▶ ECONOMY
The US House of Representatives on Tuesday (US time) approved the so-called Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2019, which has been slammed by Chinese authorities and experts as interference in the internal affairs of China.
Even though it contains items aiming at restricting economic and trade activities between Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region with firms from the US and even other countries, the bill won’t have much impact on trade or the economy of Xinjiang, experts said.
“The bill also establishes that it is US policy to work with other countries to prevent them from exporting these technologies to China,” read a statement on the Congressional website of Brad Sherman, a member of the US House of Representatives.
Liu Xiaoxue, an associate research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that the bill won’t have much impact on the economy of Xinjiang in light of the region’s economic structure, as trade does not account for much of its GDP.
According to data from website of the regional government, Xinjiang’s GDP was 1.22 trillion yuan ($172.5 billion) in 2018, up 6.1 percent year-on-year. Its total trade was $20 billion, about 11.6 percent of GDP. Xinjiang’s exports were $16.4 billion in 2018 while its imports were only $3.6 billion.
Tian Yun, vice director of the Beijing Economic Operation Association, noted that the bill was more like creating a new form of leverage in the US trade talks with China. It is no longer about so-called human rights issues, but the underlying interests the US wants to exchange with China, Tian said.