The United States and European allies blacklisted Chinese officials involved in the repression of Uyghur Muslims in a cascade of sanctions announcements, breaking the seal on Western willingness to confront Beijing’s human rights abuses.
“Chinese authorities will continue to face consequences as long as atrocities occur in Xinjiang,” the U.S. Treasury Department’s Andrea Gacki, who leads the office of foreign assets control, said Monday.
Gacki’s branding of two Chinese government officials “in connection with serious human rights abuses” in Xinjiang province built on previous U.S. sanctions, but the parallel announcements from the United Kingdom and the European Union generated transatlantic punch. The concerted effort could portend a more united Western front against Chinese Communist human rights abuses and increased friction between European allies and Beijing, where outraged Chinese diplomats unveiled retaliatory sanctions on European lawmakers and foreign policy analysts.
“The Chinese side urges the EU side to reflect on itself, face squarely the severity of its mistake and redress it,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced. “It must stop lecturing others on human rights and interfering in their internal affairs. It must end the hypocritical practice of double standards and stop going further down the wrong path. Otherwise, China will resolutely make further reactions.”
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Canada, just weeks after lawmakers in Ottawa voted that China’s repression of the Uyghurs amounts to genocide, joined the chorus Monday with their own sanctions.
“We remain deeply concerned by the egregious human rights violations that are taking place in Xinjiang at the hands of the Chinese state,” Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau said Monday. “Today, we are joining our partners in calling on the Government of China to put an end to this systematic campaign of repression against Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities and to hold those responsible to account.”
The tandem announcements are an early display of President Biden’s ability to coordinate with European allies who detested former President Donald Trump. “It was easy to say ‘no’ to Donald Trump, but it‘s now getting harder,” a European diplomat conceded to the South China Morning Post. “Will the EU go fully confrontational? It is unlikely. We don’t see it as black-and-white.”
Even under Biden, “there will not be one united front on all issues” with the U.S. on China, as a senior EU official emphasized last week to an American audience.
“We have a multifaceted approach towards China, which consists of the capacity to cooperate and negotiate good deals — yes, including investment deals,” European External Action Service’s Gunnar Wiegand, the lead official for Asia and the Pacific in the EU diplomatic service, told the Center for Strategic and International Studies last week. “I see that the new U.S. administration talks about ‘extreme competition.’ We don’t use that term, but we recognize that there is also some form of global competition, particularly in the technology area.”
In the same breath, Wiegand’s statement that the EU would enforce “red lines” regarding “human rights and fundamental freedoms” foreshadowed the news Monday. The new sanctions target only four Chinese officials responsible for the Uyghur Muslim repression, but the measures mark the first such sanctions by European powers on China since the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989.
The controversy could foster additional unity between the U.S. and European allies, to the delight of China hawks in Washington.
“It’s a toe in the water — and it’s a big toe in the water,” the Heritage Foundation’s2 said of the European measures. “And then there were Chinese counter sanctions. So, this is cool.”
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Gacki’s team struck a similar note.
“The United States will continue to play a strong leadership role in global efforts to combat serious human rights abuse in Xinjiang and around the world through the Global Magnitsky sanctions program,” the Treasury Department bulletin emphasized. “Complementary actions using these global human rights sanctions regimes enable like-minded partners to form a unified front to identify, promote accountability for, and disrupt access to the international financial system by those who abuse human rights.”
