The State Department on Tuesday rebuked Chinese officials for shutting down a Christian church service over the weekend.
“[W]e call on China to uphold its international commitments to promote respect for religious freedom for all persons,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.
Her comments offered support to Early Rain Covenant Church, which faces a potential crackdown after officials shut down a service commemorating the 10th anniversary of an earthquake that claimed more than 75,000 lives. In doing so, the State Department also called attention to a tragedy that China’s ruling communists would prefer not be discussed.
“The United States government joins the people of China in mourning the loss of tens of thousands of lives in the tragedy, and notes the value of memorializing their lives and calling for full accountability to prevent or mitigate future disasters,” Nauert said.
Chinese leaders disagree. “Foreign reporters covering the anniversary have described being warned away by nervous officials,” Christopher Buckley, reporting on the crackdown, observed in the New York Times. “Grieving parents who have kept demanding that the government give a fuller accounting of why their children’s schools collapsed in the quake have endured surveillance, warnings and detentions.”
Nauert’s brushback comes as the administration and Chinese officials negotiated a fraught trade relationship. President Trump has promised to impose tariffs on China in an attempt to boost U.S. industry and punish Chinese intellectual property theft. In parallel, the White House recently faulted the Chinese government for censoring how American companies refer to Taiwan; the communist regime regards Taiwan as a renegade province rather than an independent state.
China, meanwhile, has deployed anti-ship missiles to artificial islands constructed as a way of laying claim to some of the most important shipping lanes in the world. And U.S. pilots in east Africa were recently injured by lasers directed at them by Chinese military personnel, according to the Pentagon.
But Trump’s tough-on-China image took a hit over the weekend, when he tweeted he wold reverse sanctions imposed on a Chinese telecom company, because “too many jobs in China lost.” That drew bipartisan criticism, especially from lawmakers concerned about Chinese tech companies cooperating with Chinese intelligence officials.
“China and the United States are working well together on trade, but past negotiations have been so one sided in favor of China, for so many years, that it is hard for them to make a deal that benefits both countries,” Trump tweeted. “But be cool, it will all work out!”
