The Hong Kong Museum of History has recently opened a National Security Exhibition Gallery, dedicated to the infamous National Security Law imposed in 2020. Organised by the Committee for Safeguarding National Security, which is supervised by the Chinese government, the permanent exhibit begins with a short video that includes a clip of Chairman Mao Zedong, speaking at the 1949 founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), one of the only parts of the video that does not display subtitles in English. The montage goes on to explain how Hong Kong ‘returned to the motherland’ in 1997, before addressing Hong Kong’s 2019 pro-democracy protests, which the video labels a colour revolution maliciously instigated by external forces.
The first plaques are explicit in their messaging. One reads: ‘National security brings security to Hong Kong, our families and the people.’ The standard governmental narrative is touted, a narrative that emphasises the 5,000 years of civilisational history whose traditions the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rightfully continues to this day. The plaques explain the exhibit’s purpose as follows: ‘[To unfold] the major national security challenges faced by Hong Kong in recent years, the background and objectives of the Hong Kong National Security Law and the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, and our duties and responsibility to safeguard national security’. Yet it becomes clear that Hong Kong is merely the entry point, and the exhibit actually covers how the Party views security more broadly in its various realms of activity.
Indeed, perhaps the most revealing aspect of the National Security Exhibition Gallery is the fact that, after this, it barely touches on Hong Kong itself and in large part focuses on the CCP’s wider goals in the realm of national security. Beijing publicly lays out its aims in various spheres — cultural, technological, environmental, financial, geographical etc — revealing the Party’s opinion that there are essential links between them as part of the government’s national security architecture. This illustrates the CCP’s mindset that all of these various elements are intimately interconnected as part of one greater vision of the Party’s priorities under Xi Jinping.
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