A bipartisan pair of senators wants to aim an economic “spear” at Chinese communist officials who tighten Hong Kong’s arms-length relationship with the mainland regime through sanctions legislation that could slash the Chinese financial system.
“We felt it was necessary to take a step that would actually target the offenders, target the people in Beijing who are responsible for this denial of these fundamental rights,” Sen. Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican, told reporters Tuesday.
Chinese officials intend to expand the communist mainland government’s power to crack down on Hong Kong protesters, through national security legislation that local dissidents and U.S. observers believe will doom the former British colony’s historic freedoms. The lawmakers believe that the strength of the proposed legislation lies in the so-called secondary sanctions, which would blacklist the Chinese banks that do business with the offending communist officials.
“That is the spear in this piece of legislation to be aimed at banks in China that are complicit in supporting the individuals who are gutting the freedoms in Hong Kong,” Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democratic member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said during the call with Toomey. “So this is designed to hit the Chinese Communist Party and the individuals involved in these decisions where it hurts.”
That proposal could expand President Trump’s range of options for economic retaliation. China’s plan spurred expectations that the United States will revoke Hong Kong’s special status and subject the territory to all the tariffs and other economic restrictions that apply to mainland China. That tactic could harm the Chinese economy, but some American analysts worry it could bind Hong Kong more tightly to Beijing, while state-run media are mocking Trump’s willingness to respond.
“It is only bluffing,” China’s hawkish Global Times opined Tuesday. “The White House claimed it would impose sanctions on China, but the tools and resources at its disposal are fewer than those it could mobilize before the outbreak.”
Van Hollen and Toomey’s legislation might avoid the pitfalls of revoking Hong Kong’s special status while putting more pressure on Trump to take action. The legislation structures the punitive measures as “mandatory” sanctions, meaning that the administration would have limited discretion in whether they decided to impose or waive the sanctions at a delicate time for the president’s relationship with Xi Jinping, the Chinese communist leader, and broader U.S.-China trade ties.
“I would suspect that Democrats are attempting to call Trump’s bluff,” Foundations for Defense of Democracies adjunct fellow Craig Singleton told the Washington Examiner. “They’re attempting to say, is Trump willing to jeopardize his personal relationship with Xi by signing this legislation, or will he demur when a bill is actually put in front of him that is bipartisan? And that is, I would think, probably the key political play there.”
The Trump administration has resisted congressional efforts to blacklist Chinese banks in recent years, even those involved in helping North Korea evade sanctions imposed over the regime’s nuclear weapons program. Van Hollen maintained that the financial penalties are essential to the success of the bill.
“The key piece of ammunition here is the banking provisions,” he said. “We want to make sure that the government of China understands that this is serious, the prospects of this happening are very real and that there’ll be strong pressure in the United States to fully implement it if the Chinese Communist Party moves forward.”
Toomey agreed while raising the possibility that the threat of such a sweeping sanctions package might deter Beijing from proceeding with the crackdown. “China is obviously a huge and incredibly complex society, although it’s not a democratic society,” he said. “The government is certainly subject to political pressure. And when business interests and financial interests realize that this tool can be deployed, I think there is going to be a whole new pressure on the government not to trigger this kind of response.”
