the bottom? And unfortunately, lawyers, legal professionals should also be treated in some way as also the bottom of the system. Many of my interviewees were junior lawyers. They are not eager to be elites of the state. They are not eager to be state adjacent. So somehow they are in some way marginalized. But for interviews, I did interview with around 77 people, ranging from retired judges to legal academics, to solicitors, barristers, law students and activists. It's mainly about snowball sampling. I was grateful that during my field work I was received by the local law school as a visiting fellow. And also partly because of my civil society background, before I entered academia, I got the fortune to gain trust from the interviewees, so they were eager to share with me. And I Guess after the 2019 protests, many of the interviewees also realized the importance of knowledge production, documentation and academic work. So they felt it's important to share their true weaknesses, sentiments and viewpoints with me so that I could analyze and could comprehend and to make it more publicly available, at least to the academic community.
- [39:18]
C
Yeah, and you do that really well, like in terms of keeping a record of what happened. So then, what was the biggest challenge, would you say, in writing this book?
- [39:29]
B
Right, there are two main challenges. One is more about the emotional weight when I carry on, when I carried on with this writing. And the second is challenge really about risk assessment. Many, many events are still unfolding during the course of my writing. Even before I published the book, I still have to keep revising because updates from Hong Kong were still tremendous and they were still shocking to the many, including myself and the stories I put in. The book is always about how people who are under pressure, facing harassment charges or they have to suffer from distrust, polarization and deficiency within the profession, as you mentioned. So I have been trying to remain analytical, but honoring the stories of each interviewee. It was challenging. It was a challenging task. But more importantly, risk assessment became my key concern at a later stage of my writing. This book was published this year, five years after the Security Law was enacted. Hong Kong but in the past five years, there were different cases of national security offenses that targeted journalists, targeted people who have been outspoken as well as even with academics or with influences. I'm not concerning whether I would be targeted personally because who am I? Merely an academic. I'm merely doing research. But I care about the people that are interviewed. So I have been trying my best to anonymize them and to avoid. And to avoid making them identified. And I guess this is both risk assessment as well as research ethics. And it's also a challenge because I've also been discussing with some academics or reviewers in the past few years. They were curious of who are these people, how these interviewees were eager to speak. There are many considerations. Of course, I couldn't share all of them in the conversation today. But conducting ongoing risk assessment has been a great challenge and it's also challenging to show. On the other hand, it also reflects the. Reflects the difficulty of how to continue carrying out research with personal stories and personal interviews in Hong Kong nowadays.
- [42:46]
C
Yeah, I think that's a really important point. And it was very sensitively handled in the book. So then what surprised you then in this research?
- [42:57]
B
Whoa. Well, this is this. I would say the publication itself also tells another story about academic freedom in Hong Kong. This is a book about Hong Kong. And it's quite obvious that the choice of the topic and the approach to the topic that I took may not be appreciated by local university press. And recently there was a research report on academic freedom in Hong Kong done by some outstanding NGOs also reflected reality that academic publications, academic teaching, are no way exempted from surveillance and censorship, even though how minimal or how subtle they are. How subtle and how minimal such censorship or surveillance could be. But I'm grateful that International University Press, academic publishers, they are still appreciating the value of publishing about sensitive topics from authoritarian regimes, from jurisdiction at risk. And they were eager to treat this publication from an academic credentials point of view rather than political calculus. So I'm really grateful for the publishers, actually.
- [44:39]
C
Then I want to ask, is your book available in Hong Kong at the moment? Do you know?
- [44:43]
B
Well, I have no way to know about whether the book is available in local bookstores. Even without censorship. The book is too. Censorship is too heavy and too Expensive as academic monographs. I understand academic publications have different concerns regarding the schedules of paperback publications and hardcover publications. But I hope universities in Hong Kong will also make my book available to researchers and students. I'm confident that they could still uphold these principles of openness, diversity and appreciation of knowledge productions.
- [45:42]
C
So then, going back to the substantive research in the book and thinking about this concept of legal resistance. You mentioned there were three types being in the workplace, place at protest sites, and then within professional bodies, especially within elections. And you write about this both in terms of the Law Society and the Hong Kong Bar Association. Can you tell me about these sites of resistance by Hong Kong lawyers in Hong Kong?
- [46:12]
B
Right. From my academic debate on legal transplantation, the focus are not always about how the regime, how the political regime imposes a new legal system to a recipient state. It also talks about how the local community responds to the transplantation processes. And in my book, lawyers are not monolithic or unified community that fully accepts the reality. And there was a critical minority of lawyers who disapproved the authoritarian impulse, transition of laws and norms and practices to Hong Kong's legal system. And they find ways to resist so. And they realized to resist such grand project from China, they could not simply resist it in the courtroom. They have to go beyond their professional sphere or to go beyond their comfort zone to engage with the grassroots, engage with civil society, engage with the protesters. Protesters are usually seen as vulnerable and marginalized. And even in some sense, they were seen by elites as troublemakers, disrupting the status quo. Lawyers are always defenders of status quo. Otherwise, if the legal system collapses, how could they make a living? But these lawyers, these critical liberal lawyers, they engage with these marginalized people and eventually they challenge the establishment. In the end, they challenged both the establishment of the political authorities and the professional authorities. Because they realize for decades the professional body has been so collaborative or has been so co opted by the authoritarian state. And if they need to resist the revolution of the rule of law, the prerequisite is to uphold professional autonomy. Otherwise they will have less capacity and they will have less. They will have less bargaining power to contest with the authoritarian imposition.
- [48:35]
C
And would you say that lawyers in Hong Kong have been able to play a role in safeguarding the rule of law?
- [48:44]
B
Well, to a large extent, yes. Lawyers in Hong Kong have to take oath to defend the legal system, system, to defend the judiciary. And even if they are being critical of the legal system, it doesn't mean they are not defending the system, but they want to improve the system in a way that could align with the principles they believe and they have been taught in law schools. And democratic accountability, civil liberties, independence and autonomy of the legal system are almost important in this sense. And of course there are lawyers who are willing to co opt with the government to promote contradicting discourses and narratives. But they're having a lot of lawyers who are trying to use their own professional knowledge, professional skills and standing to defend systems in a different way. They utilize their legal knowledge to educate the public and to empower civil society about do's and don'ts and their entire entitlement, their rights when they're being arrested or arrested by the authorities. And they also took extra effort to visit police stations to support protesters for a fair testimony or investigation by the police. Because in Hong Kong, unlike in the uk, you have no both duty lawyers or government paid lawyers to be ready in the police stations for Hong Kong people, they have to rely on their own lawyers. So this is a way to enhance access to justice and to provide remedies to the limitation of the systems. And challenging the professional body is a way to uphold professional autonomy in a way to defend the rule of law. Because without one of the key feature for robust rule of law is defective checks and balances to prevent abuse of power. And quite often legal professional bodies in Hong Kong have played a focal role to be apologetic or be critical towards government policies that may damage the rule of law or judicial independence. And without this independence, voices from the bar or from the law society, how could the legal community, how could a legal professional be confident to defend the system? So I guess one of the merits I could observe from these critical liberal lawyers is that they could see defending the legal system is not just about defending the statue or defending the court. It's really about defending or promoting a public understanding, a public commitment to different norms. And the stories they tell, the narratives they present is very, very important. And it's because they are also cultivating rule of law culture in Hong Kong. And without cultural foundations, any institutions would not stand long.
- [52:13]
C
So then do you still, based on your research, do you have hope for the rule of law and for lawyers in Hong Kong?
- [52:21]
B
Yes, my book doc, my. My field work finished in 2020, just after the China's National Security Law was imposed in Hong Kong. If we only see in a short temporality, of course many of these resistance tactics were stopped or disappeared. But if it took a long, if we see in a bigger picture, if you see in a more long, in the long run, all these resistant tactics, all these actions could be Long lasting. Because when lawyers promoted work for education in Hong Kong is not just now we can see not only lawyers are promoting a popular legal education, there are court journalism, There are still civil society members who will teach basic legal education to help the public to know their rights, to know what's happening in trials, to enhance the knowledge of the public. And this is a long term ongoing work. And there are still a lot of lawyers who are defending political prisoners, defendants in security crimes. And these cases are still going on. And without legal professionals, without defense lawyers, these trials would be much more adversarial to the defendants, I would say. And despite local liberal lawyers or lawyers critical of the authorities were less eager to run for elections in the Law Society of Hong Kong as well as in the bar because of the. Because of the overall chilling effects in Hong Kong. But we can see now because of the works the Hong Kong people have contributed in the past, as well as the deterioration of the rule of law in Hong Kong. We have seen there are many international legal organizations commenced to be focal about Hong Kong. When local lawyers were attacked or harassed, or when some exile lawyers have their license being revoked by the local law society. International Bar association make a strong statement. Even the Law Society in the UK make a very robust commentary or a joy statement to condemn such decision as full contradiction to basic principles that defend lawyers and defend the rule of law. So we can see there is also an awakening of the international legal community on the state of Hong Kong. And I'm quite hopeful that all this effort, whatever you can say, is a critical effort or fraternal effort because they're also part of a broader common law legal community would eventually improve the ways of life and to improve how the legal system continue to thrive in Hong Kong.
- [55:34]
C
I think that's a really important takeaway, actually, you know, making sure our attention does stay on Hong Kong notwithstanding. The National Security law came in 20, 25 years have passed. But it is important to, you know, keep this focus and keep this momentum. So actually then, Eric, can you tell me more about recent developments in this area?
- [55:55]
B
Area?
- [55:55]
C
Since your book, since your field work.
- [56:00]
B
Yeah, I have been working on how national security regimes reshape legal system as well as in civil society elsewhere. Of course, Hong Kong was my starting point. I also publish research works or publications on Hong Kong's national security regimes in the past last few years. But more importantly, I do appreciate the importance of comparative studies. And how courts function under political pressure is now a worldwide puzzle. It's not just in authoritarian regimes, even in democratic regimes, the threats of backsliding or the threats of executive powers extensions without limits still remains alive. So I hope I could continue this comparative research, especially in the Asian context when we have observed there are many authoritarian and semi authoritarian regimes also learning tactics from each other to try to enhance the government power, to undermine the court and to undermine legal professionalism. So I'm interested in what we can learn by putting these cases into a much broader conversation in the future.
- [57:22]
C
And then. So thinking about the transferability of your research, do you have any key takeaways for listeners?
- [57:29]
B
Yeah, I would say for general lessons, it's important to observe the importance of professional autonomy in authoritarian regime. Quite a conventional wisdom is you never enjoy professional autonomy in authoritarian regimes because authoritarian governments have an appetite to centralize powers in whatever way they can. But Hong Kong seems to be kind of an exception. The government could find ways to harass or intimidate legal professionals, but as of now, they are still considering upholding at least the face of professional autonomy. Independent professional bodies are important in upholding legitimacy. And how this kind of dynamics are played out in the future will be important and also help us to understand how lawyers and governments could interact with at even in a difficult political environment. And I guess for the other lesson, this is also important for lawyers to go beyond the comfort zone, to engage with the public and to build networks of solidarity. I'm not so sure whether it's more culture in Hong Kong or is a more general norm. But I guess for decades, especially in colonial times, lawyers are seen as political and economic elites. They are the privileged class, hence they are always be seen as working out of the ground. But if you compare with lawyers in authoritarian regimes, many of them are suffering or collaborating with the grassroots for noble cause. Even in the US there is a strong culture, of course law. And it seems in Hong Kong such culture is still under development. But how would the political environment further encourage or discourage the lawyers from engaging in public interest work? That is something puzzling. And they also help us to see the complexities of authoritarian consolidations. It's not just about a top down political, always interactive, and there's always potential resilience from the bottom.
- [60:05]
C
I think that's a really important point. Thinking about the potential for resilience from the bottom and also thinking about how it doesn't have to be accepted this top down imposition of authoritarian consolidation. Now, Eric, I've taken up a lot of your time, but just before you go, can you tell me what you're working on now?
- [60:30]
B
Yeah, I'm trying To as I mentioned a little bit just now, I'm trying to look at how national security regimes can reshape legal systems and civil society and even private lives elsewhere. There are lots of rich debate, not just in Hong Kong. Right. In other authoritarian regimes. And they are still valuable insights. I would love to learn more from my academic colleagues. And how common law systems survive or succumb to authoritarian consolidation will also be an important puzzle. Especially when the fact I have been cross checking some open source data. We have almost around 100 jurisdictions in the world that use a pure common law system or a mixed common law system. But only less than one third of them are considered by international standards as democracies or liberal democracies. It means that there is a lot of non democratic regimes using common law system and Hong Kong is part of their family. So it would be very helpful for us to see more comprehensive perspective. Not to simply make Hong Kong exceptional, but also to make Hong Kong as a case that could help us to understand the developments of the common law under authoritarian regimes as well.
- [62:12]
C
That sounds really important that understanding that Hong Kong is not exceptional. And this is one reason that people, people should actually pay attention to understand what has happened there recently and the ongoing process of authoritarian consolidation. Now I'm just going to bring the interview to an end. So I'm Jane Richards. I've been speaking with Yanho Lai, otherwise known as Eric Lai. His book was Legal Resistance under the Struggle for the Rule of Law in Hong Kong. It was published by Amsterdam University Press 2025. Eric, thank you so much for your time. Time.
- [62:47]
B
Thank you Jane. Thank you. It was really a great conversation.