The following post summarizes a talk I gave at FAU’s Human Rights Colloquium on July 14, 2026.
Hong Kong is perhaps the paradigmatic example of a special “offshore” economic zone designed to be especially attractive to investment. Setting up such a space requires openness to international—or, more properly transnational—law as well as legal institutions that will be familiar to foreign investors. And it frequently entails emphasizing the rule of law and communicating that emphasis abroad. For a long time, these efforts seemed to pay off economically for Hong Kong, and the city looms large in international commercial law as an oft-emulated example.
But those interested in human rights should pay attention as well. Hong Kong’s example suggests that a “high” rule of law model has a “low” counterpart and that they both derive from the same logic. Moreover, it reminds us that the borders of such zones are always porous.
The special zone model based on Hong Kong
Under the governments of first the British and now the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Hong Kong has often been promoted as a model for other zones intended to handle international finance and commercial law. These zones sell investors on enhanced rule of law and rights protection by establishing a legal jurisdiction separate from the rest of the country, a different relationship to international law, and increased openness to foreign talent.
Separate jurisdiction permits an alternate relationship to transnational commercial law, by which I mean both international and domestic laws that govern international commercial transactions. Zones might adopt model laws like the UNCITRAL Model Arbitration Law or Model Insolvency Law or comply more scrupulously with treaties like the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Arbitral Awards.
Many zones like Hong Kong also use common law, regardless of the legal tradition governing the rest of the country. The claim that zones are common law is a claim that the zone in question is particularly suitable for economic activity. Organizations like the World Bank have promoted the idea of an association between common law and commerce or economic growth. The evidence for this claim, often referred to as the legal origins thesis, is quite thin, but the idea continues to circulate. Common law lawyers also frequently believe in an inherent association between their system and personal rights, especially property rights. Regardless of its truth, this belief matters because lawyers trained in common law often make legal decisions for multinational companies.
Special economic zones are also open to foreign legal talent. Quite a few commercially oriented zones host traveling judges, who did not reside there before their appointment. They may make it easier for foreign counsel to appear and will conduct proceedings in English even if that is not the local language. Hong Kong does all these things, allowing English-language proceedings, appearances by foreign lawyers not licensed to practice locally, and overseas non-Permanent judges on the Court of Final Appeal. Hong Kong has also instituted rules that would allow for common law–trained judges in other courts.
The “low” model
The same logic of separateness that permits the “high” rule of law model in a special zone also allows a “low” model designed to offer less rule of law, less compliance with international legal commitments, and less rights protection. Hong Kong also fits this model. Before control was returned to China, it was a crown colony with an “executive-led” government, no—and then partial—elections, and wide sedition laws.
The low model also entails a different relationship to international law. When it ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the UK government entered two reservations with respect to Hong Kong: to the right to vote and be elected and to protections for migrants facing deportation. Controlling migration is often an impetus for adopting the “low” model.
Like many colonies, Hong Kong is a zone of reduced civil and political rights. Colonial-era sedition laws covered a wide range of speech and assembly and were used against politicians and journalists. The colonial government also passed a Public Order Ordinance with a notably broad definition of riot in response to the 1967 pro-Communist riots. This “low” model of legal offshoring not only coexisted with but arguably facilitated the “high” model in Hong Kong. Relative lack of democracy and the government’s commensurate disregard for demands for labor regulations or social housing made the city more attractive as a business environment.
Today, the 2020 National Security Law (NSL) and subsequent local sedition legislation arguably put the territory on par with Mainland China, rather than making it a zone of exception. Still, the NSL has a broader extraterritorial effect than comparable Mainland legislation. Presumably, Hong Kong’s status as an international commercial hub made overseas activism more relevant.
Thin lines
Hong Kong also has a weakness from the perspective of international finance and the UK and PRC governments: it remains, as Alvin Y.H. Cheung put it, “a real place with real people facing real problems.” Hong Kong people have their own interests that shape the territory’s laws and politics—and make the line between the special zone and “onshore” areas difficult to maintain. The issue is not unique to Hong Kong, even if the human rights stakes might be more visible there than in other financial centers.
Hong Kong civil society makes demands not just through the common law but also through PRC law and culture. Some of these demands have seemed to be about separation from the larger PRC, but there is another register in which pro-democracy activists speak of their struggle as linked to those on the Mainland. The work of Hong Kong activists in solidarity with the Tiananmen Square protesters and years of commemorations in Hong Kong after the event bear witness to this fact. Benny Tai, a 2014 protest leader and imprisoned legal academic, saw the Hong Kong democracy movement as inextricably tied to democratization on the Mainland. And Agnes Chow Hang-tung, a lawyer and Cambridge University graduate who was prosecuted for helping to organize the annual Tiananmen vigil, appealed to the 1982 PRC Constitution in her closing statement.
The Mainland authorities have likewise not been content to maintain a strict separation. They intervened directly in Hong Kong law through the NSL and before that through the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress legislative interpretations.
Hong Kong has been both a “high” and a “low” zone, often simultaneously. Indeed, its experience shows that these modes are compatible, even complimentary, and raises questions about the extent to which we should view special zone projects as contributing to the rule of law. Moreover, it demonstrates the limits of a strategy that seeks to confine legal ideas to a small, circumscribed zone.