The US State Department declared the Chinese government a genocide on Tuesday Treatment of Uyghurs. In parallel, the United States accused China of committing crimes against humanity in addition to genocide. The Trump administration’s recent action against China ends several years of debate over how the United States should judge the actions of Uyghurs in China, which experts and advocates say are the most dangerous the Chinese government has committed in recent decades.
Relations between the United States and China have deteriorated steadily over the past four years, but the Trump administration has so far dealt with the issue from a commercial and economic perspective. Either way, experts say it is quite certain that China’s growing influence will be the most important global policy challenge to all U.S. governments in the coming decades.
According to a statement by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, “The genocide continues and we are witnessing the Chinese party state systematically trying to destroy the Uyghur people.” Chinese government officials are also “implicated in the forced assimilation and final extermination of a weak ethnic and religious minority.”
The US foreign affairs move is expected to lead to more sanctions against China and Chinese politicians during the Biden administration, as the Biden government is not expected to cancel Pompeo’s declaration as well, and Biden, a spokesman for Chinese Uighur policy, described genocide in the presidential campaign. (The New York Times)
