By Eric Mack | Wednesday, 03 February 2021 03:33 PM
China is firing back at Secretary of State Antony Blinken's comments this weekend on Hong Kong, calling them "foreign interference."
"Hong Kong affairs are purely China's internal affairs and allow for no foreign interference," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told China Daily, Newsweek reported Thursday.
"Any illegal activities should be punished by law, which is a principle applied in every country and region under the rule of law."
The latter was a veiled reference to Donald Trump rallygoers who stormed the Capitol to protest the certification of President Joe Biden's Electoral College victory.
Biden's Secretary of State, Blinken, had rebuked China acting "egregiously" amid pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, adding the U.S. "should do something" to give "haven" to protesters, Blinken told NBC News.
Blinken is the foreign policy leader of the Biden administration tasked with reviewing, if not unwinding, the U.S. decoupling from China amid a Trump administration trade war and the global coronavirus pandemic.
"President Trump was right in taking a tougher approach to China," Blinken told senators at his confirmation hearing last month. "I disagree very much with the way that he went about it in a number of areas, but the basic principle was the right one, and I think that's actually helpful to our foreign policy."
