Transcript
RICHARD BUSH: I've long thought that politically Hong Kong plays a very important role in the Chinese political system because it can be, I think, a test bed, or a place to experiment on different political forums on how to run large Chinese cities in an open, competitive, and accountable way. So how Hong Kong's political development proceeds is very important for some larger and very significant issues for the Chinese political system as a whole, and therefore the debate over democratization in Hong Kong is one that has significance that reaches much beyond the rights and political participation of the people there.
The election that occurred last Sunday is a kind of punctuation mark in that larger debate over democratization, and we're very pleased to have two very qualified people to talk to us today.
The first is Professor Sonny Lo Shiu-hing, who has just joined the faculty of the University of Waterloo in Canada. For a number of years he was a professor at Hong Kong University and other Hong Kong institutions before that. To my mind he is probably the smartest person on the Hong Kong political system. If you ever want to know everything there is to know about it, I suggest Governing Hong Kong, which is the textbook he wrote about it, and we're very pleased to have him as our primary speaker.
Serving as a discussant is my good friend, Ellen Bork, who is now the Deputy Director for the Project for the New American Century, and before that she had a number of interesting jobs including being on the professional staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and serving as an assistant to the Honorable Martin Lee.
Without further ado, thank you again for coming, and Sonny, the floor is yours.
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