Skip to main content
School of Law

EUPLANT Lecture: From “Occupying Central” to “Anti-Extradition” in Hong Kong – Limits of Law and Power of Politics with Professor Lin Feng

4 February 2020

Time: 6:00 - 8:00pm
Venue: Room 1.28, Arts One, Queen Mary University of London,Mile End Road, London E1 4NS

EUPLANT logo sat above the Erasmus+ logo which states 'with the generous support of the Erasmus+ programme of the European UnionEUPLANT and Erasmus+ are delighted to invite Professor Lin Feng (City University of Hong Kong) for a lecture on 'From "Occupying Central" to "Anti-Extradition" in Hong Kong - Limits of Law and Power of Politics' at Queen Mary Unviversity of London. Professor Lin Feng will be joined by Dr Heidi Wang-Kaeding (Keele University) as a discussant.

Video

Watch the full lecture.

Abstract

The “Anti-extradition Movement” in Hong Kong has been going on for more than 6 months. Since its root cause is the Extradition Bill, this lecture tries to answer the questions why the Bill has failed, for what reasons, and seeks to find out the lessons Hong Kong should learn from it. After reviewing the background and main contents of the Bill, as well as the Movement, this lecture analyzes major legal issues relating to the Extradition Bill, which demonstrates that the contents of the Bill are reasonable and would remove two major obstacles for future conclusion of a bilateral agreement between Hong Kong and mainland China. I will argue that though the contents and the necessity of the Bill is unquestionable, its consultation was too hasty, the timing was not appropriate, and the promotion was unsatisfactory. As a result, an opportunity to move closer towards the conclusion of a bilateral extradition agreement has been wasted. A well-intentioned and drafted Bill is meaningless if the Government cannot convince its people about it. Law and legal arguments have their limits. Since legislative process is both legal and political, law reaches its limits when politics manages to mobilize sufficient people against the Bill.

Speaker Bio

Professor Lin Feng (City University of Hong Kong)

Professor of Law, School of Law, City University of Hong Kong. He is originally from mainland China. He is the holder of an LLB (Fudan University, China), LLM from the Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand), and Ph.D (Peking University, China). He specializes in Hong Kong Basic Law, Chinese and comparative constitutional and administrative law. He has more than 100 publications in the relevant fields.

Dr Heidi Wang-Kaeding (Keele University)

Heidi obtained her PhD in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2017. Her doctoral thesis on China’s role in Global Environmental Governance was funded by the Montague Burton Studentship and the Goodwin Scholarship, while financial support for her fieldwork came from the Partnership PhD Mobility Bursaries Award. Heidi received her undergraduate degree from the Hong Kong Baptist University and was the winner of Scholastic Award in 2011. She joined Keele University in September 2019. Prior to this, Heidi was Assistant Professor in Asian Politics at Trinity College Dublin, working for the Department of Political Science and Trinity Centre for Asian Studies.

Heidi is one of the co-founders of the Hong Kong Studies Association.

Contact

For more information on this event, please email lawevents@qmul.ac.uk.

Photography, video and audio recording

School of Law events may be photographed or video and audio recorded. These materials will be used for internal and external promotional purposes only by Queen Mary University of London. If you object to appearing in the photographs, please let our photographer know on the day. Alternatively you can email lawevents@qmul.ac.uk in advance of the event that you are attending.

Back to top