FBI Director Kash Patel and some Republican lawmakers are sounding the alarm about threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), after two Chinese nationals were charged with smuggling a pathogen into the United States.

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A rising chorus of analysts now describe China as a “peaking power”—one that might take greater risks to revise the international order before its strategic window of opportunity closes. They cite the country’s aging population, slowing economy, and hostile external environment as evidence that time is no longer on China’s side. The “fear of decline,” they argue, could lead China to act sooner rather than later to solidify its position in East Asia, with potentially catastrophic consequences.

While there is a compelling case to be made about the downward trajectory of China’s power, it is difficult to argue that Chinese leaders perceive themselves to be running short on time. In recent years, the actions and rhetoric of the Chinese government reveal little doubt about how it sees the future. Moreover, Beijing appears increasingly bearish on the long-term prospects of the United States, which Chinese President Xi Jinping has described as the “greatest threat to China’s development and security.”

Behind closed doors, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders may well express concerns about China’s mounting internal and external challenges. But the triumphant stories Chinese leaders tell the party bureaucracy and the general public play a central role in shaping not only the country’s worldview but also its actions.

U.S. policymakers and scholars should not dismiss Chinese optimism as mere propaganda, despite how far removed it may be from reality. Perceptions of Beijing’s relative power, in addition to raw material capabilities, will affect whether or not China resorts to war in the coming decade.

The CCP is aware of the myriad challenges Beijing faces, but it believes its top-down system is capable of handling today’s complex environment. The party trusts that it can marshal the resources necessary to eradicate poverty, redress inequality, and drive innovation, as well as respond to major global trends: deglobalization, climate change, technological disruption, and shifts in the international balance of power.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, Beijing has grown more confident in its economic and political system. After an initial lapse, the party’s grassroots apparatus kicked into gear, and the CCP hailed its success in stamping out the virus just as it began spreading throughout much of the world. Sustained growth in 2020 further reinforced China’s confidence in its state-led development model. Despite recent headwinds in the energy and property sectors, Chinese economists continue to express faith that the country will not only escape the middle-income trap by 2035 but also become a fully developed nation by midcentury.

More recently, Chinese officials have doubled down on the unique aspects of their system, instituting a flurry of new regulations for the private sector. There is hope that these clampdowns will boost competitiveness by diverting resources away from “unproductive” sectors—such as real estate, e-commerce, and online gaming—toward the “real economy,” which Xi argues is based on manufacturing. The government has also instituted policies to ease financial burdens on working families in the hope of mitigating demographic pressures. In short, the CCP is confident, at least in public, that its top-down leadership can promote “common prosperity” and guide the country through unforeseen headwinds.

The party’s conviction derives, in part, from what China’s 14th Five-Year Plan describes as its “institutional superiority,” “administrative efficiency,” and “social stability.” Xi has lauded China’s “whole-process people’s democracy,” arguing that it promotes stability and good governance—key elements of comprehensive national power. The recently released 6th Plenum Communique, like Xi’s report at the 19th Party Congress, depicts China on an inevitable path to national rejuvenation under the CCP’s central leadership.

Of course, it’s difficult to distinguish genuine enthusiasm for the project from politically mandatory expressions of support—especially in an era when the already limited space for public discourse in China has radically shrunk. But from the party’s perspective, closing those discussions is also a necessary step forward.

Since coming to power, Xi has seen Western political influence as a risk, going so far as to warn against the infiltration of “universal values” such as constitutionalism, free speech, and a free press. In the intervening period, the party’s use of propaganda and tools of digital authoritarianism to institute crackdowns have demonstrated its ability to engineer political goals from the top down. While foreign observers often view such campaigns as signs of weakness or insecurity, the CCP views them as crucial levers through which to place China on a better path forward.

Internationally, despite deteriorating ties with developed democracies, Chinese perceptions of Beijing’s image remain elevated. This is, in part, the result of China’s decades-long campaign to bolster ties with developing countries through “partnership diplomacy” and programs such as the Belt and Road Initiative. Moreover, Chinese leaders believe U.S. alliances to be “outdated” relics of the Cold War that are “bound to fail” in slowing China’s rise. And during a time of rising protectionism in the United States, Xi continues to advocate for globalization.

In the military field, Chinese leaders maintain they are closing the capability gap with the United States, despite Beijing’s comparably modest defense budget. China now boasts more naval vessels than the United States, a state-of-the-art ballistic missile arsenal, and advanced hypersonic missiles, a capability that the U.S. military currently lacks. Although Washington maintains an advantage in its quantity of aircraft carriers, People’s Liberation Army officials believe Beijing’s asymmetric carrier killer capacity could give it the upper hand in a shooting war off China’s shores. Over the coming decades, Chinese leaders are confident they will achieve a “world-class” military through leapfrog modernization.

In short, despite the many challenges China faces—domestic and international—the CCP believes in the efficacy of its system. There is little evidence to suggest that China views itself as a declining power, making it less likely that Chinese leaders will embark on risky military campaigns to exploit a shrinking window of opportunity.

There exists, conversely, a trove of documents detailing the party’s belief in the ongoing diminution of U.S. power. The common refrain “The East is rising and the West is declining” has become tinged with an air of inevitability. America watchers in China have identified several factors, including rising debt, racial and wealth inequality, and rampant political polarization, that they believe will undermine U.S. stability and imperil Washington’s primacy.

In the aftermath of the 2007-2008 financial crisis, Chinese leaders began recognizing major flaws in the U.S. economic system, so much so that some believed the shock would lead to an immediate U.S. collapse. Although such dire predictions did not pan out, Chinese officials remain skeptical about the U.S. economic model, especially in light of pandemic-induced instability and widening inequality.

In a recent article, one researcher at the Central Party School argued that the United States’ response to the pandemic reflected a “crisis of capitalism” on par with the challenges of the global war on terrorism and the Great Recession. Even the U.S. policy response to COVID-19 was seen to inflate asset bubbles and funnel resources toward speculative investments in companies such as GameStop. In September, the governor of the People’s Bank of China, Yi Gang, took aim at the deficiencies of U.S. monetary policy, arguing that “the long-term deployment of asset purchases could harm market functions, promote fiscal monetization, and damage the reputation of central banks.” Finally, Chinese scholars have taken note of the “hollowing out of the American industrial base.” Some doubt that Washington’s renewed focus on industrial policy will allow advanced manufacturing in the United States to remain competitive with that in China, whose share of global industrial output is nearly double the United States’.

Perhaps more significant than Beijing’s perception of U.S. economic problems, Chinese leaders see the U.S. political system as ill-equipped to provide public goods and ensure long-term social stability. Donald Trump’s presidency confirmed the narrative that liberal democracies are liable to elevate incompetent leaders and exacerbate social divisions. These views did not recede after Joe Biden’s electoral victory, given persistent gridlock in Washington. Following an important government meeting last week, one CCP spokesperson played up the ongoing “problems in Western democracy.” America’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, finally, reinforced the view that the sun is setting on “U.S. hegemony.”

It is quite possible that China’s relative power could peak in the coming decade. Indeed, the recent spate of power outages, loan defaults, and clampdowns on the private sector portend a difficult period to come. Yet Beijing has defied bleak expectations in the past and could do so again. More importantly, forecasts about Chinese militarism, based on assessments of material capabilities, must account for China’s views of itself. The scholar Graham Allison reminds us in Destined for War that “structural realities are not the whole story. Objective conditions have to be perceived by human beings.”

For the time being, the evidence suggests that the CCP is confident in itself and its future and that it views the United States as a declining power facing manifold problems. There is a real possibility that overconfidence, rather than the fear of decline, could fuel Chinese military adventurism in the years ahead. Only time will tell whether time is on China’s side.

Nathaniel Sher is a policy analyst based in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @nathaniel_sher

Sam Bresnick is a writer and editor based in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @SamBresnick

Source: https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/11/21/the-chinese-communist-party-still-thinks-it-owns-the-future/

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A local resident listens to a medical staff before queueing up for the COVID-19 virus testing at the Wanhua District in Taipei, Taiwan, May 19, 2021. -AFP

The democratic island of Taiwan on Wednesday moved into a Level 3 coronavirus alert as a community outbreak of COVID-19 spread across the country.

Taiwan’s Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said it had recorded more than 100 locally transmitted cases for the fifth consecutive day.

Residents are now required to wear masks at all times when they leave their homes, indoor gatherings of more than five people banned, and outdoor gatherings are limited to 10 people.

Places of business and public venues not providing essential services like law enforcement, medical treatment, and government offices are advised to close.

To date, Taiwan has reported 2,533 cases of COVID-19 since the outbreak began, of which 1,226 cases are domestic infections reported since May 15, the CECC said.

Health minister Chen Shih-chung said that while the outbreak began in and around the capital, Taipei, domestic transmissions have been found in other cities too.

The authorities have set up a text-messaging service enabling residents to register more easily with the track, test, and tracing regime across the island.

A customer waits for her lunch box at a restaurant next to the Taipei Cinema Park in the Wanhua District, in Taipei , May 19, 2021. Credit: AFP

Home-grown vaccine

President Tsai Ing-wen has visited pharmaceutical factories producing Taiwan’s home-grown COVID-19 vaccine, while the island recently took delivery of fresh AstraZeneca and Moderna vaccine shipments.

“The vaccines we have purchased from abroad through various channels are gradually moving into place, so please don’t worry [about availability],” Tsai said on Tuesday.

“Development of our homegrown vaccines is also on schedule, [with Lianya] entering the second phase of the final clinical trial,” she said. “We hope to be able to start the first tranche of domestic production by the end of July.”

Meanwhile, the island’s Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) rejected suggestions that Taiwan would need to import vaccines from China to meet demand.

“As long as mainland China doesn’t get in our way, we can get greater quantities, and more reliable, vaccines from the rest of the world faster,” MAC spokesperson Chiu Chui-cheng told reporters.

“If the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) really cared about the lives of ordinary people, they should stop sending their military aircraft to harrass Taiwan, and let us get on with fighting the pandemic,” Chiu said.

He was responded to recent comments from China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson Zhu Fenglian, who had suggested Taiwanese would be “eagerly looking forward” to getting Chinese vaccines given the current outbreak there.

Reported by Chung Kuang-cheng and Hwang Chun-mei for RFA’s Cantonese and Mandarin Services. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Sources: https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/taiwan-covid19-05192021075303.html

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The president portrayed his overall foreign policy agenda as one that “benefits the middle class.” Biden explained: “That means making sure every nation plays by the same rules in the global economy, including China.”

The president cited his own conversations with President Xi Jinping, with whom he has “spent a lot of time” during his travels abroad. “We welcome the competition,” Biden says he told Xi. “We’re not looking for conflict.” However, Biden was quick to add that he made it “absolutely clear that we will defend America’s interests across the board,” standing up “to unfair trade practices that undercut American workers and American industries, like subsidies to state-owned operations and enterprises and the theft of American technology and intellectual property.” In addition, the president explained, the U.S. will “maintain a strong military presence in the Indo-Pacific, just as we do with NATO in Europe—not to start a conflict, but to prevent one.”

In broad strokes, President Biden’s summary of the Chinese challenge is not all that different from his predecessor’s. President Trump often blasted the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) trade practices, intellectual property theft, and other malign actions. The CCP’s defensive rhetoric remains largely the same as well.

The day after Biden’s speech, China’s foreign ministry spokesman, Wang Wenbin, responded at a press conference. Wang’s talking points were taken straight from the CCP’s playbook, so it’s worth a brief examination of them.

First, Wang asserted that China is following a “path of peaceful development and has been a promoter of world peace,” as well as a “contributor to global development and a defender of international order.” He insisted that Beijing wants only “peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation” with the U.S. Xi has repeatedly stated the same in public. I’d bet Xi said this to Biden during their travels together as well. Of course, the U.S. government, across three administrations now, has taken a different view of the CCP’s intentions. A significant body of evidence indicates the CCP’s designs are not that peaceful, nor is it a “defender” of the international order, which it looks to undermine and transform.

Second, Wang feigned support for democracy. Wang claimed that “democracy is the common value of all mankind, not a ‘patented product’ of one single country.” He went on to assert that no country should be in the business of “imposing” its democratic values on others. This “is nothing but an insult on and a travesty of democratic values, and will only create division, intensify tension and disrupt stability,” Wang said.

Obviously, the CCP has no interest in promoting real democracy. The CCP monopolizes China’s politics as an autocracy. What Wang was really getting at is that the CCP doesn’t want the U.S. or other Western countries to promote their form of democracy first and foremost inside China, but also likely elsewhere.

In contrast, President Biden framed the American rivalry in precisely these ideological terms—as one of autocracies versus democracies. Xi is “deadly earnest about becoming the most significant, consequential nation in the world,” Biden said during his speech before Congress. “He and others—autocrats—think that democracy can’t compete in the 21st century with autocracies because it takes too long to get consensus.” The president then quickly pivoted to an argument in favor of his American Families Plan, portraying it as a way to bolster democracy in the long-term “competition for the future” with the CCP.

Third, Wang allowed that the U.S. and China should cooperate in some fields, but he hastily turned his remarks into a broadside attack on America. Wang claimed that the U.S.—not China—“has repeatedly violated international rules and market principle of fair competition.” He charged the U.S. with pursuing policies that “politicized and ideologized economic and scientific issues, abused state power to hamstring the development of China and other countries, and undermined the interests of many, provoking outrage from the international community.”

With respect to China, close to the exact opposite of what Wang said is true. The U.S. helped build China’s economy under the theory that economic prosperity would necessarily lead to greater political liberalization. Four decades later, that still hasn’t come true. But make no mistake about it: This was the exact argument that was used to justify China’s ascent to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and other policies that integrated the Chinese economy into a worldwide network.

Consider what President Bill Clinton said during a speech in 2000, when he was advocating for China’s admission into the WTO:

By joining the WTO, China is not simply agreeing to import more of our products. It is agreeing to import one of democracy’s most cherished values, economic freedom. The more China liberalizes its economy, the more fully it will liberate the potential of its people—their initiative, their imagination, their remarkable spirit of enterprise. And when individuals have the power, not just to dream, but to realize their dreams, they will demand a greater say.

Twenty-one years later, the U.S. government is no longer counting on democracy sprouting inside China anytime soon. The CCP has taken steps to extinguish Hong Kong’s democratic autonomy and has its eyes on Taiwan, all while clamping down on other forms of dissent across the mainland. China’s admission into the WTO had clear benefits, but it came with downsides as well—including allowing an authoritarian regime to compromise various industries across the West.

Speaking of the struggle between autocracy and democracy, there was a conspicuous omission from President Biden’s speech: Taiwan. Everyone knows that the upstart democracy could become a military flashpoint in the rivalry between Beijing and Washington. It’s still not clear how far President Biden is willing to go in America’s defense of Taiwan, should Xi decide it is time to end the island nation’s autonomy once and for all. As I’ve written previously, there is likely a limit on the American public’s will to expend much blood in defense of Taiwan. And it’s not clear if the U.S. military could even prevent a takeover, should the president decide it’s worth the risk. Still, it is curious that President Biden didn’t mention Taiwan in a speech devoted in no small part to the ideological battle between China’s autocracy and Western democracies.

The omission of any reference to Taiwan is even more noteworthy when one considers what President Biden said he told Xi. “I told him what I’ve said to many world leaders: that America will not back away from our commitments—our commitment to human rights and fundamental freedoms and to our alliances,” Biden claimed. The president continued:

And I pointed out to him: No responsible American president could remain silent when basic human rights are being so blatantly violated. An American president has to represent the essence of what our country stands for. America is an idea—the most unique idea in history: We are created, all of us, equal. It’s who we are, and we cannot walk away from that principle and, in fact, say we’re dealing with the American idea.

That idea is being challenged at home by actors across the political spectrum. And the CCP is all too happy to challenge it abroad.

The post How China Responded to President Biden’s Address to Congress first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

China has been suffering through record rains the past weeks, leading to the worst flooding in the country in decades. There is little relief in sight, and the Yangtze River is now above flood level, according to China’s Ministry of Water Resources. A few days ago, officials admitted that certain “peripheral” structures of the massive Three Gorges Dam deformed due to the building water pressure. Stunning pictures of water being released to relieve pressure are raising the specter of whether the entire dam could fail (some good photos here). Some online satellite photos purporting to show the buckling of the dam, however, should be viewed with skepticism.

Still, the damage that has already occurred from the record deluge is significant, with numerous cities upriver from the dam already flooded. According to the Wall Street Journal:

Some 40 million people in more than two dozen provinces have been affected by the flooding as of July 12, causing more than 80 billion yuan ($11.5 billion) of direct damage to the economy, according to China’s Ministry of Emergency Management. Around 28,000 homes have collapsed, while millions have been displaced and at least 141 people have been declared dead or missing in the floods.

All that would be dwarfed if the Three Gorges Dam failed. The dam was built from 1994 to 2006, at a cost of $31 billion and displacing 1.4 million people for its construction, precisely to lessen the risk of devastating flooding along the Yangtze, a perennial problem in China since ancient times. The river’s basin accounts for nearly half of China’s agricultural output, and it runs through major cities, such as Wuhan, with 10 million people.

Chinese authorities have already evacuated 38 million people downriver. The dam can hold backwaters to a level of 175 meters above sea level; according to the Bureau of Hydrology of the Chanjiang (Yangtze) Water Resources Commission, the latest (Friday) height at the dam was 158.85 meters, down from 164 meters on Tuesday. Yet more rain is predicted, and if smaller, older dams upriver from Three Gorges overflow or fail, then the pressure on the main dam could quickly overwhelm either its capacity or even its structural integrity.

While an outright failure of the dam may not be the primary danger, nonetheless its geopolitical consequences are staggering to contemplate. It would be a black swan of epic proportions, China’s Chernobyl moment. A tsunami-like wave from a breach in the Three Gorges Dam could wipe out millions of acres of farmland right before the autumn harvest, possibly leading to famine-like conditions. As it is also the world’s largest hydroelectric power station, a failure would lead to huge power outages. Low-lying cities of millions along the Yangtze’s banks cities could become uninhabitable and the death toll could be staggering.

China’s heartland manufacturing and inland shipping along the Yangtze, which empties out into the East China Sea at Shanghai, would be significantly affected by downriver flooding, potentially leading to major economic disruption inside China and around the world. The political impact could be enough to destabilize the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), in the same way that Chernobyl was the nail in the coffin of the Soviet Communist Party. Public anger, already stoked by the draconian state response to the coronavirus pandemic that started in Wuhan, could boil over, even if many understand that the rains are an act of nature.

Given the social and political implications of the current flooding, and the specter of a Three Gorges breach, it may not be a complete coincidence that Beijing last week announced its second-largest purchase of U.S. corn ever, to the tune of 1.365 million tons, along with 320,000 tons of winter and spring wheat. From a political perspective, the dam’s failure would be the gravest crisis faced by CCP general secretary Xi Jinping, comparable to the Katrina hurricane that so tarnished George W. Bush’s reputation. Unlike the weakened post-Chernobyl USSR, however, a destabilized CCP could well become a more dangerous one, looking to divert public anger towards “enemies” such as Taiwan, Japan, and the United States.

That Xi has not visited the dam or seemingly made it a public priority may mean that he’s been assured by Chinese engineers and hydrologists that the dam can withstand the current deluge. A long-overdue rebalancing in U.S.–China relations is taking place, and a hard-edged policy of reciprocity is entirely proper in dealing with Beijing’s endemic predatory and abusive behavior. However, for humanitarian, economic, and geopolitical reasons, the world should obviously hope the Three Gorges Dam holds. 2020 has already been enough of an annus terribilis.

MICHAEL AUSLIN is the Payson J. Treat Distinguished Research Fellow in Contemporary Asia at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and the author of ASIA’S NEW GEOPOLITICS. @michaelauslin

Source: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-risks-of-chinas-three-gorges-dams-flooding/

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Beijing announced sanctions Monday on U.S. officials and a government agency in retaliation for ones leveled last week by the Trump administration against Chinese officials deemed responsible for abuses in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).

China’s Foreign Ministry said the sanctions target republican senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, republican representative Chris Smith of New Jersey, Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback, and the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China advisory panel, according to media reports.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters at a regular news briefing in Beijing that the move was in response to Washington’s “wrong moves” over the situation in Xinjiang, including the unprecedented step of bringing sanctions against a member of the powerful Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

“We urge the U.S. to immediately revoke the wrong decision and stop any words and deeds that interfere in China’s internal affairs and harm China’s interests,” Hua said.

While she did not provide details on what restrictions the sanctions involved, Hua warned that China “will make a further response depending on the development of the situation.”

Rubio is the co-chair of the CECC, while Smith is its vice ranking member. They, along with Cruz and Brownback, have made repeated statements critical of China’s policies in the XUAR, where authorities are believed to have held up to 1.8 million people in a vast network of internment camps since April 2017.

Beijing describes the three-year-old network of camps as voluntary “vocational centers,” but reporting by RFA’s Uyghur Service and other media outlets shows that detainees are mostly held against their will in cramped and unsanitary conditions, where they are forced to endure inhumane treatment and political indoctrination.

In a statement on Monday, Cruz said the sanctions suggest that the CCP “is terrified and lashing out.”

“They forced over one million Uighurs into concentration camps and engaged in ethnic cleansing, including horrific forced abortions and sterilizations,” he said, referring to a recent report by German researcher Adrian Zenz which concluded that an uptick in “family planning” measures in the XUAR amounts to genocide, according to United Nations definitions.

Cruz said China has been perpetrating “egregious human rights atrocities that cannot be tolerated” in the XUAR and must be held accountable.

He dismissed China’s move as largely symbolic, noting that “I don’t have plans to travel to the authoritarian regime that covered up the coronavirus pandemic and endangered millions of lives worldwide.”

US sanctions to ‘continue’

China’s sanctions follow a July 9 announcement by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that he had barred Chen Quanguo, the Party Secretary of the XUAR; Zhu Hailun, Party Secretary of the Xinjiang Political and Legal Committee (XPLC); and Wang Mingshan, the current Party Secretary of the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau (XPSB), as well as their family members, from entry into the U.S. “for their involvement in gross violations of human rights” in the region.

On the same day, the Department of Treasury said it is blocking the assets of the XPSB, as well as Chen, Zhu, Wang, and Huo Liujun—a former security official in the region—for their roles in serious human rights abuse under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act. Chen, 64, is the first member of the CCP’s elite 25-member Politburo to be targeted by U.S. sanctions.

“The United States will not stand idly by as the CCP carries out human rights abuses targeting Uyghurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and members of other minority groups in Xinjiang, to include forced labor, arbitrary mass detention, and forced population control, and attempts to erase their culture and Muslim faith,” Pompeo said at the time.

China’s sanctions also came a day after the Washington Post published an editorial by National Security Adviser Robert C. O’Brien in which he warned Beijing that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump will continue to punish Beijing for its actions in the XUAR.

O’Brien noted that, in addition to last week’s sanctions, the administration earlier this month announced a business advisory for U.S. companies with supply-chain exposure to entities engaged in the CCP’s use of forced labor and other human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

The White House has also imposed export restrictions against dozens of Chinese government entities and companies complicit in those abuses, he said, while moving to block the illegal import of goods produced by firms known to use Uyghur forced labor.

“As long as these human rights violations continue, the Trump administration will respond,” O’Brien wrote.

“If the past century has shown us anything, it is that dangerous ideologies backed by powerful states rarely confine their malign conduct within their own borders. The United States will thus continue to shine the light of truth on Xinjiang—for the Uighurs and for us all.”

Rising tensions

The tit-for-tat sanctions come amid tense relations between the U.S. and China, with the Trump administration taking multiple jabs at Beijing in recent months for its lack of transparency in handling the coronavirus pandemic, trade policy, and expansive territorial claims.

The president has also said he would take steps to remove special trade status for Hong Kong and sanction both Mainland and Hong Kong officials, citing Beijing’s encroachment on the territory’s autonomy, including through its recent imposition of a draconian security law on the city.

Over the weekend, the U.S. Department of State issued a security alert to U.S. citizens in China, saying they face a heightened risk of arbitrary detention due to the “enforcement of local laws for purposes other than maintaining law and order,” in an apparent reference to the National Security Law for Hong Kong.

Article 22 of China’s National Security Law for Hong Kong bans anyone from “seriously interfering in, disrupting or undermining the performance of duties and functions in accordance with the law by the body of central power of the People’s Republic of China or the body of power of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region by force or threat of force or other unlawful means.”

In its alert, the State Department warned that U.S. citizens could be detained in China without access to consular services or information about their alleged crime, subjected to lengthy interrogations or detention for reasons related to “state security,” and face arrest for sending private electronic messages critical of the Chinese government.

Source: https://www.rfa.org/english/news/uyghur/retaliation-07132020135632.html

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