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BEIJING: China on Tuesday criticized new US sanctions against officials involved in the Hong Kong crackdown, calling the move “crazy and vile,” a further worsening of relations between the world’s superpowers.
President Donald Trump’s administration has been using its last days to increase pressure on China, and on Monday froze American assets and banned travel to the United States for 14 vice-chairs of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, which led a new and difficult new. security law in the city.
China says the law is necessary to restore stability after the huge protests in 2019, but critics say it destroys the freedoms that were once maintained in the financial center.
On Monday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington was holding Beijing responsible for its “relentless attack on Hong Kong’s democratic processes.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying criticized the “vile intention of the measure to greatly interfere in China’s internal affairs.”
“The Chinese government and people express strong indignation and strongly condemn the rude, unreasonable, crazy and vile behavior of the United States,” Hua told a regular news conference on Tuesday.
Later, the Foreign Office summoned the United States Charge d’Affaires for an explanation.
The Trump administration stopped short of punishing committee chairman Li Zhanshu, sometimes described as President Xi Jinping’s right-hand man, who has forged an on-and-off friendship with Trump.
The Trump administration has described decades of efforts to involve China as a failure, and US intelligence chief John Ratcliffe last week called Beijing “the greatest threat to democracy in the world.”
In other steps last week, Pompeo ended five Beijing-funded exchange programs, calling them propaganda tools, and said the State Department would limit the validity of visas for any Chinese Communist Party member and their family members, a decision. that could affect hundreds. of millions of people.
Curb dissent
The Chinese parliament pushed through the new security law in June.
Critics say it destroys the freedoms once enjoyed in Hong Kong, enshrined in a deal made before the 1997 handover of British colonial rule to China.
China says the law and the prosecution of critics are necessary to restore stability after the huge and often violent protests last year.
The United States has already imposed sanctions on Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing leader Carrie Lam and has stated that it will no longer treat the financial center as separate from China.
On Monday, the US House of Representatives voted unanimously on Monday to make it easier for Hong Kong residents to live in the United States, following similar footsteps from Britain and Canada.
Hong Kong residents would enjoy so-called Temporary Protected Status for five years, joining citizens of conflict-ridden states like Syria who cannot be deported and will have the right to work in the United States.
The measure still needs Senate approval, but has the support of all parties, unlike a previous Democratic proposal to extend the status to Venezuelans.
The move by US lawmakers comes as Hong Kong police on Monday cited the law to arrest three people who chanted slogans on a university campus last month.
