China acted in accordance with the law in Hong Kong bookseller Lam Wing-kee’s case

In collaboration with certain politicians, Lam Wing-kee, one of the Causeway Bay booksellers, has been busy holding press conferences, making statements and writing articles criticising mainland China, as if the mainland authorities had done something shameful towards him.

Did Lam break the law while on the mainland? Did mainland authorities have the right to detain and investigate him? Was his detention some kind of cross-border law enforcement violating the “one country, two systems” principle? And did it challenge the interests of Hong Kong people in general? Only by clarifying the laws and facts in the case can the truth be found. The answers to all these questions lie in the laws themselves.

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First, whether a person has broken the law or committed a crime depends on the law of the country where the act was committed. According to the details provided at the press conference by Lam, he had smuggled books to the mainland, books which were published in Hong Kong but were illegal on the mainland, and which harmed the public interest. He did this by himself or by re-routing the books to mainland residents via his girlfriend. His acts violated mainland laws and harmed the harmony of Chinese society.

Such acts were carried out on the mainland. Thus, authorities there launched criminal investigations into his illegal acts according to Chinese law. This is the right of every sovereign country. Why was it wrong for mainland authorities to exercise their powers according to local law? If a mainland resident commits an unlawful act in Hong Kong, legal action can also be taken against him or her according to Hong Kong laws. In most places in the world, when an individual has broken the law, he or she is subject to the laws of the country where the act was committed. Whether Lam’s acts on the mainland were illegal should be determined by mainland law. Hong Kong has no authority to decide such matters based on Hong Kong law.

The bottom line? Hong Kong bookseller Lam Wing-kee’s case has nothing to do with ‘one country, two systems’

Second, the mainland judiciary has indisputable jurisdiction over Lam’s case. In accordance with the Criminal Procedure Law and the Criminal Law, a criminal case should be heard by a court located in the place of the criminal act, meaning the location where the act took place and suffered the consequences of the act. Both Lam’s trafficking of illegal publications into the mainland and his delivery of such publications to other people while on the mainland undermined the stability of mainland society. The place of the criminal act and the place of the act’s consequences were both the mainland. Therefore, the mainland judiciary has indisputable jurisdiction over Lam’s criminal acts.