Hong Kong's Basic Law is the constitutional manifestation of China's experimentation of the One Country Two Systems policy. The past 17 years of its implementation involved a wide range of political, social and legal problems in China and Hong Kong. Scholarship in this complex and fast-moving area has been productive, yet a one-volume monograph with a comprehensive and up-to-date coverage of the law in its historical context has been lacking since Yash Ghai's influential Hong Kong's New Constitutional Order was last published in 1999. Danny Gittings's Introduction to the Hong Kong Basic Law fills this gap and provides an excellent text for students of law and politics in Hong Kong and China.

Gittings's book is not as broad-ranging as Ghai's and does not address all aspects of the Basic Law (such as the economic system and foreign relations). But within the space of about 400 pages, Gittings manages to cover all the major topics of Basic Law that are essential for a newcomer to this field. After a brief introduction, he starts off with a summary of the history of the Basic Law. He then addresses the nature of the Basic Law from various legal dimensions, the high degree of autonomy, the system of government, the role of the courts, interpretation and amendment of the Basic Law and protection of human rights. The book concludes with a forward-looking discussion of the Basic Law beyond 2047. Given the central importance of human rights in the jurisprudence of Hong Kong courts, it may have been desirable to discuss rights protection in an earlier chapter. But the general structure of the book highlights the key legal issues on the Basic Law and navigates the reader through the discussions with ease.

This book is designed to “provide a straightforward introduction to the Hong Kong Basic Law” for first-time students of the subject (p. vii). This is no easy task as many of the important issues on the Basic Law are yet to be finally resolved, and, even on issues that are judicially settled, considerable controversies in political and academic circles may subsist. This requires even an introductory text to go beyond a mere expository account of the current condition of the Basic Law, but to clarify the historical, political and constitutional dynamics that underpin the developments and debates in this field and, more importantly, to impose the author's own analytical paradigm so that the issues in dispute are presented and assessed in a proper light. By doing so, the author's “introductory” work would necessarily contribute to the scholarship even at the cutting edge. Danny Gittings is unremitting in his efforts to synthesize, critique and re-conceptualize various aspects of the subject. His analysis of the legal character of the Basic Law is properly multi-dimensional and based on international treaty, Chinese domestic legality and Hong Kong's constitutional order (chapter three). He notes that Hong Kong's autonomy under the Basic Law is greater than even the most generous autonomy arrangements elsewhere in the world, whilst pointing out the major flaw in Hong Kong's autonomy system to be the lack of an independent mechanism for dispute resolution (chapter four). He describes the chief executive's powers under the Basic Law as more extensive than even those of the US president, yet pointedly identifies the structural defect in the government system in the lack of legitimacy of the executive power due to the denial of democratic election in Hong Kong (chapter five). He suggests that the absence of detailed prescriptions on the judicial power in the Basic Law was a contributing factor for the court's early judicial activism, particularly in the field of judicial review (chapter six). He is perceptive in arguing that the difficulty in the interpretation of the Basic Law arises from the interface between the two legal systems, and that the ambiguity over the delimitation of the interpretative powers between the Chinese legislature and the Hong Kong courts lies at the heart of the major post-1997 controversies over interpretation (chapter seven). Some of his interventions are less than convincing – for instance, his treatment of the Basic Law as merely one of the “basic laws” enacted by the NPC (pp. 40–49) and his analysis of the conflict of criminal jurisdiction between the mainland and Hong Kong in terms of a conflict between the national Criminal Law and the Basic Law (pp. 44–46) both appear misdirected. However, the book provides an overall treatment of the Basic Law that is balanced, astute and well researched.

There are abundant references to major case decisions, legislative instruments and academic writings in this book that provide up-to-date sources for further research. Like Ghai's book, there is little engagement with literature in the Chinese language, but Gittings often goes to considerable lengths to present the positions and perspectives from mainland China from English sources, which to some extent remedies this shortcoming.

Danny Gittings worked as a journalist for several years before starting his academic career at the University of Hong Kong. His journalistic experience equips him well to write an introductory textbook. A delightful feature of the book is the ease with which the author guides the reader through some of the very complex issues of law and politics with its smooth, clear and concise writing.