Opinion | Rather than legal reform, Hong Kong must first enforce laws to protect the vulnerable

Name: How will the national security law change education in Hong Kong?
Uploaded: 2020-11-22T02:30:12.000Z
Duration: 4 min 55 s
Description: How will the national security law change education in Hong Kong?

Beijing’s call for Hong Kong to review its legal system to ensure loyalty to the party, country and people – in that order – is surely less critical than the challenge of ensuring it serves society’s most vulnerable, including the city’s many foreign domestic workers

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Foreign domestic helpers gather outside Exchange Square in Central, Hong Kong, on Sunday, August 9. The recent trend to vilify historical figures associated with slavery distracts us from redressing abuses today that continue to victimise migrant workers. Photo: Robert Ng

Philip Bowring

Published: 10:30am, 22 Nov 2020Updated: 10:43am, 22 Nov 2020

Now that Hong Kong’s legal system is, we are told, in need of reform, it is instructive to read the latest thoughts of President Xi Jinping, which address aspects of the broad issue of the rule of law.

They should certainly give leaders, lawyers and the public much to think about, not to mention devising ways of bringing them to fruition. Here is one excerpt from his speech at a two-day meeting of Communist Party leaders this past week on legal governance issues: “It is necessary to strengthen the education of ideas and beliefs, carry out the education of socialist core values and socialist concept of rule of law in depth, promote the revolutionisation, regularisation, specialisation and professionalisation of the specialised rule of law team and ensure loyalty to the party, the country, the people and the law.”

It was instructive, though not surprising, that Xi placed loyalty to the party ahead of country and people. But it does underline the difficulty that so many people in Hong Kong have of aligning the interests of “one country” with the interests of “one party”.

It was surprising to see Xi support “revolutionisation” in the context of Hong Kong after last year’s disturbances, and the national security law prohibitions against subversion. But it denotes that the “reform” intended here to accord with Xi’s principles mentioned above would be quite radical, and in particular align the judicial system to a government led by party loyalists.

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How will the national security law change education in Hong Kong?

It was a reminder, too, of the role that Hong Kong’s open system and independent courts have played in Asian history.