US lawmakers voice support for the message Hong Kong voters are sending to Beijing
- But President Donald Trump and his State Department remain silent on the pro-democracy candidates’ lopsided victory on Sunday
- ‘China take notice. The people are speaking,’ writes US Senator Josh Hawley
A landslide victory for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy candidates on Sunday reverberated in Washington with lawmakers from both parties cheering the results as the deadline approaches for US President Donald Trump to decide on a bill that paves the way for diplomatic action and economic sanctions against Hong Kong.
Messages on social media praised Hong Kong’s pan-democrats, who have supported a protest movement that has roiled the city for six months, and took swipes at China, which has dismissed the movement as an illegitimate plot supported by foreign governments.
“China take notice,” Senator Joshua Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, said in a Twitter post that linked to a tweet by Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong Chi-fung. “The people are speaking.”
In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on Sunday, Hawley argued that the US should “abandon the attempt to remake the world and focus on the threat from Beijing”.
“China has shown its desire for domination in Hong Kong, where it ruthlessly suppresses its own people and seeks to strip them of their liberties, including the protections of the rule of law,” Hawley wrote.
