BEIJING ‘WILL IMPROVE’ SYSTEM FOR RULING HK
NPC chairman vows to implement mechanisms by which city safeguards national security while ‘legal tools’ will be devised to counter foreign forces
Beijing will “improve” the system by which it rules Hong Kong, while safeguarding national security and devising “legal weapons” for countering foreign forces, the head of the country’s legislature has said.
Li Zhanshu, chairman of the National People’s Congress (NPC), vowed the parliamentary body’s standing committee would “remain firm on key issues and political principles” as it planned for the use of “legal means in international struggle”.
The pledges were part of Li’s yearly report on the work of the NPC Standing Committee, presented during the legislature’s annual session in Beijing yesterday. Analysts said the report underscored Beijing’s concerns about the need to supervise senior Hong Kong officials, nurture political talent and protect the city from being caught up in tensions between China and the West.
The subject of Hong Kong came up in the section of the report laying out what the Standing Committee would do in the coming year to implement China’s constitution.
“We will improve the system under which the central government exercises its comprehensive jurisdiction over the special administrative region, in accordance with the constitution and the Basic Law,” the report said, referring to the charters of China and Hong Kong, respectively. “We will implement the legal system and enforcement mechanism under which the region safeguards national security, and improve the region’s electoral system.”
In the section on foreign affairs, Li wrote: “We will remain firm on key political principles and matters of right and wrong. We will take the initiative to plan for legal weapons to struggle with foreign forces, and use legal means in international struggle.”
In his remarks presenting the report, Li looked back at the past year, saying the Standing Committee had explained the nation’s firm stance on issues involving Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Covid-19 pandemic and human rights. “We engaged in struggles firmly against all kinds of activities that seek to contain, suppress, mess up or subvert [the nation],” he said.
Li also lauded Beijing’s “patriots-only” overhaul of Hong Kong’s electoral system last year as having “heralded a new age in which the city’s prosperity and stability is secured”.
He said the changes to the city’s political framework – which halved the number of directly elected legislators, created new vetting mechanisms for candidates and gave broad powers to a body stacked with Beijing loyalists – had formed a “democratic electoral system that suits the city’s legal status and actual situation”.
“The new electoral system allowed [the principle of] ‘patriots administering Hong Kong’ to be implemented firmly,” Li said.
“This was fundamental for Hong Kong to adopt high-quality governance with the constitution and the Basic Law as its basis, and truly implement ‘one country, two systems’.”
Critics have said the new system is designed to shut dissenting voices out of local politics, but senior Beijing and Hong Kong officials have defended the changes as necessary to avoid a repeat of the social unrest of 2019.
Li yesterday said the changes had improved the city’s “constitutional order and the rule of law”.
“The central government’s comprehensive jurisdiction and the special administrative region’s high degree of autonomy were also better implemented,” he said.
Since 2014 the mainland has asserted while the city maintains judicial independence and autonomy in areas such as socio-economic policies, Beijing enjoys “comprehensive jurisdiction” over it, especially on matters relating to the constitutional and political order, and national security.
For the first time ever on Saturday, Premier Li Keqiang said in his work report that the central government would “implement its comprehensive jurisdiction over Hong Kong, and firmly enforce the principle of ‘patriots administering Hong Kong’ ”.
The Hong Kong section of the premier’s annual work report has long been seen as an important indicator of the approach Beijing will take towards the city.
Tam Yiu-chung, Hong Kong’s sole delegate to the NPC Standing Committee, also revealed that improving the system by which Beijing ruled the city was included in the body’s plan for the coming year. “But there are no details yet, maybe the issue is still being studied,” he said.
Lau Siu-kai, vice-president of the semi-official think tank the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies, noted that in 2019, Zhang Xiaoming, then the director of the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, wrote in an essay that Beijing’s comprehensive jurisdiction over Hong Kong included a wide range of powers.
“These include the power to appoint and remove the city’s principal officials, to supervise the city government’s work and to issue directives to the city leader. All these are areas where Beijing wants to lay down clearer procedures,” Lau said.
He said Li Zhanshu’s report yesterday also showed that for Beijing, legislative work on national security was an ongoing project, even after the central government’s imposition in 2020 of a sweeping law banning acts of terrorism, subversion, secession and collusion with foreign forces.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong delegation deputy Ip Kwok-him also confirmed as his group met Vice-Premier Han Zheng on Monday, Wang Linggui, an expert in national security and international relations, also attended the meeting as a deputy director of the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office.