This book examines how civilization modes determine constitutional effectiveness, comparing the Chinese moral duty-driven civilization with the Western desire-driven civilization. 

The Chinese civilization is oriented by cosmic apprehensiveness, structured by the “mutuality of existence” ontology (I live because of others, I must live for others), and driven by (unconditional) moral duties. Moral duties 1) create “existentiality” (—a baby lives because his mother unconditionally fulfils her maternal duties); 2) generate the capacity to distinguish good from evil, right from wrong in human affairs, and 3) optimise and sustain the conversion mechanism of “duty generates order, order generates functions” —When citizens comply with legal rules under moral duties, they activate compatible orders producing sustainable constitutional functions—freedoms, rights, equality, governance, reform, etc.. A moral duty – sustained conversion mechanism is the hallmark “source code” for universal constitutions. The Chinese moral duties tradition has ensured her long periods of national and social development, harmony with her neighbours, and has catapulted an impoverished China back to fast-track development since the late twentieth century.

Western civilization, dominated by religious faith and, since five centuries ago, by liberated human desires, is fundamentally amoral. Human desires liberated in Europe are amoral, possessive, exclusive, and conflicting life forces. Liberated individual desires have since been normalized to produce a “desire-driven, liberal constitutional paradigm.” It comprises amoral and incoherent “freedom, democracy, free market, social justice, etc.” These amoral and incoherent constitutional functions have fuelled centuries of imperialist wars, colonial expansions, two devastating world wars, and other conflicts. After the war, amoral desires were elevated to the “universal value” of “human rights”, causing Western powers to confuse, and justify “desire-driven post war hegemony” for “international justice,” which provokes endless further wars. A civilisation that mistakes amoral desires for human rights is a sub-civilisation, and produces only sub-universal constitutional functions.

The book argues that liberals should transform Western amoral “imperialist nations” into “civilization nations” by seeking and activating their own moral duty traditions. Only by choosing a “life of duties” can one truly enters a “life of freedom.”

About the Speaker:

The author is a Practising Barrister and Senior Counsel. In the 1980s, he joined the Hong Kong Department of Justice as a public prosecutor. Through his early-year attachment to Lincoln’s Inn in London and involvements in criminal appeals at the Privy Council, he experienced both the strength and subtlety of the common law in its grandeur years. 

His prosecutorial duties covered mainly commercial crime, corruption, criminal appeals, and related administrative law litigation. In the early 1990s, he was seconded to the Monetary Authority of Hong Kong as legal advisor and later published The Monetary and Banking Laws of Hong Kong. 

In 2008, he was appointed Senior Counsel by the Chief Justice. He served as Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions in the Department of Justice. After completing his term of public office, he entered private practice. He served as sometime High Court Deputy Judge, and has thus experienced the“trinity”roles of prosecutor, defence counsel, and judge in the common law tradition. 

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