China’s national security law poses existential threat to Hong Kong’s universities and academic freedom

China’s tendency to use the vaguest, broadest terms in drafting its laws means research on several issues could become off-limits
Legislation will have chilling effect on overseas academics’ interest in and ability to pursue research collaboration with peers in Hong Kong

Phil C. W. Chan

Published: 9:00am, 6 Jun 2020

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Before it was replaced by “five demands, not one less” last year, “time is money” had long been Hong Kong’s unofficial motto. Visitors and expatriates were amazed at how fast Hongkongers ate or walked, often at the same time.

The “umbrella movement” in 2014, the first political movement in the city in which large segments of society took part for an extended period of time, ultimately failed because Hongkongers could not bear the inconvenience and extra time in going to work and going home.

Opponents of the movement sought court orders and bailiffs’ assistance to end the stalemate after 79 days and celebrated Hong Kong’s respect for the rule of law in the process. It is, therefore, only fitting that Hong Kong’s 178 years of political and legal culture transformed to the core within a mere six days in May 2020.

Despite our struggles for universal suffrage and dissatisfactions about the arrogance and incompetence of our local government since July 1997, Hongkongers were steadfast in our belief that the Basic Law, a Chinese national law promulgated by the National People’s Congress in April 1990 in pursuance of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, was the highest law of the land this side of the border.

The dizzying speed of collapse of the Hong Kong we had called home – from Beijing’s introduction on May 22 of a national security law for Hong Kong at its “two sessions”, to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s certification on May 27 that “no reasonable person can assert today that Hong Kong maintains a high degree of autonomy from China, given facts on the ground” – is heartbreaking.

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Just before the university sieges last November, I wrote in the Post that Hong Kong universities contributed to the city’s social unrest since last June through their silence and co-option.

As Beijing has long regarded universities as primary sites of ideological engineering and control, it is decidedly unlikely that university administrators and academics in Hong Kong could continue to reside in their ivory towers under Article 137, which supposedly guarantees academic freedom of educational institutions.

In mid-May, Hongkongers were upset about Beijing’s interference with the city’s educational matters when secondary school students being asked about Japan’s role in China’s development from 1900 to 1945 turned into national outrage. China’s national security law for Hong Kong makes the political correctness surrounding such a question very tame indeed, and has profound ramifications for universities and academic freedom in the city.

In a 2013 classified directive to local Party committees called “The Current Situation of the Ideological Front”, the General Office of the Communist Party’s Central Committee laid out seven “unspeakables” in addition to the three Ts of Taiwan, Tibet and Tiananmen. The seven were: universal values, freedom of speech, civil society, civil rights, historical errors of the Party, crony capitalism and judicial independence. Any discussion about any of these subjects would, in Beijing’s eyes, endanger China’s national security and render the speaker liable to prosecution.

Although the specifics of the national security law are yet to be revealed, China’s tendency to use the vaguest, broadest terms in drafting and applying its laws means that research on a significant number of issues are likely to become off-limits to academics in Hong Kong.

They include China’s maritime claims in the East China Sea and the South China Sea under international law; China’s commitment to international law; development of human rights, democracy and rule of law in China; the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution; the coronavirus’ source; China's rivalry with the United States; and Hong Kong’s autonomy.

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It doesn’t really matter if a Hong Kong academic’s conclusion on any prohibited subject comports with China’s position. To suggest that China’s positions could be open to scholarly debate is to question, undermine and endanger China’s national security.

There are good reasons scholars at mainland universities parrot China’s official lines from the start. After all, according to Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, critical thinking generated by liberal studies in Hong Kong’s school curriculum was to blame for the city’s worst post-war catastrophe.

Internationalisation has always been critical to the success of our universities, which take enormous pride in their international rankings. A key part of internationalisation inheres in research collaborations with academics around the world.

The sixth item of the NPC’s resolution on national security empowers its Standing Committee to “precisely prevent, stop and punish any behaviours” anathema to China’s national security, including interference or influences by “foreign forces”.

Academics at our universities will have to decide if working with fellow scholars and scientists outside China in the pursuit of scholarship and science is worth a potentially long sentence – unless the subject matter is as uncontentious as fintech or international arbitration, if scholarship from mainland academics is anything to go by.

Since the law will apply to anyone in Hong Kong, overseas academics will likely also give their Hong Kong counterparts a wide berth. What will the many foreign-passport-holding academics in Hong Kong do? Judging by the example of the Canadians arrested in China who were caught in the crossfire among Beijing, Ottawa and Washington over Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou, these foreign academics might well consider it wisest to leave Hong Kong immediately.

The damage to Hong Kong universities will be nothing short of calamitous. Seeing as they have spoken up in support of Beijing’s final onslaught on Hong Kong’s autonomy, though, perhaps they had it coming all along.

Phil C.W. Chan is author of the book China, State Sovereignty and International Legal Order and was previously visiting professor at Xiamen Law School and visiting lecturer at Tsinghua Law School

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