US prepared to escalate after China’s retaliatory sanctions

     

 

The Trump administration and the Chinese Communist Party are prepared to escalate amid back and forth sanctions issued by Washington and Beijing in recent days, reports suggest.

“We’ve begun to push back in ways that are real,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in an interview with Newsmax. “You can be sure the United States will measure them, respond to them, and help the Chinese Communist Party understand you’re not going to take action against America or Americans without President Trump responding.”

The heads of five U.S. organizations that advocate for democracy and human rights learned Monday morning that one of the world’s most authoritarian governments had issued sanctions against them, The Washington Post reports:

In announcing the measures, China’s Foreign Ministry accused the five individuals and six Republican lawmakers of having “behaved badly” on Hong Kong-related issues….The leaders of the five groups characterized the sanctions against them as a part of an escalating tit-for-tat war between Washington and Beijing over a range of issues, including phone technology and the number of diplomats and journalists in each other’s country.

“Today’s announcement is yet another weak attempt to deflect attention from the CCP’s relentless attacks on the fundamental human and political rights of its own citizens,” said the National Endowment for Democracy. “The CCP cannot hide the obvious and overwhelming desire of the people of Hong Kong to govern themselves as provided for under the Basic Law; it cannot hide its imprisonment of more than a million Uyghurs; and it cannot hide its denial of the basic freedoms of thought and expression of all Chinese people.”

The sanctions reflect Beijing’s “enemy mentality” of deflecting blame, said NED president Carl Gershman (above). He said it reminded him of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo, who was tried in 2009 for “inciting subversion of state power.” His closing statement, intended to read at his trial, was read in Oslo the following year.

“In that statement, Liu Xiaobo said he believes China in the end will become a nation ruled by laws, where human rights reign supreme,” Gershman said. “I continue to believe that. The problem the Chinese government has is not with us. It’s with the people of China.”

NDI’s Derek Mitchell concurs.

“It’s part and parcel of today’s China, where it’s not just about what happens in China, but around the world, that they want people to be quiet about what’s really happening, ” he told PBS’s NewsHour. 

 

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