China yesterday announced sanctions against US officials, including senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, in a largely symbolic attempt to retaliate over Washington’s moves to punish Beijing for its treatment of ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Hua Chunying (華春瑩) said sanctions against the four officials would begin yesterday, without elaborating.
Hua listed Rubio and Cruz — both Republicans and high-profile critics of China — as targets of the measures, in addition to US Ambassador for Religious Freedom Sam Brownback, US Representative Chris Smith and the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.
Photo: AFP
“Xinjiang is China’s internal affairs and the US has no right to interfere,” Hua said at a regular briefing in Beijing. “We urge the US to immediately withdraw its wrong decisions, stop interfering in China’s internal affairs or undermining China’s interests. We will make further reactions based on the development of the situation.”
The move comes after the US sanctioned a top member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and three other officials over alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
The individuals sanctioned by the US include Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region CCP Secretary Chen Quanguo (陳全國), a member of the CCP’s 25-member politburo; CCP Secretary of the Xinjiang Political and Legal Committee Zhu Hailun (朱海侖); Xinjiang Public Security Bureau Director Wang Mingshan (王明山); and Huo Liujun (霍留軍), a former top official in Xiinjiang’s police force.
The tit-for-tat exchanges appeared calibrated to keep the disputes from further escalating and disrupting other aspects of ties between the world’s two largest economies, such as their “phase one” trade deal.
The US moves were largely symbolic, since both groups of US and Chinese officials were unlikely to have much financial or legal exposure to each other’s countries.
“This is an equivalent action targeting the main people responsible for what happened with sanctioning Chinese officials over Xinjiang,” said Bo Zhengyuan, partner at Beijing-based research firm Plenum. “The move gives the US a sense of how China will react when potential sanctions related to the Hong Kong Autonomy Act [HKAA] is announced. Beijing has shown that it will hit back with proportional actions, which is worrisome as the HKAA includes sanctions on entities such as financial institutions.”
The list of US officials targeted by China notably included no US officials as senior as Chen.
Rubio introduced the Senate version of US legislation calling for sanctions against Xinjiang officials, one of several measures critical of China that Cruz has also supported.
The commission, a frequent target of criticism from Beijing, had earlier this year issued a report saying the country was using forced labor as part of an official policy to suppress and control its ethnic minorities.
Hua yesterday also dismissed a tweet reposted by the US embassy in Beijing, including an image suggesting Chinese labor abuses in Xinjiang.
“We oppose they use such inferior lies to smear and attack China,” Hua said. “It shows some American people have no bottom line in attacking China.”
Additional reporting by staff writer
The combined effect of the monsoon, the outer rim of Typhoon Fengshen and a low-pressure system is expected to bring significant rainfall this week to various parts of the nation, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The heaviest rain is expected to occur today and tomorrow, with torrential rain expected in Keelung’s north coast, Yilan and the mountainous regions of Taipei and New Taipei City, the CWA said. Rivers could rise rapidly, and residents should stay away from riverbanks and avoid going to the mountains or engaging in water activities, it said. Scattered showers are expected today in central and
COOPERATION: Taiwan is aligning closely with US strategic objectives on various matters, including China’s rare earths restrictions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Taiwan could deal with China’s tightened export controls on rare earth metals by turning to “urban mining,” a researcher said yesterday. Rare earth metals, which are used in semiconductors and other electronic components, could be recovered from industrial or electronic waste to reduce reliance on imports, National Cheng Kung University Department of Resources Engineering professor Lee Cheng-han (李政翰) said. Despite their name, rare earth elements are not actually rare — their abundance in the Earth’s crust is relatively high, but they are dispersed, making extraction and refining energy-intensive and environmentally damaging, he said, adding that many countries have opted to
African swine fever was confirmed at a pig farm in Taichung, the Ministry of Agriculture said today, prompting a five-day nationwide ban on transporting and slaughtering pigs, and marking the loss of Taiwan’s status as the only Asian nation free of all three major swine diseases. The ministry held a news conference today confirming that the virus was detected at a farm in Wuci District (梧棲) yesterday evening. Authorities preemptively culled 195 pigs at the farm at about 3am and disinfected the entire site to prevent the disease from spreading, the ministry said. Authorities also set up a 3km-radius control zone
CONCESSION: A Shin Kong official said that the firm was ‘willing to contribute’ to the nation, as the move would enable Nvidia Crop to build its headquarters in Taiwan Shin Kong Life Insurance Co (新光人壽) yesterday said it would relinquish land-use rights, or known as surface rights, for two plots in Taipei’s Beitou District (北投), paving the way for Nvidia Corp to expand its office footprint in Taiwan. The insurer said it made the decision “in the interest of the nation’s greater good” and would not seek compensation from taxpayers for potential future losses, calling the move a gesture to resolve a months-long impasse among the insurer, the Taipei City Government and the US chip giant. “The decision was made on the condition that the Taipei City Government reimburses the related
RSS