US leverage larger than China might recognize HoonTing 雲程＠Taipei Times 20200724

US leverage larger than China might recognize    HoonTing 雲程＠Taipei Times 20200724

On Tuesday last week, the US Hong Kong Autonomy Act took effect, paving the way for targeted sanctions against mainland Chinese and Hong Kong officials, in response to Beijing’s imposition of national security legislation on the territory.

 

The earlier US-Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992 gives US presidents the authority to revoke special treatment afforded to Hong Kong if it were to become insufficiently autonomous from China due to Beijing reneging on its obligations under the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration.

 

Beijing has never cared what the international community thinks about its failure to respect an international treaty.  It believes that once Hong Kong is fully under China’s control, no one will care.

 

It would be a mistake to believe this is all Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) doing.  According to the memoirs of then-British prime minister Margret Thatcher, during a 1982 UK-China summit, then-Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) threatened that China’s military could walk in and capture Hong Kong in an afternoon.

 

Thatcher told him that he could do so, but the world would then see the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) true colors.  Thatcher said that only then Deng became more accommodating.

 

On July 1, the day the national security law for Hong Kong came into force, the Japanese daily Sankei Shimbun carried the headline: “Beijing has parked invisible tanks in Hong Kong.”

 

The world now understands the true nature of the CCP: It is still hell-bent on exporting its brand of Maoist revolutionary communism.

 

US sanctions against China could include prohibiting targeted individuals or institutions from buying, selling or possessing real estate or financial assets, as well as becoming a primary dealer of US government debt instruments and operating as a repository for US government funds.

 

The prohibition of specific individuals from entering the US is simply the hors d’oeuvre. The act even places an embargo on the export of dual-use military and civilian US technology to Hong Kong.

 

During times of national crisis, the US constitution allows the president to expand their powers almost on par with that of a dictator.  During the height of World War I, to facilitate the imposition of sanctions on the Central Powers, the US Senate in 1917 passed the Trading with the Enemy Act.

 

The act gives the US president the authority to impose wide-ranging sanctions against an enemy nation, but also, to varying degrees, against an enemy’s allies, third-party nations and even organizations and individuals — even immigrant who have become US citizens, if they are suspected of disloyalty, the act provides the legal basis for sanctions.

 

The act extends far beyond the limited reach of the Hong Kong Autonomy Act.

 

The 1917 act was never repealed and used during World War II against Japan following its attack on Pearl Harbor.  It remains in effect today.

 

However, it is ill-suited to counter the threat from China: Under international law, the definition of an “enemy” is predicated on a declaration of war and the two or more nations involved being “in a state of war.”

 

As such, Washington must use other available statutory instruments, such as the 1933 Emergency Banking Act and the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

 

Many people are under the misapprehension that China controls massive amounts of global debt and, most notably, US economic debt.

 

However, assets and debt are two sides of the same coin: once the situation is reversed, it will become political capital for Washington.

 

HoonTing is a political commentator.

Translated by Edward Jones