Need To Know: May 24

Special Edition: With National Security Law, Beijing Brings Down Hammer on Hong Kong.

China said on Thursday it will impose a national security law on Hong Kong.

The news was met with a stock market slide and a huge outcry from opposition lawmakers in Hong Kong, human rights groups and the U.S. State Department. So let’s take a better look at what this is, why it’s happening now and what it means.

What is a National Security Law?

The law is designed specifically for Hong Kong. It will ban what China defines as secessionist and subversive activity, foreign interference, and terrorism. Full details of exactly what that entails have not been released.

Appears they don’t …

The goal is to let Beijing target a wide range of activities, and curtail political speech it dislikes in the city, a longtime goal of the Communist Party.

It appears China will also be able to set up institutions in Hong Kong like a special police force responsible for defending national security, and enforcing the law.

The law will be adopted by the National People’s Congress, China’s annual rubber-stamp parliament, which meets in Beijing.

Why is Beijing involved? Does Hong Kong have a say?

The Basic Law, Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, requires the Hong Kong government under Article 23 to enact its own national security law prohibiting acts of, “treason, secession, sedition, or subversion”

The Basic Law was negotiated between Britain and China in the run up to the return of the British colony to the People’s Republic in 1997. It sets out the principle of “One country, two systems,” over a 50 year transition period.

Hong Kong is a part of China as a special administrative region, with a legal system separate from China which guarantees basic human rights like free speech and assembly (though not genuine universal suffrage) and British civil law.

Why hasn’t the Hong Kong government fulfilled its obligation to enact a national security law?

It tried. In 2003, the city’s first Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa was forced to shelve a national security bill after an estimated half a million people took to the streets to oppose the legislation.

Since then, the local government has steered clear of introducing such legislation. Beijing acquiesced, though it never stopped agitating for the law to be passed. And China’s efforts to get the provisions it wanted in ways other than the all encompassing bill have lead to a year of violent protests.

So China has the legal right to do this?

The Basic Law also says:

• Article 2: “The HKSAR has a high degree of autonomy and enjoys executive, legislative and independent judicial power, including that of final adjudication”

• Article 22: “No department of the Central People's Government and no province, autonomous region, or municipality directly under the Central Government may interfere in the affairs which the HKSAR administers on its own in accordance with the Basic Law.”

It would appear imposing a national security law through the National People’s Congress violates that. And articles 2 and 22 come before article 23. In law, that tends to show hierarchy when there’s an apparent paradox.

However, there is no mechanism beyond sanctions or war to stop China.

In other words, “One country, two systems” depends on Beijing’s good faith. Previous Chinese regimes respected that. It’s increasingly clear Xi Jingping’s Communist China is very bad faith.

This is why many say this precedent means the beginning of the end of the Basic Law, and “One country, two systems” in Hong Kong.

Why is Beijing subverting the Hong Kong Government and introducing its own national security law?

1) Simply, Beijing believes the local government can’t get the job done.

Tienanmen’s Tank Man: Last stand on the Mainland

Last year, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam introduced a controversial extradition bill. The law was in response to the case of a Hong Kong man who lured his pregnant girlfriend to Taiwan, murdered her and then returned to Hong Kong. As Hong Kong doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Taiwan, he couldn’t be sent there to be prosecuted. The extradition bill would have allowed that.

However, it was also written in a way that would have allowed China to ask for the extradition of Hong Kongers to the Mainland to face “justice” in Chinese courts.

Months of street protests that were at first peaceful, but then often violent forced Lam to withdraw the bill, angering Beijing.

(The extradition bill didn’t happen in isolation. See the next question for more on Beijing’s attempts to undermine the Basic Law)

Beijing will not allow the 7.5 million people of Hong Kong to endanger its rule over 1.2 billion people on the Mainland, where public protests are not tolerated. The violent crackdown on protestors in Tienanmen Square in 1989, and subsequent wipe of the incident in official history, shows the deep fear Beijing has about being challenged by its own people.

It must show protests not only do not result in changes, they are counterproductive.

2) Beijing has been enraged by local separatist movements.

Two countries?

In 2016, six Hong Kong legislators modified the oath of office as they were being sworn in for a new session. Some of them belong to political parties that depending on your view, advocate “self-determination” or secession from China. They were disqualified as legislators, meaning the anti-Beijing, Pan-Democrats lost their ability to veto legislation like the extradition bill.

Here, the law is on Beijing’s side.

Remember “One country, two systems.” Two systems rights like free speech and political assembly are dependent on recognizing one country — meaning Hong Kong is part of China. It supersedes the rights under two systems.

During the extradition protests, demonstrators have been chanting, “Liberate Hong Kong. Revolution in our time.”

To Mainland ears, that sounds like two countries, two systems.

How has Beijing been undermining democracy in Hong Kong leading up to this?

In 2015, five Hong Kong booksellers were abducted in Hong Kong, taken into China, and interrogated for months by Chinese officials. Their crime?

Selling a wide range of books forbidden in China, including those about the financial dealings of Xi Jinping’s family. The bookstores were popular with mainland Chinese tourists for this reason.

Free speech is protected by law in Hong Kong, but books that displease China have largely disappeared from mainstream book retailers under pressure from Beijing.

In 2018, a high-speed rail link was opened in Hong Kong, connecting the territory with mainland China. Passengers receive “pre-clearance” to enter the People’s Republic at the station in West Kowloon. However, that means they are subject to Chinese law on the platform.

Critics said this meant Chinese police could enforce Chinese law in the Chinese way on the platform. Carrie Lam scoffed, and called the concerns “hysterical.”

She was left looking very foolish when the station hadn’t even been open for a full week before Chinese police arrested, and took to China a Hong Kong man wanted over a property dispute in China.

Hong Kong’s independent judges have complained for the last several years about being pressured by Beijing to make rulings the way China wants.

Last month, a Reuters story made the bombshell accusation that the city’s top judge, Geoffrey Ma, says he has to contend with Communist Party officials pushing Beijing’s view that the rule of law ultimately must be a tool to preserve one-party rule.

What does this mean for Hong Kong’s local government?

It’s very clear Beijing has lost patience with Hong Kong’s local politicians and the whole idea of “One country, two systems.”

Carrie Lam is the just the latest local Chief Executive to fail to deliver the kind of order Beijing expects. The paradox: she inflamed the public, and created the mass protests trying to deliver the kind of order Beijing expects.

She was also Beijing’s choice. Hong Kong’s Chief Executive is elected. But, there’s only 1200 votes. The electors are people hand picked by Beijing and its local backers.

Even so, Beijing is sidelining Lam. And perhaps the office of Chief Executive until 2047 when the Basic Law expires and Hong Kong will be just another Chinese city.

It’s doing it with the Liaison Office, which under the Basic Law is its official representative in the city.

Which is why in January in a shock move Beijing fired Wang Zhimin and put the office under the direction of Luo Huining. Luo had no experience in Hong Kong. But he is a Xi Jingping loyalist and is known for “enforcing Communist Party discipline.”

Last month, Luo, launched an unprecedented attack on pro-democracy legislators who filibustered during debate in Hong Kong's Legislative Council (LegCo) over a law which would outlaw any disrespect to the anthem of the People's Republic. The bill was introduced after Hong Kong soccer fans repeatedly booed the anthem at the start of matches.

In doing so, he may have violated Article 22. In response, Luo said Article 22 does not apply to the Liaison Office. If nothing else, that violates the Liaison Office’s own working practice since 2000.

The Liaison Office will now pull Lam’s puppet strings.

Once the national security law is passed, what will happen in Hong Kong?

1) Speech and assemblies Beijing doesn’t like will be legally called secession, subversion, and treason.

In Hong Kong, mass demonstrations require police approval. If the police don’t give the OK, their decision can be appealed to a court. Historically, permission for rallies has been quite liberal.

Whether they use the slogan or not, “Liberate Hong Kong. Revolution in our time” will be used by the police to call rallies subversive and secessionist and they will deny permission. Judges will be under intense pressure to uphold those decisions.

If the protest movement is unable to get legal approval for street protests, any public demonstration immediately becomes an illegal assembly. Police won’t need violence as a pretext to stop them. If the protestors resist police efforts to end their demonstration, they will be called terrorists and face the full force of the national security law.

Hong Kongers will take to the streets.

In the coming days, we’ll see exactly what’s in this law.

But I suspect the parts of the extradition bill that would allow Hong Kongers to be extradited to the Mainland will be there. Whether Beijing uses it, that means protest leaders could be prosecuted in a Chinese court, where the law is what the Communist Party says it is on the day they say it.

It also means Hong Kong protestors could face imprisonment in China’s appalling jails, where torture is common. And if necessary, it also greatly expands China’s capacity to incarcerate huge numbers of people, far from their base of support.

Orwell: “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.”

The provision for a special police force to enforce this law has been created for a purpose. This is why.

2) Beijing also expects the pro-Democracy camp will win a majority in the LegCo in November and is moving to neuter the impact. Bear in mind, the LegCo’s convoluted electoral process is designed to make it very difficult for the pan-Democrats to win a majority.

As it did after the 2016 election, Beijing will try to disqualify as many of those legislators as it can. The National Security Law will give them another tool.

Last month, Hong Kong police arrested 15 prominent activists, including pro-democracy media owner Jimmy Lai and Democratic Party founder Martin Lee, on charges of joining a number of assemblies that didn’t have police approval. As discussed above, almost no protests going forward will be considered lawful assemblies.

Beijing and its local backers often point to foreign influences fueling the protests. This plays to China’s “Century of Humiliation” narrative on the Mainland. Every time prominent locals in the protest movement like Joshua Wong meet with Western politicians, China will brand it foreign interference under the law and use it to sanction the protest leaders.

All in all, the future in Hong Kong is a bleak slide into Chinese authoritarianism.