China to impose security bureau on Hong Kong

China plans to establish a special bureau in Hong Kong to prosecute crimes considered threatening to national security.

Volunteers on Saturday count ballots from a vote by students on whether to hold a citywide strike on the new national security bill. Picture: AFP

China plans to establish a special bureau in Hong Kong to investigate and prosecute crimes considered threatening to national security, the state-run news agency said at the weekend, as it reported on details of a controversial new national security law Beijing is imposing on the semi- autonomous territory.

In addition to establishing the national security bureau, bodies in all Hong Kong government departments, from finance to immigration, will be directly answerable to the central government in Beijing, the official Xinhua news agency said on Saturday.

The announcement is sure to increase concerns that China’s central government will continue to tighten its grip on Hong Kong. Beijing has said it is determined to press ahead with the national security legislation — which has been strongly criticised as undermining the financial hub’s legal and political institutions — despite heavy criticism from within Hong Kong and abroad.

The details of the proposed national security law emerged as the body that handles most lawmaking for China’s top legislative body closed its latest meeting. Xinhua News Agency said on Sunday that the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress would meet from June 28-30 in Beijing. The report did not mention the Hong Kong security law among several possible discussion items, but it could still be on the agenda or added at the meeting.

The timing of the legislative session is unusual, as the committee usually meets very two months, and suggests China may be aiming to pass the law ahead of a July 1 holiday that marks the day Britain returned Hong Kong to China in 1997. The bill was submitted on Thursday for deliberation, covering four categories of crimes: secession, subversion of state power, local terrorist activities and collaborating with foreign or external foreign forces to endanger national security.

The bill has received heavy criticism, including from the US, which says it will revoke some of the preferential conditions extended to Hong Kong after the handover.

Britain has said it will offer passports and a path to citizenship to as many as three million Hong Kongers. The Group of Seven called on China to reconsider its plans, issuing a statement voicing “grave concern” over the legislation that it said would breach Beijing’s international commitments as well as the territory’s constitution. Beijing has repeatedly denounced the moves as rank interference in its internal affairs.

In its full session last month, the congress ratified a decision to enact such legislation at the national level after Hong Kong’s Legislative Council was unable to do so because of local opposition.

Critics say the law could severely limit free speech and opposition political activity. The Hong Kong Bar Association on Friday warned that the law’s enforcement in the territory risked setting up a system of conflicting parallel legal standards dominated by Beijing.

AP