Santa Claus isn't the only thing coming to town, some in Hong Kong fear, after pro-Beijing lawmakers in the city's Legislative Council approved changes to procedural rules that aim to quash democrats’ filibustering of controversial legislation and expenditures for huge construction projects.
Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China with more economic and personal freedoms than the mainland, a set-up known as “One Country, Two Systems.” In recent years, however, Beijing has been pressuring Hong Kong to introduce new laws that strengthen the “One Country” part of the principle.
For example, the Hong Kong government is in the process of introducing a law that punishes those who deliberately disrespect the Chinese national anthem. That is because in October, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress incorporated the mainland’s own restrictive national anthem law into Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, thereby compelling Hong Kong to pass local legislation on the matter.
There's another constitutional obligation looming for Hong Kong: Article 23 of its Basic Law, as the mini-constitution is called, requires that potentially troubling national security laws be implemented: