US FOREIGN CHIEF PRESSES CHINA ON HUMAN RIGHTS
WASHINGTON—US Secretary of State Antony Blinken pressed Beijing on its treatment of Uighurs, Tibetans and Hong Kong while China defended its policies in the first conversation between top officials of the two powers since President Joe Biden took office.
“I made clear the US will defend our national interests, stand up for our democratic values, and hold Beijing accountable for its abuses of the international system,” Blinken said on Twitter of his call with senior Chinese official Yang Jiechi.
Blinken told Yang that the United States “will continue to stand up for human rights and democratic values, including in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong,” a State Department statement said of the call, which took place on Friday Washington time.
Myanmar issue
Blinken also “pressed China to join the international community in condemning the military coup in Burma,” it said, using the former name of Myanmar.
The top US diplomat said the United States would hold Beijing “accountable for its efforts to threaten stability in the Indo-Pacific, including across the Taiwan Strait, and its undermining of the rulesbased international system.”
Yang however warned on the call that Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet were “China’s internal affairs” and “no external forces are allowed to interfere,” urging the United States to “correct mistakes” made in recent years, the Chinese embassy to the United States said in a statement.
He also called on Washington to “strictly abide by the one China principle” under which Beijing considers Taiwan an inseparable part of its territory, saying “the Taiwan issue is the most important and sensitive core issue in China-US relations.”
1M Uighurs in camps
Blinken has said he agrees with a determination by the State Department under former president Donald Trump that Beijing is carrying out genocide in the western region of Xinjiang, where rights groups say more than 1 million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim Turkic-speaking people have been rounded up in camps.
Beijing has also ramped up a crackdown in Hong Kong, arresting leading activists, after imposing a new law against subversion following major protests in the financial hub to which it had guaranteed a separate system.
Biden nonetheless offered a small olive branch during a speech on foreign policy on Thursday, saying that while the United states will “confront” China, “We are ready to work with Beijing when it’s in America’s interest to do so.”