Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung Kin-chung on Tuesday reiterated that the National Security Law, promulgated in Hong Kong on June 30, is intended to bolster the “one country, two systems” principle. In wake of persistent vilification of the new law, Chung — as deputy head of the China delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Council — is obliged to rebut hostile foreign politicians by pointing out the undeniable fact that the security law was introduced as an urgent response to the mounting threat to the national security of the country in the form of continued and often violent social unrest — facilitated and aided by hostile external forces — in the special administrative region.

It is widely known around the world by now that Hong Kong was the victim of a protracted illegal campaign aimed at disrupting China’s development by undermining Hong Kong’s stability, prosperity and rule of law with widespread criminal vandalism and physical violence targeting innocent residents as well as police officers protecting public safety and social order. The yearlong social unrest is also widely known as the “black revolution” because it has all the features of a color revolution, and has been masterminded, partly funded and orchestrated by the same Western forces responsible for all the “color revolutions” elsewhere in the past three decades or so.

The yearlong illegal campaign grossly harmed the overall interest of Hong Kong society since June last year and did not stop after the COVID-19 global pandemic and consequent partial lockdown of the city earlier this year. In fact, it ended only after the National Security Law took effect in late June. No matter how hard the Western politicians who have an ax to grind with China and the so-called mainstream media trumpet the “black revolution” as “activism for freedom, democracy and human rights”, millions of Hong Kong residents, including thousands of fair-minded foreign nationals who chose to stay put throughout the politico-economic strife, know exactly what it really is — a dehumanizing criminal campaign meant to choke China’s progress by creating a socio-politico-economic crisis in one of its most valuable cities, costing billions of dollars in business and property damage and counting.

Fortunately, as always, the central government in Beijing has Hong Kong’s back when the city needs help and support. The National People’s Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) on June 30 passed the National Security Law, which took effect immediately and helped restore peace and order in the city, demonstrating its strong deterrence. In a sense, the security law has helped ensure the survival of “one country, two systems” and thus the long-term stability and prosperity of Hong Kong. It also protects the various rights of ordinary Hong Kong residents that were violated by the black-clad rioters with abandon during the months of unrest. It also allows Hong Kong to focus on containing the COVID-19 epidemic by stopping violence so that the city can resume normal economic activities vital to people’s livelihoods, which is also called the right of subsistence and the prerequisite of all other human rights.

Understandably, the great majority of Hong Kong residents, who genuinely love the city, welcome and support the National Security Law wholeheartedly. As a matter of fact, many of them had urged the SAR government for months to ask the NPCSC for a national law of this nature to crush attempts by hostile external forces to harm China with socio-political sabotage in Hong Kong.