National People’s Congress Plans for Hong Kong Security Law Sends Anti-China Mob into Conniptions

May 21, 2020 (EIRNS)—Chinese officials today announcement that a new security law for Hong Kong will be introduced for passage at the National People’s Congress which begins on May 22. The Basic Law—the local Hong Kong law agreed to between the U.K. and China at the return of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in July 1997—required that a security law be adopted, but every effort to draft and pass such a law has been sabotaged by opposition forces and democracy advocates. In 2003 such a law was presented to the Hong Kong Legislature, but opponents, and a demonstration of about 500,000, forced it to be withdrawn. With the anarchy and terrorism that nearly destroyed the city last year, the Hong Kong government and the Beijing government have decided to impose a security law through “Annex III” of the Basic Law, which regards national laws which must also be followed in Hong Kong.

Several opposition figures in Hong Kong screamed that this would mark the end of “One Country-Two Systems,” and that the limited autonomy granted Hong Kong (until 2047) would be essentially abolished. That is certainly not true, as it is all within the Basic Law. However, as “Secretary of Regime Change” Mike Pompeo noted in his tirade against China on May 20, he already thinks that Hong Kong’s arrest in April of the instigators of the massive violence last year means autonomy is not being honored. An anti-China bill passed in the U.S. Congress last November, the “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019,” allows Pompeo, if, in his infinite wisdom, he determines that Hong Kong is not living up to his standards for autonomy, he can lift the U.S.’s preferential trading and investment rules that apply to Hong Kong but not to the rest of China. This would be damaging not only for Hong Kong and for the rest of China, but also for the international banking interests which depend on Hong Kong for a huge amount of business—some kosher, some not.

A Beijing source told South China Morning Post that the new law would ban all seditious activities aimed at toppling the central government, prohibit external interference in Hong Kong, and target terrorist acts. It also would ban desecration of the national flag or defacing of the national emblem in Hong Kong, which rioters committed regularly during the seven months of anarchy last year.

If the NPC passes the motion, it will delegate the Standing Committee to draft the new legislation for Hong Kong, which would be included in Annex III of the Basic Law, according to the SCMP’s source. The law would then be introduced in Hong Kong through promulgation, without local legislation.

Typically, the Washington Post lied in its headline: “China Signals Plan To Take Full Control of Hong Kong, Realigning City’s Status.” The British Empire’s last governor general of colonial Hong Kong, Chris Patten, weighed in on May 20, even before the new law was announced, that Hong Kong’s “color revolution” demonstrators “shouldn’t lose heart. They shouldn’t lose their sense of dignity and decency and moderation,” Patten said in an online interview organized by the Foreign Correspondents Club in Hong Kong.