My Take | How Hong Kong really threatens America’s security and economy
- Ongoing multi-year propaganda campaign against China is US modus operandi to demonise adversaries and prepare domestic public for war
Puny Hong Kong is a threat to the mighty United States? Apparently, it is, and not just any threat, but “an unusual and extraordinary threat” at that. That’s what US President Joe Biden declared this week when he again extended the “emergency status” of the city.
The executive order was first made by his predecessor Donald Trump in response to the national security law Beijing imposed on Hong Kong following the anti-government riots in 2019.
“The situation with respect to Hong Kong, including recent actions taken by the People’s Republic of China to fundamentally undermine Hong Kong’s autonomy, continues to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States,” Biden said.
How does that compute? Hong Kong’s autonomy? There is no such thing, at best, it’s a “high degree of autonomy”. But how high or low? Well, Washington says let it be the judge.
The world’s sole superpower does what it likes. It unilaterally declares this country, China, is committing genocide but not Israel. It decides some children, who are Ukrainian, are worthy of life but not others, who are Palestinian. And so, during the Nato summit in Washington this week, the US and its key allies condemned a Russian bombing of a children’s hospital in Kyiv that killed scores of people while remaining silent about an Israeli bombing of a school in Gaza that killed scores of people.
Under the executive order, the city is considered just another mainland city and faces the same sanctions or restrictions such as the ban on the transfer of sensitive US technologies. Holders of Hong Kong passports face the same restrictions as mainlanders who wish to travel to the US.