The Hong Kong government’s attitude to the rule of law is interestingly ambiguous.

It wishes to claim credit for being a law-abiding government, but it does not want to sacrifice for this purpose the achievement of other desires.

This implicit conflict is nicely wrapped up in the matter of restaurant licences.

In any sensible jurisdiction, there are some requirements for restaurant operators, intended to ensure hygiene and other worthy food-related objectives.

However, these days all government departments are expected to show their enthusiasm for national security.

So last year, the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD), which licenses restaurants, treated permit holders to a letter warning that licences would be revoked if holders or their “related persons” engaged in conduct against national security or the public interest.

Now the FEHD has formed in the matter of using existing regulations to pester or persecute restaurants that the government, for some basically political reason, does not like.

There were complaints that what was effectively a new licence condition was too vague and consequently open to abuse.

Not so, Chief Executive John Lee told a news conference. “Offending conduct means any offence that endangers national security, or acts and events that are contrary to national security and public interest in Hong Kong. It is very clear,” he said.

But it is not very clear, because two very different things are being mixed. An offence that endangers national security is a criminal matter.

Conviction takes place in a public court and is a matter of record. A restaurant owner convicted of such an offence may feel that losing their licence is the least of their problems, but they can read the law and look at the way it has been applied.

They will avoid traditional menu items like “Five Dumplings, Not One Less,” or “Three Hamburgers: Revelation of Our Thyme.” “Related persons” will be urged to behave themselves.

But what does the public interest require?

This mystery persists in the latest version of the licence, which has a clause we can consider in full:

“I shall ensure that no act or activity engaged or involved in by me or any of my related persons (include the directors, officers, employees, agents and sub-contractors) may constitute or cause the occurrence of an offence endangering national security under the National Security Law or other laws of the HKSAR, or conduct is otherwise contrary to the interests of national security or the interest of the public (including public morals, public order and/or public safety) of Hong Kong.”

As tends to happen in very long sentences, the grammar wilts a bit in the closing stages and seems to require either the insertion of “that” after conduct or the deletion of “is” in the same place. But this does not affect the meaning, which still leaves the question over what might be in the public interest.

There are some legal glosses on the phrase, though unfortunately, they are not particularly helpful. Some restrictions on media stories can be waived if publication is “in the public interest”.

See also: All Hong Kong restaurant licences to have national security clauses by September – minister

Judges tend to be quite conservative about this, but the general rule seems to be that the public interest is served by stories that expose iniquity (in a broad sense) or stories that alert the public to hazards which they need to know about.

In contract law, it is well established that contracts will not be enforced if their effect is not in the public interest. Once again, this does not come up very often.

Judges are even more hostile to unenforced contracts than they are to muckraking journalists, but traditionally, contracts have not been enforced if they concern gambling or commercial sex.

The morals/order/safety part seems to have been inspired by the part of the Bill of Rights Ordinance which specifies the purposes for which the government may restrict freedom of expression.

This suggests – a worrying thought – that the government intends to use threats to restaurant licences to restrict freedom of expression, and proposes that if anyone complains to rely on the permitted restrictions.

This may not fly in court because the Bill of Rights Ordinance also requires that restrictions be specified by law and necessary in a democratic society. Clearly, legal language is being used here, but perhaps as an adornment rather than a substantial signal.

Where does all this leave us? Well, one theory is that the government wishes to increase its options to suppress businesses that supported the wrong people in 2019.

Asked if this was the case, Ronnie Tong, a government adviser, replied last year that it was “hard to say”.

Another theory is that the unstated purpose is to reinforce the existing routine practice under which food outlets that have accepted bookings from organisations the government does not like tend to cancel them at the last minute.

Maybe it is just that the “public interest” is one of those elusive philosophical concepts like “soft resistance” which puzzle the public but are perfectly clear to recycled policemen and the people who write the front page of Ta Kung Pao.

The other remaining puzzle is why restaurant licences have been singled out. All government departments, we are told, have an obligation to support national security. But the numerous other licences issued for various purposes by different departments have not been amended in the same way.

Yet.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has said that a French journalist was denied entry to Hong Kong in November, accusing the city’s authorities of “weaponising visas” against foreign media workers.

Antoine Vedeilhe, who was shooting a documentary for French public broadcaster France Télévisions, was questioned upon arrival at Hong Kong International Airport on November 2 last year, RSF said in a statement on Friday.

He was detained for three hours before being deported without being given a reason, RSF said.

Vedeilhe was the 13th foreign media workers who has been denied entry or a visa by the city’s authorities following Beijing’s imposition of the national security law in 2020, RSF said.

The watchdog said the figure is based on its tally, although it said there is reason to believe many cases have gone unreported due to fear of retaliation.

“On 2 November 2025, [Vedeilhe] was detained for three hours upon arriving at the Hong Kong International Airport… from France, during which he was questioned and subjected to a full-body search before being deported from the territory,” RSF said.

“In the journalist’s view, his detention was a reprisal for his work on a documentary examining Beijing’s grip on Hong Kong.”

Another cameraman for the documentary was able to enter the city, RSF said, but he was followed by “unidentified individuals that he suspects were Hong Kong’s national security police.”

“In the following days, there was a hacking attempt on Vedeilhe’s private email account and his sources in the documentary were harassed by the national security police,” RSF said.

In an emailed reply to HKFP’s enquiries on Friday, the Hong Kong government said it “strongly condemns the smearing remarks and distorted narratives by” RSF.

Hong Kong residents’ human rights and freedoms are protected under China’s constitution and the Basic Law – the city’s mini-constitution – as well as the national security law, the government said.

“As always, the media can exercise their freedom of the press in accordance with the law. Their freedom of commenting on and criticising government policies remains uninhibited as long as this is not in violation of the law,” a government spokesperson said.

The government declined to comment on individual cases. It “accords measures to facilitate the entry of genuine visitors from around the world,” the spokesperson added.

RSF also said France Télévisions received an email from an unknown individual the day after Vedeilhe’s deportation from Hong Kong.

The email warned the French media network that Vedeilhe’s work “comes into conflict” with the national security law and that the outlet’s “editorial choices could be considered ‘incitement to hatred’” – an element of Hong Kong’s sedition offence – according to RSF.

France Télévisions announced the documentary before Vedeilhe’s arrival in Hong Kong, RSF said.

‘Not isolated’

“His case illustrates how closely Hong Kong has aligned itself with China in repressing independent media, and how far the authorities are willing to go in targeting journalists,” RSF’s Asia Pacific advocacy manager, Aleksandra Bielakowska, said in the statement.

Vedeilhe was quoted saying in the statement that he had been travelling to Hong Kong for the past 10 years.

“[I] have always sought to give a voice both to those resisting Beijing’s growing control, and to those within the authorities and civil society who express their attachment to China,” Vedeilhe said.

“My… detention and expulsion are not isolated incidents, and they illustrate how increasingly difficult it has become for journalists to work in Hong Kong,” he added.

Vedeilhe is one of the few to speak openly about being denied entry into Hong Kong.

In August last year, Bloomberg journalist Rebecca Choong Wilkins was denied a work visa renewal by the Immigration Department. At that time, RSF said Wilkins was the 10th journalist whose visa had been denied since the national security law came into force.

Hong Kong has plummeted in international press freedom indices since the onset of the 2020 and 2024 security laws. Watchdogs cite the arrest and jailing of journalists, raids on newsrooms and the closure of around 10 media outlets including Apple Daily, Stand News and Citizen News. Over 1,000 journalists have lost their jobs, whilst many have emigrated. Meanwhile, the city’s government-funded broadcaster RTHK has adopted new editorial guidelines, purged its archives and axed news and satirical shows.

See also: Explainer: Hong Kong’s press freedom under the national security law

In 2022, Chief Executive John Lee said press freedom was “in the pocket” of Hongkongers but “nobody is above the law.” Although he has told the press to “tell a good Hong Kong story,” government departments have been reluctant to respond to story pitches.

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By 4pm, the light was softening over the Pacific, and the crew of the Don Maca were finishing a long day hauling in lines of swordfish and albacore. Down in the hold, the mood had settled into the familiar rhythm of a fishing day drawing to a close.

“We were just working, waiting for the last trawler to return,” said Jhonny Sebastián Palacios, one of the fishers. “Everything was perfectly fine.”