China has sanctioned top officials at two US bodies that promote democracy worldwide for “blatantly” meddling in matters concerning Hong Kong, the Communist Chinese Party announced Monday.
John Knaus, senior director of the National Endowment for Democracy, Manpreet Anand, a regional director of the National Democratic Institute, Kelvin Sit, NDI’s program director for Hong Kong, and Crystal Rosario, a specialist at the NDI, are now banned from entering mainland China, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said Monday.
It is not clear if this ban will impact their ability to enter Hong Kong itself, however the news comes as US-Chinese relations plunge to new lows.
In June of this year, China approved a sweeping and contentious national security law that permitted Communist Party authorities to crack down on “subversive and secessionist activity” in Hong Kong.
The legislation was passed amid warnings and criticism both in Hong Kong and internationally that it would be used to curb opposition voices and dissent.
Many criticized the law as Beijing’s boldest effort to date to crack down on the territory, which has maintained a semi-autonomous system separate from that of mainland China since it was handed back to the Communist nation by the British in 1997.
In the months since the law’s passage, the US and China have offered tit-for-tat responses to one another’s efforts, with both sanctioning one another’s officials.
Those sanctions appeared to actually have an impact on one Chinese government official: Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, who admitted in an interview over the weekend that she keeps “piles of cash” at home because the US sanctions had left her unable to have a bank account.
“Sitting in front of you is a chief executive of the Hong Kong SAR [Special Administrative Region] who has no banking services made available to her. I’m using cash for all the things. I have piles of cash at home, the government is paying me cash for my salary because I don’t have a bank account,” Lam told HKIBC, an English-language news channel in the city.
In their announcement of the new sanctions Monday, Hua said, “Hong Kong affairs are purely China’s internal affairs. The US should immediately stop interfering in Hong Kong affairs and China’s internal affairs, and refrain from going further and further down the wrong path.”
With Post wires