China has imposed sanctions on 11 U.S. citizens, including lawmakers and the heads of several U.S.-based non-governmental organizations, in the latest title-for-tat measure on a national security law imposed by Beijing on Hong Kong.
In response to a similar move by the U.S. last week, the State Department said on Monday that it would target U.S. citizens who have “behaved badly about Hong Kong-related issues.”
Without specifying what sanctions would mean, the ministry named Republican senators Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley and Pat Toomey, Republican Rep. Chris Smith, and the heads of the National Democratic Institute of International Affairs, the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute, Human Rights Watch and Freedom House.
On Friday, the U.S. announced sanctions against Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam, as well as 10 other senior Chinese and Hong Kong officials, and confiscated all U.S.-based possessions and travel to the U.S. It was not clear if any of the right officials had possessions or possessions in the US.
Lam has said she does not “particularly like going to the US” and has no capacity there. Luo Huining, the head of China’s liaison office in Hong Kong and among the Chinese officials who need to be rehabilitated, mocked the measure as useless.
“To be placed on the U.S. sanctions list simply means I have done what I have to do for the nation and Hong Kong,” he said on Saturday. Is such a ‘sanction’ in vain, because I have no assets abroad? Of course, I can also send $ 100 to Mr Trump for freezing. ”
Observers say the movement in China is also mostly symbolic, given that few U.S. officials have assets in China. Chinese officials often have family and in some cases property in the US. Lam’s son, a Harvard student, went missing after July after he told a roommate he urgently needed to return to Hong Kong.
Tat-for-tat sanctions are the latest front of an escalating rivalry between China and the US, whose ties have been weakened over issues including Huawei, human rights violations in Xinjiang, Hong Kong security law and renewed US support for Taiwan.
China has previously announced sanctions against Rubio, Cruz and other U.S. officials in response to similar punishments for Chinese officials linked to policies in Xinjiang that have led to mass detention and surveillance of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities.
