WTF, Hong Kong?
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 2 July 2019
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Early this week, about 200 protestors broke into and occupied the seat of Hong Kong's legislative assembly. The protests began with a controversial law about extradition to mainland China. That law was withdrawn but the protestors remain. There are hundreds of thousands of them—a small number of them violent.
Today we ask: WTF, Hong Kong? To answer that question, Benjamin Wittes spoke with Alvin Cheung, an expert on Hong Kong's legal system based at New York University, and Sophia Yan, the China correspondent for The Telegraph in London who has been covering the Hong Kong protests (Lawfare Podcast listeners also know her for her musical prowess). They talked about where Hong Kong is now, what's really behind the demonstrations, where the anger is coming from, and where it's all going.
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Transcript
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| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:32.6 | The first branch of Hong Kong's government is the Central Government's liaison |
| 0:38.0 | office in Taiwan District, Western District. And for several years now they have |
| 0:44.2 | been effectively calling all the shots in terms of major policy decisions. When |
| 0:51.1 | Carrie Lam's predecessor, CY Lam was elected, the first thing he did was to go to the liaison |
| 0:57.7 | office to express his gratitude and that should tell you something. The liaison office has |
| 1:02.3 | also been pretty openly lobbying Hong Kong legislators on numerous topics. So what I would |
| 1:08.8 | expect over the next few years is the liaison office is going to take more direct control |
| 1:14.3 | of more things. |
| 1:16.1 | I'm Benjamin Whittes and this is the LawFair podcast July 2nd 2019. |
| 1:23.3 | Early this week about 200 protesters broke into and occupied the seat of Hong Kong's |
| 1:29.3 | legislative assembly. The protests began with a controversial law about extradition to |
| 1:35.1 | mainland China. That law was withdrawn but the protesters remain. There are hundreds of |
| 1:41.4 | thousands of them, a small number of them violent. And so today we ask WTF Hong Kong |
| 1:49.3 | to answer that question I got on the phone with Alvin Chung, an expert on Hong Kong's |
| 1:53.9 | legal system based at New York University and Sophia Yan. LawFair podcast listeners |
| 2:00.7 | no Sophia for her musical prowess but she's also the China correspondent for the Telegraph |
| 2:06.1 | in London and she's been covering the Hong Kong protests. We talked about where Hong |
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