Hong Kong National Security Law

The Hong Kong National Security Law is a national law of the Peoples Republic of China, passed by the Standing Committee of the National Peoples Congress and applied to Hong Kong on June 30, 2020, in the wake of the 2019 to 2020 Hong Kong protests. It criminalizes four categories of conduct: secession, subversion of state power, terrorism, and collusion with foreign or external forces, and it created an Office for Safeguarding National Security in Hong Kong that sits outside the existing courts and police structure of Hong Kong. The law also claims extraterritorial reach, asserting jurisdiction over acts committed by non-residents outside Hong Kong. Its passage was widely seen as marking a sharp departure from the autonomy promised to Hong Kong under the one country two systems framework agreed at the 1997 handover from British rule.