It would be a major mistake for the U.S. to allow it, undercutting every other action to punish Beijing and its Hong Kong partners for crushing democracy.
Since the Chinese Communist Party’s crackdown in Hong Kong, the city’s Beijing-backed leadership has weathered a battery of sanctions. That leadership is now working to rehabilitate its international reputation.
Hong Kong officials have had some early successes, recently enticing a group of U.S. financial-industry executives to attend a conference in Hong Kong, thus shifting the conversation away from the Party’s draconian enforcement of Beijing’s line. And in Bangkok this week, Hong Kong chief executive John Lee made the rounds at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, an international trade forum, to drum up trade activity for his city.
Next year’s forum is slated to take place in San Francisco, and Lee hopes to send a delegation, presumably with a similar goal in mind, according to Hong Kong’s Ming Pao newspaper:
CE John Lee, who is sanctioned by the US, stressed Hong Kong will “without any doubt” support and participate in the APEC summit to be held in SF, USA next year. https://t.co/jJtEm67jsU
— Alvin Lum (@alvinllum) November 20, 2022
In that instance, however, Lee himself would be barred from joining the delegation. As part of the initial U.S. response to the Party’s assault on Hong Kong’s semi-autonomy, Washington subjected Lee, at the time the city’s top law-enforcement official, to sanctions that prevent him from entering the U.S.
The State Department, however, has not seemed to rule out the participation of a delegation from Hong Kong in next year’s forum, per Ming Pao:
On whether Lee can participate APEC summit in SF, US State Dept told @mingpaocom that the US “will diligently work towards participation of all delegations in APEC events in accordance with U.S. laws and regulations and on the basis of the spirit and principles of APEC.”
— Alvin Lum (@alvinllum) November 20, 2022
State could theoretically authorize the participation of a delegation that does not include officials who have been placed on the Treasury Department’s Specially Designated Nationals list. That would be a major mistake, undercutting every other action the U.S. has taken to punish Beijing and its partners in Hong Kong for the arbitrary imprisonment of pro-democracy icons such as Jimmy Lai and the shuttering of independent newspapers.
Given the pace at which the Biden administration is seeking a diplomatic reset with Beijing in the wake of the president’s recent meeting with Xi Jinping, however, the idea that State might do this is not so far-fetched.