Indefinite healing: China’s ‘One Country, Two Systems’ formula over Hong Kong from a Daoist–Zhongyi perspective

Abstract

How can liberalist Hong Kong and socialist China coexist without posing a threat to each other? Based on L. H. M. Ling’s Daoist–Zhongyi theory and China’s ‘One Country, Two Systems’ (OCTS) policy over Hong Kong, this article analyses how the differences could be addressed through the Daoist–Zhongyi treatments of political healing, namely mutual resonances with respective legacies and desires, open engagement of parity and comity, power-sharing and trust. However, it also discusses how the Daoist–Zhongyi treatments might be misused for control when principles of healing are abandoned. First, drawing on the Chinese classics Daodejing and Huangdinejing, it outlines healing treatments of the Daoist–Zhongyi theory. Second, by examining the formation of the OCTS in the 1980s, it illustrates how the Daoist–Zhongyi treatments could be practised through mutual recognition, compassion, and trust through political commitments and compromises. Third, it discusses how the recent imposition of China’s National Security Law for Hong Kong exploits the Daoist–Zhongyi approach, making OCTS a tool for control rather than healing. The article concludes by indicating the indefinite nature of the Daoist–Zhongyi approach as a dialectical statecraft. Its potential for healing or control depends on whether the treatments deviate from Dao.