Hong Kong’s Autonomy: Legality, Legitimacy, and Reconciliation

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-611-6_43How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Basic Law of Hong Kong; High Degree of Autonomy; Unitary State; Residual Power

Abstract

Hong Kong enjoys a high degree of autonomy within China under its ‘One Country, Two Systems’ policy. In the Chinese unitary state, Hong Kong’s autonomy is authorised by the central government, and there is legally no restriction on central intervention. However, autonomy has more robust meanings as a local legitimacy, and tension exists between its legal and legitimate meanings, causing controversies in central intervention. This tension can either be resolved by constructing another local legitimacy, or be avoided by restricting the central government’s residual power or by resorting to its power incidental to the power to supervise the constitution.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Shurun Lin
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/07
TI  - Hong Kong’s Autonomy: Legality, Legitimacy, and Reconciliation
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 12th International Conference on Digital Humanities and Frontiers in Social Sciences (DHFSS 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 391
EP  - 400
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-611-6_43
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-611-6_43
ID  - Lin2026
ER  -