China’s National People’s Congress (NPC), its rubber-stamp legislature, passed a draft law on Thursday eliminating Hong Kong’s autonomy, allowing the Communist Party to punish anyone in the nominally autonomous city for crimes such as “secession” and “acts against national security.”

Under the “One Country, Two Systems” policy that Beijing agreed to when the United Kingdom handed over Hong Kong in 1997, the Communist Party is banned from imposing or enforcing laws in the region. The policy requires Hong Kong to accept that Beijing has sovereignty over it – meaning it cannot maintain its own army or engage in global diplomacy alone – but Hong Kong authorities have the ultimate authority to write and enforce local laws.

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After a year of protests against a growing number of attempts by dictator Xi Jinping to override “One Country, Two Systems,” the NPC asserted that Hong Kong’s authorities had not done enough to protect China’s “national security” from the existence of peaceful protests and Beijing needed to step in.

The Chinese propaganda outlet Global Times explained:

The new Hong Kong national security legislation entitles the central government’s national security organs to establish agencies in the SAR [special administrative region, Hong Kong’s official designation] to safeguard national security, while the chief executive of the Hong Kong SAR government will report to the central government at regular intervals.

The reports will include performance of duties in maintaining national security, conducting national security promotion education, and prohibiting acts that endanger national security according to law, details of the draft show.

The Global Times explicitly stated that the law would allow China to intervene in Hong Kong to stop “attempts to split the country, subvert state power, organize and perpetrate terrorist activities, including other actions that seriously endanger national security.”

Xinhua, the official Communist Party news agency, insisted the law was necessary “after prolonged social unrest” in Hong Kong, quoting a senior lawmaker in the NPC who stated the law was intended to replace “weak links” in Hong Kong’s laws that allowed residents too much freedom to dissent from the Party.

The version of the law passed on Thursday is a “draft,” meaning it does not have specific provisions in it yet, such as legal definitions of the crimes it covers or the sentences judges will be allowed to hand down to those found guilty. The NPC typically passes general versions of laws that then go into more detailed legal drafting by its “Standing Committee,” but its approval ensures that the bill is now officially a law. This ensures that the public will not see the law before it takes effect.

Despite the fact that the law usurps powers China promised would remain in the hands of Hong Kong officials, Premier Li Keqiang insisted at a press conference Thursday that the law does not violate the “One Country, Two Systems” policy.

“One Country, Two Systems is China’s basic state policy. The central government has all along fully and faithfully implemented [it] … under which the people of Hong Kong rule Hong Kong under the strict accordance of the constitution and Basic Law,” Li insisted.

Hong Kong’s senior officials, hand-picked by the Party, celebrated the law, which takes power out of their hands.

“Safeguarding national sovereignty, security and development interests is the constitutional duty of the HKSAR and concerns every Hong Kong citizen,” Chief Executive Carrie Lam said in a statement Thursday. Lam blamed Hong Kong’s legislature itself for not passing a similar law to silence dissent, making Beijing’s intervention necessary.

“Given the difficulty of the executive and legislative authorities of the HKSAR to complete on their own legislation … there is the need and the urgency for the passage of the Decision by the NPC to establish and improve the legal system and enforcement mechanisms for Hong Kong to safeguard national security at the state level,” Lam said. “It also shows the care of the country towards the HKSAR.”

Lam insisted the law would only affect “an extremely small minority of criminals who threaten national security.”

“It will not affect the legitimate rights and freedoms enjoyed by Hong Kong residents,” she added.

Prior to the law passing, Lam had alarmed many Hong Kong residents by repeatedly describing the fundamental rights and freedoms for which Hong Kong’s government brokered a deal with Beijing to safeguard as existing merely temporarily.

“For the time being, people have this freedom to say whatever they want to say,” Lam said this week. “Some of the things you have said about mainland [Chinese] agencies coming down to arrest people undergoing protests and they will be arrested for calling the chief executive to step down – at the moment are [in] your imagination.”

(Excerpt from Breitbart. Article by Frances Martel.)