In the Financial Times, Jonathan Sumption, a Briton who was a nonpermanent judge of the Court of Final Appeal of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, published an op-ed claiming “the rule of law in Hong Kong is in grave danger”.

Sumption recently resigned from his position, citing the sentencing of multiple activists as the reason for his concern about the city’s national security laws, which he said he believes have created an “impossible political environment”.

Given that many diatribes are published about China in the Western media these days, Sumption’s piece is fairly modest given that he is a judicial, rather than a political figure, and isn’t intending to push an agenda, unlike the Financial Times which frequently does so. Thus, he makes many valid points.

First, he correctly identifies that the attempts by the United States to place sanctions on Hong Kong judges are in fact an assault on the rule of law itself, a development he calls “crude, counterproductive and unjust”.

Second, he understands Hong Kong judges are not necessarily acting against the principle of judicial independence.

Third, he acknowledges the “riots” of 2019. This makes his piece more objective by the standard of other commentaries on the topic.

However, where Sumption goes astray is that he believes that the “ordinary laws of Hong Kong were perfectly adequate for dealing with the riots” (ironically citing the colonial era sedition law).

Moreover, he believes that the political environment, and thus the legal response, has become “paranoid” in its reaction to the riots and sedition.

We should not forget the historical context. The implementation of the National Security Law for Hong Kong, and everything that followed it, was a response to these riots and sedition, some of which were backed by exterior hostile forces. Such attempts, cheerled and actively backed by US politicians and officials, reduced the SAR to a state of chaos. The attempts were deemed to be culpable and subversive. Sumption wants to defend the rule of law in the city, from his own honest perspective, but he fails to contemplate the sheer magnitude of how these events constituted the gravest impact on the rule of law itself, and what we have seen since was a concerted campaign to restore order and stability within Hong Kong.

Recognizing this, the essential problem was not, as Sumption believes, the activists’ pursuit of universal suffrage. Rather, it was the broader, more comprehensive anti-China agenda that came with it, the bid to try and politically break the city and its government, and undermine the country, which became embodied through these events.

The activists had no intention of resolving the situation peacefully or amicably. The Basic Law mandated the local national security legislation, without which there was a loophole for foreign interference. It is therefore without question that any state in the world faced with such grave national security challenges would seek to curb certain liberties in respective areas.

We can see this in the West, for example, how Britain in the 1970s effectively censored content deemed to support Irish republicanism and the Irish Republican Army during the conflict known as the “Troubles”.

States are naturally inclined to respond to perceived threats and to clamp down on movements which pose a grave threat to law and order, irrespective of the actual just or unjust nature of the positions they may advocate. This does not mean their legal systems are compromised.

Ultimately, can there be a rule of law, with a state of lawlessness? Can the rule of law be substituted with the rule of the mob? Nobody took pleasure in the events that beset Hong Kong over the past few years, not least myself having lived there, but it remains true that in 2019 the status quo collapsed and a violent, citywide insurrection arose which mandated a response that could have only been top-down. Given that the foreign involvement in this was so blatantly clear-cut and in plain sight, it is unfair to assume it is paranoia, as extensive as the response has been. Sumption is a wise, honorable individual, but critical context is important.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

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