Beijing has approved Julie Eadeh as the new US consul general in Hong Kong despite controversies surrounding her 2019 meeting with activists Joshua Wong and Nathan Law.
In a statement released on Wednesday afternoon, the US Consulate General confirmed that Eadeh had arrived in the city on Wednesday to take up the top post.
Citing anonymous sources, local media had already reported last month that Eadeh would be appointed the next US consul general to succeed Gregory May, who left Hong Kong to assume a new role in Beijing.
Responding to the speculation at the time, David Schlaefer, the US chargé d’affaires in Hong Kong, said they were still in a “wait-and-see mode.”
Eadeh, a former political chief of the US consulate in Hong Kong, came under fire from Chinese state media and Beijing-backed newspapers in 2019 after she was photographed with Wong, Law, and two other activists in a hotel lobby during the extradition bill protests.
Ta Kung Pao and Wen Wei Po reports in August 2019 claimed the meeting was proof that the large-scale protests involved foreign interference.
Ta Kung Pao described Eadeh as a “mysterious, low-key expert in subversion,” citing her past roles at the US Department of State and postings in the Middle East, and leaked her personal information.
Then US State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus criticised the reports, saying they had “gone from irresponsible to dangerous.”
“This must stop,” Ortagus wrote on August 9, 2019, adding that American envoys were “just doing their jobs, just like diplomats from every other country.”
Eadeh’s last posting was as the US consul general in Istanbul, a role she had held since November 2022, after serving as the US Mission Türkiye spokesperson in Ankara from August 2021 to October 2022. Before working as political chief at the US consulate in Hong Kong, she took up diplomatic roles in Qatar, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Shanghai, and Jerusalem.
The new top US envoy is proficient in Turkish, Arabic, and Mandarin. She is married to a fellow Foreign Service officer, and they have two sons.
Wong, jailed under the national security law for four years and eight months last year over an unofficial primary election, has been detained since November 23, 2020, for a separate protest-related case. Law, wanted by the Hong Kong national security police, is currently living in exile in the UK.
Beijing inserted national security legislation directly into Hong Kong’s mini-constitution in June 2020 following a year of pro-democracy protests and unrest. It criminalised subversion, secession, collusion with foreign forces and terrorist acts – broadly defined to include disruption to transport and other infrastructure. The move gave police sweeping new powers and led to hundreds of arrests amid new legal precedents, while dozens of civil society groups disappeared. The authorities say it restored stability and peace to the city, rejecting criticism from trade partners, the UN and NGOs.
