Hong Kong No Longer Autonomous From China

Congress now has the power to strip Hong Kong of its “special status” under the United States-Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992, which has allowed for the Chinese city-state to be treated more favorably than the rest of China by the US. Although Hong Kong is part of China it has a different legal and economic system, a holdover from its time as a British colony. 
The status is part of what’s allowed Hong Kong to develop as China’s ‘gateway to the West’, a key part of its appeal as an international city. Without the US ‘special status’, Hong Kong will lose its international cachet and financial prestige and become just an extension of Shenzen (which lies just across the border of mainland China) and eventually becoming an obscure Chinese city. 

A U.S. revocation of Hong Kong’s special status would be viewed by Beijing as interfering with its sovereignty, and China has previously threatened to “take strong countermeasures., as Hong Kong is a “hot-button” economic and political issue for China.