New law strikes at independence
China to enforce security powers over restive HK
Ayear after protesters in Hong Kong jubilantly defied Chinese rule, the national leader, Xi Jinping, has opened a long-term counteroffensive in the territory, signing a sweeping new security law that sets obedience to Beijing above the former British colony’s civil freedoms.
Conceived in secrecy and passed with intimidating speed, the law has ignited uncertainty about the future of Hong Kong before any arrests under its sweeping powers to quash political activity and speech that challenge Beijing. Chinese officials and policy advisers have described the security law as part of a “second return” for Hong Kong — one, they suggest, that will scrub away a dangerous residue of Western influence and liberal values.
The law released to the public near midnight lays out new crimes for subverting the Government, seeking to “split” Hong Kong from China, or “colluding” with foreign governments or “external forces” to spy or gravely harm China — and authorises life imprisonment for the most serious cases.
“Nobody should underestimate the determination of the central authorities to defend national security in Hong Kong,” the main Chinese government office in the territory said in a statement.
In imposing such expansive and drastic legislation, Communist Party leaders in Beijing have faced down the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. They have also shrugged off opposition from the Trump administration and other governments, showing Xi’s determination to remake the territory on his authoritarian terms.
Some critics have described the law as a potentially fatal blow to the “one country, two systems” political framework that preserved Hong Kong’s distinctive status, freedoms and laws after China resumed sovereignty in 1997. Even before taking effect, the law has created a chill among the once-defiant activists who defined the protest movement.
“Hong Kong people understand this means the end of the ‘one country, two systems’ model for the territory, and we are now reduced to being a city like on the mainland, like Shenzhen or Shanghai,” said Joseph Cheng, a longtime political scientist at City University of Hong Kong. “We will have to behave like the people on the mainland.”
At the least, the new law complicates the delicate, oftenconvoluted game that Hong Kong officials and judges have played since China took back the territory. They have long tried to satisfy Beijing’s demands for loyalty while seeking to assure people in Hong Kong that the territory’s legal system remained insulated from politics, guarding rights absent in mainland China.
That straddling act has become increasingly unsteady in recent years as China has applied growing pressure on the territory while protesters in Hong Kong have pressed back, demanding free elections and greater autonomy.
Now the security law — creating a murky realm of police agencies, crimes defined by Beijing and judges picked by Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing leader — is likely to make it harder to preserve the city’s nebulous status as a semi-autonomous enclave under a Communist Party-run superpower.
The law sets out plans to build a complex of agencies and offices in Hong Kong dedicated to enforcing the rules. Those agencies will include an arm of the Chinese national security apparatus that will have the power to collect intelligence in Hong Kong, and handle cases.
“It’s the most fundamental change since the handover,” said Danny Gittings, an expert on Hong Kong’s legal status. Hong Kong officials have said that only a small number of people would be targeted by the rules, and the territory is likely to preserve some room for criticism of the Communist Party of the kind forbidden inside mainland China. “The law will not affect Hong Kong’s renowned judicial independence,” Carrie Lam, the chief executive of Hong Kong, who serves with Beijing’s blessing, said in a video speech to the United Nations Human Rights Council yesterday. “It will not affect legitimate rights and freedoms of individuals.”
Still, the law may bite faster and sharper than some expect, including in education, where the party has warned against Western influence and dissenting ideas that challenge official Chinese values. Hong Kong politicians loyal to Beijing and Chinese policy advisers have called for the rules to be enforced swiftly and vigorously, extinguishing any possible recurrence of the protests that hit Hong Kong last year.
The law, which was approved unanimously by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, an elite arm of the party-controlled legislature, went into force an hour before the 23rd anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to China. The July 1 anniversary has usually been a day for street protests in Hong Kong, which have been muted for months.