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Trump Sanctions Hong Kong Leader, 10 Other Officials for Subverting City’s Freedoms

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Trump Sanctions Hong Kong Leader, 10 Other Officials for Subverting City’s Freedoms

The Trump administration on Aug. 7 sanctioned Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam and 10 other Hong Kong and Chinese officials for undermining the city’s autonomy and freedoms.

Other than Lam, six other Hong Kong officials were sanctioned, including the current and preceding Hong Kong police chiefs, and the city’s security and justice secretaries. Four Chinese officials were also targeted, including the head of the Liaison Office, Beijing’s representative office in the city, and the head of a central government office for handling Hong Kong affairs in Beijing.

The sanctions freeze any U.S. assets the officials possess, and generally bar Americans from doing business with them.

The measures were imposed in response to Beijing’s implementation of a national security law for the city, which has led to heightened authoritarian control over the city, the Trump administration said.

“This law, purportedly enacted to ‘safeguard’ the security of Hong Kong, is in fact a tool of CCP [Chinese Communist Party] repression,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a Friday statement, adding that it violated Beijing’s promise to uphold the territory’s autonomy upon its transfer of sovereignty from British to Chinese rule in 1997.

In the month since the law went into effect, the Hong Kong government has escalated attempts to curb the city’s freedoms. Authorities postponed a scheduled September legislative election for a year, citing COVID-19 fears, and disqualified 12 pro-democracy candidates who won votes in an unofficial primary.

Popular protest slogans were also outlawed.

On Aug. 6, the government charged 24 pro-democracy advocates who attended a vigil to commemorate victims of Beijing’s brutal crackdown of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, accusing them of “knowingly taking part in an unauthorized assembly.” Police had banned the vigil this year over the pandemic, though many Hongkongers still showed up at the scheduled location in defiance.

A number of pro-democracy advocates, including those residing outside Hong Kong, have also been charged for violating the new law.

Pompeo said that Lam and six members of her administration were sanctioned for their roles in developing and implementing the national security law, and also for “coercing, arresting, detaining, or imprisoning individuals” under the law.

He said the Chinese officials, who are the CCP’s top officials for enacting Hong Kong policies, were sanctioned for engaging in actions that “threaten the peace, security, stability, or autonomy of Hong Kong.”

Among those sanctioned are Zheng Yanxiong, Beijing’s appointee to head a new national security bureau in the city. The bureau was set up under the new law, and directly answers to Beijing. The bureau is exempt from the Hong Kong government’s jurisdiction and exercises oversight on enforcing the law.

Another target, Zhang Xiaoming is deputy director of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, Beijing’s top agency for handling the territories’ affairs. He has repeatedly defended Beijing’s policies on Hong Kong and the national security law, calling it China’s “internal affairs.”

In announcing the sanctions, Secretary of the Treasury Steven T. Mnuchin said in a statement: “The United States stands with the people of Hong Kong and we will use our tools and authorities to target those undermining their autonomy.”

The sanctions were implemented to fulfill an executive order issued by President Donald Trump on July 16, which ended Hong Kong’s special status with the United States, after the administration deemed the territory no longer sufficiently autonomous from mainland China. On that day, Trump also signed into law a bill that would sanction officials and banks involved in crushing the city’s freedoms.

The Trump administration has recently stepped up its actions countering Beijing’s threats. In July, the United States sanctioned several Chinese Communist Party officials for their role in human rights abuses in the region of Xinjiang. On Aug. 7, Trump issued executive orders to bar U.S. firms from doing business with the Chinese owners of TikTok and WeChat, ByteDance and Tencent Holdings respectively.

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Focus News: Trump Sanctions Hong Kong Leader, 10 Other Officials for Subverting City’s Freedoms

Foreign Staff at EU Firms in Shanghai Still Unable to Return, Business Group Says

SHANGHAI—Over half of European companies in China’s financial hub of Shanghai still have foreign staff who are unable to return after coronavirus border restrictions were imposed in March, a survey indicated on Thursday. The European Union Chamber of Commerce said the survey, conducted in July, had received answers from 143 companies, or about a quarter of its members. Of the respondents who had staff yet to return to Shanghai, 53 percent said it was because of administrative requirements involved in obtaining a reentry visa, while 48 percent had their applications denied or delayed. Small and medium firms (SMEs), in particular, were affected disproportionately, the chamber said. “Securing the return of foreign nationals to Shanghai is critical to restoring normality for our member companies, especially SMEs,” said Carlo D’Andrea, vice president…