China's legislature approves Hong Kong national security law

China lawmakers voted to overrule Hong Kong’s autonomy on national security. Yahoo Finance’s On The Move panel weighs in.

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ADAM SHAPIRO: One of the things we're paying attention to is what happened in China. The legislature there did pass those new ordinances, you might call them, which crack down on Hong Kong. National security issues will now apply to Hong Kong, essentially removing their special status as an autonomous region. It goes into effect in September.

Brian Cheung, is this going to stand? Is the world going to do anything? Or is it really nothing that the world can do?

BRIAN CHEUNG: Well, for right now, what we know is that there are a number of countries that are trying to stand in solidarity with Hong Kong, that being the United States. But the measure that they just did, which you just referenced, in which they-- in which case they actually treat as a trade matter Hong Kong no differently than they do mainland China, it actually could end up harming Hong Kong further when you consider that if they're going to apply the same sanctions on certain types of trade flows with Hong Kong as they do with mainland China, that could ultimately result in quite the curb on business activity between the United States and that really important region, which is really the window to Southeast Asia and south China.

So I think when we talk about the political issues that underlie all this, we have to understand that it's not just the fact that China has used their power to basically allow forces to come into Hong Kong and crack down if they see any sort of issues of terrorism, or if they end up trying to use it to ultimately quell the protesters inside Hong Kong. But it's actually a political matter, because they sidestepped the legislative council in Hong Kong to actually enact this in the first place. This was a plenary session in the mainland that had no input from Hong Kong itself, which is the reason why you have so much uprising in the city of Hong Kong. They had no say in this, effectively.

JULIE HYMAN: What's also interesting, Adam, is that as it pertains to US-China relations, we seem to have this sort of dual track right now, whereas on the one hand you hear Secretary of State Pompeo talking about that this basically effectively makes Hong Kong part of the mainland from a political perspective, as we've been talking about, and could then-- implies then the trade relationship between the US and Hong Kong could be jeopardized. You have the US Congress considering sanctions over China's treatment of its Muslim minority. So you have that going on.

At the same time, the US and China are still talking when it comes to trade talks. And Robert Lighthizer has talked about potentially some progress being made. So it's interesting that you have this dual track at the same time that the rhetoric from the US is pretty heated on this. And, of course, the president's own rhetoric on coronavirus itself and its origins is also quite heated.