HK will no longer be US playground: China Daily editorial

The "Fact Sheet: US Interference in Hong Kong Affairs and Support for Anti-China, Destabilizing Forces" released by the central government on Friday shows the US' attempts to interfere in Hong Kong are more extensive than previously assumed and why it is important to broaden the scope of the measures to safeguard national security.

Washington's endorsement for secessionists in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region began in earnest during the mayhem in 2019, with the two bills related to Hong Kong authorizing then US president Donald Trump in November 2019 to impose sanctions on Hong Kong entities leaving no doubt about the evil designs of Washington.

Since then the United States has left no stones unturned to sabotage the SAR's peace, stability and development, in a bid to use the city as a foothold in the region to implement its China-containment strategy.

As the document indicates, the US enacted Hong Kong-related laws to vilify the central government's policy for the SAR, while imposing sanctions on Hong Kong entities in an attempt to obstruct the implementation of the National Security Law and related regulations.

To destabilize Hong Kong society, the US has been making baseless charges against the city's administration, especially the police force, which is considered one of the most professional and impartial law enforcers in the world, and shielding secessionists and other anti-China forces.

Washington has also been ganging up with its allies against China by launching a diatribe against everything Chinese, including the SAR local government — all this in order to manipulate facts about Hong Kong and turn the international community against China.

The fact sheet exposes the devilish sophistication the US is capable of when it comes to portraying itself as the biggest defender of human rights. But history tells us that it is by far the most brutal violator of human rights as, to cite just a couple of examples, its criminally poor response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the deaths and sufferings it has caused in Afghanistan show.

Yet for the schemers and saboteurs, as long as they feign to defend democracy and freedom, they can justify whatever cause they pretend to uphold, the excellent snake oil salesmen that they are.

But the fact is, they ride roughshod over basic international relations norms and seriously undermine the world order.

The document constitutes not only a strong response from the Chinese side to the US' not-so-clandestine attempts to interfere in the country's internal affairs, but also sets the record straight — that the US will go to any length to maintain its global hegemony no matter how divorced from the trend of the times its attempts are.

With the institutional fences in Hong Kong being mended, the channels for the US and its allies to infiltrate the SAR will soon be closed, showing they had underestimated China's resolve and capability to protect its core interests.