{S} enior members of Congress urged the Biden administration impose new sanctions on Chinese officials — including one of the regime’s top spies, National Review has learned. The request, by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, follows Hong Kong’s issuance of new bounties for the arrest of two pro-democracy advocates in the U.S.
In a letter addressed yesterday to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the members of Congress provided a list of senior Hong Kong government officials that they believe should be sanctioned under existing law. “The Hong Kong authorities’ egregious attempt to intimidate and silence U.S. nationals engaged in peaceful political activism in the United States is outrageous and cannot be met with inaction,” wrote the lawmakers.
Representatives Mike Gallagher (R., Wis.), Raja Krishnamoorthi (D., Ill.) — the chairman and the ranking member of the House Select Committee on the CCP — signed the letter, alongside the co-chairmen of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, Representative Chris Smith (R., N.J.) and Senator Jeff Merkley (D., Ore.).
Last week, Hong Kong authorities announced the new bounties, on five activists overseas, claiming that they are “inciting secession” and “colluding with foreign forces” through their work against the Beijing-controlled government of the city. Authorities had previously issued bounties of the same amount, about $128,000, for the arrest of eight other activists, including Anna Kwok, one of the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement’s leaders who now lives in the U.S.
The latest round of bounties target Joey Siu, a U.S. citizen, and Frances Hui, both of whom live in America.
“Last week, the arrest warrant and 1 million HKD bounty placed on me, an American citizen, for my advocacy for freedom in my own country, demonstrated yet again the extraterritorial reach and ridiculousness of the national-security law,” Siu told NR. She said that the move is one more indication that Hong Kong is no longer a safe place for foreign visitors and businesses.
Hui, who is the policy and advocacy coordinator for the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, called the bounties an “escalation” and a “retaliation for my advocacy calling for sanctions against Hong Kong officials and members of the judiciary,” in comments to NR. “This act of intimidation is just one of the many accounts of transnational repression and egregious human-rights abuses conducted by China on Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers, and Chinese dissidents both inside China and abroad.”
The lawmakers asked Blinken and Yellen to review a list of seven high-ranking Hong Kong government officials based on the sanctions criteria laid out in the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, the Hong Kong Autonomy Act, and a July 2020 executive order that reversed the U.S. government’s previous decisions to treat the city as an autonomous entity. Hong Kong officials included on the list are Justice Secretary Paul Lam, Police Commissioner Raymond Siu, and Director of Public Prosecutions Maggie Yang.
A State Department spokesperson told NR: “”As a general matter, we do not comment on Congressional correspondence and we do not preview sanctions actions.” The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment.
The lawmakers also asked the administration to consider applying sanctions on Dong Jingwei, a longtime Chinese intelligence official and former vice minister of China’s spy agency who was appointed this year to lead the mainland’s office in the city.
Although the U.S. has imposed sanctions on numerous Hong Kong officials for their role in the implementation of the 2020 national-security law that marked the end of the city’s semiautonomous status, the last time it did so was in 2021. The trial of pro-democracy icon and media executive Jimmy Lai on charges under that law began earlier this week.
Gallagher has previously criticized the State Department for its failure to impose new sanctions related to Chinese human-rights abuses, including the situation in Hong Kong. “The problem is that right now, good policies that would earn bipartisan support are stuck in the inter-agency process, apparent sacrifices on the altar of engagement,” he said at a hearing in July that featured testimony from top Biden-administration officials.
His House select committee and the Congressional-Executive Commission on China have investigated Beijing’s transnational repression of dissidents in America, holding hearings and demanding law-enforcement probes into several related matters, including the assaults of several pro-democracy advocates by pro-Beijing crowds in San Francisco last month.
Siu said that Washington needs to pursue a broader agenda against Chinese-government interference and harassment: “Beyond sanctions, the United States must work in coordinated efforts along other democracies to address the expanding transnational repression on American soil and elsewhere by the Chinese Communist regime, beginning with shutting down the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices,” she said, referring to the city’s diplomatic outposts on U.S. soil, which were established when it was semiautonomous.
“If the U.S. chooses to stay silent, we will risk enabling more of it to happen to other Hong Kongers and those who defend freedom and human rights,” said Hui.