US Xinjiang sanctions would prompt Chinese retaliation
China faces possible US sanctions for its detention of up to 1 million Muslims in 're-education' camps
Reports of detentions of up to 1 million people, mostly ethnic Uighurs, at ‘re-education camps’ in China’s Xinjiang region have led to international condemnation. In Washington this has escalated to potential sanctions, with a bipartisan committee in Congress and senior administration officials suggesting that legislation called the Global Magnitsky Act should be used to put targeted sanctions on key Chinese officials and firms.
What next
Beijing is likely to view US criticism and sanctions as part of a broader campaign against China, rather than a specific reaction to events in Xinjiang. China will consider this a further ratcheting up of bilateral tensions and react in what it believes to be an equally asymmetric way. It is therefore likely to retaliate to this 'attack', and do so in a way that targets some element of the bilateral relationship unrelated to Xinjiang.
Subsidiary Impacts
- The direct impact of the sanctions is likely to be negligible and will not lessen the plight of Chinese citizens in Xinjiang.
- Beijing will be reluctant to respond to specific accusations, considering them internal affairs not for others to comment on.
- Western companies doing business with China, and Xinjiang in particular, will face potential sanction, public protest or shaming at home.
- Firms such as HikVision that have been identified as providing technical tools for repression in Xinjiang will be specific targets.
- Beijing's asymmetric retaliation may extend to US companies entirely unconnected with Xinjiang.
Analysis
The Uighurs are a Turkic people, most of whom live in the Xinjiang region in China's north-west and are traditionally Muslim. They have long faced repression at home and indifference internationally. After years of relative neglect, the issue has now caught international attention as repression worsens.
US legislators have begun talking about placing global sanctions on the senior officials administering Xinjiang, in response to reported human rights abuses taking place at 're-education camps' in the region.
Repression in Xinjiang has risen to prominence in the West after decades of relative neglect
'Re-education camps'
The trigger for Washington's possible escalation appears to be the widespread coverage of Xinjiang in the international media over the past year. This includes a growing numbers of reports about the detention of many thousands of people in 're-education camps'.
The genesis of these camps was in legislation in August 2016, when Xinjiang was the first region to issue its own counterterrorism legislation, following China's first national level counterterrorism law in December 2015. The Xinjiang-specific laws went even further than national legislation, stating that "religious extremism is the ideological basis of terrorism and must be prevented and punished".
According to the Xinhua news agency, new rules stipulate that "it is illegal to intervene in others' marriages, funerals, inheritance issues for religious reasons. The spread of distorted Islamic ideas is also prohibited. Acts such as encouraging others to resist national policies, destroying identification cards, household registration and marriage certificates are also made illegal".
Additional measures attacked the spread of 'radical' material online.
It became almost impossible for Muslims to practice their religion in Xinjiang, or talk about it (and much else) online or on social media without falling foul of this legislation.
Around the same time that the law was passed in Xinjiang, the region received a new Communist Party secretary, Chen Quanguo, formerly the party chief in Tibet who was well-known for his hard-line approach. He was perceived as being brought in to fix a region that his predecessor, Zhang Chunxian, had failed to pacify.
In fact, under Zhang's watch, violence appeared not only to have escalated but also spread elsewhere in China, with unprecedented attacks linked to Uighur militants in Beijing and Kunming (see CHINA: Muslims in China will face tougher controls - May 15, 2017).
Chen brought with him many of the policies that he had honed in Tibet, and began introducing a vast array of technical and other police measures (see CHINA: Beijing may export technology of repression - September 4, 2018).
The one which appears to have particularly caught the public imagination in the West is the 're-education camps' in which people are reportedly put through intense courses of indoctrination and 'self-criticism' to show their loyalty to the Communist Party.
Reports suggest that any indication of religious identity, anti-government thought or the loosely defined behaviour proscribed in the counterterrorism legislation can end with an individual being sent to these camps.
Stories of torture and death have emerged as a growing number of Uighurs living outside China discover their relatives have been sent to these camps -- or as internees escape.
Exact numbers are unclear, but calculations based on analysis of camps' size judged through leaked construction project tenders, reporters on the ground, images from within and outside them, interviews with former detainees and analysis of satellite imagery suggest that at least a few hundred thousand and even up to 1 million people may be interned.
Not just Uighurs but also Muslims of other ethnic minority groups (Hui, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Tajik) are confirmed or suspected of being caught up too. The detention of former Chinese citizens who have taken Kazakhstan nationality has caused strains with Kazakhstan (see KAZAKHSTAN/CHINA: Rights case causes concerns - August 2, 2018). There are reports that Uighur wives of Pakistani traders living in China have been detained, so far with little response from Pakistan.
A US response has been building for some time
US response
During a visit to Beijing in April, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Laura Stone raised the option of using the 2016 Global Magnitsky Act in response to detentions in Xinjiang. Public comments about Xinjiang followed from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence.
In August, both the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and US Congress came out with even more pointed statements. The CERD said that there were credible reports of some 1 million people being held, while US Senator Marco Rubio and Representative Chris Smith, chair and co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China respectively, filed a formal letter to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Pompeo calling for "a tough, targeted, and global response" to detentions in the camps.
Early this month, credible reports emerged that senior Uighur dissidents and activists were invited to the White House to brief officials. Another letter from Rubio and Smith followed yesterday, this one to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.
Global Magnitsky Act
The growing impression is that Washington may use the tool of the Global Magnitsky Act (initially developed to punish Russian officials for human rights abuses) against certain key officials in Xinjiang.
There is likely some limited de-risking or due diligence required for financial companies around the sanctioned individuals, in particular around extended family members, since many senior Chinese officials have family resident in the West.
Confrontational context
Any US sanctions would come in the context of increasingly sharp US policy towards China, including:
- a growing array of trade tariffs and repeated threats of more;
- the decision to recall the top US diplomats from the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Panama in reaction to their switching recognition from Taipei to Beijing;
- bipartisan condemnation of perceived 'debt trap diplomacy' under the Belt and Road Initiative; and
- the decision to rename Pacific Command the 'Indo-Pacific Command', implying a desire to contain China in the seas.
In this context, Beijing will interpret Xinjiang-specific legislation or sanctions as part of a broader push to undermine and weaken China, and feel obliged to retaliate.
