As Blinken Visits Europe, China Retaliates Against U.S., EU Xinjiang Sanctions

As Blinken Visits Europe, China Retaliates Against U.S., EU Xinjiang Sanctions

On March 22, the United States, along with the European Union, the United Kingdom and Canada imposed coordinated sanctions on Chinese officials accused of human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The sanctions freeze all of the targeted officials’ assets under the control of the sanctioning nations and ban the Chinese officials from traveling in or through those countries. China responded with its own sanctions against European officials and academics. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is currently in Brussels, meeting with high-level European officials; on March 23, he reportedly told NATO personnel that “we’re in it together” when it comes to China and Russia.

The EU sanctions represent a significant hardening of European attitudes toward Beijing, as these actions are the bloc’s first major sanctions against China in 32 years. The European Union had not imposed substantial sanctions on China since the Tiananmen Square massacres in 1989. 

The EU sanctions included four senior Xinjiang officials, along with the Xinjiang Public Security Bureau, described as a “state-owned economic and paramilitary organization” that controls Xinjiang. Britain and Canada announced their own sanctions shortly after the European Union. British diplomats described the coordinated sanctions as “intensive diplomacy” meant to force action after the United States officially labeled China’s actions against Uighurs in Xinjiang as genocide on Jan. 19. 

This is the second round of sanctions levied by the United States on Chinese officials responsible for the central government’s repressive actions in Xinjiang; the last were imposed in July 2020. In a statement on March 22, Secretary Blinken said the coordinated sanctions demonstrate the United States’s commitment to “working multilaterally to … shin[e] a light on those in the [People’s Republic of China] government and [Chinese Communist Party] responsible for these atrocities.”

The sanctions on Chinese officials were issued pursuant to recently implemented EU, U.K. and Canadian versions of the United States’s Global Magnitsky Act, which allow governments to declare sanctions on foreign individuals accused of gross violations of human rights or corruption.

In retaliation, China sanctioned 10 European officials and four institutions for damaging China’s interests and “maliciously spread[ing] lies and disinformation.” The sanctioned individuals include five members of the European Parliament, as well as Adrian Zenz, a leading researcher on the human rights situation in Xinjiang, and MERICS, the leading European think tank on China. Raphaël Glucksmann, one of the sanctioned Parliament members, called the sanctions a “badge of honor” in a tweet.

Cyberattacks Among U.S. Complaints at Anchorage Summit

On March 18 in Anchorage, Alaska, Secretary Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met their Chinese counterparts, Director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs Yang Jiechi and State Councilor Wang Yi, for the first high-level dialogue between the U.S. and China under the Biden administration. The diplomats’ first meeting began with an extraordinary public statement of grievances, a sight once unusual in diplomatic fora but more frequent since the beginning of the Trump administration. Among the complaints made by the Americans were “cyber attacks on the United States.” 

In the past year alone, hackers linked to the Chinese government have been publicly accused of an email hacking campaign against some 30,000 U.S. companies, ransomware attacks against gaming and gambling entities, espionage against the U.S. defense industry, illegal scans of U.S. government networks, and attempts to steal coronavirus vaccine research. 

Chinese-linked cyber espionage in the United States—of which there have been 152 publicly reported instances since the year 2000—was Become a supporter of IT Security News and help us remove the ads.