Human rights advocates welcomed United States sanctions on officials in China and Hong Kong who used draconian security laws to intimidate and harass pro-democracy activists.
The March 2025 sanctions freeze U.S. assets owned by six senior Beijing and Hong Kong security officials and block U.S. entities from conducting financial transactions with the sanctioned individuals. They include the chief of Beijing’s national security office in Hong Kong, a police commissioner and others involved in imposing China’s repressive policies.
The U.S. State Department said the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) attempted “to intimidate, silence, and harass 19 pro-democracy activists who had been forced to flee overseas, including a U.S. citizen and four other U.S. residents.”
CCP actions “threaten to further erode the autonomy of Hong Kong in contravention of China’s commitments,” according to the State Department.
China pledged to allow independent economic and political systems in Hong Kong after the United Kingdom handed over its former colony in 1997. Instead of adhering to a promised “one country, two systems” principle, however, the CCP in 2019 proposed extraditing suspects from Hong Kong to China for trial.
Resulting protests in the global financial hub became part of a larger pro-democracy movement before China bypassed Hong Kong’s elected lawmakers to impose a purported national security law aimed at quashing dissent.
In 2020, the CCP began enforcing the law to jail opposition leaders, shutter independent media outlets and silence civil society. The crackdown continued with fast-tracked security legislation in 2024 that U.K.-based Amnesty International called “another crushing blow to human rights in the city.”
Authorities have used the regulations to erode the rule of law and undermine fundamental freedoms, as well as to harass and intimidate people outside China’s borders, according to the U.S. State Department’s 2025 report on conditions in Hong Kong. For example, Beijing issued arrest warrants and bounties on overseas democracy advocates and canceled passports for others, including some based in the U.S., in late 2024.
The U.S. has sanctioned 48 senior officials “for their involvement in suppressing the pro-democracy movement and violating the ‘one country, two systems’ commitment,” stated the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation in Washington, D.C.
“We commend the State Department for sending a clear message that repression will not go unanswered,” said Frances Hui, a policy and advocacy coordinator at the foundation.
Officials named in the latest sanctions “are directly responsible for enforcing draconian policies, imprisoning pro-democracy activists, and expanding their persecution across borders by placing bounties on those of us forced into exile — including myself,” she said. “Many of us have endured relentless pressure and threats through transnational repression. It truly means a great deal to see the U.S. taking the lead in holding accountable the officials who orchestrated these actions.”
The U.S. also imposed visa restrictions on officials in China involved in limiting access to Tibet, which CCP forces invaded and annexed in the early 1950s. “For far too long, the Chinese Communist Party has refused to afford U.S. diplomats, journalists, and other international observers access to the Tibet Autonomous Region and other Tibetan areas of China, while China’s diplomats and journalists enjoy broad access in the United States,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a late March 2025 statement.
