CHINA OKS NAT’L SECURITY LAW, CRUSHES HK AUTONOMY

China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) has passed a national security law for Hong Kong that would effectively crush the city’s autonomy under the 1997 handover deal between the United Kingdom and China.

In a story written by Rosie Perper for Business Insider on May 28, 2020, she said that the proposal was voted on by the annual and largely rubber-stamp National People's Congress (NPC) on Thursday afternoon, allowing China to unilaterally force national security laws in Hong Kong. The proposal passed by a vote of 2,878 to 1, and six others abstained.

Hong Kong formally operates with significant autonomy from the rest of China, an arrangement called “one country, two systems” after being under British colonial rule for more than 150 years until its sovereignty was passed on to China in 1997 through an agreement called "the Basic Law” that allows Hong Kong to maintain its own political, legal, and economic systems separate from China until 2047.

The Basic Law, or Hong Kong's mini-constitution, calls for the city to enact national security laws to prohibit "treason, secession, sedition [and] subversion" against the Chinese government under Article 23 but these were never enacted. An attempt to do so in 2003 resulted in mass protests which forced the bill to be shelved, Perper said. This new national security provision would be added on to the Basic Law according to the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC), which also means that China would be modifying the agreement without Hong Kong's approval, and ensuring complete Beijing control 27 years before the UK-China deal expires and Chinese sovereignty becomes complete in the former Crown Colony. #HongKong