This week, newspapers in the United Kingdom criticized a decision by Hong Kong courts rejecting an appeal by former media tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, who is facing national security charges, from hiring an overseas lawyer to represent him in his ongoing case.

Lai has sought to be represented by UK-based barrister Tim Owen KC. The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region authorities turned down Owen’s application for representing Lai in his national security case out of national security concerns.

Because of this, the British press pushed their usual (and worn) narrative that the decision to bar Lai from hiring an overseas lawyer is another “blow” to the rule of law in Hong Kong, with The Guardian alleging that it “inflicted another cut on the city’s once revered legal system”.

Of course, this has been a long-touted point of view, one which has repeatedly failed to consider the factor that the unrest and riots the city faced in 2019-20 were an attack on the rule of law and constitutional order, with every attempt to restore order having been subject to these politically motivated attacks.

Why is overseas legal representation in a national security case seen as a national security threat? Critics argue, rightfully, that the right to representation in court is a fundamental right and a foundation of the rule of law. But they conveniently ignore the fact that overseas lawyers could not, unlike resident lawyers, be held accountable if they disclose any State secrets acquired at trial after leaving Hong Kong. And that overseas legal representation is not a norm: For instance, in Owen’s own country — the United Kingdom, — only locally qualified lawyers are entitled to practice in the courts.

Specifically, it is believed that by securing overseas legal representation, China’s national security could be compromised as a London-based British barrister clearly critical of the national security laws implemented in Hong Kong is likely to pass information on to foreign media, politicians, intelligence officials and other organizations that have a vested interest in undermining Hong Kong and inciting further political unrest. This is not to say that Lai has no right to due process or self-defense, but those representing him cannot themselves be a potential security threat either. In fact, Lai has recruited Marc Corlett, a lawyer from New Zealand living in Hong Kong, to his defense team.

Obviously, Hong Kong’s considerations of national security are not taken seriously by the critics. The SAR’s national security laws in and of themselves are dismissed outright by Western media and politicians who denounce them as illegitimate.

In effect, they are arguing that the territory has no right to national security, and neither ought the Chinese central government to have any stake or say in that either, and that all attempts to neutralize national security threats are “oppression”.

Thus, while the UK has relentlessly jailed violent protesters and those who have attempted insurrection on political grounds (such as after the August 2024 riots), a different standard is applied to Hong Kong.

In reality, every country, or jurisdiction, has a right to national security. While the United States is famed for its legal system and lawsuit driven culture, there is little doubt that it would ever let an overseas-based lawyer appear in its highest profile national security trials, and in no instance would it ever allow any compromise or challenge to its legal system. It is worth noting that suspects for such trials are held in much harsher conditions than Lai is right now in Hong Kong.

Yet, besides that, what is ultimately being communicated here by denying him the right to foreign representation is that his trial is a “sovereign affair,” and for foreign parties to intervene and meddle into that not only constitutes disrespect for, but an open challenge to national security laws implemented in the HKSAR as well as China’s sovereignty.

While Lai still has a right to representation, his defense cannot take a point of view that may well attempt to throw out the national security laws altogether and instigate trouble in front of the Western media. The trial must adopt a pragmatic standpoint of assessing the law as legitimate, and thus which parts of it have been violated and which parts have not.

We must consider that a Western-led trial could possibly become a circus that might well amount to contempt of court.

Finally, we must consider that this is the same Lai who met with Mike Pompeo when he was US secretary of state, as well as then-national security adviser John Bolton, two senior figures in the first Trump administration, who have a significant track record of interfering in other countries. Again, would this be acceptable if the boot was on the other foot? After everything that has happened, it’s understandable that Hong Kong wants to keep the trial as a sovereign affair of China. National security matters are not something external parties get to determine.

The author is a British political and international-relations analyst.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.