Congress clears bill to punish China over Hong Kong

Congress yesterday cleared legislation for the president that would require US sanctions on Chinese officials violating human rights in Hong Kong while also threatening penalties on foreign banks that support Beijing’s crackdown on the formerly autonomous territory.

Lawmakers were spurred to action after Beijing earlier this week enacted in swift fashion a new harsh anti-sedition law, which will effectively supplant Hong Kong’s famously independent justice system with the mainland’s.

The so-called ‘‘national security’’ law uses broad language to criminalise a range of actions the Chinese Government interprets as constituting terrorism, subversion, advocacy for secession and collusion with foreign powers. The measure also asserts extra-territorial jurisdiction against those working abroad to subvert China’s Hong Kong policies.

‘‘The United States needs to send a very clear message that we will not stand idly by while the authoritarian government in China violates its international agreements and snuffs out the rights of the people in Hong Kong,’’ Senator Chris Van Hollen, a primary co-sponsor of the sanctions bill, said in a media call.

The Senate agreed by unanimous consent to pass the sanctions measure, which the House passed in the same manner on Thursday.

The measure was originally developed by Pennsylvania Republican Senator Patrick J Toomey, and Van Hollen, a Democratic from Maryland, and passed out of the Senate last week.

However, concerns that the bill would impact revenue and thus should originate in the House led to the decision to pass the House legislation after it was amended to include technical fixes sought by the Treasury Department and previously agreed to by the Senate.

‘‘I just think it is very, very important that we be on the side of people who are calling out for their own freedom,’’ Toomey said. ‘‘I am very, very grateful that we were able to get this done. I am very confident that the president is going to sign it into law.’’

Toomey and Van Hollen are confident that President Donald Trump will sign the bill because lawmakers in both chambers were unanimous in their support of the measure.

Trump has done little to criticise Chinese President Xi Jinping’s increasingly rough and unyielding treatment of the onetime British colony.

Congress late last year passed a measure that would authorise the president to sanction Chinese officials involved in oppressing Hong Kong.

Since then, the Trump Administration has done little with its new authorities, though Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced last week visa bans on any Chinese Communist Party officials deemed complicit in the crackdown on Hong Kong.

The administration earlier this week announced it was ending exports of defence equipment and other sensitive technology to Hong Kong.

While defence exports comprise a sliver of commerce between the US and Hong Kong, Pompeo has left the door open to more significant curtailments of the Asian financial hub’s special trade privileges.

Pompeo on Wednesday did not offer a timeline for stricter economic penalties against Hong Kong and Beijing. –