Benjamin Wilhelm Wednesday, May 8, 2019
https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/trend-lines/27831/is-the-u-s-pursuing-a-trade-deal-with-china-at-the-cost-of-human-rights?fbclid=IwAR0dnZcS4PjGTLZVkm7x2IIOWbLdbazVR3XjjOrhqkifkKK1MZusKhWAdZc
itor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China.
Uighur security personnel patrol near the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar in western China’s Xinjiang region, Nov. 4, 2017 (AP photo by Ng Han Guan).
The United States has offered its harshest assessment yet of the mass detention of Uighur Muslims in China’s western Xinjiang autonomous region. Speaking at a press briefing Friday, Randall Schriver, the assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, said China is “using the security forces for mass imprisonment of Chinese Muslims in concentration camps.”
Pressed on his use of the term “concentration camps,” Schriver defended it as “appropriate.” He also said that “at least a million but likely closer to 3 million citizens” were being detained—a significant jump from the usual estimate of a million or more detainees.
China rejected Schriver’s comments, calling on “the relevant U.S. individual” to “stop interfering in China’s domestic affairs.” His comments also highlighted a divide within the U.S. government over how to address Beijing’s most severe human rights violations without damaging prospects for a deal to end the U.S. trade war with China—a divide that’s most clearly demonstrated by conflicting statements over what is actually happening in Xinjiang. In an interview with CBS on Sunday, two days after Schriver spoke, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo referred to China’s detention centers as “re-education camps” and said they hold up to a million people. He became hostile when asked about the apparent inconsistency on the part of U.S. officials. “Don’t play ticky-tac,” Pompeo said in response to a question. “There’s no discrepancy.”
Pompeo’s appearance did not sit well with human rights advocates, who wonder why the White House has shied away from imposing targeted sanctions over the mass detention of Uighurs—especially if it has evidence that the number of Uighurs incarcerated in Xinjiang is “closer to 3 million.” Foreign Policy reported last month that activists were at one point told by the administration that sanctions were forthcoming, but that they had since been taken off the table due to the trade talks.
Sophie Richardson, China director for Human Rights Watch, told The New York Times this week that the trade talks and China’s human rights violations are linked, and that Washington should place restrictions on U.S. companies that are complicit in the crackdown through their ties to Chinese firms known to be supporting the detention centers. “There’s room for scrutiny of Chinese companies that are engaged one way or another in repression in Xinjiang,” she added.
Such statements aside, the issue is almost certain to be absent from talks taking place this week in Washington, which face daunting challenges as it is. Just days ago, the talks were seen as a potential last step toward finalizing a trade deal. But after negotiations last week in Beijing, China reportedly reneged on nearly all binding legal language holding a potential trade agreement together. In response, the Trump administration has said new tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods will be implemented Friday. Trump also said the U.S. would “shortly” impose 25 percent tariffs on another $325 billion in Chinese products, meaning tariffs would touch everything China exports to the U.S.
Top Reads on China
The centennial of the May Fourth Movement: Saturday marked the centennial of China’s patriotic May Fourth Movement, in which students called on China to stand up against foreign imperialism. The Communist Party has “rooted its origin story in the romance and defiance of May 4,” Beijing-based journalist Dan Xin Huang writes for Foreign Affairs. The movement’s themes of democracy, artistic freedom and feminism also inspired the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. But as Huang writes, that has not stopped the Communist Party from co-opting its legacy:
“May Fourth—modern China’s most potent symbol of national expression—has been stripped of its aspirations and sanitized into a reliable party talking point… a recent survey administered to select [Peking University] graduate students tested their affinity to statements such as ‘[Xi is] a leader whose heart was forged by the noble struggle’ and ‘Multiparty Western democracy is not suited to China.’ One line of questioning appeared designed to root out subversives, gauging what respondents thought was embodied by ‘the May 4th Spirit’ and whether ‘the youth should release its passion… and chase youthful ideals.’”
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Uighur security personnel patrol near the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar in western China’s Xinjiang region, Nov. 4, 2017 (AP photo by Ng Han Guan).
The United States has offered its harshest assessment yet of the mass detention of Uighur Muslims in China’s western Xinjiang autonomous region. Speaking at a press briefing Friday, Randall Schriver, the assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, said China is “using the security forces for mass imprisonment of Chinese Muslims in concentration camps.”
Pressed on his use of the term “concentration camps,” Schriver defended it as “appropriate.” He also said that “at least a million but likely closer to 3 million citizens” were being detained—a significant jump from the usual estimate of a million or more detainees.
China rejected Schriver’s comments, calling on “the relevant U.S. individual” to “stop interfering in China’s domestic affairs.” His comments also highlighted a divide within the U.S. government over how to address Beijing’s most severe human rights violations without damaging prospects for a deal to end the U.S. trade war with China—a divide that’s most clearly demonstrated by conflicting statements over what is actually happening in Xinjiang. In an interview with CBS on Sunday, two days after Schriver spoke, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo referred to China’s detention centers as “re-education camps” and said they hold up to a million people. He became hostile when asked about the apparent inconsistency on the part of U.S. officials. “Don’t play ticky-tac,” Pompeo said in response to a question. “There’s no discrepancy.”
Pompeo’s appearance did not sit well with human rights advocates, who wonder why the White House has shied away from imposing targeted sanctions over the mass detention of Uighurs—especially if it has evidence that the number of Uighurs incarcerated in Xinjiang is “closer to 3 million.” Foreign Policy reported last month that activists were at one point told by the administration that sanctions were forthcoming, but that they had since been taken off the table due to the trade talks.
Sophie Richardson, China director for Human Rights Watch, told The New York Times this week that the trade talks and China’s human rights violations are linked, and that Washington should place restrictions on U.S. companies that are complicit in the crackdown through their ties to Chinese firms known to be supporting the detention centers. “There’s room for scrutiny of Chinese companies that are engaged one way or another in repression in Xinjiang,” she added.
Such statements aside, the issue is almost certain to be absent from talks taking place this week in Washington, which face daunting challenges as it is. Just days ago, the talks were seen as a potential last step toward finalizing a trade deal. But after negotiations last week in Beijing, China reportedly reneged on nearly all binding legal language holding a potential trade agreement together. In response, the Trump administration has said new tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods will be implemented Friday. Trump also said the U.S. would “shortly” impose 25 percent tariffs on another $325 billion in Chinese products, meaning tariffs would touch everything China exports to the U.S.
Top Reads on China
The centennial of the May Fourth Movement: Saturday marked the centennial of China’s patriotic May Fourth Movement, in which students called on China to stand up against foreign imperialism. The Communist Party has “rooted its origin story in the romance and defiance of May 4,” Beijing-based journalist Dan Xin Huang writes for Foreign Affairs. The movement’s themes of democracy, artistic freedom and feminism also inspired the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. But as Huang writes, that has not stopped the Communist Party from co-opting its legacy:
“May Fourth—modern China’s most potent symbol of national expression—has been stripped of its aspirations and sanitized into a reliable party talking point… a recent survey administered to select [Peking University] graduate students tested their affinity to statements such as ‘[Xi is] a leader whose heart was forged by the noble struggle’ and ‘Multiparty Western democracy is not suited to China.’ One line of questioning appeared designed to root out subversives, gauging what respondents thought was embodied by ‘the May 4th Spirit’ and whether ‘the youth should release its passion… and chase youthful ideals.’”
U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping during a joint press
conference at the Great Hall of the People, Beijing, Nov. 9, 2017 (AP photo by Andrew Harnik).
China, the civilizational threat: Kiron Skinner, the State Department’s director of policy planning, told an audience at a security forum in Washington last Monday that American diplomats were developing a strategy for China based on the idea of “a fight with a really different civilization” for the first time in American history. “It’s the first time that we will have a great power competitor that is not Caucasian,” Skinner said, prompting some ridicule. Bloomberg columnist Hal Brands arguedthat a policy informed by the “clash of civilizations” thesis—a term coined by American political scientist Samuel Huntington in 1993—actually serves Beijing better than Washington.
“The Chinese government…has embraced the concept of civilizational difference as a means of autocratic self-protection. Beijing has long rejected the idea that it should liberalize its political system—or simply stop throwing dissidents in jail—on grounds that ‘Western’ concepts of democracy and individual rights are incompatible with the traditions of China’s unique civilization.”
In the News This Week
U.S.-China relations: Two U.S. guided-missile destroyers sailed near Chinese-claimed islands in the South China Sea on Monday, provoking a statement of displeasure from Beijing (Reuters). … A retired CIA officer pleaded guilty Wednesday to conspiring to spy for the Chinese government (Washington Post).
Cross-Strait relations: Foxconn chairman and Taiwanese presidential hopeful Terry Gou challenged Beijing to “acknowledge the existence of the Republic of China,” Taiwan’s official name (Financial Times). … China is holding live-fire military drills at the northern end of the Taiwan Strait this week (South China Morning Post).
Military: Satellite images obtained by a Washington think tank show “considerable recent activity” on China’s first full-sized aircraft carrier (Reuters) … A U.S. Department of Defense report released Thursday warned that China’s increased activities in the Arctic region could support “a strengthened Chinese military presence in the Arctic Ocean” (Reuters).
Domestic politics: Chinese censors are shutting down some WeChat accounts for sharing a petition in support of Jingyao Liu, a woman who accused billionaire Richard Liu of rape in Minnesota (Associated Press). … In a video and written testimony, missing student labor activist Qiu Zhanquan said he suffered abuse at the hands of Chinese police (South China Morning Post).
Business and economics: China stocks suffered a record fall after Trump’s tariff threat Sunday, but rose after Beijing confirmed that Vice Premier Liu He would still travel to Washington for trade negotiations (Financial Times). … China’s April exports unexpectedly fell 2.7 percent from a year ago to $193.5 billion (Associated Press).
Huawei: Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou appeared in a Vancouver court Wednesday for a proceeding about her potential extradition to the U.S. (New York Times).
Benjamin Wilhelm is WPR’s newsletter and engagement editor.