Legislative process and bitcoin

So one narrative that keeps coming up is "oriental despotism." When the British wanted to justify their empire, it was to save those poor Asians from horrible oriental depots and bring them the wonders of Western culture and civilization. And if the locals don't appreciate this, then tough luck.

So one thing that will happen is that the HK legislature will start to work more like legislatures in Mainland China. One reason that this is possible that the HK Legco is rather new. It really didn't exist in 1980.

So what do legislatures in mainland #China do? Most people assume "they do nothing and are just rubber stamps." The party decides everything the legislators look pretty. This was kind of true in 1985, but it's not true now.

Basically legislatures in Mainland China is where different interest groups get together and make deals. So the legislative process in Mainland China involves getting different interest groups into a room and then hammering out deals and compromises. This system evolved in the 1990's, and came about to avoid the breakdowns that led to Tiananmen and to prevent the type of splits (i.e. Yeltsin versus Ligachev) that killed the CPSU.

One reason you need this sort of system is that it's not clear how you'd otherwise do politics in a system that doesn't have party politics. So what it looks like is going to happen is that they'll expand the Legislative Council to make sure that everyone gets a "seat at the table." What will be interesting is to see how this works with pre-existing Hong Kong practice.

So the way that it worked in 1980 in Hong Kong, was that the Legislative Council was just an extension of the Executive Council. So the Governor would run things through the civil service, and if a really important decision needed to be made, there would be a meeting of the Legislative Council which was the Executive Council with expanded non-official members. The governor would get feedback from the non-officials, but it was more of a focus group, and in the end, the real power was in the hands of the Governor and civil service.

Legislative process in Hong Kong reflects that history. Legco itself doesn't have too much power, and legislation is driven by the civil service.