In a rare talk hosted by the Foreign Correspondents Club in Hong Kong last week, a spokesman of China’s Foreign Ministry’s arm in the city has criticised Western media for keeping telling “one-sided stories” of the city.

“If you check the Western media, whenever it mentions Hong Kong, 90 percent of the time it’s about national security cases,” Huang Jingrui said on Wednesday.

“It gives the outside world the impression that both [the] mainland and Hong Kong have become a state or region of surveillance … but it’s totally wrong.”

Huang may be right. But the irony is: if the national security stories are unwanted, why not try making less of them?

Keep national security in headlines

Despite the hype of the slogan saying Hong Kong was moving “from stability to prosperity,” officials have made strenuous efforts to keep national security in headlines. Upholding national security has always been high on the agenda of Beijing and Hong Kong leaders since the enactment of a national security law in 2020.

Since 2020, about 300 people have been arrested for allegedly breaching the law, including prominent names such as now-defunct Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai and dozens of democrats.

Although there were fewer new NSL cases in recent months, the trials of the Apple Daily case, the democrats’ preliminary election case and the Stand News case have drawn the attention of Western media for obvious reasons.

The cases have and will give a fuller picture of civil liberties and judicial independence of the SAR after Beijing enacted the Hong Kong national security law in 2020, followed by the passage of another law on national security based on Basic Law Article 23 legislation.

The rigorous, if not harsh, implementation of the two national security laws saw new arrests and prosecutions, trials and convictions of cases one after another in the past two years.

Freedoms under “one country, two systems”?

One day after Huang spoke, a District Court judge imposed Chung Pui-kuen, former editor-in-chief of the Stand News, to a jail term of 21 months and ex-acting editor-in-chief Patrick Lam a 14-months-long term. Lam was freed after taking into account he had spent months in custody and is currently in poor health.

And days before his talk, a photographer of the Associated Press, who took a world exclusive picture of Jimmy Lai inside a public place in a jail, was denied entry into Hong Kong. The number of cases of foreign journalists being denied work visas or entry seems to have risen in recent months for unknown reasons, causing more jitters to foreign media.

As he urged foreign media not to tell “one-sided stories”, aka national security-related, spokesman Huang went in length to assure residents enjoyed “all the freedoms” provided under the “one country, two systems” model as long as they abided by the government’s “red lines.”

The irony is that the power of the national security laws, both in terms of arrest and prosecution and in their chilling effect, has eroded the freedoms that residents have been promised.

One glaring episode saw a local free-to-air television news crew being cold-shouldered by some passers-by who said no when asked to comment on a bill on Article 23. Some said it was not appropriate to comment publicly.

Voices of elites

The American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong is one of the rare voices being made public calling on the Government to “tone down the national security rhetoric.” In a submission to the Chief Executive during his policy address consultation, AmCham said it is time for Hong Kong, especially the Government, to shift the focus and rhetoric away from “security”.

In an interview with the Hong Kong Economic Journal, Chan Tsz-ching, senior adviser of Bank of East Asia, has urged the Government to “talk less, arrest less (people)” to help repair the damage to Hong Kong’s image as an international financial centre. He did not elaborate.

He lamented that Hong Kong’s banking and financial role has become increasingly marginalised, adding the “excessive politicisation” of the city in recent years has been frightening. He did not give details.

The voices of the AmCham and Chan do not seem to be orchestrated. They do reflect the aspirations of elites and various segments in the society for the authorities to avoid excessive acts and deeds on “security” for focusing more on economic and livelihood tasks.