[The Politics of the Rule of Law No. 45] Profession under authoritarianism

Under the authoritarian governance after the National Security Law, how should we understand the connotation and meaning of "abide by professionalism"? Or, to put it better, when we have been advocating "professionalism" and advocating adherence to "professional ethics" and "professionalism", what are we actually talking about?

The word "professional" has been the subject of many political events in the past two weeks:

The cable news department has made major layoffs, dismissing the entire "News Needle" team responsible for investigative reporting, causing several directors of the news department, reporters from the Hong Kong News Department and the entire "China team" to resign as a sign of dissatisfaction. Afterwards, the directors of its news department issued a statement saying that they would not "fire people" for the next two years, and hoped that employees "keep their posts and give full play to the professionalism of journalists";

The Education Bureau has issued a circular letter to all primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong, requesting that "law-abiding" and "empathy" be added as the "correct" values and attitudes to be cultivated first for students, and will "organize professional development courses" to help teachers master the planning of "law-abiding" ” and “empathy” education skills;

The magistrate sentenced Lin Langyan, Zhou Ting, and Huang Zhifeng to 7 to 13.5 months in prison without bail for the unapproved assembly of Lin Langyan, Zhou Ting, and Huang Zhifeng last year. He will be remanded in custody until the trial begins in April of the following year. After the parties in these two cases were refused bail, public opinion questioned whether the judge's rationale and practice were reasonable and proportionate. The Department of Justice has frequently issued statements, saying that the prosecution is free from any interference.

Professionals and professions do not only refer to people engaged in industries that require certain specialized skills or expertise; the reason why a certain industry has become a professional rather than a general occupation is that a certain industry is supported by public power, and a series of It has evolved into a set of certification and licensing systems to define the knowledge and conduct of the industry.

The benefits of having public power certification, authorizing industry associations to issue licenses and supervising ethics are to increase the credibility of the industry on the one hand, and to ensure that the industry strictly selects aspiring practitioners to achieve the monopoly effect of controlling quotas and managing quality. However, those who do not have professional qualifications do not mean that they are not professional. They may simply have no public authority to legally recognize them. For example, journalists do not have an official licensing system in Hong Kong, but they must possess a certain degree of specialized knowledge and skills to engage in journalism.

Professions can be regulated autonomously by guilds or directly managed by the government. Taking the education sector as an example, although one wants to become a member of the education sector in Hong Kong, there are diploma courses in education issued by higher education and accreditation by trade unions (such as the Education Association), and the Council of Professional Conduct for Educational Personnel formulates a code of conduct for teachers; but it can control the teaching profession. Eligibility for life and death always comes from the regime that controls registration. Section 47 of the Education Ordinance empowers the Government to, through the Permanent Secretary for Education, "feel that the teacher is incompetent", that any conduct by the teacher is "sufficient to constitute professional misconduct" or "unfavorable to the maintenance of the teacher's teaching" good order and discipline in the school”, thereby cancelling the registration of any teacher. This means that if the regime "feels" you are unprofessional, you can lose your professional qualifications.

The most important influence of the regime on the profession is related to the functional constituencies of the Legislative Council and the Election Committee. In a democratic society, the role of professional groups is to assist the government in formulating policies, but the real authority to make decisions is the government empowered by the people. Through elections, the people have the final say. Democracy is designed to make the political power of the people as equal as possible. However, in Hong Kong, those with professional knowledge and skills certified by public authority directly enjoy the "transcendent" right to vote and veto. The logic of the system determines the behavior of the participants in the system. It is inevitable that there will be internal political competition between professional sectors and trade associations, so as to increase the power of factions in the election of the Legislative Council and the Election Committee. Control the professional sector.

The regime’s tactics to win over professionals can be through collaborative policies and laws to further protect industry monopoly, or it can be to open up the mainland market to allow different experts and bosses to share a piece of the pie, thereby self-censoring – even if it has to give up some of the original ethical habits. This method is particularly effective for the professional sector that is self-regulated, and the regime does not need to actively intervene in its operation. However, since profession is always a profession, and ultimately has to face the agenda of "feeding food", the economic operation of the regime is often indirect control of profession. 's recipe.

As for the high-pressure method, it is to directly reform the professional discourse and directly control the professional licensing. For example, the earlier controversy about the press card issued by the regime and the direct cancellation of the teacher registration by the permanent secretary of the Education Bureau is the public power without professional certification. Examples of professional licensing.

The most difficult thing to deal with is the regime's direct transformation of professional discourse and redefinition of the profession. Recently, two scholars published a paper in the academic journal "China Quarterly", discussing how a group of state-adjacent lawyers in mainland China can play a professional role for the regime. The two scholars focused their research on the winners of the "National Outstanding Lawyers Award" issued by the National Lawyers Association in recent years. They believe that the latter are a group of professional elites favored by the regime. Outstanding work performance” etc. The reason these favored professionals are "good lawyers" is that they are politically good enough in the eyes of the regime. They play the role of comprador as a bridge between the regime and the people, emphasizing cooperation with the regime or compromise, but at the same time criticizing the actions of human rights lawyers as "illegal," "extreme," "irrational," and "destructive." As we all know, to practice law in the Mainland, one must not only swear allegiance to the Constitution as in other countries, but also support the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party; lawyers’ licenses are also reviewed every year by the government-controlled Lawyers Association, which is a regular review in disguise. It is the "professional ethics" that Chinese lawyers must abide by and the basis for obtaining "professional qualifications". The so-called professional ethics, in the end who should be defined, it is worth pondering.

Most of the reason why professional autonomy and professional value have a detached status in the past is that they are often the life goals that ordinary people flock to and strive for upward mobility. Therefore, when it comes to professional interests, it is only natural to think of the economic interests of engaging in professionalism; whether the industry safeguards public interests and whether it can define public interests independently is often lacking. However, the incidents in the past two weeks related to different professional sectors just happened to ask what is professionalism. For example, when cable reporters resigned en masse, some people can criticize the resigners for being "not abiding by their posts" and "not professional enough"; but if the resigning reporters think that it is difficult for them to exert their "fourth right" in their work space to monitor the government, they will maintain their journalism work. The independent status of the people did not hesitate to leave the original post, and his approach even had the chivalrous spirit and sense of resistance of "going up and down together". So, between "staying away from politics, focusing on craftsmanship" and fighting for the protection of professional identity and value beliefs, which of the two shows the value of "professionalism" more?

In the final analysis, the so-called professional ethics or professionalism needs to be supported by a corresponding set of political values. For example, abiding by the media is a "fourth right" other than the three powers, that is, having the right to monitor the government; affirming that the rule of law is not only abiding by the law; empathy does not mean condoning those in power to suppress human rights; Faith stems from insisting that freedom and democracy are fundamental values, affirming that people are not beasts, they are free and equal citizens with their own personalities. Without democracy and freedom, the right to speak of professional ethics will be monopolized by authoritarianism, and professionalism will only stagnate at the level of superb skills, or even regress to the level of regime-first. The 2014 white paper required judges to be patriotic, safeguard national security and development interests, which is the "first shot of judicial reform" fired by the authoritarian to control the profession in Hong Kong.

Further reading:

Liu, L., & Stern, R. (2020). State-adjacent Professionals: How Chinese Lawyers Participate in Political Life. The China Quarterly, 1-21. doi:10.1017/S0305741020000867