The Trump administration announced Monday that it has imposed sanctions on six Chinese and Hong Kong officials for undermining the autonomy of Hong Kong, violating the freedoms of Hong Kong’s citizens, and engaging in the transnational repression of freedom advocates in the U.S. and across the globe.

According to the Associated Press, the sanctioned individuals include “two assistant police commissioners, the Beijing official heading the Hong Kong office on safeguarding national security, and a top Hong Kong official serving on the committee of safeguarding national security.” Penalties involved in the sanctions include “property and interests in the U.S. blocked from transactions.”

The U.S. Department of State announced that the six communist officials engaged “in the coercing, arresting, detaining or imprisoning of individuals,” using a “national security” law as pretext for the persecution.

In a report released Monday detailing the breakdown of human rights and freedoms that occurred in Hong Kong in 2024, the U.S. Department of State notes that the “overall trend … has been one of centralization under Beijing. China and Hong Kong authorities continued to use ‘national security’ as a broad and vague basis to undermine the rule of law and protected rights and freedoms.”

The report further highlighted how in March of last year, “the Hong Kong government enacted the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance (SNSO), adopting Beijing’s overly broad definition of ‘national security.’ Under the supervision of the central government, Hong Kong authorities used the SNSO and the Beijing-imposed 2020 National Security Law (NSL) to further erode the rule of law in Hong Kong and undermine the human rights and fundamental freedoms of people in Hong Kong, as well as to harass and intimidate individuals outside of its borders.”

The report went on to note that “authorities used the NSL and the SNSO” as an excuse for issuing arrest warrants and bounties on dozens of democracy advocates across the globe, “including the 47 individuals tried in a case known as the ‘NSL 47,’ Jimmy Lai, and former editors of Stand News.” The AP also reported that “Over the past two years, Hong Kong authorities have issued arrest warrants for 19 activists based overseas, with bounties of $1 million Hong Kong dollars ($128,536) for information leading to each of their arrests. The affected activists included former pro-democracy lawmakers Nathan Law and Ted Hui.”

Notably, the tentacles of China’s communist regime have extended far beyond Hong Kong democracy advocates to persecute any and all advocates of increased freedoms for China, even those who live in other countries. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed last week, China democracy advocate Bob Fu described how he and his family fled China in the 1990s after being persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for his religious freedom and democracy advocacy.

After being accepted as a refugee in the U.S. and founding the organization ChinaAid, Fu soon found that his days of persecution at the hands of the CCP were far from over. “From late September to early November 2020, my family and I experienced physical threats and stalking outside our West Texas home,” he related. “As many as 100 people gathered in front of our residence. … The threats were so credible that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and local law-enforcement officers had to rescue my family, leading us through the alley beside our house and to various safe houses.”

Fu, who also serves as a senior fellow for International Religious Freedom at Family Research Council, went on to describe how in 2023 he “began receiving text messages from unknown numbers urging me to stop my advocacy efforts for Chinese dissidents and threatening consequences if I refused. The regime’s track record of surveillance and intimidation suggests it also launched a systematic ‘swatting’ campaign against me: Hotel rooms in Houston, Los Angeles, New York and Washington were booked using my name, and then people falsely claiming to be me called in bomb threats to the various locations.”

In addition, “At least 12 employees of my religious-freedom nonprofit — all naturalized U.S. citizens — have been arbitrarily detained while traveling to China to visit family,” Fu noted. “Each one was told to spy on the organization once he returned.”

Religious freedom experts applauded the new State Department sanctions as an important step in addressing CCP oppression that is taking place in other countries.

“It’s good to see that the State Department is taking the issue of transnational repression, especially by the Chinese government, seriously,” Arielle Del Turco, director of the Center for Religious Liberty at FRC, told The Washington Stand. “Persecuted Chinese believers or Chinese dissidents who fled to the United States often face harassment and pressure by Chinese agents in the U.S. This is a serious security risk for the Chinese people who have sought refuge in the United States, and it’s also a sign of weakness on behalf of the U.S. government and federal law enforcement that we have not been able to end transnational repression already. This is a step in the right direction from the Trump administration. I hope that they continue to prioritize and address this issue via every means available.”

Del Turco further urged the Trump administration to take additional steps to compel Xi Jinping’s regime to cease its clampdown on Hong Kong.

“It’s important that the Chinese government continue to feel outside pressure for undermining Hong Kong’s autonomy,” she contended. “Just a few years ago, it was a democratic and free society with robust protest movements before the Chinese government forcibly subsumed it into its own government. Now, many of the leaders of the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests are in jail, and the protests have ended. Yet, the world shouldn’t forget what the Chinese government did just because it’s not in the news every day anymore. The Chinese government crushed Hong Kong’s freedom, and that’s a tragedy.”