Beijing waited 27 years for Hong Kong to pass its own national security law. When it finally came in March 2024, it was worse than anyone expected. The city's remaining civic space effectively closed overnight.
Hong Kong's Basic Law — the mini-constitution that governed the territory's relationship with mainland China — always contained Article 23, a provision requiring the local government to enact national security legislation on its own. For 27 years, the Hong Kong government failed to do so. The closest it came was 2003, when a proposed bill triggered such massive public opposition — half a million people marching on July 1 — that the government withdrew it. Article 23 became a political symbol: proof that Hong Kong's civil society was strong enough to defend itself against the law that Beijing wanted and that Hong Kongers feared.
That changed on March 19, 2024, when the Hong Kong Legislative Council passed the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance unanimously, in a session that followed what the government described as "adequate public consultations" and that critics described as a rubber stamp by a legislature that no longer contained meaningful opposition. The vote came four years after the NSL had already achieved most of what Article 23 was supposed to accomplish — but its passage signalled something important: the Hong Kong government was now prepared to go further still.
Apple Daily UK's Hong Kong editorial news team reported on the SNSO's passage and has tracked its implementation in our Hong Kong media news and Hong Kong democracy coverage sections. What the law does, in practical terms, is fill gaps left by the NSL and dramatically expand the legal toolkit available to prosecute dissent in Hong Kong.
What the SNSO Does That the NSL Did Not
The Safeguarding National Security Ordinance introduced several new offences and significantly expanded existing ones. It created new crimes of treason, insurrection, sabotage of critical infrastructure, external interference, and — in what many observers considered the most alarming provision — the theft or handling of "state secrets." The definition of state secrets in the ordinance borrows from mainland Chinese law, which defines state secrets broadly enough to encompass virtually any information the government chooses to classify. A journalist who obtains and publishes a government document that the government subsequently decides is a state secret could, in theory, be prosecuted under this provision.
The ordinance also entrenched sweeping powers of enforcement. It expanded the range of entities that could be designated "external forces" — including foreign governments, political parties, international organisations, and media outlets — whose contact with Hong Kong residents could constitute the basis for a collusion charge. The effect is that any Hong Kong journalist who speaks to a foreign diplomat, any academic who corresponds with an overseas researcher, or any activist who contacts an international human rights organisation is potentially engaging in conduct that could be construed as collusion with an external force.
"The ordinance introduced mainland China's broad and vague definitions of 'national security' and 'state secrets' which could potentially cover almost any conduct or information."
— Amnesty International, Hong Kong 2025 Report
The Civic Space That Closed
The SNSO's passage in March 2024 was not the beginning of Hong Kong's civic contraction — that had been underway since the NSL in 2020. But it represented a consolidation and extension of the tools available to the government, and its passage signalled that the political will to use those tools remained undiminished. The Hong Kong freedom that had defined Hong Kong as a place apart — from mainland China and from any other territory in the region — was being replaced, law by law, by a legal architecture designed to make dissent impossible.
The Hong Kong Christian Institute, which had supported the 2014 and 2019 democracy movements, announced it was disbanding in July 2024, citing the "social environment" and its inability to freely fulfil its mission. Civil society organisations that had operated for decades — unions, advocacy groups, professional associations — continued to dissolve, either under direct legal pressure or in anticipation of it. Three people were arrested in June 2024 for turning their backs during the Chinese national anthem at a football match. Another received eight weeks in prison for covering his ears and singing a protest song.
"The definition of state secrets in the ordinance is broad enough to encompass virtually any information the government chooses to classify. That is not a legal system. It is an instrument of arbitrary power."
What This Means for Hong Kong press freedom Outside Hong Kong
For journalists and media organisations operating outside Hong Kong — including Apple Daily UK — the SNSO's extraterritorial provisions are a specific and concrete concern. Like the NSL before it, the ordinance claims jurisdiction over activities conducted anywhere in the world. The theoretical scope of this claim means that any journalist anywhere who produces reporting that the Hong Kong government considers harmful to national security could, if they ever entered Hong Kong or another jurisdiction that recognised the claim, face prosecution.
In practice, this risk is manageable for journalists based in the UK under British legal protection. But it is real, and it shapes the operational environment for diaspora Hong Kong media news in ways that mainland-based journalists do not face. The Apple Daily UK's commitment to covering Hong Kong's Hong Kong democracy and Hong Kong freedom stories — the NSL prosecutions, the SNSO's implementation, the continuing arrests of activists and ordinary citizens — is made with full awareness of this legal landscape. The Hong Kong editorial news mission of this platform is not naive about the risks. It is committed to the journalism despite them.
The SNSO is now the law of Hong Kong. Its consequences for what remains of civil society in the territory are still unfolding. Apple Daily UK will be there for every development.