By Jerome A. Cohen
Following the passage of the Hong Kong National Security Law, it was announced that educational materials will be subject to government “guidance,” and some libraries have begun to pull books by pro-democracy activists off the shelves. This bleak turn of events is obviously worrying to the academics living and teaching in Hong Kong and has been the subject of much discussion with some wondering if they should leave, or if it is even more important now that they stay.
These events have made me think of 1949-1950 when many able Chinese returned amid the excitement of creating a new and stronger China. Others returned later, especially during the optimistic 1953-57 period. Some important and talented people were not permitted to leave the US for China for several years after “Liberation,” especially Qian Xuesen, the Cal-Tech rocket scientist who later became famous for his role in PRC nuclear development. Some intellectuals even chose to go back in the 1960s just before the Cultural Revolution broke out. The great Harvard-based scholar Ch’u Tung-tsu, who in 1962 published Local Government in China Under the Ch’ing and who welcomed my interest in China during our brief meeting, had the misfortune to return not long after the book’s publication. I next heard of him when my wife bumped into him and a small group of Shanghai scholars climbing Huang-shan in mid-September 1979. Life would have been pleasanter and more productive for him had he remained at Harvard’s East Asian Research Center.
My hope is that people stay if possible and continue to teach and research as they have previously done. As an example, before Hong Kong was returned to the PRC in 1997, China News Analysis chose to leave Hong Kong for Taipei, leading to the demise of the publication. Father Ladany, its editor when I was breaking into the field in the ‘60s, was a shrewd observer and critic of the PRC’s efforts to develop a legal system, and it is a shame that the publication left when it did. Of course, we all hope that those foreigners who stay on to teach sensitive subjects like history and law in HK will not suffer the fate of French academics who decided to stay on in Shanghai after “Liberation.” In a long piece that is about to be published and that is already on SSRN, I discuss, among other things, the PRC’s criminal punishment of Dean Andre Bonnichon of the Aurore University Law School in Shanghai. Fortunately, he was ultimately released and later vividly described the long incommunicado detention and coercion that he suffered, which hopefully will not happen to those who wish to stay in Hong Kong. Whatever happens, those on the outside will surely learn from the experiences of those who stay. We must wish them bonne chance!