US Consul General Gregory May has announced that he will leave Hong Kong and assume a role in Beijing next week, after an almost three-year tenure as the top American diplomat in the financial hub.
Speaking on Thursday at an Independence Day event at The Murray, a hotel in Admiralty, May said he will be moving on to the US embassy in Beijing next week.
He will take on the title of deputy chief of mission in the Chinese capital, making him second-in-command at the embassy.
May will work as an assistant to David Perdue, the US ambassador to China, who began his role in April.
“[My wife] Margaret and I, we lived in Beijing for a while. It’ll be a bit of a return to familiar ground,” he said.
May, an experienced diplomat who has spent much of his career in the US government abroad, arrived in the city in September 2022.
During his time in Hong Kong, he saw two of the city’s most high-profile national security trials get underway: that of media mogul Jimmy Lai and that of the 47 democrats.
He also witnessed the enactment of Article 23, the city’s homegrown and second national security law, in March 2024 after it passed in the opposition-free Legislative Council.
Last May, the diplomat said Hong Kong authorities needed to “stop the slide towards ever-greater repression.”
He said nothing had done “greater damage” to the US’s relationship with Hong Kong than the city’s police issuing bounties on a US citizen and residents, referring to arrest warrants placed on activists overseas.
May’s departure comes as tensions between Washington and Beijing remain high, after US President Donald Trump slapped tariffs on Chinese exports and ordered his government to “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party.”
‘Big fan’ of Hong Kong
Speaking to reporters after his speech at the Independence Day event, May said he was leaving Hong Kong as a “big fan” of the city, but what was “not so great” was what he called the “erosion of freedom” at the hands of mainland Chinese and Hong Kong authorities.
May said he was especially concerned about the treatment of Lai, the former owner of pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, who has been charged under the national security law.
Closing arguments for the trial are expected in August. Lai faces up to life imprisonment if convicted.
May said he was concerned not just about Lai, but “other political prisoners” too.
“There are many other people, unfortunately, in Hong Kong who are in jail for [the] peaceful expression of political views, for putting things on the internet.”
In response to a media report that the Education Bureau had warned students and teachers not to take part in American Independence Day activities, May said he had not heard anything directly from the city’s government about it.
But he said he was “disappointed… education officials would have that kind of order.”
“I challenge any one of you to find anything about this event… at The Murray hotel this afternoon that would in any way violate the national security of any country,” May said, adding that cross-cultural exchanges with students were beneficial.
