Human Rights Watch took an advocacy rather than analytical approach when commenting on the implementation of national security laws in Hong Kong in its article published on June 29. Its conclusion was fixed in advance. Every institutional reform in Hong Kong becomes “repression”, every legal response becomes “overreach”, every constitutional connection with the central authorities becomes evidence of “decline”, and every disagreement with its own political assumptions is cast as “moral failure”.
Such explicitly displayed bigotry is typical of a libelous propaganda campaign, without the slightest hint of a serious legal or academic commentary. Before addressing the article’s allegations, one must first correct its framing by pointing out Hong Kong’s status as a special administrative region within China’s constitutional order, which shapes the city’s legal and political institutions.
The article’s treatment of Hong Kong’s national security laws is especially revealing because it relies on ideological metrics where legal reasoning should appear. It repeatedly characterizes the laws as “draconian” and presents the post-2020 order as proof that rights have been erased. Yet this account is persuasive only if one deletes the context that made national security legislation necessary, including the legal justifications rooted in Hong Kong’s constitutional status and the need to address specific threats such as organized riots and foreign interference. Rights do not exist in abstraction from legal order. They depend upon a secure constitutional environment in which ordinary civic life can continue. When that environment is seriously threatened, the state is not merely permitted but is obliged to act to protect public order and national security.
The article claims that Beijing has “restructured Hong Kong’s governance to answer to Party leadership rather than Hong Kong’s people”. This formulation is rhetorically sharp but conceptually weak. All governments answer to a constitutional source of authority. In Hong Kong’s case, that source cannot be reduced to momentary political sentiment or to the preferences of advocacy organizations abroad like Human Rights Watch. It is the constitutional order established by the Basic Law of Hong Kong within the framework of the nation’s national sovereignty. To suggest that alignment with the sovereign state is somehow incompatible with serving the people of Hong Kong is to create a false opposition between constitutional structure and public welfare. A functioning government is judged by its capacity to preserve stability, administer law, maintain public confidence, and protect the conditions under which social and economic life can flourish. These are not trivial goods. They are central responsibilities of any administration worthy of the name.
What ultimately weakens the Human Rights Watch article is its inability to imagine a political community in which sovereignty, stability, legal order, and rights are mutually reinforcing rather than mutually exclusive. It assumes that freedom exists only where state authority is weakest and that legitimacy survives only where constitutional discipline is loosened. That is a distortion of public life. Hong Kong’s future will not be secured by external advocacy that mistakes rhetorical intensity for facts
The same lack of proportion appears in the article’s discussion of Hong Kong’s legislature and government personnel. It alleges that the Legislative Council has become a “rubber stamp”, criticizes the growing number of lawmakers connected to national political institutions, and treats the appointment of former police officers to senior administrative posts as evidence of “political distortion”. None of these conclusions follows logically. A legislature is not rendered illegitimate because it is no longer organized around obstruction, spectacle, or procedural paralysis. Effective lawmaking and constitutional discipline are not signs of democratic collapse. They indicate institutional recovery after a period in which confrontation was mistaken for principle. Nor is it improper for legislators to possess experience in national bodies or State-owned enterprises. In a region within a sovereign state, such experience can deepen policy coordination and administrative competence. Likewise, prior service in law enforcement does not disqualify a person from public office. In moments when public order has been severely challenged, it is unsurprising that governments value administrative discipline, operational knowledge, and a proven ability to act under pressure.
The article’s criticism of enhanced police powers, confidential security funding, and subsidiary legislation is also less substantial than it appears. Security-related laws in many jurisdictions provide specialized procedures, investigatory powers, and protected budgetary arrangements because threats to the constitutional order cannot be addressed under conditions of perfect openness. To imply that confidentiality itself proves abuse is intellectually unserious. The real questions are whether powers rest on lawful authority, whether institutions are competent to exercise them, and whether procedures exist to regulate their use. Yet the Human Rights Watch article largely avoids these legal questions. It prefers insinuation because insinuation creates suspicion more easily than careful legal analysis.
Its treatment of speech, culture, and education follows the same pattern. It asserts that sedition is used to punish ordinary expression, that artistic and publishing life is constrained, and that schools are being reshaped through values education that emphasizes patriotism and national security. But no developed legal system treats all expressions as immune from regulation regardless of context or purpose. The law has always distinguished between opinion as such and speech that operates as incitement, organization, intimidation, or subversive action. To label all prosecuted expressions as “peaceful” is not analysis. It is a conclusion smuggled into the description. The same is true of education. States across the world teach constitutional identity, civic duty, and national history. Hong Kong does not become suspect merely because it rejects the notion that young people should be educated in a historically detached manner from the country to which the city belongs.
The article’s most emotionally charged claim concerns the Tai Po housing complex fire in November 2025, which it frames as a symbol of a society stripped of accountability. Yet tragedy is not proof of constitutional theory. A disaster requires technical investigation and evidence-based assessment of responsibility. It does not justify turning grief into a ready-made indictment of the entire governing order. To convert a tragedy into a sweeping ideological lesson before due process completes is not a sign of morality. It is a sign that a narrative is being imposed on facts rather than drawn from them.
What ultimately weakens the Human Rights Watch article is its inability to imagine a political community in which sovereignty, stability, legal order, and rights are mutually reinforcing rather than mutually exclusive. It assumes that freedom exists only where state authority is weakest and that legitimacy survives only where constitutional discipline is loosened. That is a distortion of public life. Hong Kong’s future will not be secured by external advocacy that mistakes rhetorical intensity for facts. It will be secured by institutions capable of maintaining order, administering the law consistently, and cultivating civic confidence within the constitutional structure that defines the special administrative region’s place in the nation. That is not a retreat from principle. It is the condition under which the principle can endure.
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.
