About the growing alliance of autocracies

A WaPo opinion essay discusses an alliance that is taking shape among the various flavors of global tyranny: 

An alliance of autocracies is deepening. 

One city plays a central role.

It is making a mockery of Western sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea

In recent years, dictators in China, Iran, Russia and North Korea have strengthened trade and security ties, formalized cooperation and alliances, and worked together to expand their power from Ukraine to Taiwan.

One city plays a central role in this deepening alliance of autocracies: Hong Kong.
Once a trusted global financial center aligned with Western democracies and governed by the rule of law, our new report with the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation details how Hong Kong has become the world’s leader in such practices as importing and re-exporting banned Western technology to Russia, forming untraceable front companies for the purchase and sale of barred Iranian oil, and managing “ghost ships” that illegally trade natural resources with North Korea.

Hong Kong’s business-friendly policies, which make it easy to conceal corporate ownership and quickly create and dissolve companies, allow illicit actors to make a mockery of U.S. and Western sanctions. At the same time, slow and inconsistent enforcement by Western governments has allowed those actors to continue their operations with relative impunity. The United States can and should address this situation without delay.

Customs data collected by the global security nonprofit C4ADS shows that eight months after Russia invaded Ukraine, shipments of technology categorized by the United States and European Union as the highest priority to Russia for its war effort, such as advanced semiconductors and communications equipment, had nearly doubled from prewar levels. They included products from U.S. companies such as Intel, Analog Devices, Apple and Texas Instruments — despite efforts by the U.S. government to stop sales of sensitive goods by U.S. companies to Russia. By the end of 2023, nearly 40 percent of the cargo shipped from Hong Kong to Russia was made up of these “Common High Priority Items.”

Hong Kong’s destabilizing behavior is not limited to Russia. Leaked emails we analyzed from the Iranian petrochemical company Sahara Thunder revealed relationships with Hong Kong companies that sought to facilitate ship-to-ship transfers of Iranian oil, which would then be taken to foreign ports where its Iranian origin could be masked. Other Hong Kong companies have supplied the Western parts that Iran needs to produce drones — which have increasingly appeared on battlegrounds in Ukraine, Yemen and elsewhere.

The United States should also designate Hong Kong a “primary money laundering concern,” a tool that would, for example, permit the Treasury Department to require U.S. financial institutions to disclose the beneficiaries of accounts opened by Hong Kong individuals. Finally, the process of investigating and sanctioning evaders must be completed much faster; the Treasury, Commerce, and State departments must receive all the resources they need to do the job.

Hong Kong is undermining the world’s security, stability and liberty. The United States and its allies need to curb the city’s behavior before sanctions become ingrained as little more than symbolic gestures.

The world's tyrants seem to be getting their anti-democracy act together. Are the democracies getting their anti-tyranny act together? Definitely not if DJT gets re-elected -- he's on the American pro-tyranny side with its Project 2025 plan to install tyranny here.