China’s state media and the government of Hong Kong lashed out on Sunday at US President Donald Trump’s vow to end Hong Kong’s special status if Beijing imposes new national security laws on the city, which is bracing for fresh protests.

Trump on Friday pledged to “take action to revoke Hong Kong’s preferential treatment as a separate customs and travel territory”, and to impose sanctions on unspecified individuals over Beijing’s new laws on the Asian financial centre.

But China’s state media pushed back, saying this would hurt the US more than China.

“The baton of sanctions that the United States is brandishing will not scare Hong Kong and will not bring China down,” China’s Communist Party mouthpiece, the People’s Daily, wrote in a commentary. It used the pen name “Zhong Sheng”, meaning “Voice of China”, often used to give the paper’s view on foreign policy issues.

The Global Times wrote: “China has already prepared for the worst. No matter how far the US goes, China will keep its company.”

A Hong Kong government spokesman expressed regret the US continued to “smear and demonise the legitimate rights and duty of our sovereign” to safeguard national security.

In a sign of diplomatic manoeuvring, the US government said it would put one of its prime Hong Kong properties up for sale — a luxury residential complex worth up to HK$5 billion.

A spokesman for the US consulate in Hong Kong said this was part of a global programme that “reinforces the US government’s presence in Hong Kong” through reinvestment in other areas.

China and Hong Kong officials have justified the laws that will be directly imposed by China to restore order to a city that has been wracked by sometimes violent anti-China, anti-government protests over the past year.

A senior Hong Kong official, Erick Tsang, said he couldn’t care less if he were sanctioned by Washington. “I wouldn’t even go to Canada, just in case they try to catch me” there, Tsang said.

UK pledge

Britain will not look away from its responsibilities to Hong Kong, foreign minister Dominic Raab said on Sunday.

“If China follows through with this national security legislation... we will give those people who hold BNO passports (British National Overseas passports) the right to come to the UK,” Raab told the BBC, adding that only “a fraction of them would actually come”.