China: HK judiciary will stay independent

Bloomberg

China sought to reassure Hong Kong that its judiciary would remain independent under a new national security law, as concerns grow that the city may lose one of its key selling points for international companies.
“The legislation will not change the one country, two systems policy, Hong Kong’s capitalist system, high degree of autonomy, nor will it change the legal system in Hong Kong SAR, or affect the independent judicial power, including the right of final adjudication exercised by the judiciary in Hong Kong,” Xie Feng, commissioner of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Hong Kong, said.
Still, Xie provided few new details on how the new law would be implemented while addressing journalists and diplomats. Instead he repeated a line that said that protesters breached a red line supporting independence, mischaracterising a movement that pushed for meaningful elections, an independent review of police abuses and the withdrawal of a bill that would allow extraditions to the mainland for the first time.
China last week stirred outrage in Hong Kong by announcing it would write in a sweeping new national security law into the city’s charter, fuelling fresh protests and a sell-off in the markets. The National People’s Congress, China’s rubber-stamp parliament meeting in Beijing this week, confirmed it would pass a bill establishing “an enforcement mechanism for ensuring national security” for the city, without providing details.
The bill would require Hong Kong to quickly finish enacting national security regulations under the Basic Law that governs relations with China, NPC Standing Committee Vice Chairman Wang Chen said in a speech last week. China’s parliament empowers itself to set up a legal framework and implementation mechanism to prevent and punish subversion, terrorism, separatism and foreign interference “or any acts that severely endanger national security,” Wang said.
The lack of details surrounding the new law has generated alarm among Hong Kong’s business community. Hong Kong’s Bar Association said the legislation was incompatible with the Basic Law that governs the city’s relations with China, calling it “worrying and problematic.”