May 2020
The Hong Kong National Security Law (NSL) to be adopted soon by China’s legislature, will no doubt prompt a fresh wave of protests in Hong Kong. Beijing has likely calculated it can weather the storm any enforcement of the law will bring. In fact, China is accelerating assertive behaviours elsewhere, including the South China Sea.
The submission of a new draft NSL to delegates of China’s legislative body – the National People’s Congress – reverberated across Hong Kong today. The document asserts that ‘law-based and forceful measures must be taken to prevent, stop and punish such activities’, referring to the violence and unrest in 2019. The historic move is widely viewed as a step-change in Beijing’s approach to the city after the 2019 violence when the Hong Kong police force repeatedly clashed with high school and university students in a game of attrition. Most observers fear the NSL will prompt a fresh wave of protests, perhaps offering a trigger for China’s enforcement of the law and the deployment of People’s Liberation Army troops from their garrison onto the streets of Hong Kong.
Wang Chen, Vice Chairman of the NPC Standing Committee, explained the reasoning behind the law in these terms: “National security risks in the HKSAR have become a prominent problem… and have seriously challenged the bottom line of the “one country, two systems” principle, harmed the rule of law, and threatened national sovereignty, security and development interests.”
The draft law is the latest in a string of controversial decisions putting a spotlight on Beijing and its policies. Criticism of China’s handling of its COVID-19 outbreak, led by the United States has enraged a large swathe of China’s population, prompting an exchange of bellicose language between China and the US. Hostility towards the US and ‘the West’ is on the increase with nationalist rhetoric increasing. While some western leaders appear persuaded by US Secretary of State Pompeo’s argument that China is exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic to double-down on its ‘core concerns’ such as Hong Kong and the South China Sea; Beijing sees hypocrisy. One military commentator accused the US of ‘looting a burning house’: interfering in China’s most sensitive internal affairs (Xinjiang, Taiwan and Hong Kong) right at the moment when the Chinese government was attempting to contain the Wuhan outbreak.
Also on the horizon are increasing tensions surrounding Taiwan. The creation of the Hong Kong National Security Law resonates strongly with China’s controversial Anti-Secession Law (ASL) of March 2005. Article 8 clearly asserts the right to resort to non-peaceful means to reunite China in the event of Taiwan’s secession. Alarmingly, the debate about forceful reunification with Taiwan has re-emerged among China’s hawkish commentators. The COVID-19 blame-game has often centred on Taiwan’s exemplary measures in tackling the virus under the leadership of Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-Wen. The World Health Organisation is at the centre of Sino-US tension amid growing international support for Taiwan, enraging Beijing. Tsai, a toxic figure to Beijing, was recently inaugurated for a second term supported by voters marked by the Hong Kong protests. The US has condemned Taiwan’s exclusion from the recent World Health Assembly and accused the WHO Director-General of undermining the organisation’s credibility under pressure from China. Xi Jinping himself has shown unremitting support for the WHO and dismissed the criticism.
Beijing has big plans for Hong Kong’s integration into the Greater Bay Area (GBA) of the Pearl River delta, an enormous conurbation and industrial powerhouse of some 70 million inhabitants for China. The area will be crucial to China’s post-COVID economic recovery, but in the longer term, when Hong Kong’s Basic Law expires in 2047, Beijing envisions a city already absorbed into the GBA with all vestiges of its special status and memories of the protest movement gone.
China’s relations with the rest of the world have deteriorated, with China’s ‘core concerns’ the centrepiece of China’s more assertive actions. Hong Kong, Taiwan and the South China Sea have become the focus of increased tension, as China’s military and diplomatic capability expands. India is now part of this volatile mix, with renewed skirmishes in the disputed parts of the China-India border. In the space of only a few weeks, China has provoked the wrath of Vietnam the Philippines and Malaysia over South China Sea disputes, prompting the US navy to deploy to the region. The deployment included an amphibious assault ship to waters nearby, joined by an Australian frigate.
The region remains tense, particularly after China ratified the establishment of two new government jurisdictions in the Xisha and Nansha island groups (The Paracel and Spratly Islands respectively). In addition, Beijing gave formal names to eighty features across the disputed region, many within the Exclusive Economic Zones of rival claimants. The new jurisdictions within China’s ‘nine-dashed line’ claim pave the way for the creation of a greater civilian presence on the islands alongside more military deployments to China’s new naval and air bases across the South China Sea.
Chinese behaviour in the region, in conjunction with re-ignited tension in Hong Kong, may be early evidence of a more coercive and discordant approach by Beijing exploiting a ‘period of strategic opportunity’ as the world reels from the impact of the COVID pandemic. China’s latest coercive behaviour could be the next stage in a calculated plan to make this strategic waterway of Southeast Asia an irreversibly Chinese one.