Washington's double-dealing laid bare: China Daily editorial

Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, on Tuesday again decried the double standard adopted by some countries after the central government moved to improve security and law enforcement in Hong Kong with the proposal to introduce national security legislation.

Lam is obliged to call out the hypocrisy displayed by biased Washington politicians.

Indeed, no right-thinking people will have bought into the rhetoric of these politicians who claim they are trying to help Hong Kong people by actually inflicting harm on them with sanctions, including the revocation of the city's globally recognized status as a separate customs territory.

As Lam said, "there is simply no justification whatsoever for any government to impose sanctions on Hong Kong" as a result of the central authorities taking the legitimate decision to enact laws for Hong Kong to better protect national security, and improve law enforcement.

Hong Kong has had 23 years to enact its own national security laws. That it has not done so has enabled external forces to incite and encourage the violence that has created a climate of fear and intimidation in the SAR.

But the truth is that politicians in Washington could not give a fig about the well-being of Hong Kong people. Their continuous hysterical outbursts over the proposed security legislation for Hong Kong are not out of any concern for the city's "democracy", "rights" or "freedom", but simply part of the pressure tactics being applied toward China.

Those anti-China Washington politicians are outraged simply because they cannot swallow the fact that they will soon no longer be able to use Hong Kong as a base for their subversive activities against the Chinese mainland.

It is unfortunate for Hong Kong people, international investors who have big stakes in the city and the tens of thousands of foreign residents who have made the city their home that Hong Kong is being treated as a pawn in an all-encompassing geopolitical strategy designed to contain China's development.

This containment offensive targets all major interests of China. Without the proposed security law, Washington politicians can easily find another excuse to exploit Hong Kong for their geopolitical strategy against Beijing.

If those Washington politicians were not just shedding crocodile tears when they claimed they would stand by Hong Kong people, they would stop their toxic rhetoric and withdraw their threat of sanctions now that some 3 million local residents have signed a petition in support of the proposed national security legislation in an eight-day campaign. The number would have been more had the campaign not ended on Monday.

For Washington politicians, "democracy", "rights" or "freedom" are nothing more than undersized fig leaves covering their crude zero-sum intentions.