{"id":1542,"date":"2020-01-13T07:46:44","date_gmt":"2020-01-13T07:46:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/?p=1542"},"modified":"2020-01-13T07:46:44","modified_gmt":"2020-01-13T07:46:44","slug":"trump-administrations-actions-in-middle-east-complicate-its-criticisms-of-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/?p=1542","title":{"rendered":"Trump Administration\u2019s Actions in Middle East Complicate Its Criticisms of China"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Edward Wong\u00a0 , Jan. 9, 2020<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a news conference this week in which\u00a0he justified<\/a>\u00a0President Trump\u2019s order to\u00a0kill Iran\u2019s most powerful general<\/a>, he also took the opportunity to criticize China twice: for its mass detentions of Muslims and for its repressive policies in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n

China\u00a0hit back<\/a>\u00a0immediately. \u201cIt must be pointed out that the wars staged by the U.S. in the Middle East over the past years have caused countless Muslim casualties and displacement as well as turmoil in the region,\u201d a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, said at a news conference in Beijing. \u201cAs has been proven, it is precisely the U.S. that has infringed upon Muslim human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIts attempts to sow discord between China and Islamic states are futile in the end,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump\u2019s military strike on the Iranian general and other aggressive actions against Tehran gave China ammunition to undermine the administration\u2019s main line of critique on Beijing\u2019s human rights record. And they have allowed China, the United States\u2019\u00a0greatest rival for global influence<\/a>, to raise the specter of the Iraq war, which, by one count, left\u00a0200,000 civilians or more<\/a>\u00a0dead and is considered by many Americans to be Washington\u2019s\u00a0greatest foreign policy disaster<\/a>\u00a0of the post-Vietnam era.<\/p>\n

Beijing also stresses that it was Mr. Trump who\u00a0destabilized the Middle East<\/a>\u00a0by withdrawing in May 2018 from a landmark nuclear deal that Iran had reached with six world powers, including China and the United States, and reimposing sanctions on Tehran. China is Iran\u2019s biggest buyer of oil.<\/p>\n

Complicating matters is the fact that while Mr. Pompeo talks tough about the\u00a0detentions of at least one million Muslims<\/a>\u00a0in China, Mr. Trump has yet to seriously punish China for the abuses. Mr. Trump\u00a0rarely, if ever, talks about human rights issues<\/a>, and his main goal with China has been to try to reach a deal with President Xi Jinping to end the\u00a0trade war<\/a>\u00a0that he started in July 2018. Liu He, the main Chinese negotiator, plans to visit Washington next week to sign a \u201cphase one\u201d agreement, officials in Beijing said on Thursday.<\/p>\n

For many years, starting well before the Trump administration, China accused the United States of hypocrisy on human rights, using \u201cwhataboutism\u201d arguments that point out\u00a0the American histories of slavery<\/a>, persecution of Native Americans and mass incarcerations. But Mr. Trump\u2019s policies and China\u2019s growing global power have emboldened Beijing to be more direct in those messages and to highlight what Chinese officials say are the deleterious effects of American foreign policy. Mr. Trump\u2019s constant alienation of international allies, including with the surprise decision to kill Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani in a drone strike last week, helps strengthen China\u2019s arguments, administration critics say.<\/p>\n

Mr. Trump\u2019s reluctance to address China\u2019s human rights violations has\u00a0frustrated members of Congress from both parties<\/a>. On Wednesday, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China\u00a0released a report<\/a>\u00a0in which it called on Mr. Trump to issue a directive ordering a \u201cwhole-of-government approach\u201d to develop strategies to promote human rights, the rule of law and democratic governing in dealing with China.<\/p>\n

The commission, whose annual report documents China\u2019s rights abuses, also called on Mr. Trump to invoke the Global Magnitsky Act and\u00a0impose sanctions on Chinese officials<\/a>\u00a0deemed responsible for the repression of Muslims, many of them members of the Uighur ethnic minority. And it said the United States must limit commerce between American companies and Chinese regional governments, agencies and companies that have taken part in the repression.<\/p>\n

\"\"Secretary of State Mike Pompeo criticized China for its mass detentions of Muslims and for its repressive policies in Hong Kong.<\/span>Credit…<\/span>Erin Schaff\/The New York Times<\/span><\/a><\/h6>\n

\u201cMany issues exist in the U.S.-China relationship, but as I have said time and time again, human rights cannot be sidelined in our relationship with China,\u201d Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida and the co-chair of the commission, said at the release of the report on Capitol Hill. \u201cHuman rights are intertwined with fundamental principles and rules by which we govern ourselves and shape the world in which we wish to live.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

In the room,\u00a0Uighur Americans who have family members detained<\/a>\u00a0in the vast internment camp system in the Xinjiang region of China held up photographs of their missing relatives.<\/p>\n

Mr. Rubio said the Senate planned to send back to the House within weeks a new version of legislation compelling the Trump administration to take tough action on the repression of Muslims. Lawmakers are aiming to pass a version of the bill with a veto-proof majority, which would most likely force Mr. Trump to sign it. They did the same thing with a bill supporting the Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters last fall, and Mr. Trump\u00a0reluctantly signed it<\/a>\u00a0the night before Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n

In his news conference on Tuesday, Mr. Pompeo, an\u00a0evangelical Christian<\/a>\u00a0who promotes the idea of religious freedom as a central policy platform, praised the Council of Representatives in Bahrain, an Islamic country, for issuing a statement on Jan. 2 that expressed concern over China\u2019s treatment of Muslims.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re happy with what Bahrain did, and we ask all countries, particularly those belonging to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Arab League, to denounce the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s brutal treatment of Uighurs, which is part of the party\u2019s broader war on faith,\u201d Mr. Pompeo said.<\/p>\n

Yet the Trump administration has been unable to rally majority Muslim nations in condemning China. For one thing, the\u00a0travel ban that Mr. Trump imposed against citizens of such nations<\/a>\u00a0has fueled notions that his administration is anti-Muslim. But a greater reason is that China has been\u00a0nurturing economic ties across the Middle East<\/a>, including with American allies such as Saudi Arabia, while Mr. Trump\u2019s policy, like that of his predecessors, remains focused on military issues and\u00a0using the armed forces as Washington\u2019s main policy tool<\/a>\u00a0in the region.<\/p>\n

His aggressive push on Iran, which reached a new level of hostility with the killing of General Suleimani, has underscored that view of Washington\u2019s policy, though officials argue that the Trump administration was seeking to deter Iran from attacking American interests.<\/p>\n

The fact that the strike against General Suleimani took place in Iraq,\u00a0where the United States has been at war<\/a>\u00a0since President George W. Bush invaded the country in 2003, has allowed China to cloak its language on American policy in moral superiority. Mr. Trump ordered 4,500 more troops to the region after the strike.\u00a0<\/strong>On Thursday, Mr. Geng, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, said senior Chinese and Russian officials had recently discussed the rising regional tensions and had committed to \u201cjointly uphold international justice and regional peace and stability.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Geng noted that the Trump administration, in withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal, \u201cneglected international law and its international obligations\u201d and \u201cobstructed other parties in keeping their commitments.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSuch practices are the root cause of current tensions,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Washington\u2019s European allies would agree with that assessment. Along with China and Russia, they have stayed in the agreement and tried to persuade Iran to do so, despite Washington\u2019s increasing sanctions. To try to get Mr. Trump to lift the sanctions, Iran\u2019s military began taking\u00a0more forceful action in the region last year<\/a>, and Tehran announced it was\u00a0breaching some of the agreement\u2019s limits<\/a>\u00a0on its nuclear program, even though it had been abiding by the deal.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, after the killing of General Suleimani, Tehran said it was\u00a0ending limits on uranium enrichment<\/a>, though it said it might return to the commitments later.<\/p>\n

The prospect of Iran accelerating its nuclear program raises anxiety levels in the region, even in the governments of Israel and gulf Arab countries that criticized the 2015 deal as being beneficial for their enemies in Tehran. And among the nations that foresaw the firestorm that would come with Mr. Trump\u2019s withdrawal from the deal and imposition of sanctions in a \u201cmaximum pressure\u201d campaign, Beijing\u2019s admonitions of American policy appear justified. The chaos around the killing of Mr. Suleimani only goes to strengthen China\u2019s arguments.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the aftermath of this assassination leads to more regional instability with continued confusion about U.S. commitment and objectives, U.S. relations across the region could worsen,\u201d said\u00a0Dalia Dassa Kaye<\/a>, an Iran expert at the RAND Corporation, a research group. \u201cWe should never discount that people in the region can resent both Iranian and American involvement in the region at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Against that backdrop, China is all too happy to swoop in.<\/p>\n

Source: The New York Times<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Edward Wong\u00a0 , Jan. 9, 2020 WASHINGTON \u2014 When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a news conference this week in which\u00a0he justified\u00a0President Trump\u2019s order to\u00a0kill Iran\u2019s most powerful general, he also took the opportunity to criticize China twice: for its mass detentions of Muslims and for its repressive policies in Hong Kong. China\u00a0hit back\u00a0immediately. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinas-uyghur-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1542"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1545,"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1542\/revisions\/1545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.uyghuracademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}