US
Vice President Mike Pence urged China on Monday to respect the integrity of
Hong Kong’s laws and repeated President Donald Trump’s warning that it would be
harder for Washington to make a trade deal with Beijing if there was violence
in the former British territory.
“For
the United States to make a deal with China, Beijing needs to honor its commitments
- beginning with the commitment China made in 1984 to respect the integrity of
Hong Kong’s laws through the Sino-British Joint Declaration,” Pence said in an
address at the Detroit Economic Club.
“Our
administration will continue to urge Beijing to act in a humanitarian manner
and urge China and the demonstrators in Hong Kong to resolve their differences
peacefully,” Pence said.
Trump
said last week he was concerned about the situation in Hong Kong and did not
want to see a resort to violence to quell weeks of mass protests that have
presented one of the biggest challenges for Chinese President Xi Jinping since
he came to power in 2012.
On
Sunday, Trump repeated a call for China to resolve the situation in a
“humanitarian” way and said this would be “very good for the trade deal” he has
been seeking with Beijing while conducting a major tariff war.
On
Monday, China’s state-controlled Global Times tabloid said “elites” in the
United States could not influence China’s decisions in handling the situation
in Hong Kong.
It
said China was hoping Hong Kong’s internal forces were able to restore order
with the support of the central government, but said “strong intervention” from
China would be the only choice if Hong Kong is unable to do so.
“Political
and public opinion elites in the US must understand that although they have the
ability to instigate Hong Kong’s radical protesters and make it harder for Hong
Kong to restore order, they absolutely cannot influence Beijing’s decisions on
Hong Kong’s situation,” in said in an editorial.
The
paper added that talks between Beijing and Washington to resolve their trade
dispute had “already been difficult” for the United States and that it cannot
“afford any other burden.”
Hong
Kong is gearing up for more protests this week after hundreds of thousands of
anti-government demonstrators braved heavy rain to rally peacefully on Sunday,
marking a change to what have often been violent clashes.
The
Sino-British Joint Declaration that Pence referred to was an agreement on the
terms of Britain’s handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997. It allows freedoms
not enjoyed in mainland China, including the right to protest.
China
said in 2017 that the declaration was a historical document with no practical
significance, and a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said on Monday Hong Kong
was an internal matter for China and there was no clause in it allowing outside
forces a right to interfere.
Trump,
who has been seeking a deal with China to correct major trade imbalances ahead
of his 2020 re-election bid, has appeared to toughen his approach on Hong Kong
after facing criticism from Congress and elsewhere for his characterization of
the protests earlier this month as “riots” that were a matter for China to
address.
As
concerns grew last week about possible Chinese intervention, Trump linked the
situation to a trade deal for the first time and urged Xi to meet personally
with the protesters to defuse tensions.
