[The back-to-back U.S. measures targeting the Chinese government’s handling of Hong Kong and Xinjiang — two of the most politically sensitive regions in the eyes of Communist Party leaders — have added strain to the bilateral relationship at a time when the two sides are struggling to reach a trade deal.]
By Gerry
Shih
 |
|
This
May 31 photo shows a high-security facility in Hotan, Xinjiang province,
thought
to
be one of the camps where China has detained at least a million Muslims.
(Greg
Baker/AFP/Getty Images)
|
BEIJING
— The House of
Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill late Tuesday that would sanction
senior Chinese officials involved in the country’s mass detention of its Muslim
Uighur minority, setting up another clash between Washington and Beijing at a
time of broadening disputes between the two powers.
The Uighur Act cleared the House by 407 to 1
a week after President Trump signed legislation that would sanction Chinese and
Hong Kong officials involved in human rights abuses in the protest-racked
financial hub.
China has angrily denounced both measures and
said Wednesday it would respond to the House’s passage of the Uighur Act, which
must be reconciled with a Senate version passed in September before it reaches
Trump’s desk.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying
urged the United States to “immediately correct its mistake, stop the above
bill on Xinjiang from becoming law, and stop using Xinjiang as a way to
interfere in China’s domestic affairs.”
The state-run Global Times tabloid suggested
in an article that China could take aim at American companies doing business in
China by naming them on an “unreliable entities” list. Hu Xijin, the paper’s
editor, tweeted that Xinjiang officials would shrug off the sanctions because
they have no connections with the United States.
“But U.S. politicians with stakes in China
should be careful,” he said.
The back-to-back U.S. measures targeting the
Chinese government’s handling of Hong Kong and Xinjiang — two of the most
politically sensitive regions in the eyes of Communist Party leaders — have
added strain to the bilateral relationship at a time when the two sides are
struggling to reach a trade deal.
Trump acknowledged this week that the new
Hong Kong legislation complicates trade talks. He played down the possibility
of an imminent deal a day later, telling reporters during a visit to London
that he “like[d] the idea” of waiting until after the November 2020 election to
reach an accord even though the Chinese wanted a deal soon.
The Uighur Act would probably target
officials including the Xinjiang regional Communist Party chief, Chen Quanguo,
a member of the ruling party’s elite 25-person Politburo whom researchers
consider responsible for overseeing the detention and surveillance program in
Xinjiang. The three-year crackdown has led to the detention of at least 1
million Uighurs in reeducation camps, designed to mold them into secular,
patriotic citizens who embrace Chinese customs and language.
The program has been extensively documented
in media reports, satellite imagery and public and leaked Chinese government
documents. Chinese officials initially denied the camps’ existence but now
describe them as vocational boarding schools that allow “trainees” to graduate
into gainful employment.
In remarks Tuesday on the House floor, Rep.
Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), a Uighur Act co-sponsor, said the Xinjiang
detention program was “on a scale not seen since the Holocaust.”
“This Congress wants to hold the Chinese
government and Chinese companies accountable for crimes against humanity and
the cruelty they inflicted,” Smith said.
[China announces sanctions against U.S.-based nonprofit groups in response to Hong Kong legislation]
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.), said
in remarks supporting the bill that “the human dignity and human rights of the
Uighur community are under threat from Beijing — Beijing’s barbarous actions,
which are an outrage to the collective conscience of the world.”
In October, the Trump administration placed
visa restrictions on Chinese officials involved in the Xinjiang crackdown and
barred the export of U.S. products to Chinese technology companies involved in
the region’s surveillance.
Chinese diplomats and state media have
doubled down on their defense of the Xinjiang policy with increasingly pitched
rhetoric. The Global Times on Tuesday launched a rare and personal attack
against an American anthropologist at the University of Washington and an
independent German researcher, accusing them of working undercover on behalf of
a U.S. intelligence agency to “slander and smear China.”
Earlier this week, the Chinese Foreign
Ministry announced that it would sanction several U.S.-based nonprofit and
human rights organizations, including the National Endowment for Democracy and
Human Rights Watch, but it did not provide details about what the sanctions
would entail.
China also said it would deny the U.S. Navy
port visits to Hong Kong.
Read more
