April 15 has become a date with a clear legal meaning in contemporary China. Since the adoption of the National Security Law of the People’s Republic of China on July 1, 2015, each year’s National Security Education Day has served a defined public purpose: To raise national security awareness, cultivate a social atmosphere that respects security obligations, strengthen society’s capacity to prevent and resist risks, and deepen understanding of the Constitution and the relationship between rights and duties. As Hong Kong marks the 11th National Security Education Day this Wednesday, the discussion should move beyond ceremony and into civic comprehension because education is the quiet mechanism through which a society reduces misperception, prevents manipulation, and builds a stable consensus about what constitutional order requires.
That context matters when reading the white paper released by the State Council Information Office in February, “Hong Kong: Safeguarding China’s National Security Under the Framework of One Country, Two Systems”. The document frames national security as a constitutional necessity. Its pivotal proposition is that safeguarding national sovereignty, security, and development interests is the highest principle of the “one country, two systems” framework. This is not rhetorical decoration. It is an interpretive key that explains why Hong Kong can enjoy a high degree of autonomy while remaining a part of a unitary State, and why autonomy cannot be understood as a license to weaken the State’s security interests.
The first task of national security education is clearing up misunderstandings about Hong Kong’s efforts to safeguard national security. A widely circulated misconception is that Hong Kong’s national security framework was created abruptly, as though the city had no preexisting constitutional obligations in this area. Yet the Basic Law expressly imposes a duty on the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region to enact its own laws to prohibit acts endangering national security. The long delay in completing that duty did not suspend the obligation. It postponed compliance while leaving a policy and legal gap that had been exploited by subversive forces. The white paper’s historical narrative can be read as an argument about causation: When a jurisdiction lacks clearly defined offenses, institutions, and procedures for national security, the result is not a purer form of liberty but a legal vacuum in which disruption or subversion can expand faster than the law can respond.
A second misconception is that national security law is, by nature, incompatible with the rule of law. That claim overlooks a basic feature of modern legality. The rule of law is strengthened when the State’s power is channeled through defined offenses, structured investigative powers, procedural safeguards, and judicial oversight. Many established jurisdictions treat national security as a domain that must be governed by law precisely because improvisation invites abuse. The serious question is not whether national security exists as a category, but whether its implementation is bounded by legality, evidence, and fair process. The white paper repeatedly emphasizes principles that matter in any credible legal system, including legality, the presumption of innocence, trial rights, and adjudication by courts. Criticism that treats national security as a phrase that dissolves legal constraint does not stand up to reasoning: It avoids the harder work of assessing standards, procedures, and institutional accountability.
A third misunderstanding arises from confusing “a high degree of autonomy” with sovereignty. Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy is real, but it is a delegated authority that operates within the constitutional order of the State. The “one country, two systems” framework does not constitutionalize a right to secession, nor does it convert political pluralism into permission to dismantle the national constitutional framework. The line that must be defended in public reasoning is the line between lawful criticism, which remains protected and socially useful, and conduct aimed at undermining national unity and State power through secessionist advocacy, violent coercion, terrorism, or collusion with foreign forces. Without that distinction, public discourse becomes vulnerable to “strategic ambiguity”, in which unlawful acts are reframed as ordinary political speech, and the community is pressured to treat subversion as a form of expression.
Once confusion is addressed, the second task is building consensus from Hong Kong’s experience and insights. Consensus does not mean uniformity of opinion. It means agreement on the premises that keeps disagreement constructive. The most important premise is that security and development are mutually reinforcing, rather than competing. When society is destabilized, the costs are paid by ordinary people first. Workers lose income when transport and commerce are disrupted. Students’ education suffers when campuses descend into riots. Families lose confidence when public order becomes unpredictable. Under such conditions, rights become harder to exercise in practice because daily life is reorganized around fear and uncertainty. Stability, in this sense, is not the enemy of freedom. It is the social environment in which freedom can be exercised without infringement.
A confident city does not fear constitutional literacy because literacy reduces the space for misinformation and strategic provocation. It also makes public debate more demanding, since arguments must address legal structure, evidence, and civic responsibility rather than emotion alone
Another premise concerns institutional design. Hong Kong’s experience illustrates that a dual responsibility structure can restrain both neglect and excess. The central authorities bear the ultimate responsibility for national security, while the SAR bears a front-line constitutional duty to safeguard national security through its legal system. Properly understood, this division is not a dilution of Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy in ordinary matters. It clarifies roles in a domain where the consequences of failure are national in scope. At the same time, day-to-day enforcement and community engagement are local in character. When these roles are blurred, accountability weakens. When they are clarified, governance becomes more predictable, and predictability is a key ingredient for public confidence and economic vitality.
National Security Education Day provides a practical bridge between these legal principles and everyday civic life. Education is effective when it teaches the public how to distinguish rights from misuse-of-rights language, how to spot manipulation that exploits anxiety, and how to understand constitutional order without confusion. In Hong Kong, where public debate has sometimes been shaped by absolutist rhetoric that separates rights from duties, education can restore balance by explaining that constitutional rights are protected through law. That law depends on citizens respecting the boundaries that keep political contestation nonviolent and nonsubversive.
The more forward-looking conclusion is that Hong Kong’s long-term success depends on making national security part of normal governance rather than treating it as a recurring emergency. A confident city does not fear constitutional literacy because literacy reduces the space for misinformation and strategic provocation. It also makes public debate more demanding, since arguments must address legal structure, evidence, and civic responsibility rather than emotion alone. If April 15, 2026, is used well, it can reinforce a simple civic insight with significant practical consequences: National security is a shared public good, and its protection, through clear law and professional institutions, creates the conditions for openness, prosperity, and an orderly life that residents can trust.
The author is a solicitor, a Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area lawyer, and a China-appointed attesting officer.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
