Following the last planned meeting between President Joe Biden and China’s President Xi Jinping over the weekend, reports emerged that Xi set out four “red lines” to Biden that could not be crossed, which included “democracy and human rights.” The details surfaced as news broke that the communist regime sentenced over 40 Hong Kong citizens to lengthy prison sentences for advocating for democracy in the region.

While Saturday’s meeting between Xi and Biden in Peru was described as “constructive,” the Chinese dictator emphasized, “The Taiwan question, democracy and human rights, China’s path and system, and China’s development right are four red lines for China. They must not be challenged. These are the most important guardrails and safety nets for China-U.S. relations.”

As if to underscore this stringent opposition to any actions deemed a threat to its communist rule, a Hong Kong court bound by the intensely controversial national security law (NSL) handed down sentences to 45 pro-democracy activists charged with “conspiracy to subvert state power.” The NSL was enacted in 2020 by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) by decree — circumventing Hong Kong’s democratically elected parliament — amid a massive pro-democracy movement that swept Hong Kong in 2020 to protest the measure.

The defendants included college professor Benny Tai, who at the time created a plan for the pro-democracy movement to win control of Hong Kong’s legislature. As noted by The Wall Street Journal, “What the opposition viewed as a political maneuver authorized by Hong Kong’s constitution, China’s Communist Party leadership saw as a criminal scheme to subvert the government.” Tai was given a sentence of 10 years, the longest sentence of all the defendants.

Those who were sentenced included citizens from all walks of life. Owen Chow, a 27-year-old nursing student, was given seven years and nine months, the second-longest penalty among the group. Au Nok-hin, a former lawmaker, received a seven-year sentence, as did Gwyneth Ho, a former journalist. Joshua Wong, who had become the face of the democracy movement in Hong Kong and had previously spent numerous stints in prison for his work, was sentenced to four years and eight months.

The latest crackdown on the Hong Kong democracy movement by the CCP stemmed from an informal primary organized in 2020 by many in the group of 47 activists that were initially charged, with the goal of winning control of Hong Kong’s legislative council. Despite warnings from the CCP that the primary was illegal under the recently enacted NSL, over 600,000 Hong Kong citizens voted. The CCP subsequently barred opposition candidates from running in the general election a year later, and the regime formally charged the 47 citizens with “state subversion” for attempting to arrange democratic elections.

“This is the trial that put all the opposition, pro-democracy leaders in jail,” Eric Yan-Ho Lai, a research fellow at the Georgetown Center for Asian Law, told The Wall Street Journal. “It’s unprecedented, because before 2020, Beijing had long been tolerant of political dissent in Hong Kong for decades.”

Arielle Del Turco, director of the Center for Religious Liberty at Family Research Council, concurred. “The sentencing of 45 Hong Kong pro-democracy activists under a sweeping new national security law is an absolute travesty,” she told The Washington Stand. “In one batch of sentencings, the court has silenced the majority of the CCP’s opposition in Hong Kong, which was a nearly entirely free city only a few years ago.”

Still, observers say that renewed pressure for the communist regime to increase political freedom and human rights may be on the horizon with President-elect Donald Trump’s administration poised to take power in January. Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who Trump selected to serve as Secretary of State, is considered a leading voice for human rights due to his sustained advocacy for the ethnic Uyghur minority in China’s Xinjiang province that has been victim to extensive human rights abuses. Rubio co-sponsored legislation in 2021 that barred the importation of goods from Xinjiang into the U.S. due to ongoing forced labor.

Del Turco expressed optimism that Rubio’s appointment will keep the CCP accountable on human rights. “In his role as Secretary of State, Marco Rubio can be expected to be tough on China and speak up for those suffering under the CCP’s brutal human rights abuses,” she observed. “Rubio’s appointment is a signal that the U.S. will be strong on the world stage and will not be silent in the face of such egregious abuses.”