US targets more officials over Hong Kong as pressure builds on China

WASHINGTON: The United States on Monday imposed sanctions on 14 senior Chinese officials over the growing clampdown in Hong Kong, with President Donald Trump's administration using its waning days to ramp up pressure on Beijing.

President-elect Joe Biden has signalled that he will maintain the tough line, if not always the bellicose tone, on China, which the US intelligence chief, John Ratcliffe, last week described as the "greatest threat to democracy worldwide."

In its latest move, the Trump administration said it was freezing any US assets and barring travel to the United States of 14 vice chairs of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, which spearheaded a tough new security law in the city.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the United States was holding Beijing accountable for its "unrelenting assault against Hong Kong's democratic processes."

"The United States again urges Beijing to abide by its international commitments and to heed the voices of many countries, which have condemned its actions," Pompeo said in a statement.

The Trump administration, however, stopped short of punishing the committee's chairman, Li Zhanshu, a powerful figure in Beijing sometimes described as a right-hand man of President Xi Jinping, who has forged an on-again, off-again friendship with Trump.

The United States has already slapped sanctions on Hong Kong's pro-Beijing leader, Carrie Lam, and has declared that it no longer will treat the financial hub separate from China.

While Lam has sought to play down the effect of US moves, she acknowledged in a recent interview that she relies on "piles of cash" as she can no longer maintain a bank account due to pressure from the US Treasury Department, which has broad influence over dollar-denominated transactions.

China's rubber-stamp parliament pushed through the draconian new security law in June despite international warnings that it was violating a promise to allow a separate system in Hong Kong made before Britain handed over its colony in 1997.

Through the law, China has largely succeeded in stamping out protests that rocked Hong Kong last year.

On Monday, police cited the law to make arrests over a small unofficial graduation rally last month at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where masked students waved banners and chanted slogans that included, "Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times."

Li Kwai-wah, a senior officer in Hong Kong's new national security unit, told reporters that three had been arrested for unlawful assembly and "inciting secession," a crime under the law.

Five others were also arrested for unlawful assembly, added Li, who is among a group of senior Hong Kong and Chinese officials that were earlier sanctioned by the United States.

Amnesty International said that there was a "grim predictability" to the arrests as human rights deteriorate in Hong Kong.

"Chanting political slogans, singing songs and waving flags should never be crimes," the group's Hong Kong program manager, Lam Cho Ming, said in a statement.

Also in November, pro-democracy lawmakers resigned en masse from the Legislative Council after the disqualification of four of their colleagues.

Pompeo said the move has "effectively neutered the ability of the people of Hong Kong to choose their elected representatives."

Pompeo also last week terminated five Beijing-funded exchange programs, calling them propaganda tools, and said the State Department would limit the validity of visas for any members of the Chinese Communist Party and their family members -- a decision that could affect hundreds of millions of people.

The Trump administration declared ahead of November elections that it has taken a new, more realistic view of China, believing that decades of US efforts to engage Beijing have failed.

Biden has agreed on the challenge from China and in some cases has gone further, with his campaign describing the mass incarceration of Uighur Muslims as "genocide."

But Biden's team has also said it is open to targeted cooperation on areas of common interest including fighting the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change.