Threats to national security take various forms. This is precisely why constant vigilance is essential. Although the Hong Kong SAR National Security Law (NSL) of 2020 and the Hong Kong Safeguarding National Security Ordinance (SNSO) of 2024 are firmly ensconced in the legal landscape, Hong Kong cannot afford to let its guard down.

Indeed, the secretary for security, Chris Tang Ping-keung, recently highlighted “four great national security threats” (Sept 21). They include interference by foreign forces, domestic terrorist activities, “Hong Kong independence” ideology and soft resistance. Although each is pernicious in its own way, he considered soft resistance the “most malicious”.

This was undoubtedly because its dangers are frequently less clear-cut than others, and sometimes secretive and cunning. The perpetrators can operate surreptitiously beneath the radar, or on the borders of criminality. They can also be subtle, targeting the innocent and unsuspecting.

The expression “soft resistance” was first used in 2021 by Luo Huining, then-director of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the HKSAR. He warned that in addition to cracking down on “hard resistance”, Hong Kong had to regulate “soft resistance”. Although he did not elaborate, his meaning was clear.

After all, armed resistance, political resistance, and street resistance are obvious, and people should not find it unduly onerous to grasp the notion of soft resistance. When all is said and done, they are all birds of the same feather.

Soft resistance may, for example, involve peddling misinformation (as occurred during the Tai Po fire tragedy), twisting historical narratives (like blaming China for the Opium Wars), misleading the gullible (most obviously in schools) and misrepresenting the efficacy of the rights and freedoms enshrined in the Basic Law (by falsely claiming its fair trial guarantees are being ignored by the courts).  

Young people are invariably vulnerable to false messaging, particularly when it is sugar-coated. A classic example involved the speech therapists union (General Union of Hong Kong Speech Therapists). Five of its executive committee members were convicted of using children’s books to promote separatism and incite hatred of the government. When they were each imprisoned for 19 months, the three-judge panel of the Court of First Instance said what they did with the illustrated books was “in effect brainwashing” young readers.    

At a pre-retirement press conference (Sept 22), the deputy commissioner for national security, Andrew Kan Kai-yan noted that soft resistance is now more covert. Although street violence was a thing of the past, soft resistance was ever-present and had not decreased. For example, it could involve misleading the public by politicizing issues through false information. Echoing Tang, Kan also viewed soft resistance as “the first national security threat”.

Although critics sometimes claim that the very idea of soft resistance is capricious and unhelpful, the evidence shows otherwise. If unchecked, it can be profoundly damaging, which is why it needs to be identified wherever possible. It has certain defining characteristics, including falsity, irrationality and emotive bias. In 2025, the secretary for justice, Paul Lam Ting-kwok, while emphasizing that the label must not be used arbitrarily, provided a working definition that covers many situations.

He said soft resistance involved using false statements to create misunderstandings about Chinese mainland and HKSAR authorities. Although some methods might not be strictly illegal, he stressed that did not mean they were not harmful to society.  

Soft resistance is not confined to schools and may raise its ugly head in any sector, including culture, media, and even sport (for example, national anthem blunders at international sporting events). In 2025, Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu described it as “lurking across different areas and different sectors”, albeit sometimes “disguised as righteous-sounding causes”. Hence there is a need to keep national security mechanisms under review, and hone them whenever necessary.

When the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress enacted the NSL in 2020, it was keenly aware that national security was a work in progress.  Apart from enacting the outstanding national security laws (Basic Law Art.23; completed in 2024), the NSL requires the HKSAR to “strengthen its work on safeguarding national security” (Art.9). In particular, there is an obligation to promote national security education in, for example, schools, universities and social organizations. The objective is to raise the “awareness of Hong Kong residents of national security and of the obligation to abide by the law” (Art.10).

If these imperatives can be achieved, it will go a long way toward neutralizing those who wish to use clandestine methods to destabilize the HKSAR and undermine the mainland.

The author is a senior counsel and law professor, and was previously the director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.