On Wednesday, the Foreign Ministry of China accused the United States after Senate solidly passed a bill supporting protestors of Hong Kong. According to the online statement in the Chinese language, Geng Shuang, a spokesperson of the foreign ministry, said that the “HK Human Rights and Democracy Act” interferes in the domestic affairs of China. However, China straightly condemns the act of interference. Now, that bill moves to the House, that previously approved its own kind of the bill in late October. The two compartments of Congress have to sort out differences in their bills before sending it to the United States President Donald Trump.
Furthermore, the upper house of Congress also passed another bill banning specific munition exports to the police of Hong Kong. Hong Kong is a former British colony, and in 1997, it returned to Chinese rule. A region with special administration in China, the city functions under a structure of “one country, two systems,” which grants its inhabitants legal as well as economic freedoms that people in mainland China don’t have. In a statement, the foreign ministry of China said that it made stern representations to an embassy official of the United States in Beijing on Wednesday after the projected legislation passed in the Senate.
It said Ma Zhaoxu, Vice Foreign Minister urgently call on William Klein, the counselor of the embassy minister of the United States for political affairs. Zhaoxu tells Klein that issues of Hong Kong are the intimate affairs of China, and demands that the United States stop interfering. On Wednesday, the government of Hong Kong expressed deep guilt over the passage of the proposed act.
Hong Kong the Special Administrative Region of China
A government spokesperson stated that the “Hong Kong Human Rights & Democracy Act” and the other act on HK are unwarranted and unnecessary. Moreover, they will also damage the relations along with common interests between the United States and Hong Kong. The spokesman added, since the return to the motherland, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) has working out the ‘Hong Kong people managing Hong Kong’ and a high degree of autonomy in firm accordance with the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’s Basic Law of the People’s Republic China. The ‘one country, two systems’ principle has wholly and successfully implemented.
Copyright: CNBC
Read Also: The Largest Trade Agreement of the world could be signed in 2020
China and the U.S. likely to reach Phase one of Trade Deal
Director of the Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute on the United States and China, Robert Daly said that instead of the differences over the bill, China and the United States are still possible to reach phase one of the trade deal. Daly says that if a phase one trade deal is in the offing, it’s just about specifically going to be an agreement on terms of Beijing; somewhat that Beijing will want – promises and purchases, not an accord reckoning on the structural process. China might need that pact even if it felt insulted over Hong Kong. The United States is not likely to withdraw the special trading status of Hong Kong for now.
Washington treats Hong Kong as a separate area from mainland China under the United States-Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992, even after the previous British colony transferred to Chinese rule in 1997. That includes treating HK as a separate customs territory. So, Hong Kong exports to the United States are not related to the tariffs that the administration of Trump slap on Chinese goods from mainland China. Daly expressed at the Morgan Stanley Asia Pacific Summit that he didn’t think they would straightly withdraw that relationship until China went in with equipped forces weather through the People’s Armed Police or through People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
The Hong Kong Human Rights & Democracy Act still has to reconciled and signed into the law by the President of the United States – a procedure that might slow-walk. Concerning the clean-up activity of PLA on the Hong Kong streets last week, Daly termed it as a short-term step that Beijing took to get people used to seeing the PLA on the Hong Kong streets “even though seeing them in a comparatively benign light of young men & women clearing bricks.”
Ben Bland, Director at Australian think tank Lowy Institute about the current situation in Hong Kong
Daly says that it is also gesturing to the Chinese people to see the People’s Liberation army out there as worthy, as positive as opposed to the anarchy and the Hong Kong protesters itself. Sidewise from the political gesturing within China, it might also be a provisional move to further involvement of either the PLA or People’s Armed Police. Director at Australian think tank Lowy Institute, Ben Bland, said both Hong Kong and Beijing scrambling over what to do regarding the city’s situation. He said, nobody really expected we would face this level of disobedience, but also unity from the democracy supporters in Hong Kong. Most probably, it trapped the government of Hong Kong off-guard. It caught Beijing unaware; also, it caught the rest of the world off-guard.
Bland said it assumes more Beijing misunderstanding in Hong Kong. The one thing that anyone can expect, and they specified that they would squeeze Hong Kong harder on several fronts more trials, more firm action from the state police, and in fact, more straight control over Hong Kong from the Beijing authorities. Beijing said on Tuesday that courts of Hong Kong have no right to rule on the constitutionality of legislation under the Basic Law of the city.
That statement came just one day after the special administrative region, Hong Kong’s High Court ruled that a bar on the wearing of face masks throughout public protests was unlawful. In addition, Bland said that according to him they want a Hong Kong that’s loyal as well as quiet and does what it’s told and as to in what way they get there that depends on how people of Hong Kong react and up to now they really digging their heels in.
