For decades, the city of Hong Kong has operated trade offices in the United States – known as Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices, or HKETOs – that receive special diplomatic privileges thanks to Hong Kong’s unique international status. But with the city increasingly under the thumb of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Congress is rethinking whether those offices should continue to get the privileges they’ve been afforded.
In 2022, Rep. Chris Smith (R-Manchester) introduced a bill that would authorize the president to strip HKETOs of their special privileges and immunities. That bill, the HKETO Certification Act, finally passed the House today – and it did so on an overwhelming 413-3 vote.
Smith, one of Congress’s most consistent critics of the CCP, said in remarks on the House floor that the HKETOs are a relic of a time when Hong Kong was still relatively free from Chinese repression, before the passage of a 2020 national security law that substantially reduced the city’s autonomy.
“Three years after the CCP imposed the national security law on Hong Kong, we must deal with this new reality,” Smith said. “The Hong Kong all of us knew, loved, and respected is gone. The city that was once a bastion of freedom in a sea of oppression is now governed by the CCP puppets who have become as repressive as their masters in Beijing.”
In the wake of the new law, Smith said that the three HKETOs operating in the United States (in New York City, Washington D.C., and San Francisco) have become fronts for the Chinese government, and thus their longstanding diplomatic privileges should be cut off.
“These offices serve as Beijing’s propaganda arm in the United States, defending and dismantling the freedom of Hong Kong and obscuring the truth,” he said. “In addition, HKETOs help the Chinese Communist Party track exiled Hong Kong activists in our own country… The United States should not be granting diplomatic privileges and immunities to a network of communist spies and propagandists.”
The long-in-the-making passage of Smith’s bill comes as part of the House’s “China Week,” a Republican-led effort to pass a number of tough-on-China bills (most of which are likely to be more controversial than the one authored by Smith).