China pledged to retaliate after the U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S-China 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 U.S. action is tied to the widespread detention of Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang, a policy that has been sharply criticized 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 U.S. 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 U.S. move.
The decision also marks the first time the U.S. has sanctioned a sitting Chinese official under the 2016 Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, which gives the U.S. broad authority to impose human-rights sanctions on foreign officials. Senior administration officials had been pushing for the sanctions for months but had been stymied by President Donald Trump, who fretted that they would complicate his U.S.-China trade deal.
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Chen, seen as a rising star in the Communist Party, has become China’s point man for subduing ethnic unrest. During his earlier stint in Tibet, Buddhist temples were told to display Chinese flags and images of party leaders. His implementation of a vast police state in Xinjiang and demonstrations of loyalty to Xi won him a promotion in 2017 to the Politburo, and he may be considered for a spot on its supreme Standing Committee, which now has just seven members, in the coming years.
Given Chen’s rank in the party hierarchy, which is comparable to a member of the U.S. cabinet, the move is also likely to infuriate President Xi Jinping’s government. Even though the sanctions were weeks in the making, the timing may be seen as deliberate because Treasury announced the move hours after Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi delivered a major speech that called for better ties.