The United States confirmed last week that it did not renew a “national emergency” declaration over the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, leading to the lifting of partial sanctions. While the US did not fully restore Hong Kong’s special privileges as a separate customs zone, it nonetheless marked the most significant retreat over the city since the so-called Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act was enacted in November 2019 to support the “black-clad riots” that engulfed the city in 2019-20, and as a response to the SAR’s law-enforcement actions against the rioters.

China’s Ministry of Commerce said the White House decision was a direct consequence of the consensus reached during the bilateral economic and trade talks, and expressed its appreciation. Likewise, the HKSAR government said the development represented a positive shift in US policy toward the city, and emphasized that maintaining the HKSAR’s prosperity and stability serves the common interests of China and the US and aligns with the general expectations of the international community.

This outcome is a welcome development in China-US relations. Although differences remain around economics and technology, the US administration deserves credit for rowing back from the worst hawkishness and extremism that has engulfed Washington, DC, in recent years. One of these areas of contention was US interference in Hong Kong affairs. It was in 2019 that American politicians brazenly supported and encouraged rioting in the city as a means to advancing strategic containment of China, including passing the aforementioned act.

While US politicians did not sanction the city directly on an economic level, the fundamental goal of successive administrations and the Western mainstream media was to cultivate a narrative of “failure” and “decline” pertaining to the city by deliberately instigating fear and stigma over the national security laws. This included multiple newspaper editorials announcing that Hong Kong was “dead”; the imposition of politically motivated, exaggerated travel warnings that sought to scare people and investors away; and many other things. A great deal of faith was placed in “wishcasting”, a narrative that Hong Kong would ultimately diminish as an international financial center, but this did not materialize.

As a result, we might conclude that for the time being, the US has arrived at the conclusion that a stable and prosperous Hong Kong is in its best interests. The city is not going anywhere, and attempts to stir up trouble have failed. Now has finally landed

So why has the incumbent US administration now changed course? First of all, we should understand that its ultimate foreign policy priority is trade. The US government has engineered a shift away from attacking China over matters related to national sovereignty in a break from neoconservatives in previous administrations, including in the current president’s first term. In doing so, he has signaled a willingness to respect China’s core interests with the incentive of making progress in economic dialogue. This is because from China’s point of view and national interests, matters pertaining to national sovereignty are deemed nonnegotiable. This is a consistent position.

The mistake that previous administrations made is that if the US is intent on trying to domestically undermine China, there is simply no dialogue to be had. These issues are not “trade-offs”, so to speak, but fundamental prerequisites for any talks at all. This factor helps lead to the second point — that the US administration is pragmatic enough on this note to realize that its pressure campaign against the HKSAR has been a failure. Because of the city’s role as a global financial center and a key holder of US-dollar assets, American leverage over the city even at the height of tensions was limited, which is why sanctions have been symbolic at best. Hong Kong’s enduring economic importance has arguably been one reason why the pressure campaign against it failed, and thus from a policymaking and administrative point of view, what other direction does the US have? And is it worth the cost?

After all, it is clear that China is never going to be pressured into relinquishing its right to national security over its own sovereign territory, and there is no possible way to do so. This shift by the US coincides with a broader Western pragmatic shift that has slowly reopened engagement with the special administrative region, most notably in Britain too, which itself is part of a trend of downsizing the most extreme hawkishness against China. Anti-China figures who were very prominent just a few years ago are now marginal.

This, of course, all feeds into the next point: The benefits of engagement with Hong Kong vastly outweigh the political downsides and this itself is a testament to the city’s enduring success. Attacks against the city pertaining to its national security laws were geopolitically and selectively motivated and conveniently ignored the reality that the city had suffered a massive insurrection comprising widespread violence and destruction. It is unrealistic to think that contingencies could not be taken in such a scenario.

As a result, we might conclude that for the time being, the US has arrived at the conclusion that a stable and prosperous Hong Kong is in its best interests. The city is not going anywhere, and attempts to stir up trouble have failed. Now has finally landed.

The author is a British political and international-relations analyst.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.