Abstract
A viable sociology of the powers should be able to account for the specific power techniques of the sovereign statehood. In this chapter, through a contrastive discussion between two strands of comparative criminology, using colonial Hong Kong and socialist China as the examples, I will identify and explain how the practices of hegemony and sovereignty may constitute the essential power techniques of modern statehood in East Asia. Characterized by the prevalent instrumental rationality found in the rapidly expanding Chinese state security apparatus, although these power techniques can seemingly rein in such evils as greediness and political corruption, the lurking spirit of instrumentalism may also be found in the modus operandi of the power techniques of censure and exception, wherein the ends justify all possible means.
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In organizing the proletariat revolution in China, Mao (1971[1967]: 3–11) distinguished nonantagonistic contradictions from antagonistic contradictions. Contradictions with nonantagonistic groups, such as the farmers, rural petty capitalists, market vendors, school teachers, students and artisans, might well be neutralized and co-opted as friends and supporters of the proletariat revolution. However, contradictions with antagonistic forces, especially the landlords, bourgeoisie, US imperialists and the Kuomintang regime, were irresolvable in nature. These were the essential enemies of the revolution.
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Wong, P.N. (2016). Techniques of Hegemony and Sovereignty: Censure, Exception and Criminal Justice in Colonial Hong Kong and Socialist China. In: Discerning the Powers in Post-Colonial Africa and Asia. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-511-2_4
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