Hong Kong: free & secure

The Point with Liu Xin

Hong Kong is set to pass its own national security law, finally fulfilling the region's constitutional duty. Nearly 27 years after the handover, the outstanding loopholes in this regard are to be plugged with a bill called Safeguarding National Security. After a month-long public consultation period, the bill, as stipulated in Article 23 of the Basic Law of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, was introduced in the legislative council on March 8th, with majority support. It has not been passed yet, but it has come a long way. Now, on the heels of the bloody unrest that rocked the city in 2019 and 2020, the central government in Beijing enacted a National Security Law, or NSL, for the region in June of 2020. Why does the region introduce its own bill? What are the new offences that have been outlawed? And why are Western governments and mainstream media making so much noise about the bill, as they did nearly 4 years ago when the NSL was about to be introduced?