During today’s Chinese Foreign Ministry press briefing, spokesman Guo Jiakun responded harshly to the U.S. State Department’s March 31 announcement of sanctions on six Beijing and Hong Kong individuals for “degrading Hong Kong’s autonomy,” and the simultaneous release of the “Hong Kong Policy Act Report,” which Guo charged “is composed of falsehoods and disinformation.” (See separate report It is, he added, “a vicious attack on China’s One Country, Two Systems, the Law on Safeguarding National Security in the HKSAR (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region) and the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance.” The report seeks to “smear Hong Kong’s democracy, rule of law, exercise of freedoms, and human rights conditions. It interferes in Hong Kong’s handling of national security cases and mischaracterizes the extraterritorial application of the law.”
The sanctions levied on officials of the Hong Kong government and the Special Administrative Region, named in a separate State Department Fact Sheet, constitute gross interference in China’s internal affairs, Guo charged. He discussed the scope of China’s National Security Law, its implementation in accordance with international law, and its justified use against violent rioters in Hong Kong. Pointedly, he noted that in contrast, the U.S. keeps “overstretching and abusing the concept of national security, stepping up illegal unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction,” while “smearing and attacking” the efforts of the central government and the HKSAR for upholding national security in Hong Kong. This, he said, exposes the U.S.’s “hypocritical double standard and domineering nature.” He vowed that China will take “resolute countermeasures” in response to the U.S.’s “erroneous measures.”
