China's New Security Law

In Saturday’s New York Times, Edward Wong writes the Memo from China, “Security Law Suggests Beijing Is Broadening Its Definition of ‘Core Interests’  an interesting look at how the new national security law defines what is internal and external so we don’t confuse the two.  It is easy to do, when China sees Taiwan as an internal issue [ hexin liyi –“ a critical issue on which there is very little room, if any, for negotiation”].  Wong says there are three “sacrosanct rights of the nation:  maintaining the Communist Party rule, defending sovereignty rights, and economic development.  This is a big expansion of the term core interest, which used to be Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang and puts the claimed land in the South China Sea clearly in  China’s interests to defend.

China is talking more like Russia every day, saying there are Chinese people in Macau, Hong Kong and Taiwan and they owe an obligation to the Chinese mainland.  It seems that obligation might include giving up their own sovereignty, something Taiwan is surely not going to do willingly.  Hong Kong seems to be able to maintain some semblance of independence in spite of attempts by China to bring its own officials to leadership roles there.  It hasn’t worked out as well as they thought it would.

When one of the core interests in maintaining the rule of the Communist Party, one has to wonder why it needed to be clearly stated when the Party still rules and there is little doubt of its authority.  A person’s job may depend on his place in the Party, a concept foreign to those of the Free World.  How independent can a business leader be when his  position exists at the pleasure of the Party?  Where this interest in the supremacy of the Party comes from is another question.  We aren’t talking about the rule of one party at the exclusion of another.  They are a one party system.  Why is so important to say that maintaining it is a core interest?  Maybe the technology of communications has finally caught up with them.  People are having a say in what they don’t like and introducing new ideas.  Maybe one of those ideas is a new way of governing.  They certainly would want to head that off because power sharing is not part of the empire that China has built.  We have to remember, now and again, they are not like us.