Chief Executive Carrie Lam defended the new film censorship guidelines to ban films that are deemed in breach of the national security law, saying it would not undermine Hong Kong’s creative freedom.

“Hong Kong upholds freedom of expression, and that’s why we are very well-positioned to be a cultural hub and a creative city to the extent that in the nation’s 14th five-year plan, they have given Hong Kong the needed support to develop into a cultural hub where the East meets the West,” she told the press ahead of her weekly meeting with the Executive Council on Tuesday.

“But one has to accept that rights and freedoms, including the freedom of expression, are not without restrictions. The court has ruled on many, many occasions that at the end of the day some of these individual rights and freedoms have to be restrained by law, in order to have a civilized and safe city,” she doubled down.

“So it is a matter of striking the needed balance between respecting creative freedom on the one hand and safeguarding national security and safety of Hong Kong on the other.”

Admitting that the new guidelines have sparked “some anxiety” among the film industry practitioners as well as the cultural sector, Lam said she has instructed Secretary for Commerce Edward Yau to meet with the industry to “ease their concerns.”

The city’s chief also took the chance to defend Beijing’s security law for Hong Kong once again.

“It has been almost a year since the national security law was imposed. Many have suggested that a lot of things have become off limits, like you can’t speak up or write articles, or criticize the chief executive,” but acts involving people’s freedom of expression have remained largely unchanged in the past 12 months except for those who violated the law, she said.

Lam believed the new censorship rules would not undermine the city’s creative freedom, “just like the national security law has not affected the freedoms of most individuals.”

Her comments came after the amended Film Censorship Ordinance gazetted last Friday, allowing authorities to pull films that are considered “objectively and reasonably capable of being perceived as endorsing, supporting, promoting, glorifying, encouraging or inciting” acts of subversion, secession, terrorism or collusion with foreign forces.

Meanwhile, Lam stressed everything she did as “for the benefit of Hong Kong,” two years after she announced the suspension of the extradition bill that had first sparked the mass protests. Two million people took to the streets on June 16 in 2019 after the suspension failed to appease Hongkongers.

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