The Chinese Foreign Ministry denounced the bill after the Senate vote, saying it “interferes in China’s internal affairs” and “violates the basic norms of international law and international relations.”
The Hong Kong government said the bill was “unnecessary and unwarranted” and would harm relations between the United States and Hong Kong.
Republican and Democratic senators decided to try to quickly pass the bill after hundreds of young protesters fought off a police siege on the campus of Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The confrontation, which began Saturday night, was the most violent episode of the nearly half-year of demonstrations, though almost all protesters at the university had fled or been arrested by the police by Tuesday.
Last week, the Hong Kong protests entered a more violent phase when activists began disrupting traffic across the city and the police tried breaching campuses, considered a last refuge of the demonstrators.
The bill is the latest sign of a strong bipartisan push in Washington to confront China and its authoritarian leader, President Xi Jinping, on a wide range of issues, including commercial practices, global infrastructure building and the detention of at least a million Muslim ethnic minority members in camps in northwest China. Because of the pro-democracy protests, Hong Kong has become a central rallying point.
Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, and Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, both flew to Hong Kong last month, while Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat from California, met recently with activists in Washington.
“We have sent a message to President Xi: Your suppression of freedom, whether in Hong Kong, in northwest China or anywhere else, will not stand,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the top Democrat in the Senate, said on Tuesday evening. “You cannot be a great leader and you cannot be a great country when you oppose freedom, when you are so brutal to the people of Hong Kong, young and old, who are protesting.”
Elaine Yu contributed reporting from Hong Kong.
Source : Nytimes
