Noah Feldman, Columnist

History and the Logic of Empires

Current events in Asia echo the days of British rule.

August 13, 2019 at 9:30 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

The scene in Hong Kong.
Photographer: Kyle Lam/Bloomberg

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If you’re trying to figure out China’s next move in Hong Kong or how India will proceed in Kashmir, here’s a clue: follow the logic of an empire. China and India each inherited control from the British Empire, and are following a script that could have been written a century or more ago. Both governments probably have more legitimacy among their subjects than the British Empire had, but that’s beside the point when it comes to their reasons for acting today.

Start with China, which got Hong Kong back from the U.K. in 1997. China promised “one country, two systems,” an arrangement that was supposed to allow a common-law-style judiciary to continue operating in the former British colony. Yet, it’s not as though Hong Kongers enjoyed democratic self-government under the British. The handover of Hong Kong was the exchange of one imperial sovereignty for another. The government of the People’s Republic of China was just much closer at hand, and had a stronger traditional claim to the territory.