Months after China imposed the draconian national security law on Hong Kong, the administration of the semi-autonomous region has quietly hardened the language of the terms of violations that were already vague. The city’s administration is now even planning to introduce new laws under Hong Kong’s Basic Law that will pave way for easily cracking down on dissenting voices. The proposals include ‘Fake news’ legislation, anti-doxxing law, and anti-sanctions law among others.
China imposed the national security law on Hong Kong last year.
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Reports suggest that Hong Kong authorities, who were initially using the phrase “actions that “endanger national security", have quietly started using the term “contrary to the interests of national security”. While the phrase “endanger national security” appears more than 30 times in the national security law, "contrary to” has not been mentioned in the original legislation.
The Hong Kong government has proposed ‘Fake news’ legislation months after officials and lawmakers started using the term ‘fake news’ in their press statements and in speeches. But they have not outlined any exact provisions for the law. The Asia Internet Coalition has even warned that tech giants may stop offering their services in the semi-autonomous region if anti-doxxing laws were used to target their employees.
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Article 7 of the Hong Kong Basic Law still requires the local government to pass its own law. The newly proposed Article 23 can do away with this obligation. China is also planning to extend the anti-sanctions law to Hong Kong. The law allows Beijing to deny visas, deport, or seize assets of those involved in formulating or complying with sanctions against China.
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Article 7 of the Hong Kong Basic Law still requires the local government to pass its own law. The newly proposed Article 23 can do away with this obligation. China is also planning to extend the anti-sanctions law to Hong Kong. The law allows Beijing to deny visas, deport, or seize assets of those involved in formulating or complying with sanctions against China.
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These minor changes could provide greater ammunition to the government for harassing businesses and citizens as it increases compliance risk for companies operating from what is touted as global financial capital. The broadening of the language of terms of violations put more companies and people at the risk of being accused of security violations.
Several pro-democracy activists, including Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai, were arrested last year days after the implementation of the controversial law. The international community, especially the US, UK, Canada, and Australia, has often termed the legislation contrary to China's international obligations under the principles of the legally binding, UN-registered Sino-British Joint Declaration.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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Home/World News/Hong Kong slyly tweaks language of security law, puts media at greater risk
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