Donald Trump
Donald Trump
Hong Kong: The US fired a new round of sanctions at China on Monday, targeting six high-level Chinese and Hong Kong officials over what it described as acts of transnational repression for their crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong and on US soil.
The move was the first significant step by the new Trump administration to pressure China over human rights in Hong Kong. The state department said in a statement that the officials used the city’s national security laws “to intimidate, silence, and harass 19 pro-democracy activists who had been forced to flee overseas, including a US citizen and four other US residents”.
The sanctioned officials included Dong Jingwei, China’s top national security official in the city since 2023. In his previous role as China’s vice-minister of state security, Dong
led the country’s efforts to
track dissidents and catch foreign spies.
Hong Kong’s secretary for justice Paul Lam and police commissioner Raymond Siu were also among the six officials within national security bodies and the police force who were sanctioned for their roles in “coercing, arresting, detaining, or imprisoning” individuals under the national security law.
In a national security crackdown since widespread unrest rocked the city in 2019, the Hong Kong authorities have jailed scores of Opposition lawmakers, activists and others, including journalists, in the city.
The state department also on Monday released an annual report saying that the Hong Kong government had continued to use its broad national security laws to undermine human rights and civil liberties in Hong Kong, a criticism other Western countries have also made. It noted that, as recently as December, the Hong Kong government had offered bounties for information leading
to the arrests of dissidents living overseas.
Hong Kong activists in the US welcomed the move.
“Many of us have endured relentless pressure and threats through transnational repression. It truly means a great deal to see the US taking the lead in holding accountable the officials who orchestrated these actions,” Frances Hui, who was granted political asylum in the US, said in a statement on behalf of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation in Washington. Family members of overseas activists including Hui have been questioned in Hong Kong by its national security police.
The Chinese embassy in Washington said in a statement that its enforcement of these laws, which were first imposed in 2020 in the aftermath of months of monthslong mass pro-democracy protests the year before, were “just and necessary” to return stability and prosperity to the Chinese territory. It also condemned the sanctions, calling it a “gross interference in China’s internal affairs and Hong Kong affairs”.
The Hong Kong government described the sanctions as “despicable behaviour” and acts of intimidation that “clearly exposed the US’s barbarity”.
The state department’s sanctions place restrictions on property ownership and financial dealings of the individuals in the US. The US has already sanctioned dozens of other Chinese and Hong Kong senior officials, issuing travel bans and directives to freeze assets imposed in 2020 and 2021.
New York Times News Service