22 U.S.C. § 5725 — Secretary of State report regarding the autonomy of Hong Kong

(a) Certification. (1) Unless subsection (b) applies, at least annually and together with the report under section 5731, the Secretary of State must certify to Congress whether Hong Kong^* still warrants treatment under United States law in the same way United States laws applied before July 1, 1997. The certification must address: (B)(i) commercial agreements; (ii) law-enforcement cooperation, including extradition requests; (iii) sanctions enforcement; (iv) export controls and other exchanges involving dual-use, critical, or sensitive technologies; (v) formal United States-Hong Kong treaties and agreements; (vi) other relevant bilateral cooperation; (vii) Hong Kong Government decision-making, including executive, legislative, and judicial structures and (I) assembly freedom, (II) speech freedom, (III) expression freedom, and (IV) press freedom, including the Internet and social media; (viii) universal suffrage, including the ultimate goal of choosing the Chief Executive and all Legislative Council members by universal suffrage; (ix) judicial independence; (x) police and security functions; (xi) education; (xii) laws or regulations on treason, secession, sedition, subversion against China’s Central People’s Government, or theft of state secrets; (xiii) laws or regulations on foreign political organizations or bodies; (xiv) laws or regulations on political organizations; and (xv) other rights listed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The certification must also include: (C)(i) an assessment, for each category above, of autonomy erosion caused by China’s Government actions inconsistent with commitments under the Basic Law or Joint Declaration^*; (ii) an evaluation of specific effects of that erosion, or Hong Kong’s failure to meet United States obligations under international agreements, on each United States-Hong Kong cooperation area; and (iii) a list of specific United States actions responding to the identified erosion or failures, including actions identified in the section 5731 report. (2) The Secretary should consider the Joint Declaration’s terms, obligations, and expectations for Hong Kong. (3) The certification is annual, but the Secretary may issue more certifications whenever circumstances in Hong Kong warrant them.

(b) Waiver authority. (1) The Secretary may waive subsection (a) if (A) the Secretary finds the waiver is in the United States’ national-security interests and (B) by the effective date, the Secretary notifies the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and House Foreign Affairs Committee of the intent to waive it. (2) Except for the action list required by subsection (a)(1)(C)(iii), the Secretary may waive relevant parts of subsection (a) if the President issues an Executive order under section 5722 suspending a particular United States law’s application to Hong Kong.