The U.S. again blamed China for its lack of transparency over the coronavirus.
China then suggested the U.S. might be the real source of the pandemic. China has also said the U.S. is trying to shift blamed for the U.S. mishandling of the COVID-19 crisis, says Reuters.
On top of that, the U.S. just passed the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act, which “requires certain issuers of securities to establish that they are not owned or controlled by a foreign government. Specifically, an issuer must make this certification if the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board is unable to audit specified reports because the issuer has retained a foreign public accounting firm not subject to inspection by the board.”
“Furthermore, if the board is unable to inspect the issuer’s public accounting firm for three consecutive years, the issuer’s securities are banned from trade on a national exchange,” according to Congress.gov.
Now, there’s new potential tension over Hong Kong.
President Trump says the U.S. will have “a very strong reaction” to new China legislation.
At the moment, China has plans to introduce a new national security law in Hong Kong that would ban “sedition, secession, and subversion of the central government in Beijing,” as reported by CNN. “The move could enable Beijing to crack down on anti-government protests in Hong Kong and will raise further fears that the city’s autonomy is being eroded just as demonstrations begin to resume following a lull due to the coronavirus pandemic.”