China's proposed national security law could end Hong Kong as we know it

Hong Kong is known for being a "city of protest," with people taking to the streets by the hundreds of thousands to hold their government to account. Long before the Umbrella Movement or last year's sustained political unrest, this reputation was cemented in 2003, when mass marches against a proposed anti-sedition law known as Article 23 succeeded in forcing the government to shelve the legislation. In the 17 years since, despite promises to do so and much prodding from Beijing, no Hong Kong administration has dared restart this process.

This week, Beijing's patience ran out. On the back of more than six months of often violent pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong last year, the National People's Congress (NPC), China's rubber-stamp parliament, put forward plans to introduce a national security and anti-sedition law on the city's behalf, bypassing Hong Kong's legislature via a rarely used constitutional backdoor.

The details of the proposed law go far beyond what was put forward in 2003. As well as criminalizing "treason, secession, sedition (and) subversion" against the central government, it will also enable Chinese national security organs to operate in the city "to fulfill relevant duties to safeguard national security in accordance with the law."

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