China hitting US citizens with visa restrictions tied to Hong Kong

China’s government announced Monday it will impose retaliatory visa restrictions on some Americans after the State Department outlined restrictions in response to what the U.S. called a crackdown by Beijing on Hong Kong’s autonomy.

Beijing will impose the restrictions on Americans for “egregious conduct” related to Hong Kong, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Monday,  according to Reuters. He did not specify who would be targeted by the sanctions.

“The U.S. is attempting to obstruct China’s legislation for safeguarding national security in the HK SAR [Hong Kong Special Administrative Region] by imposing the so-called sanctions, but it will never succeed,” Zhao told reporters. “In response … China has decided to impose visa restrictions on U.S. individuals with egregious conduct on HK related issues.”

The announcement comes the week after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. would apply restrictions to “current and former” Chinese Communist Party officials “believed to be responsible for, or complicit in, undermining Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy.”

Hong Kong has operated under the “one country, two systems” policy since its 1997 handover to China by the British, but a bill expected to easily pass Beijing’s legislature that would take aim at “foreign interference” and “subversion” in the city has been widely perceived as eroding that autonomy.

After the bill was announced in May, the Trump administration announced the U.S. would no longer treat the city as autonomous, enabling the State Department to restrict visas or impose sanctions under the 1992 Hong Kong Policy Act and the 2019 Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate passed a measure last week imposing mandatory sanctions on individuals or companies for supporting efforts to roll back Hong Kong autonomy, including secondary sanctions on banks that do business with those entities, Reuters noted.

Zhao said during the press briefing that Beijing has filed a complaint over that legislation, adding that it will impose unspecified countermeasures, according to the news service.