Sunday, March 23, 2025

Panama Canal—"Pro-Beijing paper: Anti-sanctions law can block Li’s ports deal"

Highlighting  by climateer investing.

From Asia Times, March 23:

Anti-sanctions law can stop Li Ka-shing fom selling Panama ports but it will hit many other Hong Kong firms  

A media mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party has suggested using China’s anti-sanctions mechanism to deal with Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing’s proposed selling of his global ports, including two at the Panama Canal, to BlackRock.

In its latest article titled “Stop the transaction, avoid losing a lot to save a little,” Ta Kung Pao, a pro-Beijing newspaper, urges Li to scrap his ports deal. 

Since its first attack on Li on March 13, the newspaper has published more than 10 commentaries and news articles on the topic. While previous ones called Li a “traitor” and an unpatriotic businessman, its latest opinion piece mentions a concrete legal tool – the anti-sanctions law – for the first time.

“Both at the national and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region levels, our legal system is quite complete,” writes Wan Yunping. (The name may be a pseudonym as the author has no title and has not published any article before.)

“In response to the United States and Western sanctions in recent years, our country has accumulated rich experience in anti-sanctions and formed an effective response mechanism,” Wan says. “Both the state and the SAR have legal mechanisms to deal with so-called ‘legal transactions’ that harm national interests.”

He says those who have stressed that Li’s proposed deal is a “legitimate transaction” under the principle of freedom of contract are “too naive and senile.”

“From the operational level of commercial mergers and acquisitions, I advise relevant companies and individuals to stop delivery, avoid miscalculations and avoid losing a lot to save a little,” Wan says.

The author also says Li’s deal violates the principle of Hong Kong’s National Security Ordinance, which states that “the highest principle of the policy of ‘one country, two systems’ is to safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests.” The Legislative Council passed the ordinance, drafted on the basis of Article 23 of the Basic Law, in March 2024.

“This transaction directly violates this highest principle as it will hurt China’s national security and development interests,” he says. “Violating the principle of the law is also a violation of the law.”

“Throughout the legal system, not every legal provision directly states the consequences of violation,” he adds. “However, the lack of written legal consequences does not mean the law has no legal effect.”....

....MUCH MORE

The Chinese are going bust-up the Panama ports deal. It is one of their all-star choke point positioning plays.

If interested see: "Chinese EV battery makers are building huge factories in Morocco to cash in on U.S. electric vehicle subsidies" (and China is now camped at most of the world's chokepoints)"

Here are a collection of previous post snippets addressing exactly these laws as they are playing out between Beijing, Hong Kong, and Panama under the January 2025 headline "DeepSeek and Chinese Security Laws: There Are No Secrets":

....Some years ago China implemented a series of laws that require Chinese companies to work with the state security organs and not just in China but around the world - universal jurisdiction.

Some of our posts from that time:

July 2019
"How the state runs business in China"
.... The author rather blithely skips over the National Security Law.
Here via China Law Translate:

There is not a lot of wiggle room in Article 7

Article 7: All organizations and citizens shall support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts in accordance with law, and shall protect national intelligence work secrets they are aware of.
The State protects individuals and organizations that support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts.
All means all, including foreign companies operating in China.
Ditto articles 14:
Article 14: National intelligence work institutions lawfully carrying out intelligence efforts may request that relevant organs, organizations, and citizens provide necessary support, assistance, and cooperation.
And 16:
Article 16: When national intelligence work institutions staff lawfully perform their tasks in accordance with relevant national provisions, with approvals and upon the presentation of relevant identification, they may enter relevant restricted areas and venues; may learn from and question relevant institutions, organizations, and individuals; and may read or collect relevant files, materials or items.
And then there's The Cybersecurity Law and the Foreign NGO Law (2016) and the Counter-espionage Law (2014) and all worded vaguely enough that the laws can mean whatever the Party and the authorities want them to mean.

****

July 2020 claiming universal jurisdiction for an ostensibly Hong Kong focused law:
 
"Hong Kong’s National Security Law: a first look"
....The law also applies to everyone everywhere in the world. This means if one were to be seen by Beijing as breaking this new legislation in another country and then enter Hong Kong, or transit through it, or even fly in a vehicle registered in Hong Kong, then one would be at risk. Possibly this could even apply to residing in a country with an extradition treaty with Hong Kong (or one day China?). In short, it is a very large, sharp Sword of Damocles....

From The China Collection, June 30:

It’s not the substantive crimes and their definitions that count; it’s the institutions that will investigate, prosecute, and judge them that count. Language matters only if there are institutions that will make it matter. This whole law is about avoiding the involvement of such institutions.

Everyone is doing their hot take on the new Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (the “Nat Sec Law” or the “Law”) [Chinese | English], just revealed to the public and made effective today (consultation? schmonsultation!), so why not me?
Two things first:
  1. As these are just quick notes, I’m going to comment on the various parts of the law pretty much in the order they appear instead of in a more organized way.
  2. An important point: I’m not going to talk much about the substantive offenses and their definitions. There’s a reason for that. If mainland practice to date is any guide—and it is—then the definitions don’t matter that much. Anything can be stretched as necessary to cover something done by the person being targeted. As the old cliché goes, 欲加之罪何患无辞 (roughly, “if you are determined to convict, you needn’t worry about the lack of grounds”). The key is in the institutions and procedures the law establishes and empowers. Who has power to do what? What are the procedures under which they operate? Who appoints and pays for them? To whom are they responsible? Etc.
All right, let’s begin.
Article 2 begins with a weird provision stating that nobody may violate the rules of Article 1 and Article 12 of the Hong Kong Basic Law. But Article 1 and Article 12 of the Basic Law aren’t rules about anything. Article 1 states a proposition, not a rule: “The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is an inalienable part of the People’s Republic of China.” How could one “violate” that statement? Article 12 is grammatically the same: ” The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall be a local administrative region of the People’s Republic of China, which shall enjoy a high degree of autonomy and come directly under the Central People’s Government.” Again, how does one “violate” a proposition?

Article 4 says that Hong Kong should protect rights under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Given the rest of the law, whether this will happen seems unlikely.

Article 5 states that all persons shall be considered innocent until declared guilty by a judicial organ. As we shall see, this is contradicted by the bail provisions in Article 42.

Article 6 says that protecting the country’s sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity is the common duty of all the people (renmin 人民) of China. This seems an odd formulation to me. Why not say all the citizens (gongmin 公民) of China? “People” in PRC officialese has a special meaning: it is a subset of the citizenry, and consists of those who are allies of the Communist Party at any given moment. It would be odd to say that reactionaries and counterrevolutionaries, who are not part of the people, get a pass on this duty.

Article 12 calls for the establishment of a Committee for Safeguarding National Security (the “National Security Committee” or the “Committee”), said to be under the supervision of and accountable to the Central People’s Government (the “CPG”), i.e., the State Council and the Premier.

It’s not quite clear how this accountability is to work in practice, since the membership is prescribed by law: the Chief Secretary for Administration, the Financial Secretary, the Secretary for Justice, the Secretary for Security, the Commissioner of Police, the head of the department for safeguarding national security of the Hong Kong Police Force established under Article 16 of this Law (the “Nat Sec Head”), the Director of Immigration, the Commissioner of Customs and Excise, and the Director of the Chief Executive’s Office. (To understand where all these fit within Hong Kong’s administrative structure, check out this handy chart. I’ll just note here that they are not all of equal rank. The Nat Sec Head, for example, is under the Commissioner of Police, who is under the Secretary for Security, who is under the Chief Secretary for Administration.) The Committee is to be chaired by the Chief Executive.....MUCH MORE

 Finally, more on that universal jurisdiction (tweet disappeared but she was right):

THREAD

Here's Bethany:

Head of China investigations @aspi_cts. Was @axios @foreignpolicy @yale
@HopkinsNanjing. Author BEIJING RULES, FT Best Books 2023. bethanyallen AT aspi org au
https://x.com/BethanyAllenEbr/