The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Monday announced sanctions against several American officials, including members of Congress, who allegedly “performed poorly” on issues related to Hong Kong.
The sanctions were clearly in retaliation for President Donald Trump’s tariffs and for sanctions the U.S. brought against Chinese and Hong Kong officials in March for participating in “transnational repression.”
The U.S. State Department brought sanctions against six officials in Hong Kong for abusing Hong Kong’s draconian “national security law” to “intimidate, silence, and harass 19 pro-democracy activists who were forced to flee overseas.” One of the activists was a U.S. citizen and four of the others were U.S. residents.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the sanctions demonstrated “the Trump Administration’s commitment to hold to account those responsible for depriving people in Hong Kong of protected rights and freedoms or who commit acts of transnational repression on U.S. soil or against U.S. persons.”
The first Trump administration and the Biden administration both imposed sanctions against Chinese officials for compromising Hong Kong’s autonomy and practicing transnational repression.
China furiously condemned the March 31 sanctions, promising that “resolute countermeasures” would soon be taken. It ended up taking three weeks for those countermeasures to arrive.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun repeated China’s denunciation of the U.S. sanctions as “severe interference in Hong Kong affairs, which are China’s internal affairs” when announcing Beijing’s retaliation on Monday.
Guo said China would sanction ”Congress members, officials, and heads of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) who acted egregiously on Hong Kong issues.” He did not name the targets of the sanctions.
Guo said the retaliatory sanctions were authorized by the “Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law of the People’s Republic of China,” a threatening act passed by China’s rubber-stamp legislature in 2021 that ostensibly requires automatic sanctions against any nation that dares to take action against Beijing’s human rights abuses.
“Our message to the U.S.: Hong Kong is China’s Hong Kong and Hong Kong affairs brook no U.S. interference,” Guo said.
“The U.S.’s erroneous practice on the Hong Kong-related issues will for sure meet China’s resolute response and reciprocal countermeasures,” he threatened.
The tariff war between the U.S. and China undoubtedly factored into Beijing’s actions. Chinese officials have denounced U.S. tariffs, which now total up to 245 percent, as “arrogant and shameless.”
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