Human Rights Watch says that six years after the Chinese Communist Party imposed a National Security on Hong Kong, “Beijing Tightens Social Control” and “Accountability Suffers.” That’s one way of putting it (Human Rights Watch, June 29, 2026).
This passage has another odd formulation: “The Chinese Communist Party and state have comprehensively reengineered Hong Kong’s foundation of governance, reshaping its leadership, personnel, institutions, and ideology. The authorities no longer present national security as an exceptional response to the 2019 protests, but as a standing principle of administration. They have enforced citywide compliance by punishing increasingly minor acts and targeting ordinary people for peaceful expressions.”
In general, I agree with HRW’s indictment of the Hong Kong government’s conduct since 2020. But exactly when did Hong Kong or Beijing “present national security as an exceptional response to the 2019 protests”?
The urgency of enforcement may ebb and flow, but the Party has long and ubiquitously used concern for “national security” as one of its blanket rationalizations for repressing every kind of resistance to or criticism of the state.
The law
The 2020 National Security Law is full of doubletalk and references to concepts to which the Party assigns a special meaning.
The Law refers, for example, to “protecting the lawful rights and interests of the residents of the Hong Kong Special Administrative region.” Yet right away the Hong Kong government used the law to accelerate violations of the (actual) rights of Hongkongers. Contradiction? Well, what are “lawful” rights and interests, in the view of the Party? Whatever rights and interests are consistent with the party-state’s arbitrary determinations of what is “lawful.”
This text of the National Security Law doesn’t sound as if it were setting forth a merely exceptional response to the 2019 protests, relying on assumptions carefully restricted in their application in time and space:
“The Central People’s Government has an overarching responsibility for national security affairs relating to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region….
“The executive authorities, legislature and judiciary of the Region shall effectively prevent, suppress and impose punishment for any act or activity endangering national security in accordance with this Law and other relevant laws.”
The 2020 National Security Law assures the reader that all the political freedoms that might be laid out in a Western constitution like that of the United States, “including the freedoms of speech, of the press, of publication, of association, of assembly, of procession and of demonstration…shall be protected in accordance with the law.”
The proviso “in accordance with the law” is all-important. Then we have “rule of law.”
“The principle of the rule of law shall be adhered to in preventing, suppressing, and imposing punishment for offences endangering national security. A person who commits an act which constitutes an offence under the law shall be convicted and punished in accordance with the law. No one shall be convicted and punished for an act which does not constitute an offence under the law.”
For a Hong Kong official to comport himself in a way consistent with “the law” and “rule of law” is to refer to such notions as he violates your rights.
Of course, “Any institution, organisation or individual in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall abide by this Law and the laws of the Region in relation to the safeguarding of national security, and shall not engage in any act or activity which endangers national security.”
Criticizing the government endangers national security, according to the Chinese Communist Party.
Elections
“A resident of the Region who stands for election or assumes public office shall confirm in writing or take an oath to uphold the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China and swear allegiance to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China in accordance with the law.”
To uphold democracy or resist CCP tyranny as a legislator is to act in contradiction to the law as understood by the Party. The Hong Kong government had been disqualifying prodemocracy candidates for some years before passage of the National Security Law; after 2020, the disqualifications became more sweeping. Soon, only vetted “patriot” candidates would be allowed to run for election to the Legislative Council.
The political environment in Hong Kong has been getting worse and worse since 2020, but not because the requirements of national security were once presented “as an exceptional response to the 2019 protests” and then came to be applied as an unexceptional response to all peaceful speech and actions that annoy or scare Hong Kong or Beijing officials to the extent that they would want to repress them. It simply took time for the tyrants to do what they had been planning to do since before Britain handed over Hong Kong in 1997.
