The Chinese Communist Party’s National People’s Congress has just passed the National Security Law that ends Hong Kong’s judicial independence. Its enactment signals the final death knell of the “one country, two systems” promise made to Hong Kong and Great Britain in 1984 and repeated before the 1997 reversion to China.

Xi Jinping, though, has been slowly chipping away at the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region’s (HK SAR’s) authority and autonomy since 2014. His effort has accelerated over the last year, beginning with the failed attempt to push the HK SAR to accept mainland China’s judicial authority over Hong Kong courts. Facing massive protests, Xi launched an intimidation campaign, stationing several thousand paramilitary People’s Armed Police (PAP) in nearby Shenzen and a massive media campaign depicting the demonstrators as anarchists and agents of hostile foreign powers.

Hong Kong authorities withdrew the court legislation, but Hong Kong’s new elections put a pro-democracy majority in office. Xi didn’t initiate a Tiananmen Square-style massacre to suppress the pro- democracy demonstrations that followed, but his police have disappeared over 1,000 suspected and actual protest leaders and hundreds more have been detained and are awaiting trial.

More recently, armed thugs escorting a pro-Beijing member into Hong Kong’s legislature physically assaulted a pro-democracy member and a journalist in the hallway outside the chamber. Party officials have resurrected plans to modify Hong Kong’s school curriculum and replace local teachers with instructors from the mainland to ensure students receive a “moral, patriotic education.”

The sum of all these actions present clear indicators of Xi’s disdain for human rights, the rule of law and China’s commitments to international agreements. More ominously, they have been accompanied by aggressive Chinese military actions against its neighbors.

Already this year, Chinese military units have rammed a Vietnamese fishing boat, and threatened Philippine surveillance aircraft and Coast Guard vessels in the South China Sea. It has also staged bomber and fighter aircraft to the artificial islands there, islands Xi promised then- President Barack Obama that he would not militarize. Yet, Xi has done exactly that, building fortified structures and expanding both the islands and the facilities on them. China’s People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia craft have attempted to drive Japanese fishing boats way from the disputed Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, generating an incident with a Japanese Coast Guard vessel.

To the west, People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops accosted Indian Army troops along the Sino-Indian border. Finally, the People’s Republic of China has expanded military operations around Taiwan, sending aircraft more deeply into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone and China’s Premier Li Keqiang dropped “peaceful” from his policy statements about reunification.

Viewed in combination with his incarcerating more than 1 million Uighurs in “re-education camps” and moves against Hong Kong, Xi has telegraphed his aggressive domestic and international intentions. He has broken every promise he made, to the people of Hong Kong in 2014 and to American leaders and the international community since 2015.

More importantly, his actions have been contrary to his and his predecessor’s statements about China’s peaceful rise and respect for rule of law. Hong Kong may well be a bellwether of the Indo-Pacific Region’s future. If so, the road ahead is neither clear nor bright.

The question for the United States, the Indo-Pacific region — including, of course, the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command based in Hawaii — and the international community is how to respond. Rational comprehensive, and where possible, unified diplomatic and economic action offers the best policy options — but security cooperation and military deterrence must also play a role. To achieve that, the region needs strong “whole of government” American leadership.

Carl O. Schuster, of Honolulu, is a retired U.S. Navy captain.