While chairing a congressional hearing today, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), Chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), called for the immediate closure of all Hong Kong consular outposts in the United States now that “the distinction between the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong has been obliterated.”

            “We no longer have rule of law in Hong Kong, but rule by law—laws that are imposed upon the people of Hong Kong by their communist overlords in Beijing,” said Smith, who has chaired over 85 congressional hearings and markups on the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) egregious human rights abuses.

            “I see no reason why Communist China should have three additional consular outposts in the United States, as Hong Kong no longer is distinct from the mainland,” said Smith, the prime House sponsor of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO) Certification Act (HR 1103), which would revoke the diplomatic privileges and immunities granted to the official Hong Kong representative offices in the United States.

            Smith’s hearing included compelling testimony from Sebastien Lai—the son of renowned media entrepreneur and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai, who founded the popular independent Chinese language newspaper Apple Daily and has been imprisoned in Hong Kong since December 2020.

            “What happened to my father, to Next Digital and to Apple Daily should sound the alarm bells for any business operating in Hong Kong,” said Sebastien Lai. “What happened to my father could happen to anyone, to any organization. For as long as my father remains in prison, Hong Kong is not a safe place to do business. For as long as the National Security Law and other laws are used to target business and organizations considered to undermine the CCP, Hong Kong is not a safe place to do business.”

            Entitled “One City, Two Legal Systems: Political Prisoners and the Erosion of the Rule of Law in Hong Kong,” the CECC hearing comes amid ramped-up incarceration of pro-democracy leaders by Hong Kong authorities after the CCP unilaterally imposed a national security law in June 2020 that has destroyed Hong Kong’s judicial independence.

            Also testifying at the hearing was a panel of expert witnesses, including Kevin Yam, Senior Fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Asian Law; Brian Kern, a writer, researcher and activist who has been involved in the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement for 15 years; and Anna Kwok, Executive Director of the Hong Kong Democracy Council.

            “What we have witnessed in Hong Kong is death by a thousand cuts from Beijing to Hong Kong’s rule of law and judicial independence,” said Kevin Yam.

            “The only countries incarcerating political prisoners at rates faster than Hong Kong’s over the past three years are Burma and Belarus. Hardly beacons of rule of law,” said Brian Kern, noting the close to 50 percent increase in political prisoners in Hong Kong from 1,014 to 1,457 in the past year alone.

            “Political imprisonment isn’t an entirely new phenomenon in Hong Kong, but mass political imprisonment is: At the start of the protests in June 2019, there were 26 political prisoners,” Kern added. “We’ve gone from 26 then to 1,014 in May 2022 to 1,457 today.”

            “Within 25 years, Hong Kong has descended from being a symbol of a vibrant civil society in East Asia, to the epitome of another failed international deal negotiated with the People’s Republic of China,” said Anna Kwok.

            “American businesses have now been put on notice that rule of law in Hong Kong is dead,” Smith said. “We are going to look closely at the actions of American companies like PayPal and Stripe, which according to one of our witnesses, are terminating services to pro-democracy groups in Hong Kong,” said Smith, referring to Kwok’s testimony. 

            “And we are also going to look at the role played by Tik Tok in interfering with the advertising for and playing of the documentary ‘The Hong Konger: Jimmy Lai’s Extraordinary Struggle for Freedom,’” Smith added.

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