As predicted, China will be the next run to 300. This is huge.
May 21, 2020
Updated 9:54 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON — China’s plans to impose sweeping new security powers over Hong Kong could inflict even more damage on already fraught relations between Washington and Beijing, and force President Trump into uncomfortable decisions about whether to maintain his self-described friendly ties with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping.
The proposal announced in Beijing on Thursday provoked outrage in Congress, where bipartisan support grew quickly for new sanctions on Chinese officials and entities that Mr. Trump — who has shown limited interest in Hong Kong’s plight and a continued desire to carry out terms of a trade deal with Beijing — may not welcome.
Giving the government broad new powers to crack down on pro-democracy activists could effectively end Hong Kong’s limited independence and crush a protest movement that has agitated for nearly a year against China’s authoritarian Communist Party.
“This move by Beijing would rip away the remaining veneer of ‘one country, two systems.’ It would precipitate a crisis in U.S.-China relations,” said Evan Medeiros, a senior Asia director at the National Security Council under President Barack Obama and a professor at Georgetown University.
“Nationalist voices in the U.S. and China would have a party with this; 2020 is beginning to feel more and more like 1948 when the first crises of the Cold War broke out over Berlin,” Mr. Medeiros said, predicting that the United States and China would probably impose sanctions or other punishments on each other.
The Chinese government, which announced the move, is likely to put it in place by fiat during the National People’s Congress, which begins on Friday. How Mr. Trump will react is unclear.
Leaving the White House for a trip to Michigan on Thursday, he told reporters that he did not know “what it is,” but added, “If it happens, we’ll address that issue very strongly.”
