HONG KONG (AP) – The US has sanctioned 24 more Chinese and Hong Kong officials over Beijing’s ongoing crackdown on political freedoms in the semi-autonomous city, just before the Biden government’s first face-to-face negotiations with China.
The move reflects Washington’s “deep concern” about the erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy after changes in its electoral system endorsed by China’s ceremonial legislature last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on Wednesday.
Foreign financial institutions dealing with the 24 authorities would be subject to U.S. sanctions, the State Department said.
The planned changes Hong Kong’s electoral law gives a pro-Beijing committee the power to nominate more Hong Kong lawmakers. The move will reduce the proportion of directly elected officials and ensure that only those determined to be truly loyal to Beijing are allowed to run for public office – effectively excluding opposition figures from the political process.
The US announcement was made during a visit by Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to Japan and South Korea, both concerned about China’s growing economic, military and political weight.
The imposition of new sanctions “fully exposes the sinister intention on the US side to interfere in China’s internal affairs, disrupt Hong Kong and obstruct China’s stability and development,” said a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, Zhao Lijian, told reporters at a daily briefing on Wednesday.
“China will take strong measures as appropriate to resolutely defend national sovereignty, security and development interests,” said Zhao.
While in Tokyo, Blinken and Austin made a joint statement with their Japanese counterparts expressing concern about Beijing’s human rights violations in western Xinjiang against ethnic minorities and China’s determination to change the status of a group of uninhabited islands administered by Tokyo but claimed by Beijing. The two arrived in Seoul on Wednesday for talks.
On Thursday, Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan are due to meet with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Communist Party chief foreign relations Yang Jiechi in Anchorage, Alaska.
The White House has set low expectations to the meeting. A senior official, who informed reporters on condition of anonymity, said the two sides will not make a joint statement and that no major announcement is expected.
The United States said Thursday’s meeting would be an initial opportunity to address intense disagreements over trade and human rights in Tibet, Hong Kong and Xinjiang, as well as the coronavirus pandemic. .
While President Joe Biden has sought to soften the harsh tone that his predecessor has adopted with China, his government seems committed to taking a hard line on these issues.
China rejected all criticisms of its policies towards Hong Kong, accusing foreign governments of interfering and saying that political tightening was necessary after months of anti-government protests in 2019.
Last June, Beijing imposed a comprehensive national security law on the city and Hong Kong officials arrested most of the prominent supporters of democracy and outspoken critics. Many others fled abroad and renewed their calls this week for Hong Kong diaspora members to continue the fight for freedoms promised to the city after the end of the British colonial regime in 1997.
Among those included in the sanctions they are Wang Chen, a member of the 25-member Politburo elite of the Chinese Communist Party, and Tam Yiu-chung, the Hong Kong delegate to the Chinese parliament’s standing committee, who drafted the national security law.
Several officials from the Hong Kong National Security Division were also punished, including Li Kwai-wah, a senior superintendent, as well as Edwina Lau, a deputy commissioner of the Hong Kong police force and head of the division.
As of last October, the United States had already sanctioned 10 officials, including Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam and deputy director of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office, Zhang Xiaoming. The sanctions prohibit his travels to the United States and block his dealings with American financial institutions.
Lam said in a television interview in November last year that the sanctions meant that she received her salary in cash and had “stacks of money” at home because she was without banking services in Hong Kong.
Chinese officials have disregarded the impact of the sanctions, with some calling his designation a source of pride in what they see as an attempt to undermine Chinese control in Hong Kong and its rise as a US competitor.
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Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.