“Great power involves great responsibility,” said the former US president, Franklin D Roosevelt. Although his message should resonate with his successors, it has been lost over time. In the era of Donald Trump, power has come to mean doing whatever one can get away with, and the big loser is American prestige.

However, power can only be exercised responsibly if its controllers can tell right from wrong. That was not difficult for Roosevelt, who had to choose between freedom and democracy on the one hand, and Nazi Germany and imperial Japan on the other. Although not all situations are clear-cut, righteousness should always be the guiding star.

When, for example, the sanction power becomes a tool of oppression, all right-thinking people should recoil in horror. Although it is now being used willy-nilly by the US to victimize anybody of whom Trump disapproves, most people have bravely stood their ground. They have refused to succumb, and their resilience is a testament to resolve in the face of injustice.

Even if the US disapproves of their actions, it can never legitimize bullying or the intimidation of people who are upholding the rule of law internationally or in their own countries. If, moreover, those who operate legal systems were to buckle or otherwise change course because of intimidation, the primary casualty would be the rule of law.

On Feb 6, for example, the US imposed sanctions on the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan KC, his immediate family members, and other judicial officials. Khan’s “crime” was to obtain an arrest warrant against the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, for allegedly committing international crimes. This was after Khan’s investigation had identified cogent evidence pointing to the pair having committed war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Palestinian population of Gaza (latest figures put the death toll in excess of 60,000, mainly women and children, and rising).

Instead of providing Khan with the support the proponents of “the international rules-based order” are supposed to deliver in such circumstances, Trump treated Netanyahu like a conquering hero. Rather than arresting him when he visited Washington, Trump red-carpeted him. As if this was not bad enough, he has resumed the supply of 2,000-pound (907-kilogram) bombs to Israel to drop on the essentially defenseless Gazan population, making him complicit in Netanyahu’s excesses.

Although the targeting of Khan was an egregious international example of American might being abused, Hong Kong has also suffered its fair share of injustice at Trump’s hands.

On Aug 7, 2020, during his first term of office, Trump imposed sanctions on the then-chief executive, Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, and ten other officials (including the current chief executive, John Lee Ka-chiu, and his secretary for security, Chris Tang Ping-keung). This was because of their involvement in the implementation of the Hong Kong National Security Law (NSL), enacted on June 30, 2020.

Lam was even accused of “suppression of freedom and democratic processes”, a strange way of describing her efforts to end the months of “black-clad” violence aimed at destroying Hong Kong’s way of life and capitalist system.

Although the sanctioned officials had helped to save the “one country, two systems” policy, which the insurrectionists had, with foreign encouragement, violently targeted over many months, the US accused them of “undermining Hong Kong’s autonomy”.  However, the sanctions showed that the US was a poor loser and that its then-secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, was retaliating in fury at the thwarting of a “color revolution” in which he had invested much of his own credibility.

If, however, the US imagined its maltreatment of Hong Kong and Chinese mainland officials would somehow change the course of history, it could not have been more mistaken. Lam said she would not be “intimidated,” and her spokesman denounced “blatant and barbaric interference in the internal affairs of the People’s Republic of China, using Hong Kong as a pawn”.

Although being maltreated by a country that once professed goodwill for Hong Kong cannot have been pleasant, Lam was in no doubt over where her duty lay. She announced that she and her colleagues were “discharging an honorable duty to safeguard national security, protecting the life and interests of not only the 7.5 million Hong Kong people but also the 1.4 billion mainlanders”.

If anybody thought she was bluffing, their doubts have now been laid to rest. Her successors have remained as committed as she was to the country’s well-being. Undeterred by American skullduggery, they have conscientiously done their duty by their country.

Thus, on March 23, 2024, Lee and Tang, despite their earlier sanctioning, were able, together with the justice secretary, Paul Lam Ting-kwok, to celebrate the enactment of the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance (finally discharging Hong Kong’s constitutional obligations under the Basic Law’s Article 23).

Their selfless commitment, moreover, has inspired the next generation of officials, and nobody has been frightened away by US threats. However, bullies rarely give up, particularly when they imagine their victims are weak and cannot strike back. On March 31, the US once again targeted six officials from Hong Kong and the mainland, accusing them, as before, of undermining Hong Kong’s autonomy.

Five officials were victimized because of their involvement in trying to counter the subversive activities of 19 individuals who were accused of trying to undermine Hong Kong and weaken China from their foreign bases. For his part, Paul Lam was targeted for ensuring the NSL’s proper implementation, a move he described as “completely groundless”.

Although its actions are despicable, the US knows that Hong Kong’s national security framework is now in place, and its agencies can no longer destabilize the city from within as they once did.

Let nobody ever forget the sight of the then-US political consul in Hong Kong, Julie Eadeh, meeting covertly in a hotel, at the height of the insurrection in 2019, with protest leaders, including Joshua Wong Chi-fung and Nathan Law Kwun-chung, or the spectacle of US Senator Ted Cruz parading around the streets in black attire to show his support of the black-clad mobs, or the revelation that the US-financed National Endowment for Democracy was fomenting unrest in the city.

Those days, fortunately, are gone forever, and Hong Kong’s future is set fair.

However, this has not stopped the US, egged on by the likes of Mark Clifford’s Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation (Clifford campaigns on behalf of national security suspect, Jimmy Lai Chee-ying) and Brian Leung Kai-ping’s Hong Kong Democracy Council (Leung gained notoriety when trashing the Legislative Council’s chamber on July 1, 2019), from trying to harm particular individuals, whose only “sin” was to have done their patriotic duty.

However, just as Trump’s intimidatory tactics had no effect in 2020, they will have no impact now. He is not dealing with fainthearts but with patriots who love their country. Although there may be some short-term inconvenience for the individuals concerned, China looks after its own, and they will continue to discharge their duties to the best of their ability.

The situation in Hong Kong will not change, and everybody will continue to hold their heads high.

Although bullying may sometimes be painful for its victims, it is the perpetrators who are ultimately demeaned, and the US is no exception.

The author is a senior counsel and law professor, and was previously the director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.