The Biden administration is considering an invitation for Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu (李家超) to November’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco. Just one problem: Lee is a recognized human rights violator on the U.S. sanctions list since 2020.
Sleepy Joe. Dementia Joe. Hidin’ Biden. We all know the tropes and labels that will be slapped on President Joe Biden’s back as U.S. election campaigns gather both pace and spite in the runup to November 2024. We also all know how confirmation bias works: Once people get an idea in their heads, whatever agrees with it magnifies; whatever disagrees shrinks into oblivion.
A simple rule is enough to deal with this: Do not give your critics material. Accused of being old and out-of-whack? Align yourself with the vibrancy and vision of youth. Labeled as weak and befuddled? Demonstrate clarity of thought and action. Demeaned as running away from critical issues? Stand firm for what you believe in.
With even the briefest thought that John Lee might be an acceptable attendee for APEC, Biden is instead radiating almost every stereotype or criticism that could be flung at him. Is it possible to look more muddle-headed than by inviting a person to a country that has already banned them from visiting? Could you dissociate yourself from the voice of youth any further than by selling out their bravest to a colonial-era throwback like Xi Jinping? Is there any way to cleave American society deeper, except by running contrary on one of the few issues where some bipartisan consensus actually exists?
The stakes should not be underplayed: Lee has been sanctioned for “coercing, arresting, detaining, or imprisoning individuals” in Hong Kong, a brutal task that is still progressing in his name. Criminalization of peaceful dissent is advancing law by law. Politically motivated arrests and prosecutions happen routinely. People are in danger, and their peril is growing. Nobody can predict just how far the restrictions on freedom will go, or who will fall victim to them next.
An APEC invitation for Lee will reverberate far beyond Hong Kong, too: Flimsy allies like France’s Macron may as well diverge from the U.S. if the latter cannot adhere to its own rules, and attempts to muster international outrage over the proposed attendance of Vladimir Putin at the August BRICS summit in South Africa will fall flat if the U.S. proves incapable of aligning with its own sanctions regime.
Hypocrisy is never a good look, and Biden seems to have forgotten the history of targeted sanctions. The Magnitsky Act, which provides tools to deny banking access, freeze assets and issue travel bans for human rights offenders, was first delivered into U.S. law by the Democratic Party with Biden as vice president specifically to respond to the excesses of the Putin regime. It is therefore paradoxical to see the act undermined by the Democrats themselves now that Biden is president, specifically at the moment when control over Putin and others like him is needed more than ever.
The Putin situation illuminates the pitfalls in pandering to Lee in other ways: The former’s journey from faceless FSB thug to nuclear-enabled war crimes suspect could perhaps have been averted if stronger action was taken against him back in the days when pilfering from St. Petersburg was still among his gravest crimes. For all his rights abuses, Lee is currently little more than an ambitious and vindictive underling incapable of receiving a bank transfer in his own supposed seat of power, but it may not always be that way if his profile is permitted to elevate.
Shutting the door to him at international negotiations is one way to hold him back, as it can hardly be helpful to either his career or the length of his stay as chief executive to be shunned for high-level gatherings. It also signals to countries like China that promoting human rights violators to upper-level positions will not form a workaround for designated individuals who have been placed under sanction.
Why the U.S. would release the pressure on Lee for APEC is meanwhile baffling: A regional economic get-together does not have the same existential compulsion to dialogue as, say, nuclear non-proliferation talks or climate change agreements. As a mere administrator of repressive policy, Lee lacks true decision-maker function in any case.
Moreover, Beijing has sensed the opportunity to tie American sanction policy in knots by ramping up pressure for Lee to attend. It argues that, as a full APEC member since 1991, Hong Kong has the right for its leader to participate in summits, conveniently ignoring the de facto dissolution of the “one country, two systems” policy, which, in practical terms, has negated any need for China to have an additional representative for Hong Kong.
With the opportunity in hand to highlight the obvious fact of the two systems’ collapse by shutting Hong Kong out of APEC 2023, Washington is instead moving towards normalizing the presence of its puppet leader on the international stage. According to Reuters, in a written response to questions from the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman has justified Lee’s proposed attendance on the grounds that “it is important … for the United States and the PRC to work together to maintain global macro-economic stability.” In other words, human rights come second to the status quo, language more in line with the Great Hall of the People than Capitol Hill.
Responding to an angry backlash from two senators and two congressmen each from the Democratic and Republican sides of the American political divide, the State Department has since issued a statement that seemed to retreat from Sherman’s words, claiming that Congress had received an incorrect version of its position. It affirmed that no decision has yet been taken on Lee and added that his presence would have to accord with U.S. law, including sanctions. Nonetheless, the announcement has not placated critics, who note the indecision and fear that workarounds to facilitate his participation may still be found.
Any influence that Lee’s inclusion would have on Election Day 2024 is impossible to gauge, but, given the current front-runner on the Republican side, those old nicknames are certain to pop up again. Remember Beijing Biden? As a transparent exaggeration from a pathological liar, it didn’t fly last time. Next time, however, there may be more teeth in the taunt.
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