Members of Congress reintroduced a bill that takes aim at the Hong Kong government’s bullying of U.S. companies in its jurisdiction. The Hong Kong Business and Transparency Act comes amid a flurry of other legislation targeting the city’s authoritarian government.
The Hong Kong Business and Transparency Act was first introduced last year by Representatives John Curtis (R., Utah) and Scott Peters (D., Calif.). It mandates that the Commerce Department compile a report detailing instances in which the Hong Kong government issues demands to U.S. firms.
In recent years, as Beijing has dismantled the relative autonomy that Hong Kong once enjoyed, firms such as Apple and Google have been subject to Hong Kong’s censorship and surveillance demands. For instance, a 2019 version of Apple’s iOS removed the Taiwanese flag from iPhones in Hong Kong and Macau, while Google last year faced pressure to hide search results for a song associated with Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. Hong Kong chief executive John Lee requested during a press conference that Google manipulate its search results, saying that it is “possible to rearrange the search results via advertisements and remove [the offending] items.”
Now, as Hong Kong emerges from the draconian Covid-control measures to which it was previously subjected, members of Congress are looking for new ways to counteract the Chinese Communist Party’s crackdown there.
The bill “will establish transparency on what information the government of Hong Kong is requesting so that we can protect not only businesses but also protect Hong Kongers,” Curtis said in a press release.
It’s also a matter of protecting the Americans who have remained in Hong Kong in the wake of the Covid pandemic and Beijing’s crackdown. The U.S. consul general to Hong Kong and Macau, Greg May, recently said that 15,000 Americans have left the city over the past two years. That’s equivalent to 20 percent of the 2019 American population of Hong Kong.
Yet those who remain there are dealing with an emboldened government that answers directly to Beijing. Peters pointed out that his bill “would help Congress better understand how recent events in Hong Kong touch the lives of U.S. citizens who live there and affect U.S. companies operating there.”