Congresswoman Defies Warnings from Pro-Democracy Groups to Attend Hong Kong–Sponsored Event

Other New York Democrats, including Mayor Eric Adams, participated, while Governor Kathy Hochul’s office sent a representative.

C ongresswoman Grace Meng (d., n.y.) attended and spoke at the opening ceremony of a festival in Queens backed by Hong Kong’s authoritarian government earlier this month, in defiance of pleas from pro-democracy campaigners.

Other politicians who attended included New York mayor Eric Adams and many lower-level city and state officials, such as Elaine Fan, an aide in Governor Kathy Hochul’s administration who presented a proclamation to the organizers. It’s not clear if they were previously aware of the event’s backing by the Hong Kong government, though the affiliation of several Hong Kong agencies — including the participation of several Hong Kong officials in its host committee — is prominently listed on the event’s website. Meng, however, the only member of Congress to have attended, received a letter in advance detailing the event’s links to Hong Kong.

The Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival is an annual boat race that takes place over two days in Flushing, Queens. This year’s iteration of the event, on August 12 and 13, featured a series of boat races involving teams from several corporations, New York government agencies including Adams’s office, and the Chinese consulate general of New York.

Organizers cast it as a cultural event. Chinese consul general Huang Ping said during the festival’s welcome ceremony that this was the first time his organization had formed a team to participate in the race. During his remarks, he also said that traditional Chinese cultural events such as the dragon-boat race are critical to promoting Sino–U.S. exchanges, according to the consulate general’s website.

But campaigners and lawmakers warn that it is in fact part of a Chinese Communist Party effort that leverages soft cultural events to whitewash the authoritarian crackdown in Hong Kong that Beijing set in motion in 2020.

The participation of Meng, who represents Queens, and Adams in the event is “shameful,” Frances Hui, policy and advocacy coordinator for the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong, told National Review. “It also shows the scale of the CCP’s penetration into American politics,” she said. Hui pointed out that the Hong Kong government has detained some 1,500 political prisoners since 2020. Recently, it issued massive bounties for information leading to the arrests of eight pro-democracy figures who fled the city as the crackdown began.

Though the race has taken place several times previously, the Hong Kong–government ties of the nonprofit group that organizes the race, which is called Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival New York, are receiving more scrutiny in the wake of the Hong Kong government’s repression.

Henry Wan, the group’s chairman, told NR that the event has taken place since 1991 and that “it is a unique Asian heritage sporting and community event in a multicultural celebration, it is strictly a cultural festival, nonpolitical.” He directed NR to news clippings about the event, including one article by a writer at Forbes — which is listed as a sponsor of the race — leaning heavily on Wan’s framing.

But the nonprofit’s host committee includes five Hong Kong–government officials.

Two of those officials work for the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, which represents the Hong Kong government in the U.S., and one of those two is the outgoing director of the New York office. Historically, HKETO has been seen as a quasi-diplomatic entity independent of Beijing until the Chinese government stripped Hong Kong of its relative political autonomy in 2020.

Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have subsequently introduced legislation that could result in the revocation of HKETO’s legal status in the U.S., arguing that it merely grants the Chinese Communist Party an additional and unwarranted presence in the U.S. The office is also part of a vast, well-funded lobbying operation that works in Washington, according to the Hong Kong Democracy Council.

“It’s no secret Hong Kong’s government officials and HKETOs serve as mouthpieces for China’s genocidal regime,” Senator Marco Rubio, a lead author of the HKETO bill, told NR. “The mayor of New York City and lawmakers who attended the Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival chose to align themselves with the oppressors rather than stand in support of the victims of the Chinese Communist Party’s human-rights violations.”

The Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office of New York said in a statement to NR that it used to organize the race itself, from the first event in 1991 until the nonprofit took over that responsibility in 1995 with support from HKETO and corporate sponsors. “Over the past three decades, the HKDBF-NY has grown and is now one of the largest multicultural events in New York and the largest festival of its kind in the U.S.”

HKETO also referred NR to a statement made by the Hong Kong government in which it “strongly condemned” the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for passing the HKETO Certification Act in July.

On the dragon-boat festival’s board of directors, there are representatives from HKETO, the Hong Kong Trade and Development Council, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, and the Hong Kong Tourism Board, which is running an international tourism campaign dubbed Hello Hong Kong and intends to attract tourists back to the city following its crackdown and stringent Covid controls. None of the other Hong Kong–government offices responded to requests for comment about their roles in organizing the boat race.

Meanwhile, supporters and sponsors of the event include several U.S. and Hong Kong companies. Some of the biggest are financial institutions, including the Shanghai Commercial Bank, HSBC, which has frozen the accounts of individuals involved in the protest movement, and the Chinese-state-owned Bank of China.

Citing the event’s Hong Kong–government backing, a coalition of New York-area pro-democracy groups, led by NY4HK, Lion Rock Café, and NYC852HKer, wrote to Meng and other city officials including Parks and Recreation commissioner Susan Donoghue in July, urging them to boycott it.

“The Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival of New York appears to essentially be run or controlled by the Hong Kong government, which is responsible for widespread human rights abuses against Hong Kongers, many of whom now make their home in New York City,” the letter read.

That letter also went to several New York City council members and other Adams-administration officials, though the pro-democracy groups mainly targeted officials in Queens and did not contact Adams or Hochul, according to Anna Cheung, the NY4HK leader who drafted the letter.

Cheung told NR last week that none of the officials she addressed had responded to the letters. “I am disappointed as many local politicians joined the event as I guess they thought this is only a cultural event,” she said.

When NR approached Meng spokesman Jordan Goldes with questions, including one about why the lawmaker attended the event after pro-democracy advocates sent her a letter detailing its Hong Kong–government backing, he declined to comment, replying only by demanding a list of the other officials from whom NR was seeking comment.

“At this delicate geopolitical time, especially when the crackdown in Hong Kong and other parts of China continues, American politicians and local officials should carefully reevaluate their interactions with organizations that are either directly or indirectly controlled by the CCP,” Hui said.