China security proposal stirs alarm in Hong Kong
Draft law may worsen shaky relations with US
China is poised to pass a national security law for Hong Kong that the city’s opposition lawmakers, analysts and U.S. officials say could plunge the semi-autonomous territory into its deepest turmoil since it returned to Chinese rule in 1997 and exacerbate already coronavirus-strained tensions between Washington and Beijing.
The draft law bans “treason, secession, sedition and subversion.” It was submitted Friday at China’s National People’s Congress, an important annual political event where legislation already approved by China’s ruling Community Party is rubber-stamped.
Full details of the law have not been released. However, critics say it will curb freedoms and puts Hong Kong’s pro-democracy activists on a dangerous collision course with China’s central government in Beijing. Supporters and Chinese officials, such as Zhang Yesui, a spokesman for the National People’s Congress Foreign Affairs Committee, argue it is “highly necessary in light of new circumstances” in Hong Kong.
The motion is fueling concern among activist lawmakers.
“It’s the saddest day in Hong Kong’s history,” Tanya Chan, a Hong Kong pro-democracy legislature, told reporters outside the city’s parliament.
“It’s the end of ‘one country, two systems,’ ” said Dennis Kwok, another pro-democracy lawmaker, referring to the policy that has governed Hong Kong since it returned to Chinese control after a century and a half of British colonial rule.
“One country, two systems” was intended to make sure that capitalist Hong Kong retained a measure of legal, economic and financial independence from socialist mainland China, but the principle has come under intensifying pressure as Beijing has taken steps to bring the territory under full Chinese control. Hong Kong was rocked last year by almost six months of violent antichina, pro-democracy protests as Beijing imposed an extradition law to China.
China has also evolved to have a more nuanced economic system that draws from its socialist roots but incorporates aspects of Western-style commercialism.
Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, said Friday her government would cooperate with Beijing to enact the law and that it would not substantially affect civil liberties for the city’s 7.5 million inhabitants. Still, China experts said the move is likely to trigger fresh protests and demands for democratic reforms that yield more independence from China.
President Donald Trump, who has berated Beijing over its handling of the coronavirus outbreak, said Thursday his administration would come down hard against any attempt by China to gain more control over the ex-british colony.
“Nobody knows yet” the details of China’s plan or what it intends to do, he said. But “if it happens we’ll address that issue very strongly,” Trump said, without specifying potential U.S. actions. However, Democratic and Republican U.S. senators said they would consider introducing legislation to impose sanctions on Chinese officials.