Article 23: Hong Kong's repressive new "security law"

By Chan Ying

This article originally appeared in the newspaper Solidarity, published by Workers' Liberty who are affiliated to our campaign. Photo above: members of Hong Kong's League of Social Democrats protest the "Article 23" law with a banner reading "Put the people above the country, human rights above the regime. There can be no national security without democracy and human rights".

On 19 March, the Hong Kong Legislative Council, now completely devoid of oppositional voice, unanimously passed a new security law. In addition to the National Security Law imposed on Hong Kong in 2020 by Beijing, new offences have been created — treason, insurrection and sabotage which are punishable by up to life; imprisonment, secession, sedition, subversion against the Chinese government, external interference, theft of state secrets and espionage.

The oppositional forces of the 2019 uprising have already been decimated, with hundreds of activists in jail, either convicted or awaiting trial for years with bail denied, or in exile. So this new legislation would appear to be overkill, a sledgehammer devised to flatten nuts that have already been cracked.

The new legislation has been condemned by what Beijing would regard as the “usual suspects” — the UN, Amnesty International, the BBC and other western media, UK, US, and allied governments.

• The various offences are very broadly and vaguely defined, seemingly designed as catch-all devices to intimidate any opposition and forcing media and NGOs to self-censor.
• Exceptional police powers now include detaining suspects for 16 days without charge, and denying access to a lawyer during detention.
• The definition of “external forces” could be interpreted to include UN bodies, international charities and NGOs, and even multinational companies!
• The legislation was rushed through with just one month’s public consultations and 12 days’ debating in Legco. Even pro-Beijing personalities commented that the draft wording could benefit from fine-tuning.

Article 23 of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HK SAR) Basic Law, imposed in 1997, said that HK would enact a security law. The people of Hong Kong had no say in that Basic Law and the constitutional arrangements negotiated between the Thatcher UK Government and the People’s Republic led by Deng Xiaoping.

The first attempt to implement Article 23 was in 2003. The HK SAR government conducted a consultation over three months and received over 90,000 submissions (fewer than 20,000 this time). There was widespread opposition by the pro-business Liberal Party as well as the “pan-democratic parties” in Legco and people in the streets of Hong Kong. 500,000 people marched against the draft bill on 1 July 2003, the anniversary of the establishment of the HK SAR. Previously, the only large scale protest in Hong Kong was when over a million marched in support of the Tiananmen democracy movement in 1989.

The then Security Minister, Regina Ip, and the Chief Executive, Tung Che Hwa, resigned.

Article 23 highlighted the contradictions of HKSAR One Country Two Systems formula:

The people of Hong Kong wanted the autonomy promised under the Basic Law to include local democracy and the right to elect their Chief Executive and the Legislature, to retain the city’s distinct identity and have a real say in its destiny. Hongkongers were never able to exercise their right to self-determination, but autonomy looked like a possible way not to become just another Chinese city.

Deng Xiaoping and Thatcher wanted a continuation of neoliberal capitalism, for the golden goose to lay more golden eggs. Hong Kong post-1997 was meant to keep its status as a global financial centre — providing the PRC access to international capital, facilitating greater external investment to continue driving China’s post 1978 economic transformation along capitalist lines, and enabling CCP cadres operating China’s crony state capitalist system to corruptly enrich themselves.

The Hong Kong capitalist class were the earliest foreign investors in Deng’s “Opening Up” capitalist project for China, rapidly transferring their factories from Hong Kong across the border. As a comprador layer, they also delivered large-scale OEM manufacturing on behalf of global brands seeking super profits in China.

The CCP was prepared to allow these oligarchs a little leeway, with a few extra civil liberties for the city’s population, but opposed any developments towards full-blown democracy that might rock the boat and weaken their monopolistic grip on political power as a one party state.

Tiananmen 1989 was an existential crisis for Deng and Co, but following the repression and with the support of western capital, within three or four years it was business as usual, as the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from one colonial master to another approached.

In 2003 the HK authorities backed down. Given the level of repression since 2020, it is no surprise that this time round the “patriots-only” Legco rubber-stamped the security law with little protest.

Article 23 is done and dusted. However, has the regime killed the golden goose?

Hong Kong is already caught in the middle of a rising geopolitical conflict between the USA and China.

The Hong Kong stock market is in the doldrums. Foreign investment is hesitant to come back, housing prices in Hong Kong have plummeted over 25%. A significant layer of Hong Kong’s skilled workforce has left for the UK, around 135,000 people, despite the cost of a British National Overseas (BNO) visa (£5,425 per adult including NHS surcharge, plus no recourse to public funds for five years).

Hong Kong is severely affected by China’s economic woes — massive housing problems remain unsolved, with leading construction companies defaulting and going bankrupt, paid-for homes unfinished as well as completed houses unsold, together with deflation, local government debt, over-capacity in manufacturing, and youth unemployment. The CCP’s early-March “Two Sessions” projection of a 5% growth of GDP would appear to be optimistic.

The US Government is about to announce financial and visa sanctions against specific government officials, similar to the sanctions imposed in 2020 after Beijing imposed the National Security Law. These sanctions are of dubious value, and divert people’s attention from the two-fold reality of the situation:

Firstly, global capitalist entities are only interested in profit-making from their investment through the super-exploitation of labour inside the People’s Republic, whether this is forced Uyghur labour in Xinjiang, North Korean labour in North East China, or the sweatshop factories along the southeast coastal provinces populated largely by migrant female labour from the inland rural countryside.

Secondly, the fightback against repression and exploitation must involve the active agency of working people in Hong Kong and in China as a whole rather than be reliant on the US Government, either under Trump in 2019-20 or Biden in 2024. The most recent example of such fightback is the “A4” or “White Paper” movement which forced Xi Jinping’s government to cease the Covid ultra-lockdown.

Will Article 23 strengthen the resolve of the atomised oppositionists in Hong Kong and the exiled activists in the Hong Kong diaspora, or will the lack of world attention and political disorientation lead to despair?

To avoid such a scenario, it is vital to reflect on the political limitations and geopolitical context of the 2019 protest movement, in order to draw out the key lessons of the defeat. Socialists will aim for much more than a slogan about “Revolution in our Time”. We want to regroup activists into a workers’ socialist party with a working-class programme including democratic rights, and to make that party an active force for speeding the revolutionary overthrow of the Beijing autocracy, for making the overthrow the most democratic achievable, and for winning specifically working-class demands in it.

A fight for Hong Kong’s self-determination, to be successful, needs to be part of a China-wide resistance movement of the working class against the CCP Party-State, a monolith that is on the wrong side of history. One day it will crack under the stresses and contradictions of its own making.