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
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