New Law Will Be 'tailor-made' For HK: Albert Chen

A pro-Beijing legal scholar said on Saturday that he believes the mainland’s national security laws won’t be the model for the proposed legislation for Hong Kong, but rather it would be a tailor-made one for the SAR.

Albert Chen from the University of Hong Kong said he expects the central government to make reference to the common law system as well as the shelved national security bill in Hong Kong since a lot of study was done in 2003.

Macau’s version of the national security legislation will also be studied on for example the definition and peanlty of secession and subversion, he added.

Chen believed the proposed legislation, to be directly promulgated in Hong Kong after it’s inserted to the annex three of the Basic Law, won’t have retrospective effect.

Professor Chen, who’s also a member of the Basic Law Committee, said the panel hasn’t been consulted yet, but he doesn’t rule out Beijing may send officials to Shenzhen or Hong Kong to collect views later.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam said on Friday that she’s afraid there won’t be any public consultation in Hong Kong since the law is being drafted in a state level.

Meanwhile a former chief economist of the Bank of Communications Law Ka-chung, warned that foreign companies may pull their funds in Hong Kong because of the proposed national security law.

He said if Hong Kong was no longer an international finance centre, it may not be able to raise capital in the long run.