China’s stability maintenance machine in Hong Kong (Lau Sai Leung)
The Legislative Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee has published the draft version of the new Hong Kong National Security Law. According to this draft, the Central People’s Government will establish a National Security Office in Hong Kong. In addition to “supervising, guiding, coordinating with and supporting” the Hong Kong SAR government to safeguard national security, the Office will also collect and analyze intelligence, and involve itself in criminal cases concerning national security. Furthermore, under specific circumstances, the Office can exercise jurisdiction over an “extremely small” number of criminal cases that are considered to have national security implications. The HKSAR government will set up a local National Security Committee, to be chaired by the Chief Executive and counseled by a National Security Affairs Advisor appointed by the Central People’s Government. Judges presiding over national security trials in Hong Kong are to be appointed by the Chief Executive.
Immediately after the release of the draft law, People’s Daily, the Party’s official newspaper, ran an editorial in which it asserted that “no sovereign country would delegate issues of national security to local authorities”. The article also maintained that the HKSAR government is still in charge of law enforcement, prosecution and judicial processes as well as most legal cases in Hong Kong. The central government’s exercise of its enforcement and jurisdictional authority will be “limited, restrained and extremely rare”. It would intervene only in those national security cases which the HKSAR Government “cannot manage” or “has not managed well”.
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This begs the question: how would “jurisdiction” be defined and interpreted? The National Security Office decides what constitutes a “national security case” on a political level; but in doing so, it would also be determining unilaterally whether a case is serious or not. In reality, the local national security committee comprising mainly HKSAR officials is in fact merely an advisory body under the Office. That’s why assertions about “letting HKSAR officials handle national security matters” is nothing more than lip service; the real power resides inside the corridors of the National Security Office. If there is another Causeway Bay Bookstore incident in the future, would Hong Kong officials on the local National Security Committee consider it a “national security case”? And if the National Security Advisor opines that the case is national security issue, and therefore the store’s owner, manager and staff should stand trial in mainland China, would the Hong Kong committee object? On what grounds would they do that? When the Advisor announces that a case falls under the purview of the central government, that would be tantamount to saying it is a case which HKSAR Government “cannot manage” or “has not managed well”. What can the Hong Kong officials do then? It’s safe to say they can only hang their heads in disgrace.
During the early stages of the implementation of the national security law, the strategic focus would likely be on intimidation. With the new law casting a long shadow over Hong Kong, self-censorship would cripple international lobbying efforts and muffle objective commentaries on mainland affairs or international relations. Political figures discussing Hong Kong affairs in interviews with foreign media or attending conferences hosted by overseas think tanks would become much less outspoken. For Hongkongers, the only example of a silovik department crossing the border and enforcing the law in a “national security case” would be the Causeway Bay Bookstore incident. But by Hong Kong and common law standards, that incident was not even a crime, let alone a serious one. How, then, can Hongkongers be convinced that the National Security Advisor would exercise self-restraint when wielding his power? Previous cases of “subversive” and “anti-revolutionary” crimes are ample proof that the judicial process in China is highly malleable, and subject to prevailing political whims and imperatives.
The National Security Office is not the “secret police” nor is the National Security Advisor the party secretary in Hong Kong. If we look back to the old colonial government’s surveillance-and-control strategy with regard to national security, the new National Security Advisor would be in the mold of the “political advisor” of the British era, who reported to the UK’s Joint Intelligence Committee and MI5. Similarly, the National Security Advisor would be an official from the PRC’s Ministry of State Security, tasked with leading the police and national security apparatus in Hong Kong and reporting directly to the Ministry. With reference to the colonial era, the key point to consider is whether the Office is defensive in nature, or is it infiltrative and offensive in principle? Since 1967, Britain’s security operations in Hong Kong had only been defensive; its approach to national security had never been predicated on infiltration, subversion and coercion.
(Lau Sai Leung is a political commentator based in Hong Kong and a former full-time member of the HKSAR Central Policy Unit.)
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