A police spokesperson, responding to questions for Tang from Reuters, said violent attacks by protesters last year - including the use of “sharpened instruments, metal rods, bows and arrows, petrol bombs, corrosive liquid and explosive substances” - had put “national security” at risk. This threat to public safety and “forces” advocating independence, the spokesperson said, required “effective measures to prevent the situation from deteriorating.”
The police force, the officer said, will “fully perform its duties and strictly enforce the law to restore social order and ensure the effective implementation of the National Security Law” in Hong Kong.
Explaining the need for the new law, a Hong Kong government spokesman said that in addition to “frequent violence over the past year,” there had also been “actions in pursuit of independence.” The spokesman was responding to questions sent to Lee and Cheng.
Lam did not respond to questions about the increasingly dominant role played by Tang. Mainland authorities did not respond to questions from Reuters for this story.
Though the new law came into effect last week, Tang had already begun spearheading the crackdown in Hong Kong months earlier. In mid-November, the city was in open revolt. Months of protests had shattered the authority of the local government and demoralized its 30,000-strong police force. As the demonstrations reached a climax, Beijing announced the appointment of Tang.
He moved into the Commissioner of Police’s office in November, just as a pivotal showdown was underway. Demonstrators, some armed with Molotov cocktails and bows and arrows, had barricaded themselves inside Hong Kong Polytechnic University. It was a tactical blunder. Police pounced.
In earlier protests, demonstrators were able to melt away through the labyrinth of Hong Kong streets and regroup elsewhere. This time they were trapped. Hundreds of police sealed the entrances to the campus and seized any protesters attempting to leave. More than 1,100 were eventually arrested. It was a turning point for the embattled authorities. For the first time in months, beleaguered police officers had outmaneuvered the protesters.
At the end of Tang’s first day in the top job, he went straight to the front line to congratulate his officers. Dressed in a dark civilian jacket and trousers, he stood out. He shook hands and chatted with weary riot police in helmets and heavy protective gear.
Tang has since remained on the offensive, aided in part by the COVID-19 pandemic, which effectively shut down the protests for several months. He has used pre-emptive arrests and stop-and-search measures to prevent protests, and issued blunt rallying cries to buoy his officers. After police thwarted a protest in late May at the city’s Legislative Council, Tang took to police radio to congratulate the force.
Pro-democracy lawmakers, academics and foreign diplomats say that the new security law signals the death of the “one country, two systems” model used to govern Hong Kong. In place since the 1997 handover of the city to China, the arrangement has afforded Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy and has protected a wide array of freedoms enjoyed by the city’s residents, such as freedom of expression and the press, that don’t exist on the mainland.
Many say the city is increasingly being run from Beijing. Mainland Chinese officials have been appointed as the city’s top national security adviser and head of a new national security agency in Hong Kong that will have overarching authority, including an enforcement role in the most serious cases.
“We are in a situation where the Chinese Communist Party controls the police, and the police controls Hong Kong,” said veteran pro-democracy legislator James To, who has monitored policing and security matters for decades. “It is not the way Hong Kong is supposed to work, or has worked up until recently.”
Hong Kong, he added, has become “a security police state.”
The new law quickly sent a chill through the city. Hours before it was imposed, pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong said that Demosisto, a group he led, was disbanding, while a prominent member of the group, Nathan Law, departed the city. Wong told Reuters the group took the decision because it was concerned about the safety of its members.
“China won’t take any chances anymore with national security, and Chris Tang is someone they trust.”
A man carrying a popular protest slogan – “Liberate Hong Kong. Revolution of our times” – drove his motorcycle into a police line last week knocking over three officers in protest against the security legislation. He became the first person to be charged with incitement to secession and terrorist activities under the law. The man, who has yet to enter a plea, was later denied bail and remanded in custody. The city government said the slogan connoted separatism or subversion under the new law.
The legislation, Tang said this week, was doing its job. He told China’s state broadcaster CCTV that the enactment of the law was already having a “positive effect” on the stability of Hong Kong. It appeared to have led to some people dropping out of the protest movement, he said, without naming anyone.
Tang has likened the actions of some of the protesters to terrorism - a line that the leadership in Beijing has used to justify the legislation. In a May 25 statement, he said that police had uncovered 14 cases involving explosives and five cases where genuine firearms and ammunition were seized since the protests began.
And he highlighted the threat of what he called “home-grown terrorism” in a video published on a government-backed website in mid-April. The video included footage of explosions during the siege at Polytechnic University, where protesters hurled Molotov cocktails and fired arrows at police. It also shows a plane slamming into one of the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001, as Tang is heard explaining to viewers that the incidents involving explosives in Hong Kong are “very similar to these overseas cases.”
