China still counting on Hong Kong to enact its own national security law ‘or the city will face unbearable cost’, says Beijing adviser

Beijing is still counting on Hong Kong to enact a national security law by itself, a heavyweight adviser on Beijing policy for the city has said, amid fears that the central government could take more direct action on the controversial issue. “For more than 20 years, Hong Kong still has not completed legislation and law enforcement on national security,” Wang Zhenmin, director of Tsinghua University’s Centre for Hong Kong and Macau Research, said on the sidelines of an event for business leaders hosted by Beijing think tank Centre for China and Globalisation. “This is the constitutional responsibility of the special administrative region for all stakeholders.” Wang was referring to Article 23 of the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, which stipulates that the city must enact its own national security law. But the article has remained highly controversial in Hong Kong, amid fears that its freedoms and autonomy would be undermined. A national security bill was shelved in 2003 when hundreds of thousands took to the streets to protest against it, and eventually contributed to the resignation midterm of Tung Chee-hwa, the city’s first chief executive. All three subsequent leaders of the city, including the incumbent Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, have opted against stepping into the same minefield by officially initiating the legislation. Lam told reporters in Beijing on Wednesday that the task involved “bigger challenges” in the present circumstances. The remarks by Wang – who advises on the central government’s policies for Hong Kong and is a former director of legal affairs at Beijing’s liaison office in the city – were made on Saturday, two days after the end of a key meeting of the Communist Party elite, including President Xi Jinping. During the meeting, known as the fourth plenum of the 19th Party Congress, attendees said there was a need to safeguard national security in Hong Kong and called for the establishment of a legal system and enforcement mechanism of national security in the city. Macau introduced its own national security law 10 years ago but proposals for similar legislation in Hong Kong met stiff resistance. After last week’s party meeting, there was mounting concern that Beijing was losing patience for the city to enact its own national security law and that the National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, could issue an interpretation of Basic Law or enact a national law directly. Beijing ups call for Hong Kong to prioritise national security, patriotic education But Wang said Beijing still hoped the city could introduce its own national security legislation, as outlined by the Basic Law, and blamed Hong Kong’s inability to end its ongoing unrest on the absence of such a law. “There are plenty of international lessons Hong Kong can learn from to safeguard national security while ensuing normal transactions at the markets,” he said, saying that Britain, the United States and Singapore all had national security laws and enforcement. Wang said that such laws would help stabilise investors’ confidence, despite regularly cited fears that such a move would undermine Hong Kong’s autonomy. Expectations of a national security bill being initiated by Hong Kong are low, with the administration struggling to restore calm after months of protests. Lam did not include plans to enact a national security law in her annual policy address last month, and has said that the prospect of doing so was “lower” after the ongoing unrest triggered by her unpopular and now-withdrawn extradition bill, which would have allowed the transfer of criminal suspects to mainland China’s opaque legal system. In her previous two policy addresses, Lam had said that her government had the constitutional responsibility to enact a national security law under Article 23 of the Basic Law, and that she would act to create a favourable environment for it. Echoing Wang’s remarks, a retired Shenzhen-based law professor specialising in Hong Kong affairs said Article 23 remained the most important step in introducing national security measures, despite fears of more direct action by Beijing. “I personally think Article 23 will be an important step to be taken next,” said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The extradition bill is more closely related to ordinary citizens, whereas Article 23 is more indirectly related. The failure with the extradition bill doesn’t mean Article 23 is off the table.” Wang added that, although peaceful protest had been common in the city, the violent scenes of recent weeks had not been seen before. “There are more than 10,000 protests each year in Hong Kong, but most of them were peaceful, so normal business operations were not disturbed,” he said. “But the violence in the past four months was not seen in the past and has hurt multiple sectors and the life of ordinary citizens.” When asked what would happen if Hong Kong failed to pass the law, Wang declined to say what direct action Beijing could take. “Everybody can see Hong Kong is sick, and if no one is willing to go through treatment, the city will be over,” he said. “China would of course bear a heavy loss over Hong Kong, but for Hong Kong the costs will be unbearable.”