Reckless State Department Escalates Attacks on China over Hong Kong

May 28, 2020 (EIRNS)—The U.S. mission to the United Nations tried to call an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on May 27, to put China in the docket because its new security legislation for Hong Kong purportedly was “a matter of urgent global concern that implicates international peace and security.” China “categorically rejects the baseless request” because “legislation on national security for Hong Kong is purely China’s internal affairs ... (and) has nothing to do with the mandate of the Security Council,” China’s UN Ambassador Zhang Jun posted on Twitter.

The U.S. said China’s opposition to a Security Council meeting on Hong Kong coupled with its “gross cover-up and mismanagement of the COVID-19 crisis, its constant violations of its international human rights commitments, and its unlawful behavior in the South China Sea, should make obvious to all that Beijing is not behaving as a responsible UN member state.”

Continuing with the provocations, Mike Pompeo’s State Department issued a joint statement today of four of the so-called “Five Eyes” nations (the U.S., Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, but not New Zealand), pronouncing that “Direct imposition of national security legislation on Hong Kong by the Beijing authorities, rather than through Hong Kong’s own institutions as provided for under Article 23 of the Basic Law, would curtail the Hong Kong people’s liberties, and in doing so, dramatically erode Hong Kong’s autonomy and the system that made it so prosperous.” This would also “undermine the One Country, Two Systems framework,” the statement maintained.

In other words, the argument is heading in the same direction as what the State Department has used to end the JCPOA, the INF Treaty, the Open Skies Treaty, and other international accords: You have violated “One Country,” therefore we are going to end support for that policy. It is well known that China considers the One China policy to be a red line in their foreign relations.

President Donald Trump continues to join in the China-bashing, as he has done over the last couple of weeks—in striking contrast to his own, earlier attitude—with a tweet this morning on the toll the coronavirus is taking: “All over the World the CoronaVirus, a very bad ‘gift’ from China, marches on. Not good!”