The bipartisan leaders of two China-focused congressional panels dinged the Biden administration’s response to escalating repression in Hong Kong as “not adequate,” in a letter addressed yesterday to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury secretary Janet Yellen.
They also urged that the U.S. impose sanctions on a top Chinese spy agency official in Hong Kong and the city’s Justice secretary.
In 2024, Beijing took several significant steps to gut Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, even more definitively than it had in the past, through the 2020 national-security law. In the letter, a copy of which was obtained exclusively by National Review, the lawmakers pointed to the imposition of new, repressive national-security legislation to criminalize political activity, called Article 23, and the conviction of a group of 14 political figures part of a cohort targeted by the Chinese Communist Party-controlled government of the city known as the Hong Kong 47.
“These actions by Hong Kong authorities represent a significant escalation in their efforts to dismantle Hong Kong’s autonomy and stifle dissent at the behest of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP),” wrote the lawmakers. Signatories included Representatives John Moolenaar and Raja Krishnamoorthi, the chairman and ranking member of the House Select Committee on the CCP, and Representative Chris Smith and Senator Jeff Merkley, who serve as co-chairs of the Congressional Executive Commission on China (CECC).
Despite pledging a strong response to China’s new repression in Hong Kong in line with U.S. support for human rights, the State Department response has so far declined to employ several of the legal tools that the U.S. government has at its disposal, even after Hong Kong issued bounties for the arrests of an American citizen, Anna Kwok, and Frances Hui, a U.S. resident. Senior Hong Kong officials even traveled to the U.S. for meetings in May, presumably on visas issued by the State Department.
The State Department has issued statements condemning Article 23 and the developments in the Hong Kong 47 cases. It also imposed visa restrictions on specific Chinese government officials after the convictions, though it has not publicized the names of those officials, in line with common practice.
The lawmakers wrote that they view this as an insufficient reaction to the conviction of Hong Kong activists: “We acknowledge the State Department’s response to these convictions with the announcement of visa restrictions on Hong Kong officials. However, such a measure alone is not adequate.”
As they pointed out in their letter, the administration has declined to use tools under authorities including the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, the Hong Kong Autonomy Act, and a July 2020 executive order under the latter law through which the president can impose sanctions and take other steps to penalize Hong Kong.
The lawmakers urged Blinken and Yellen to consider imposing sanctions on several officials, including Hong Kong Justice secretary Paul Lam, the top central government security official in the city and former vice minister of state security Dong Jingwei, and security official Sonny Au. Other people on the list of sanctions targets include top police officials, prosecutors, and pro-Beijing judges.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment about its Hong Kong sanctions.
Hong Kong still maintains its own diplomatic outposts in America, even though Washington no longer views it as autonomous of Beijing. The CECC and other lawmakers have pushed the Biden administration to close them.