Just over two years after the Trump government’s declared trade war with China, the United States has opened up new fronts to exert pressure on Beijing, in the name of the principles it defends and through extraterritorial laws. The offensive is about political issues – autonomy for Hong Kong, human rights for the Xinjiang region, and espionage for Huawei and Chinese official media in the United States, now known as “Foreign missions”.
” It was the first time since Tiananmen in 1989 that such systematic sanctions were taken against China. At the time, it was a massacre. There, it punishes the repression, but what is aimed is the assertion of Chinese power. The real question now is: “Can we let a dictatorship become the world’s leading power?” », Analyzes the sinologist Jean-Pierre Cabestan, of the Baptist University of Hong Kong.
The American legal “blitzkrieg” is based on the Hongkong Autonomy Act, signed on July 14, the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act, signed on June 17, as well as on the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Act. This law, originally intended for Russia, extended in 2016 to perpetrators of human rights violations worldwide, targets for the first time China. Several senior Xinjiang officials who had a key role in the policy of mass internment of the Uighur minority are now banned from staying in the United States, and their assets, if any, are frozen by the State Department.
The new Hong Kong Law, which is added to the revocation of the preferential treatment reserved for the territory by the Americans in commercial and financial matters, must sanction the entities and the individuals who contributed to erode the high degree of autonomy of Hong Kong by means of the national security law promulgated by Beijing on 1er last July. No name was specified, but “Everything is on the table”, said a spokesperson for the US National Security Council.
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Bloomberg reported on Wednesday (July 15) that Hong Kong affairs official on the Communist Party of China (CPC) Standing Committee Han Zheng – potentially the most senior Chinese leader ever to join the list. targeted – as well as the head of the Hong Kong government, Carrie Lam. The New york times reported the same day a plan being studied at the White House to ban the 92 million CCP members from visas. A delicate decision to implement, however, because of the difficulty for Americans to verify this status for ordinary members.
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