National security law proves effective bulwark: China Daily editorial

The incumbent US administration, counting down the days it has left in office, is apparently in high gear preparing to impose "sanctions" on Chinese officials and businesses.

According to reports, the administration is planning to impose "sanctions" on at least a dozen Chinese officials, some in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, over their alleged roles in the disqualification of four Hong Kong lawmakers, and it is poised to add China's top chipmaker SMIC and national offshore oil and gas producer CNOOC to the list of companies it is sanctioning for what it alleges are connections to the Chinese military.

Washington has already imposed sanctions on Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, the territory's current police chief and other top officials in August for what it said were their roles in undermining Hong Kong's autonomy.

Many have suggested that the incumbent US administration seems intent on stepping up efforts to escalate tensions with Beijing a few weeks before president-elect Joe Biden takes office in a bid to lay as many political or diplomatic land mines as possible for his administration to stumble upon.

But that should not eclipse the main reason behind Washington's deep animosity toward the national security law promulgated in Hong Kong — which is, the law has effectively foiled the US' attempts to make Hong Kong a bridgehead to infiltrate the Chinese mainland and subvert its political system.

After the promulgation of the law, foreign subversives operating in Hong Kong under the guise of NGOs, academic institutions or business consultants have quickly fled the city; separatist groups have scrambled to disband themselves and political fanatics who had been colluding with foreign forces in political machinations against Beijing have gone into self-imposed exile.

The law has helped restore peace and order in the special administrative region by being an effective deterrence to such agitations and collusions.

And like the desperate efforts to strangle Chinese technology giants such as Huawei, ZTE and ByteDance, the latest move to target SMIC and CNOOC is part of Washington's all-out campaign to contain China's development.

The China hawks in Washington justify the moves as being in the name of "democracy", "civil rights" or "freedom" whenever they interfere in Hong Kong's affairs, which are essentially China's internal affairs; and target Chinese enterprises under the guise of "national security". But they cannot fool the world with such glib hypocrisy.

It is their corrupt and insolent behavior that has inflamed impressionable minds, and it is the national security law that has extinguished the malicious fires they started.