What Hong Kong can learn from Macau’s national security law
- Macau brought in the legislation on its own in 2009 but commentators warn of its limitations as a model for Hong Kong
- Beijing has resolved to enact the laws for Hong Kong to tackle secession, subversion, terrorism and foreign interference
Macau’s experience of national security laws since 2009 can shed light on how the legislation that Beijing is devising for Hong Kong will be enforced there, observers say while warning against simply copying its model.
With the central government requiring a new organisation to oversee the proposed national security law in Hong Kong, observers believe the city can learn from its neighbour’s establishment of a commission chaired by its leader.
But some of Macau’s reforms from 11 years ago – such as specifying that only local judges of Chinese nationality could hear national security cases and the closer sharing of intelligence with mainland officers – would be difficult to introduce in Hong Kong given the differences between the cities’ politics, judiciary and police, commentators have said .
Unveiled during the two sessions of China’s most important annual political event, the National People’s Congress (NPC), the country’s legislature, plans to “prevent, stop and punish” secession, subversion, foreign interference and terrorism in a law tailor-made for Hong Kong, to be added to Annex III of the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution, without the need for local legislation.
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New law will ‘prevent, stop and punish’ activities endangering national security
It specified that Hong Kong must “establish an organisation and enforcement mechanism to protect national security”, according to a resolution put forward at China’s legislature on Friday.