The Trump administration slapped sanctions on 11 key government officials involved in implementing the Chinese Communist Party’s “national security law” in Hong Kong.
The Chinese government “has made clear that Hong Kong will never again enjoy the high degree of autonomy that Beijing itself promised to the Hong Kong people and the United Kingdom for 50 years,” said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday. He added that President Trump believes the United States must “take action against individuals who have crushed the Hong Kong people’s freedoms.”
Pompeo said the 11 officials were being hit with sanctions because of “their roles in coercing, arresting, detaining, or imprisoning individuals under the authority of, or having been responsible for or involved in developing, adopting, or implementing, the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in Hong Kong.”
“This law,” he said, “purportedly enacted to ‘safeguard’ the security of Hong Kong, is in fact a tool of CCP repression.”
The Treasury Department went into detail about the 11 government officials being sanctioned, arguing that they had all “implemented policies directly aimed at curbing freedom of expression and assembly, and democratic processes, and are subsequently responsible for the degradation of Hong Kong’s autonomy.”
Carrie Lam, the chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, is accused of being “directly responsible for implementing Beijing’s policies of suppression of freedom and democratic processes,” including by pushing for the 2019 law that would have allowed extraditions from Hong Kong to the Chinese mainland, which set off mass demonstrations across Hong Kong. The Treasury Department said Lam “is designated for being involved in developing, adopting, or implementing” the so-called “national security law” in Hong Kong.
Chris Tang, the commissioner of the Hong Kong Police Force, is said to have “enthusiastically supported the Hong Kong National Security Law,” it being noted that the police force “besieged Hong Kong Polytechnic under his leadership, along with arresting hundreds of protestors.” The Treasury Department said Tang sits on the newly established Committee for Safeguarding National Security and “is designated for coercing, arresting, detaining, or imprisoning individuals” under the new law in Hong Kong.
The other officials dealt sanctions include former Hong Kong Police Force Commissioner Stephen Lo, Hong Kong Secretary for Security John Lee Ka-chiu, Hong Kong Secretary for Justice Teresa Cheng, Hong Kong Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Erick Tsang, Director of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council Xin Baolong and its Deputy Director Zhang Xiaoming, Director of the Hong Kong Liaison Office Luo Huining, Director of the Office for Safeguarding National Security in Hong Kong Zheng Yanxiong, and Secretary-General for the Committee for Safeguarding National Security in Hong Kong Eric Chan.
“The United States stands with the people of Hong Kong, and we will use our tools and authorities to target those undermining their autonomy,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said.
The U.S. recently hit other Chinese Communist Party officials with sanctions for their roles in carrying out alleged human rights abuses against the Uighur Muslims and other religious and ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region of western China. Trump also signed executive orders this week that could effectively ban Chinese-owned TikTok and Chinese-owned WeChat from operating in the U.S. within 45 days.
The new Hong Kong sanctions mean that any property or interests that any of the 11 officials own 50% or more of in the U.S. or under U.S. control would be immediately blocked and reported to the Office of Foreign Assets Control. The sanctions also mean no one in the U.S. will be able to conduct any transactions or do any business with any of the 11 officials, and the officials are essentially cut off from U.S. markets and the financial system, in addition to any of their U.S. assets being seized.
The actions on Friday follow a July executive order from Trump in which he concluded that Hong Kong “is no longer sufficiently autonomous to justify differential treatment in relation to the People’s Republic of China,” thanks to China’s decision to “unilaterally and arbitrarily impose national security legislation on Hong Kong.” Trump called the country’s crackdown “merely China’s latest salvo in a series of actions that have increasingly denied autonomy and freedoms that China promised to the people of Hong Kong” under the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration. Hong Kong was given back to China in 1997 with the promise that China wouldn’t interfere with Hong Kong’s political or economic freedoms for 50 years.
The ruling Chinese Communist Party has been arresting key leaders of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong in an effort to continue to crack down on anti-authoritarian thought in the city following protests that rocked it last year. The mass demonstrations that swept Hong Kong last fall centered on an effort by its China-dominated government to impose new extradition laws. Those protests quickly gave rise to the broadest civil unrest under Chinese rule since Beijing assumed sovereignty over the former colony more than two decades ago.
