On Friday United States Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced the Department of State was taking steps to impose visa restrictions on some Hong Kong officials in response to the passing of Article 23 legislation, or the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, in the city. Such a response was inevitable, since the passage of the “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act” in 2019, successive US administrations have targeted officials in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region under the claim that they are “supressing democracy and freedom”. 

Such acts of course represent just another act of brazen political interference by the US in the HKSAR which have also included actively supporting groups and organisations attempting to change the HKSAR’s status quo and giving full political backing to the rioters who reduced the city to chaos in 2019-20. In doing so, Washington has constantly aspired to use the city as a backdoor in order to project influence into the Chinese mainland and undermine China, and thus seeks to challenge Beijing’s sovereignty over the city. 

Although the US claims that it supports the rule of law in Hong Kong, it is obvious and perhaps ironic that its actions in practice intend to have the opposite result. In attempting to impose external pressure on a specific legislative system, the goal of course is to undermine it, challenge its legitimacy and therefore spark rebellion against it. In doing so, the US actively wants to undercut the authorities’ responsibility to respond to such disorder through the application of sanctions, and therefore politically undermine the city of Hong Kong and China as a whole. As I have noted in previous articles, the US is deliberately pushing an agenda of the city’s “decline”.

While disruptive protesters in the US are often met with indiscriminate police violence, sometimes even resulting in death, the US has constantly attempted to push the assumption that Hong Kong has no “right to national security” and that the city must tolerate violence, insurrection, and widespread disorder by radicalized protesters in the name of “democracy and freedom”, which the US of course is then backing simultaneously. It goes without saying that part of the strategy the Hong Kong rioters were using in 2019-20 was precisely to try and provoke a violent response from the authorities, cry oppression and thus spark even more foreign intervention in the city.

Despite this, the latest sanctions threat does not mean a lot, and is, for all intents and purposes, inconsequential. Other than a symbolic show of disapproval, they will in no circumstances make any difference to the city’s affairs or undermine its return to law and order. There is no real reason why any Hong Kong official would lose sleep or concern over being unable to visit the US. In any case, from China’s perspective, no amount of pressure from Washington would be able to undermine China’s national sovereignty over the city or the commitment to national security.

It should be reiterated that contrary to the mainstream media narrative, Beijing’s mindset over Hong Kong is not “offensive” but in fact “defensive”. The binary narrative pushed by the US that the city is simply about “freedom and democracy” versus “evil China” is wrong, misleading, and simplistic, and conveys a Western sense of overlordship, saviorism and entitlement. Instead, China sees itself as defending its rightful sovereignty over a territory that was seized from it by foreign powers and ultimately handed back as an act of restorative justice.

Therefore, the “commitment to Hong Kong’s autonomy” on matters of “low politics” does not in any case undermine China’s lawful or sovereign rights over the city, and foreign powers thus in any case do not have the right to use the city as a playground to push their own ideological and political agenda. Thus, no matter what the US does, the clock is not going to be turned back in Hong Kong. Not only is the colonial era over, strictly speaking, but also the era of US-backed interference and rioting has also been brought to an end and will never be allowed to reoccur. National security legislation in Hong Kong, as mandated by Article 23 of the Basic Law since 1997, is here to stay.

The author is a British political and international relations analyst.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.