Congressman Smith facing sanctions from Chinese gov’t
HAMILTON » Congressman Chris Smith of Hamilton has been sanctioned by the People’s Republic of China after accusing Chinese President Xi Jinping of genocide.
“I am going to double down,” Smith said Tuesday in an interview with The Trentonian. “We want a peaceful and democratic China. That is the hope.”
China this week announced sanctions against Smith and several other lawmakers who pushed for the passage of the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020, which President Donald Trump signed into law last month.
The Uyghurs are a Muslim minority group in China’s Xinjiang autonomous region. When Smith delivered a U.S. House floor speech in May, he said:
“Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping’s ongoing genocide against the approximately 10 million Uyghurs living in Xinjiang in northwestern China demands action.”
The Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 requires the White House to impose sanctions on any Chinese official who has subjected ethnic minorities to “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment” in Xinjiang.
The Trump administration invoked the new law last week when it announced sanctions against four Chinese officials accused of heinous human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
China retaliated by announcing sanctions against U.S. Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Ambassador for Religious Freedom Sam Brownback.
China has not announced what it will do, exactly, to Smith and Co., but the congressman believes he will be banned from visiting China and may face certain security threats at home, he said.
“I want to go back to China,” said Smith, a Republican who has previously visited a Chinese gulag in the aftermath of Beijing’s 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. “I know many dissidents from China.”
“The ultimate goal is a free and democratic China where they do have free and fair elections,” Smith said, adding he also wants China to become a “fair” trading partner to “where they don’t exploit their workforce.”
A democratic China that respects human rights would “mitigate the threat of war,” he said.
Smith also condemned the Communist Party of China, saying, “People of China deserve better than the dictatorship that they have.”
The sanctions against Smith come as no surprise.
The state-affiliated Global Times newspaper on May 14 suggested China would impose sanctions on Smith and other lawmakers who championed what it called “anti-China agendas.”
Smith in April introduced a bill, H.R. 6524, that blames China for the coronavirus pandemic, alleging China deceived the World Health Organization in the early days of the public health crisis.
Smith’s bill, if enacted into law, would give civil litigants the power to pursue wrongful death lawsuits against China in American courts. COVID-19 is a deadly respiratory illness first discovered in the Chinese city of Wuhan last December. The virus quickly spread to the United States, killing well over 100,000 people in this nation to date.
Smith has been serving in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1981 and has authored a variety of human rights legislation during his political career.
The 39-year incumbent will face Democratic challenger Stephanie Schmid in the Nov. 3 general election.