The Hong Kong national security law imposed by Beijing will not conform to the city's common law tradition completely, says Secretary for Justice Teresa Cheng.

“It is impracticable and unreasonable to expect that everything in a national law, the National Security Law, will be exactly as what a statute in the HKSAR common law jurisdiction would be like,” she wrote in her official blog post published on Sunday. “Yet of course, the legislation should be clear and understood in HKSAR.”

Cheng’s remarks came after an appeal from the Bar Association, the professional body of barristers in Hong Kong. On Friday, the association laid out 11 recommendations in a statement urging the national security law to comply with Hong Kong’s common law principles. The Law Society, the professional body of some 10,000 solicitors in Hong Kong, and two former chief justices Yang Ti-liang and Andrew Li also made similar appeals earlier.

“The People’s Republic of China has two legal systems, the civil law system and the common law system,” she wrote.

Cheng also rejected the Bar Association’s proposal for a “sunset clause” to ensure that the national security law will expire after the local enactment of the Article 23 of the Basic Law, which also deals with national security.

She wrote that the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, which was responsible for enacting the national security law, “has the power to add or delete from the list of laws” in Annex III of the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, after consulting the Basic Law Committee and the city’s government. As a result, adding a “sunset clause” to the law would be unnecessary, she wrote.

Anita Yip, vice-chair of the Bar Association, said the gist of the issue lay in the ambiguity of China’s legal system and its understanding of the law. She said if the national security law customized for Hong Kong was to be written according to the mainland's civil law system, the law would become an accomplice to serve political needs, urging the law to be implemented and interpreted in accordance with common law principles.

Yip added a “sunset clause” was necessary as the Article 23 will be overlapping with the national security law.

Barrister Anson Wong, also a member of the chief executive election committee, questioned why it would be “impracticable and unreasonable” to write the national security law according to the common law principles since it will be enforced in Hong Kong, worrying that the Hong Kong court might have trouble in interpreting the law in the future.

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