China tells Hong Kong to hold national security tightly for development [Video]

Hong Kong should hold on “tightly” to national security to safeguard development, China‘s top man on the autonomous city’s affairs said, just weeks after the financial hub enacted draconian domestic security laws.

Hong Kong last month enacted Article 23, a new national security law that criminalises treason, sabotage, sedition, theft of state secrets and espionage with jail terms of up to life imprisonment.

Critics of the law fear that city authorities could weaponise the legislation to stub out the remaining traces of dissent, which has been routinely targeted using a similar national security law imposed by China.

“To move towards governance and prosperity, we need to tightly hold onto the bottom line of national security in order to safeguard the high-quality development of Hong Kong,” Xia Baolong, the director of Beijing’s Hong …