‘Bad for China’: US threatens to impose sanctions on country over Hong Kong crackdown

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The Trump administration warned China that it would likely face sanctions if it imposes its new so-called national security law designed to limit freedoms in Hong Kong and assert Chinese Communist Party dominance over the city.

Robert O’Brien, President Trump’s national security adviser, warned during Sunday interviews with NBC’s Meet The Press and CBS’s Face The Nation that the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to crush protesters and impose its will over Hong Kong, a former British colony with semi-autonomous status, violated an international treaty it made with the United Kingdom. He said these moves by China would likely result in Hong Kong losing its special trading status with the United States and in the U.S. punishing China with sanctions.

“This is really a choice for the Chinese Communist Party. And they made a commitment in 1984 in the Sino-British Declaration that Hong Kong would maintain autonomy through 2047. And 27 years earlier with this national security law, it looks like they’re violating that agreement, which is filed as a treaty with the United Nations,” O’Brien told Margaret Brennan of CBS.

“And if they do pass this national security law, there will be significant consequences,” he added. “And I can’t see how Hong Kong remains an Asian financial center if the Chinese Communist party goes through and implements this national security law and takes over Hong Kong. That’ll be a tragedy for the people of Hong Kong, but it’ll also be very bad for China.”

O’Brien’s warning was even starker when speaking with NBC’s Chuck Todd.

“It looks like, with this national security law, they’re going to basically take over Hong Kong,” he said. “And if they do, under the 1992 Hong Kong Policy Act and the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019, Secretary Pompeo would likely be unable to certify that Hong Kong maintains a high degree of autonomy. And if that happens, there will be sanctions that will be imposed on Hong Kong and China. It’s hard to see how Hong Kong could remain the Asian financial center that it’s become if China takes over.”

In the Sino-British Declaration of 1984, China agreed that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region “will enjoy a high degree of autonomy.” The agreement stated that Hong Kong “will be vested with executive, legislative, and independent judicial power,” and China also promised that “the current social and economic systems in Hong Kong will remain unchanged, and so will the life-style” and that freedoms such as speech, assembly, press, association, travel, property, and religion would be protected by the law.

The 1992 Hong Kong Policy Act laid out the details of Hong Kong’s special trade status with the U.S., but the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019 set out to address its status under U.S. law and to punish those responsible for human rights violations there. It also said that the State Department must certify to Congress annually whether or not Hong Kong “warrants its unique treatment” by the U.S. and whether it is still “upholding the rule of law and protecting rights.”

O’Brien said Hong Kong would be hit hard financially if the Chinese Communist Party breaks its treaties and takes over, predicting that the global financial companies housed there would likely leave and that there would be a “terrible brain drain” as Hong Kong citizens sought refuge elsewhere.

The current Chinese national security law proposal would ban alleged treason, sedition, and subversion — all defined broadly by the Chinese Communist Party — as well as firmly outlawing any effort at secession by Hong Kong. If imposed, it could spell the end of Hong Kong’s “One Country, Two Systems” framework, as the law could be used by the Chinese government to crush its autonomous status and the relative political freedoms guaranteed under its governing Basic Law.

Chris Patten, the final British governor of Hong Kong, called out China over the weekend.

“We should make it clear to the Chinese that this is outrageous. … We should talk to our allies, our friends around the world, all of whom have a stake in two things,” he told BBC News.

“First of all, the continuance of Hong Kong as a great international city in Asia. And secondly, in whether or not China can be trusted to keep its word,” he continued. “Now, there are all too many examples of that not being the case, the way it’s actually used the preoccupation which everybody rightly has with fighting this awful epidemic — they’ve used that preoccupation to bully and harass in other areas, and one of them is in Hong Kong.”

The ruling Chinese Communist Party arrested key leaders of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong in April in an effort to continue to crack down on anti-authoritarian thought in the city following protests that rocked it last year. This weekend, the Chinese government again cracked down on protesters.

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 China assumed sovereignty over the former colony in 1997.

“Well, I think what we can all be proud of are the people of Hong Kong who have taken to the streets to show all of us who enjoy democracy and the rule of law in our countries how precious that is,” O’Brien said Sunday. “China is dependent on capital from the rest of the world to build their economy and grow their middle class. … If they lose access to that through Hong Kong, that’s a real blow to Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party.”

Pompeo said on Friday that “Hong Kong has flourished as a bastion of liberty,” and “the United States strongly urges Beijing to reconsider its disastrous proposal, abide by its international obligations, and respect Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy, democratic institutions, and civil liberties.”

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