US calls off speech by former Hong Kong envoy amid fear of derailing trade talks

A scheduled speech at a Washington think tank by the former United States consul general to Hong Kong has been postponed on the orders of the US State Department, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

Kurt Tong, who retired as Washington’s envoy to Hong Kong and Macau last week, was to deliver a keynote speech on Wednesday at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) to address Hong Kong’s relationship with China and comment on the direction of US economic policy in the region.

The State Department’s directive follows a string of similar moves by the US administration to dampen or put off public remarks by officials that could anger the Chinese government and derail US-China trade talks that restarted in late June.

During his three-year tenure, Tong on numerous occasions publicly warned that Hong Kong’s autonomy was increasingly at risk of being eroded under the “one country, two systems” framework, a position that put him at loggerheads with Beijing.

More recently, he had expressed his concern about the impact on Hong Kong’s “political fabric” of proposed amendments to the city’s extradition laws, which would have allowed the transfer of fugitives to mainland China.