China threatens to hit back against fresh US sanctions
Grave violation of norms governing international relations: Chinese official
China pledged to retaliate after the US sanctioned a top member of China’s ruling Communist Party and three other officials over human rights abuses in the far western region of Xinjiang.
“We urge the US to withdraw this wrong decision, stop interfering in China’s domestic affairs and stop harming Chinese interests,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a daily briefing in Beijing on Friday. “If the US insists on going forward, China will take firm countermeasures.”
The sanctions are a “grave violation of basic norms governing international relations and deeply detrimental to USChina relations,” Zhao said. “We reject and condemn that.” He didn’t give details of the reciprocal measures against “individuals and institutions,” but said they would be known “soon enough.”
The Trump administration’s move on Thursday marked an escalation in the increasingly tense rivalry between the world’s two biggest economies. The sanctioned individuals included Chen Quanguo, the Xinjiang party secretary who sits on the 25-member Politburo, as well as Zhu Hailun, party secretary of the Xinjiang Political and Legal Committee, and the current and former directors of the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau.
The US action is tied to the widespread detention of Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang, a policy that has been sharply criticised by top American officials as well as human rights groups. It comes amid soaring tensions between Beijing and Washington over the origin of the coronavirus pandemic, China’s moves to quell dissent in Hong Kong and a debate over the use of Chinese technology by the US and allies.
“The United States is committed to using the full breadth of its financial powers to hold human rights abusers
accountable in Xinjiang and across the world,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in the statement announcing the US move.
The decision also marks the first time the US has sanctioned a sitting Chinese official under the 2016 Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, which gives the US broad authority to impose human-rights sanctions on foreign officials.