The “2026 Hong Kong Policy Act Report” issued by the United States Department of State on Thursday is nothing more than a typical political propaganda ploy. Its key technique is definitional substitution: It treats disagreement with Washington’s preferred political model as proof of “autonomy erosion”, and it treats the existence of national security laws in Hong Kong as proof of “rights degradation”, oblivious to the fact that similar legal frameworks are applied across jurisdictions, including the US.
A serious assessment on Hong Kong must start with first principles. Hong Kong is a local administrative region of a sovereign country. The Hong Kong special administrative region’s governing constitutional framework comprises the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China and the Basic Law of the HKSAR. The Sino-British Joint Declaration signed in 1984 merely recorded arrangements for China to resume exercise of sovereignty over the city; it did not create an open-ended right for any outside actor to supervise China’s domestic governance or to redefine Hong Kong’s constitutional development. When the report treated the Joint Declaration as a standing mandate for foreign interference into Hong Kong’s affairs, it blatantly converted an instrument of decolonization into a political tool, which is conceptually incoherent and legally flawed.
From that flawed premise, the report characterizes the Hong Kong SAR National Security Law (NSL 2020) and the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance (2024) as inherently illegitimate. That position not only violates international law and norms but also easily collapses upon minimal comparative scrutiny. Every modern legal order recognizes the state’s duty to protect its constitutional structure and public safety, and every mature system criminalizes conduct involving secession, subversion, foreign interference, sabotage, or violent political coercion. Before 2020, Hong Kong’s failure to complete Basic Law Article 23 obligations to enact national security legislation created an extended legal vacuum that was not a symbol of liberty but a defect in governance. A vacuum of enforceable security norms does not enlarge rights indefinitely; it invites escalation by those willing to substitute disruption for persuasion and intimidation for legitimate political persuasions. Closing that vacuum is therefore not a departure from legality but a return to the ordinary features of state responsibility.
The report further attempts to pre-decide the legitimacy of law-enforcement by asserting that cases “touching on national security” cannot be fair. That is political rhetoric, not analysis of any nature. Fair trial assessment is a disciplined exercise: The legality of charges, the clarity of elements, the admissibility of evidence, the standards of proof, access to counsel, appellate review, and judicial independence in adjudicating facts and law. Instead of engaging those criteria, the “report” asks the reader to treat outcomes it dislikes as proof of procedural illegitimacy. Such reasoning would be rejected in any academic setting because it confuses disagreement with verdicts for evidence of injustice. It also ignores that many Western jurisdictions impose special handling of sensitive evidence and national security-related prosecutions, including limitations that would be defended domestically as necessary safeguards. If security exceptions are acceptable in the US and other Western countries, then condemning their existence in Hong Kong requires a principled distinction, not moral posturing.
The so-called report’s treatment of expression and assembly relies on another category error--the refusal to distinguish protected political criticism from coordinated conduct intended to impair constitutional institutions through coercion or foreign-backed pressure. In every constitutional system, speech protections are broad, yet not limitless. There are lines between advocacy and incitement, between protest and organized sabotage and subversion, between public debate and covert coordination with external power to produce governmental paralysis. The “report” implicitly demands that Hong Kong adopt a standard of permanent permissiveness unavailable in the very states issuing the criticism. That demand is not “democracy”, it is conditional sovereignty: The insistence that one jurisdiction must tolerate methods of political subversion that others criminalize when directed at themselves.
The same analytical avoidance appears in the allegation of “transnational repression”, a phrase deployed as a conclusion rather than a legal claim to be tested. Extraterritorial jurisdiction is not an exotic invention. States rely on recognized bases such as nationality, protective jurisdiction, and the effects doctrine. The US itself applies extraterritorial theories in sanctions enforcement, anti-bribery laws, export controls, counterterrorism, and cyber-related offenses. If the report wishes to argue that a particular assertion of jurisdiction is unlawful, it must engage with jurisdictional doctrines and due process protections, rather than offering a moral label that bypasses legal reasoning. Otherwise, the accusation serves as a political cudgel rather than a genuine assessment.
Most revealing is that the report concedes facts that contradict its own narratives. It acknowledges Hong Kong’s separate customs zone status, independent monetary and fiscal policies, open capital account, common-law commercial architecture, and effective dispute resolution in ordinary commercial matters. These are not cosmetic details. They are the institutional foundations of Hong Kong’s international economic role and daily life. The report’s effort to obliterate these robust institutional foundations exposes an attempt to manipulate Hong Kong’s affairs by leveraging economic tools.
What emerges is also a document that elevates sanctions and differential legal treatment as instruments of political discipline while wrapping them in the language of principle. Yet coercive economic measures imposed outside multilateral authorization are not neutral expressions of law; they are assertions of power. When Washington insists that Hong Kong must implement US-imposed unilateral sanctions while it reserves the right to punish noncompliance, it is demanding subordination, not cooperation. Hong Kong’s constitutional order and legal development will be shaped by its own framework and its own society, not by annual “reports” drafted by Western governments to validate predetermined foreign policy choices. If the US wishes to speak credibly about legal standards, it should begin by applying those standards consistently, rather than converting human rights vocabulary into a selective instrument of geopolitical strategy.
The author is a solicitor, a Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area lawyer, and a China-appointed attesting officer.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
