Opinion | National security law: how a ‘burning’ Hong Kong wore out Beijing’s patience

The extradition controversy that exploded last June was like Mrs O’Leary’s cow, which ran amok, caused a fire in the family barn and apparently led to the Great Chicago Fire of October 1871. Hong Kong is ‘burning’, with some radical protesters chanting: “If we burn, you burn with us”, taken from Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games: Mockingjay. Considering the city on the verge of breakdown, the National People’s Congress took the unexpected step of approving a national security law, causing local and international shock, even though the details have yet to be unveiled.

It is mind-boggling how a bill ignited Hong Kong’s worst governance crisis and placed the prospect of “one country, two systems” in jeopardy.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor was arguably at her political peak when she decided early last year to legislate for extradition arrangements with the mainland, Macau and Taiwan. The lack of such arrangements has a long history, dating from British colonial rule.

The Chan Tong-kai case, involving the murder in Taiwan of a young woman, also a Hongkonger like Chan, provided the reason for quick legislative action. The bill followed the international practice for extradition, with the court playing a judicial gatekeeping role and the chief executive having the final veto, where justified by public interest.

If successful, it would have been hailed as killing two birds with one stone, but it was too huge a gamble. Lam had grossly underestimated the political sensitivities of extradition between “two systems” amid cross-strait tensions over “one China” in Taiwan’s election year.