On June 12, the Hong Kong authorities carried out a joint operation with Chinese national security officials in the city, going down to the houses of six people and the office of an organization suspected of “collusion with a foreign country or with external elements to endanger national security”. A few days earlier, Hong Kong police warned against the download of a “seditious” mobile video game considered to be “in danger of national security”. And on June 10, the city manager John Lee said that Hong Kong will intensify the projections of “national security” of food and entertainment establishments.
Since the Chinese central government adopted a controversial law in 2020 in response to generalized anti-establishments in the previous year, Hong Kong regularly transformed a place known for the more free expression to that which Benedict Rogers, a British human rights activist focused on Asia, described last month as a “police state”.
When the law, which penalizes a group of actions deemed critical of Hong Kong and China, was adopted, those responsible for both parties in the United States at the time considered a violation of democratic rights and the United States has imposed sanctions to try to mitigate the effects.
The administration of Trump’s second mandate, however, did not say little about what is happening in Hong Kong. Secretary of state Marco Rubio said in March that “Beijing had broken its promises to the people of Hong Kong” in the midst of repression, and on March 31, the State Department sanctioned six people linked to the erosion of freedom in Hong Kong, including national security officials and the former city police commissioner.
But criticisms say that the American response seems to stop there, and the last wave of actions in June was not addressed.
Tormented around the world can be useful in Hong Kong to accelerate its repression. Eric Yan-Ho Lai, a researcher at the Georgetown Center for Asian Law, told Time that “increasing geopolitical tensions, in particular between the United States and China, favored the government of Hong Kong to extend national security governance in the city.”
LAI also said that the latest developments show that Hong Kong officials have since moved to regulatory approaches “led by management” to suppress dissent, rather than stopping en masse.
As part of the administration of Trump’s second mandate, American policy has so far focused on China, Hong Kong, often gathered with the continent. For example, an in -depth examination of the Chinese students’ visas also covered those of Hong Kong. Hong Kong was also included in American prices on Chinese products.
Experts previously told Time that the administration of the second term of Trump, in the hope of negotiating with China on priorities such as trade, could avoid measures aimed at non -economic areas, such as national democratic concerns and human rights of China, which could disrupt Trump’s relations with Chinese President XI.
Ja Ian Chong, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore, says in time that he thinks that members of the Trump administration as Rubio are “aware” of what is happening in Hong Kong, but that the administration is “the most targeted” at the moment on his own domestic questions.
On this front, Beijing can also benefit from it, the observers have noted in recent days, as increasingly authoritarian movements by the Trump administration, in particular the sending of troops to repress the demonstrations to Los Angeles earlier this month and the organization of a military parade during the weekend, threw the United States as comparatively hypocritical and weak, according to Chinese media. Said a point of sale managed by the state on the dull parade on Saturday: “Democracy is in trouble in the mud.”
As Alex Colville and David Bandurski said of the Chinese media project: “Trump’s attack on democratic standards is an unexpected gift for Chinese leaders, and which can be more expensive than any trade war or diplomatic dead end.”
