I wonder if this would be sufficient to get Hong Kong's special trade status in the US revoked. It is supposed to be once HK no longer enjoys "sufficient autonomy" from the PRC. As I recall, the previous report found that autonomy was "sufficient but diminished."
I believe it would; I haven't looked over the finalised legislation that was passed last year, but my recollection of the law is that it would take effect at most six months after the special panel determined that Hong Kong has lost "sufficient autonomy", which it might well do if the national-security law is as draconian as some in Hong Kong are expecting – conditional upon that being true, it would therefore take effect no later than the end of this year.
This is what I hate about talking about this kind of thing with Americans. The same principles applied to the United States would be entirely uncontroversial - look at how crazy Americans went over Maria Butina allegedly spying for Russia. There's a risk of spying, of terrorism, of doing things to harm the country. You've got people parading in the streets of Hong Kong committing racist attacks against people speaking Putonghua and holding up banners asking for Trump to send in the troops. Imagine if people in Texas were getting beaten for speaking English by rallies of people holding Mexican flags and asking for AMLO to invade. That wouldn't even be an issue... because Texas State doesn't lack laws against treason.
While that is an otherwise reasonable analogy, I'm going to be pedantic for a moment and point out that that would not be treason as defined by the U.S. Constitution. I am fully aware that China and most of the Hong Kong Executive Council feel differently about that, and that the protestors are within their legal jurisdiction. Doesn't stop people on here from having an opinion about this that's consistent with their interpretation of the First Amendment as it applies to their own country.
Why? Is this a super bad thing? HK is failing its constitutional duties. They had a chance to do it themselves. Without a law like this, HK citizens could get away with some grave offenses against the central government. With the presence of foreign intelligence operations in HK I don't think anyone with a brain would want to take that risk.
There's nothing particularly wrong with a country enacting its own national security laws, per se, but the argument for Hong Kong – as a special administrative region – "failing its constitutional duties" leans quite heavily on the unwritten premise that the 2003 proposal and subsequent ones failed precisely because Hong Kong citizens and the opposition expressed a strong opinion against the idea of overreaching national rule through protest, which up till last November was the only political means available to them. The concern over this legislation, from within Hong Kong, is that too much latitude will be given to law enforcement and the central government to interpret "acts of treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the central people’s government, or theft of state secrets" as they see fit (not an unreasonable viewpoint, given the events of the past year), which – if applied to even the most benign protests of last June against an unpopular extradition bill that the Council at the time fully intended to implement – would curb individual rights as enshrined in the Basic Law to the point of absorbing Hong Kong into the wider national legal structure, in contradiction to "one country, two systems". This also does not begin to cover the very clear signals from the National People's Congress, including today's opening speech, that it apparently has no intention of following the other parts of the Basic Law while implementing Article 23.
