Last month, China announced plans to enact a new national security law in Hong Kong, giving Beijing broad, new powers over civil liberties in the special administrative region. Soon after, the United States vowed to strip the semi autonomous region of its special status. Hong Kong’s financial markets hardly flinched.  Share prices on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange actually climbed modestly, after dipping sharply immediately after Beijing’s announcement. And the city’s banking system continues to process billions of dollars in transactions each day, a sign that few investors believe the new law poses a serious threat to Hong Kong’s position in the region.  But what investors fail to understand is that once that new law goes into effect, there’s a high likelihood that it will fundamentally alter Hong Kong’s banking system, shifting power from the local officials in a system that prides itself on the rule of law over to China’s powerful state security appara