The recent decision by the US government not to extend its Hong Kong-related state of emergency saw the effective lifting of sanctions on nine mainland Chinese and Hong Kong officials. At a Ministry of Commerce press briefing, a spokesman called it “an important step in fulfilling the consensus” reached in negotiations. The trend in Sino-American relations remains one of controlled decoupling with particular emphasis on insulating their respective sensitive technology spheres from the other. Against this backdrop of great power competition, Hong Kong remains what former UN Security Council president Kishore Mahbubani terms a passive “football” . Its recent transformations have been appropriated by US officials and elected representatives to score points against an increasingly technologically self-sufficient China.