China’s top legislative body has binding power over Hong Kong, Beijing scholar says
- And it doesn’t matter if the Basic Law says so or not, Wang Lei asserts
- That comes a day after a Court of First Instance judge refused to rule on the issue
Peking University law professor Wang Lei was the government’s expert witness during the hearing on the constitutionality of the arrangement that lets national laws be applied in a Hong Kong railway station.
High Court judge Mr Justice Anderson Chow Ka-ming largely adopted Wang’s views and ruled the arrangement constitutional on Thursday. But he stopped short of saying whether decisions made by China’s top legislative body were binding on Hong Kong in general.
The city’s Legislative Council enacted a law on the joint checkpoint arrangement at the West Kowloon terminal of the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link after the National People’s Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) approved the so-called co-location proposal in December last year.
But critics challenged the arrangement as unconstitutional, saying it breached 13 articles of the city’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law. In particular, they cited a provision that no national laws should apply in Hong Kong apart from those listed in Annex III, which deal with matters such as nationality and diplomatic immunity.
