By Frank Chen
In the recently released film Cold War 1994 (寒戰1994), Hong Kong is not merely a city of police manoeuvres, elite rivalries and institutional tension. It is a city standing at the edge of a geopolitical transition, where local order, colonial power, organised interests and external influence collide beneath the surface of public life. The film works because its anxiety feels recognisable: Hong Kong has always been more than a commercial port or financial hub. It has been a strategic space where law, sovereignty, capital and politics meet — and where power is never merely local.
That is precisely why the discussion over Hong Kong's national security legislation should be approached with more seriousness than slogans. National security law is not an authoritarian curiosity, but a normal attribute of sovereign governance in any serious jurisdiction. Britain has one. The United States has one. Australia, Canada and Singapore have their own. The real question is therefore not whether Hong Kong should have national security laws. It is whether Hong Kong, as a common law jurisdiction under "one country, two systems", has designed a framework that is legally necessary, politically justified and institutionally credible.
In 2026, the answer should be a confident yes.
Hong Kong's national security framework, comprising the 2020 National Security Law and the 2024 Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, filled a long-standing constitutional gap since the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Article 23 of the Basic Law states plainly that the HKSAR shall enact laws on its own to prohibit treason, secession, sedition, subversion, theft of state secrets and foreign political interference in the Region. For more than two decades after the handover, this obligation remained incomplete. That was not a sign of liberal maturity; it was a structural vulnerability. The 2019 social unrest gave Hong Kong society a painful lesson about the cost of leaving such a gap unresolved.
The events of recent decades before the establishment of the national security framework made that vulnerability impossible to ignore. No serious government can permit its public order, constitutional institutions and political process to be exposed indefinitely to organised violence, separatist advocacy, external manipulation or covert foreign influence — themes also echoed in Cold War 1994. To say this is not to criminalise dissent, as some so-called democracies like to portray. It is to distinguish between ordinary political expression and activities that threaten the basic security of the state and the stability of the constitutional order. Mature legal systems make that distinction all the time.
This is where the comparison with Britain becomes meaningful. The United Kingdom has also recently refreshed its own national security framework. Its National Security Act 2023 is an expansive statute by any comparative standard. It modernises espionage offences, creates new offences concerning sabotage, foreign interference, trade secrets and assistance to foreign intelligence services, and establishes a Foreign Influence Registration Scheme — a mechanism that would almost certainly be described by some Western critics as an offence against civil society if adopted elsewhere. It also uses a broad "foreign power condition" to determine whether conduct falls within the national security framework. In other words, the UK plainly believes that a modern state must defend itself against covert influence, hostile intelligence activity and interference in its political institutions, while often implying that Hong Kong should not enjoy the same right.
That belief is not unreasonable. But it exposes the double standard in British criticism of Hong Kong. If Britain may legislate against foreign interference, why should Hong Kong not do the same? If Westminster may update its national security laws in response to contemporary geopolitical threats, why should Hong Kong be expected to live with a permanent legal deficit? If Britain may define threats in terms of its own safety, interests and constitutional order, why should Hong Kong's constitutional responsibilities be treated as illegitimate? The logic is difficult to defend. The real intention is not difficult to see.
The more one compares the two national security frameworks, the weaker the British moral and legal posture on HKNSL becomes. In important respects, the UK's framework is broader and harsher than Hong Kong's. British legislation extends across espionage, sabotage, foreign interference, trade secrets, intelligence assistance and political influence registration. It is not confined to spectacular acts of violence or overt betrayal only, but reaches into the grey zones of information, influence, institutional access, and political activity. By contrast, Hong Kong's framework is rooted in a specific constitutional duty and directed at clearly identified threats to sovereignty, territorial integrity, state security and the constitutional order.
Hong Kong's approach is also institutionally stronger than its critics admit. It does not operate outside the legal system; it operates through the legal system that has underpinned Hong Kong's success in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Cases are handled by prosecutors, argued by counsel and adjudicated by courts within Hong Kong's common law system. The judiciary, which remains independent within Hong Kong's constitutional order, does not make national security law — that is the responsibility of the constitutional and legislative system — but it gives the law practical credibility through adjudication, interpretation and procedural discipline. This matters greatly. Hong Kong remains a common law jurisdiction with professional judges, reasoned judgments, established evidential rules and a legal culture familiar to international business, finance and arbitration.
That legal credibility is not decorative. It is one reason Hong Kong continues to function as an international legal and commercial centre. Investors do not need a vulnerable city without national security laws. They need a city where the law is clear, order is stable, courts are competent and rights are exercised within a predictable legal framework. National security legislation, properly understood, strengthens that environment. It reassures residents, businesses and institutions that political conflict will not be allowed to collapse into disorder or external manipulation.
Nor is freedom meaningfully protected by leaving national security undefended. Freedom of speech, press, assembly and academic inquiry require a stable political and social order protected by competent laws. A city in which government departments can be intimidated, transport systems paralysed, public authority delegitimised through external campaigns, or young people pushed towards separatist fantasies is not freer. It is more vulnerable. Hong Kong's national security framework protects the conditions under which ordinary freedoms can be enjoyed without fear, coercion or chaos.
The British position often sounds as though national security law is legitimate when drafted in London, but suspect when enacted in Hong Kong. That is not a legal principle, but political hierarchy disguised as liberal concern. In Cold War 1994, the line attributed to a British representative — "We don't obey the law; we write the law" — captures the arrogance of an old imperial mentality. It is precisely this mentality that continues to haunt some foreign commentary on Hong Kong today. The United Kingdom has no right or power to obstruct, sabotage or delegitimise Hong Kong's fulfilment of its own constitutional duty. Hong Kong is not asking Britain for permission to safeguard national security, nor should it. The city's constitutional order derives from the Basic Law and Chinese sovereignty, not from Westminster's approval.
The deeper geopolitical point is simple. Western states increasingly acknowledge that foreign interference is one of the defining challenges of contemporary politics. They worry about hostile influence, covert funding, disinformation, cyber operations, elite capture and the weaponisation of open societies. Yet when Hong Kong responds to similar risks, it is often told that any such response is excessive. This is intellectually unserious. Either foreign interference is a real danger, or it is not. If it is real for Britain, it is real for Hong Kong.
The difference is that Hong Kong's situation is more exposed. It is an open, international city; a global financial centre; a media and information hub; and a society long shaped by colonial legacies and external networks. Its openness is an asset, but openness without safeguards becomes vulnerability. National security legislation is therefore not a retreat from Hong Kong's international character, it is what allows that international character to continue safely.
This is why Cold War 1994is such an apt point of departure. The film reminds audiences that Hong Kong's political order has never existed in a vacuum. Behind the surface of prosperity lie questions of authority, loyalty, institutional control and foreign influence. Those questions did not disappear after 1997, they became more important.
Hong Kong's national security laws should therefore be seen not as an anomaly, but as the completion of an unfinished constitutional architecture. Compared with Britain's wider and more intrusive national security framework, Hong Kong's approach is more closely tied to a specific constitutional obligation, a concrete historical experience and a functioning common law system. It is legally defensible, politically necessary and institutionally credible.
A serious comparison leads to a simple conclusion: Hong Kong has done what any responsible jurisdiction would do. It has closed a dangerous gap, defended its constitutional order and done so through law. The true test of the rule of law is not whether a society leaves itself defenceless in the name of abstract freedom, but whether it has the discipline to protect freedom through clear laws, competent courts and constitutional responsibility. On that test, Hong Kong's national security framework is not a departure from the rule of law, it is one of the conditions that allows the rule of law to endure. Britain may disagree politically while making itself a harsher national security law for its own country, but it cannot credibly insist that national security is essential for itself and illegitimate for Hong Kong. That is not a principle, but an imperial and privileged speaking in the language of law.
Frank Chen is a Research Associate in International Relations at the Hong Kong New Emerging Technology Education Charity Foundation. He holds an MPhil in Government and Public Administration from CUHK and a Bachelor's degree in Globalisation and Development from HKBU.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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