Lee, then Hong Kong’s safety chief, was elevated final 12 months to chief government, handpicked by Beijing to proceed what critics say is a broader marketing campaign of repression within the once-semiautonomous metropolis. He has helped execute Beijing’s reimagining of the territory, the place establishments from faculties to the media now function below new crimson traces which have eroded freedoms.
The snub by america, which in November will host the annual Asia-Pacific Financial Cooperation leaders’ summit in San Francisco, comes within the midst of a tenuous thaw within the two powers’ frosty bilateral relationship. It might, some analysts say, induce Chinese language President Xi Jinping to skip the APEC summit — the place a gathering with Biden has been anticipated.
Others, nonetheless, say they anticipate Xi will attend, as China, whose financial fortunes have dimmed significantly, will wish to venture management in a bid to revive international investor confidence and present Xi’s home viewers that he’s successfully managing the nation’s ties with america.
The sanction on Lee doesn’t stop Hong Kong’s participation in APEC, permitting for an additional senior consultant to attend as an alternative, U.S. officers mentioned, talking on the situation of anonymity due to the matter’s sensitivity.
A White Home spokesperson declined to touch upon the matter, besides to say: “We’re trying ahead to the participation of all APEC member delegations in accordance with U.S. legal guidelines and rules.”
Requested for remark, Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese language Embassy in Washington, mentioned: “We categorical our sturdy opposition” to Lee’s exclusion. “This violates APEC guidelines,” Liu mentioned, “and breaks the commitments made by the U.S.”
The Hong Kong chief government’s workplace didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was sanctioned final 12 months after ordering the invasion of Ukraine and whose journey to america would typically be barred until a waiver was obtained, additionally will probably be excluded from the APEC summit, officers mentioned. Putin faces an arrest warrant issued by the Worldwide Prison Court docket in reference to alleged warfare crimes in Ukraine, and in addition is not going to attend a summit of main creating nations in South Africa subsequent month, by mutual settlement with Johannesburg.
Tensions between Washington and Beijing flared within the winter, after the Biden administration shot down a suspected Chinese language spy balloon that flew over america. However as fallout from the incident receded, a number of senior U.S. officers in latest weeks have made visits to China, together with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and Biden’s local weather envoy John F. Kerry.
Beijing had indicated as just lately as June that it anticipated america, because the summit’s host, to ask Lee. Hong Kong has been a member of APEC since 1991, six years earlier than Britain handed the territory again to China. International Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin mentioned then that Washington had “undertaken to meet its obligation, observe related guidelines and procedures of APEC, and facilitate the participation of all representatives.”
Disclosure of the administration’s resolution will “generate political strain for Xi Jinping to rethink going, even when U.S.-China relations would profit from his assembly President Biden,” mentioned Scott Kennedy, senior adviser and knowledgeable on the Chinese language economic system on the Heart for Strategic and Worldwide Research. However, he conceded, Xi could decide that with worldwide confidence in China’s economic system sinking, APEC could also be too essential to skip.
“It could come all the way down to them swallowing this [slight] as a result of it’s so essential, nevertheless it makes it a bigger, extra bitter capsule to swallow,” Kennedy mentioned, on the sidelines of a College of California at San Diego “China discussion board,” a convention inspecting U.S.-China relations.
Though Hong Kong might ship a substitute, Xi’s response to Lee’s exclusion might find yourself disrupting Washington’s goals for APEC, mentioned Kurt Tong, who from 2016 to 2019 was the highest U.S. diplomat in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong was granted membership in APEC with the help of america and others as a result of it was seen as a “helpful voice” in favor of free commerce and open markets, mentioned Tong, now a accomplice at The Asia Group, a Washington-based advisory agency.
“Reasonably than selecting a battle with China on this purely symbolic situation,” Tong mentioned, “the administration ought to lay out a set of expectations, that Hong Kong should take part from the angle of what’s good for the Hong Kong economic system and the regional economic system, and communicate with a voice of autonomy moderately than carry out as a rhetorical puppet of the Individuals’s Republic of China.”
The case has underscored the challenges Washington faces in imposing sanctions on people working for governments with which america should interact, mentioned Peter Harrell, a nonresident fellow at Carnegie Endowment for Worldwide Peace.
“Traditionally, we’ve tended to sanction of us we didn’t must cope with immediately” as a result of they represented governments that had been remoted internationally, mentioned Harrell, a former senior White Home official within the Biden administration dealing with sanction coverage.
“After we sanction officers in massive international locations which have international attain, it creates a dilemma of tips on how to sign disapproval of their acts and maintain them accountable whereas confronting the truth that this can be a decision-maker it’s important to cope with,” he mentioned. “The problem right here is while you’re coping with overseas officers who’ve carried out actually atrocious issues.”
U.S. individuals and entities, from banks to airways to authorities officers, typically are barred from interacting with sanctioned people on the Treasury Division’s Specifically Designated Nationals record. That makes entry into america troublesome until a waiver is granted.
The information company Reuters reported in June {that a} bipartisan group of lawmakers urged the State Division to bar Lee from attending the summit, citing a written acknowledgment from the division’s deputy secretary, Wendy Sherman, that it was planning to ask him “to foster regional financial dialogue.”
Per week later, Reuters reported, the State Division walked again Sherman’s assertion, saying “an incorrect model of this reply was inadvertently transmitted to Congress.”
Biden has been criticized by some Republican lawmakers who’ve accused his administration of pulling punches on China in an effort to pursue engagement. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), chairman of the Home Choose Committee on China, mentioned final week that “it’s been over two years since a single Hong Kong or [People’s Republic of China] official was sanctioned for the erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy.”
As a substitute, he mentioned, administration officers are chasing Chinese language diplomats world wide, “desperately looking for conferences like ardent suitors.”
He accused the administration of delaying the imposition of harder export controls geared toward stopping U.S. expertise from aiding China’s army modernization. “Clearly,” Gallagher mentioned, “the push for high-level engagement has come at the price of defending ourselves.”
A particular person conversant in the administration’s considering mentioned he disputed the notion that Biden officers are slow-rolling coverage strikes to curry favor with Beijing, and cited the Lee resolution for instance.
“It’s actually essential to wish to interact in stiff competitors, managed responsibly,” the particular person mentioned. “However we’re not going to cease doing the issues we have to do to guard ourselves and get up for the values we care about.”
Mahtani reported from Singapore