Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

The Chinese Foreign Ministry announced on Friday sanctions on the Hudson Institute and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and their directors in response to the latest meeting between the regional leader of the Taiwan island and the US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in the US.  

Universities, institutions and other organizations and individuals in China are prohibited from conducting exchanges and cooperation with the two US institutions and four senior representatives from these two organizations are prohibited from entering China.

In disregard of China's repeated representations and firm opposition, the US insisted on allowing the island's regional leader Tsai Ing-wen to "transit" through the US to engage in political activities from March 29 to 31 and April 4 to 6. 

The Hudson Institute and the Reagan Library provided a platform and convenience for Tsai to engage in "Taiwan independence" separatist activities in the US, which seriously violated the one-China principle and the provisions of the three China-US joint communiqués, and seriously damaged China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, the ministry said. 

Under China's countermeasures, universities, institutions and other organizations and individuals in China are restricted from conducting transactions, exchanges and cooperation as well as other activities with the two sanctioned institutions. 

The four individuals including Sarah May Stern, chair of Hudson Institute, John Walters, president of the institute, John Heubusch, executive director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute, and Joanne Drake, chief administrative officer of the institute are also placed on the sanction list. 

Their movable and immovable assets and other types of property within China will be frozen and organizations and individuals within China will be prohibited from conducting relevant transactions, cooperation and other activities with them. The individuals are prohibited from entering China and barred from being issued a visa, the ministry said. 

Chinese experts believe that these countermeasures will send a strong deterrence to those political figures and individuals in the US who manipulate the Taiwan question to contain China. 

"I think those measures are very targeted, which will send a signal of deterrence to those individuals in the US who hype on the Taiwan question, using the question to advance the containment and rivalry with China," Diao Daming, an associate professor at the Renmin University of China in Beijing, told the Global Times on Friday. 

Washington-based think tank the Hudson Institute, a prominent anti-China institute established a China Center in May 2022, with former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo as a "distinguished fellow" and extreme anti-China figure Miles Yu as its director. 

The center was established to collude with anti-China figures, concoct and disseminate anti-China rhetoric, in order to cope with the so-called threats from Communist Party of China (CPC), the Global Times learned from sources familiar with the matter.

The institute has also taken sponsorship from the Taiwan authorities, and invited Tsai as well as Hsiao Bi-khim, the island of Taiwan's representative to the US, to take part in online events to disseminate remarks of "Taiwan independence" secessionism.