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The draconian security law that Beijing forced upon Hong Kong last week contains an article making it illegal for anyone in the world to promote democratic reform for Hong Kong.
Why it matters: China has long sought to crush organized dissent abroad through quiet threats and coercion. Now it has codified that practice into law — potentially forcing people and companies around the world to choose between speaking freely and ever stepping foot in Hong Kong again.
What's happening: Article 38 of the national security law states, "This Law shall apply to offences under this Law committed against the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region from outside the Region by a person who is not a permanent resident of the Region."
https://www.axios.com/china-hong-kong-law-global-activism-ff1ea6d1-0589-4a71-a462-eda5bea3f78f.html
Why it matters: China has long sought to crush organized dissent abroad through quiet threats and coercion. Now it has codified that practice into law — potentially forcing people and companies around the world to choose between speaking freely and ever stepping foot in Hong Kong again.
What's happening: Article 38 of the national security law states, "This Law shall apply to offences under this Law committed against the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region from outside the Region by a person who is not a permanent resident of the Region."
- In other words, every provision of the law applies to everyone outside of Hong Kong — including you.
- "It literally applies to every single person on the planet. This is how it reads," said Wang Minyao, a Chinese-American lawyer based in New York. "If I appear at a congressional committee in D.C. and say something critical, that literally would be a violation of this law."
- This means that anyone advocating democracy in Hong Kong, or criticizing the governments in Hong Kong or Beijing, could potentially face consequences if they step foot in Hong Kong, or have assets or family members in Hong Kong.
- "For Hong Kong, we have to understand that it is the foreground of a very global fight, authoritarianism versus democracy."
- He and other leaders of the pro-democracy movement, including Joshua Wong, have traveled the globe in recent years to promote their cause, including meeting with U.S. lawmakers — an activity that the new law prohibits.
- U.S. counterterrorism laws have a degree of extraterritoriality, but those laws are intended to fight actual violent terrorism — not free speech — and are not used to crush peaceful political organizing.
- Earlier this year a Chinese student at the University of Minnesota was sentenced to six months in prison after returning home to China for the summer, for a tweet criticizing Xi Jinping that he posted while in the U.S.
- Chinese officials have also threatened people of Chinese heritage abroad who are no longer Chinese citizens, in some cases kidnapping them, taking them back to China, and forcing them to renounce their foreign citizenship so that Chinese authorities can prosecute them as Chinese nationals without foreign involvement.
- Hollywood movie studios make sure their films don't offend China's censors so they can retain access to China's massive domestic movie market.
- After Beijing complained, Marriott fired an employee who used a company social media account to like a post about Tibet.
- An example: The tweet that Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey posted last year in the support of the Hong Kong protests got the NBA in a lot of trouble in China.
- That tweet would likely be illegal under the new law.
- "It’s the obsession with seizing the narrative-setting power," said Alvin Cheung, a legal scholar at New York University.
https://www.axios.com/china-hong-kong-law-global-activism-ff1ea6d1-0589-4a71-a462-eda5bea3f78f.html