On Friday, or just a day after a panel of Hong Kong High Court judges handed down a guilty verdict on 14 individuals charged with the offense of “conspiracy to commit subversion” under the 2020 National Security Law for Hong Kong (NSL), the United States State Department said it will impose visa restrictions on officials of the Chinese mainland and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region responsible for enforcing the NSL. 

The so-called “sanctions” came after the US issued a warning in March this year against HKSAR government officials following the city legislature's passage of local national legislation -- the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance --- under Article 23 of the Basic Law. That intimidation move against Hong Kong officials came even before the SNSO starts to bite.

Obviously, Washington abhors any Hong Kong move to curb the excesses of the political agitators in the city, whose subversive activities against China play into the hands of Washington, which has been using the “Taiwan card”, “Xinjiang card”, “South China Sea card” and “Hong Kong card” in its relentless efforts to advance its geopolitical strategy against China ever since Washington designated Beijing as its major strategic rival in 2018.

The NSL and the SNSO together have plugged the loopholes in Hong Kong’s legal system, effectively kept political agitators at bay, and denied them any chance to relaunch a “color revolution” like the “black-clad” revolution in 2029-20 that was backed and funded by external forces. This explains US politicians’ hatred for Hong Kong’s two national security laws, which are much lenient in many aspects than dozens of similar laws in force in the US and its closest ally, the United Kingdom.

There’s no reason for US politicians to forego any chance to vilify the HKSAR and Beijing. But the coordinated moves by Washington, London and other allies in the “Five Eyes” alliance against the Hong Kong court’s verdict on the 14 individuals and the city’s national security laws has, in fact, done a disservice to their declining credibility in promoting “the rules-based international order”.  They’ve once again displayed a ridiculous and hegemonic mentality: Rules that aren’t in their favor are illegitimate; and they’re in a position to determine the legitimacy or illegitimacy of laws adopted by other countries and regions under “the rules-based international order” they have enthusiastically promoted.

Invariably, they have wrapped their “sanctions” and “condemnations” over Thursday’s verdict with noble words like “democracy”, “freedoms” or “human rights” to forge a fake moral high ground.

In reality, the 14 convicted and 31 other accomplices who had pleaded guilty before the start of the trial were charged with “conspiracy to commit subversion” for organizing, participating in or facilitating the “35-plus primary election” in July 2020, which was part of a plot to subvert the HKSAR government, specifically, the “Ten Steps to Mutual Destruction” project launched by its chief architect Benny Tai Yiu-ting, a legal scholar, on media outlets.

As the first step in the plot, participants organized illegal “primary elections” in July 2020 to produce a group of candidates who would, hopefully, gain control of Hong Kong’s legislature in an election originally slated for September 2020. They would then indiscriminately veto the government budget repeatedly to force the chief executive to step down and, thereby, causing a constitutional crisis, with the aim of creating chaos and social instability, instigating violence and insurrection, prompting Beijing to “forcefully intervene”, and causing bloodshed that would give Western countries an excuse to intervene in the SAR’s affairs and impose crippling sanctions on China.

They had hoped the plot would succeed in eventually forcing Beijing to concede to their demands for electoral reforms that would allow them to seize the SAR’s governance power and turn the city into a subversion base against Beijing.

In a nutshell, the “35-plus primary election” was a carefully planned, organized and executed subversive act. Aside from a clear-cut criminal intent, as declared in the “Ten Steps to Mutual Destruction” plan, there was also strong evidence supporting the subversion charges that convinced the three judges, who ruled that the prosecution had proved beyond doubt that the defendants were engaged in a conspiracy to disrupt the HKSAR government’s “duties and functions … with a view to subverting the State power”, which was a violation of the Basic Law, the constitutional document that underpins the HKSAR’s governance framework.

Washington and its closed allies, or vassals, might have been emboldened by their success in intimidating some small and weak countries into submission. But they would go nowhere with their bullying tactics against a strong country like China. They would only further erode their own credibility and the “rules-based international order”.

The author is a current affairs commentator.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.