Opinion | What’s so wrong with China defending Hong Kong and national security?

Name: Australia suspends extradition treaty with Hong Kong, offers residency pathway for Hongkongers
Uploaded: 2020-12-12T22:45:17.000Z
Duration: 1 min 49 s
Description: Australia suspends extradition treaty with Hong Kong, offers residency pathway for Hongkongers

As the West remonstrates about perceived violations of Hong Kong’s autonomy and human rights, surely China has the right to protect itself, and a vital part of its territory, even though its systems are different

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Hong Kong police fire tear gas as hundreds of protesters march during a pro-democracy protest against Beijing’s national security legislation for Hong Kong on May 24. Photo: AP

Regina Ip

Published: 6:45am, 13 Dec 2020Updated: 7:11am, 13 Dec 2020

Hong Kong – known to the world as a model free-market economy, as in Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose TV programme, or a city with a stunning skyline, as in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight – has joined Tibet and Xinjiang as one of China’s human rights trouble spots.

Australia, a long-time trade and investment partner of Hong Kong, went out of its way before 1997 to enact a special statute to grant Hong Kong’s economic and trade office in Sydney immunities and privileges.

Yet, after China enacted a national security law for Hong Kong, Australia asked its nationals to reconsider remaining in the city. Australians were warned they could be “at increased risk of detention on vaguely defined national security grounds”.

Local officials are busy rejecting accusations by Western governments and politicians of human rights suppression. The national security law is decried as vague and “sweeping”, and legitimate law enforcement denigrated as a purge or persecution of democracy activists.

Yet Hong Kong is a latecomer in enacting national security legislation. It has much to learn from Australia, which enacted a flurry of laws in 2018 to enhance national security protection.

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Australia suspends extradition treaty with Hong Kong, offers residency pathway for Hongkongers

The Espionage and Foreign Interference Act empowers Australian authorities to suppress “inherently harmful information” or information that could “harm or prejudice relations between the Commonwealth and a state or territory”. The Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme Act 2018 puts a range of people and organisations at risk of committing a criminal offence.

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