Beijing will impose visa restrictions on some U.S. government personnel for speaking out about Hong Kong, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Dec. 10.
The Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said that “Hong Kong is China’s Hong Kong” and that U.S. sanctions against Chinese officials interfered with “China’s internal affairs.”
The ministry did not make a list of names public.
Beijing routinely warns the international community against bringing up the regime’s poor track record regarding democracy, human rights, and the claims it makes over democratically ruled Taiwan.
Several U.S. officials and agencies have recently condemned the Hong Kong courts’ sentencing of 45 pro-democracy activists, calling for their unconditional release. The U.S. State Department announced on Nov. 19 that it would be preparing sanctions on Hong Kong officials responsible for the prosecution and sentencing of the pro-democracy activists.
The activists were among the 600,000 citizens who participated in an unofficial election in July 2020 to select candidates for the legislative elections that year. They were arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit subversion under Hong Kong’s updated National Security Law.
Benny Tai, a 60-year-old former legal professor, received the longest jail term of 10 years. Other pro-democracy leaders received prison sentences ranging from 50 months to 93 months.
The international community widely condemned the convictions. The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, an alliance of more than 200 lawmakers from 40 countries, called them a “travesty of justice.”
U.S. lawmakers have also recently sounded the alarm on Hong Kong increasingly becoming a site for international sanctions evasion and money laundering, based on a report submitted to Congress by the U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission. It cites cases of authoritarian regimes—including communist China, North Korea, and Russia—transporting goods and financing via Hong Kong, noting that the United States has already sanctioned some Hong Kong entities for aiding Chinese or Russian entities in financing the war in Ukraine.
The report recommends that the United States reevaluate its economic relationship with Hong Kong and end its preferential treatment as it no longer enjoys autonomy from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which lawmakers have since brought up with the U.S. Treasury Department.
Officials and lawmakers point to the 2020 update to the Hong Kong national security law as the end of Hong Kong’s legal autonomy.
For a large part of 2019, Hongkongers protested the CCP’s encroachment on what had been a “one country, two systems” relationship between China and Hong Kong that allowed the port city its own legal system. Protests peaked and successfully prevented a legislative meeting to vote on an extradition bill backed by the CCP. This led to the United States passing the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which required the United States to renew Hong Kong’s special trade status year by year and sanction Hong Kong officials who violate human rights.
The mass protests continued into 2020 as thousands took to the streets against a string of CCP-backed laws on everything from criminalizing the singing of the national anthem in a “distorted or disrespectful way” to allowing CCP security personnel to set up shop in Hong Kong. At the time, more than half of the Hong Kong Legislative Council’s seats were held by pro-Beijing members, and the national security law update passed despite protests.
On June 30, 2020, the national security law was updated to make a wide range of political activity and expression illegal and give authorities broad powers to suppress acts deemed illegal. The law was updated again earlier this year to expand the covered offenses to include treason, insurrection, theft of state secrets and espionage, destructive activities endangering national security, and external interference.
Dorothy Li and Reuters contributed to this report.
