Blinken Meets With China’s Genocide Perpetrator, but Doesn’t Condemn It

When Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a press convention April 22 on the State Department’s launch of its 2023 nation studies on human rights practices, he mentioned China was partaking in genocide in Xinjiang province. 

“The report documents atrocities reminiscent of humanity’s darkest moments,” Blinken mentioned in Washington. “In Sudan, both the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces have committed war crimes. Rohingya [were targeted] in Burma, Uyghurs in Xinjiang—each victims of genocide and crimes against humanity.” 

“The United States will continue to raise our deep concerns directly with the governments responsible,” Blinken mentioned. 

Since 2020, each annual State Department report on human rights in China has unambiguously said that the communist regime operating the nation was committing genocide. 

“The People’s Republic of China is an authoritarian state in which the Chinese Communist Party is the paramount authority,” mentioned the 2020 report. 

“Genocide and crimes against humanity occurred during the year against the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang,” it mentioned. 

The first sentence of the 2023 report, which the State Department launched April 22, declares: “Genocide and crimes against humanity occurred during the year in China against predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang.” 

The second sentence cites many different human rights abuses this communist regime had perpetrated. These embody “arbitrary or unlawful killings by the government; enforced disappearances by the government; torture by the government” and “involuntary or coercive medical or psychological practices.” 

The State Department report additionally says the federal government of China was responsible of “arbitrary interference with privacy including pervasive and intrusive technical surveillance and monitoring” and “serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media freedom, including criminal prosecution of journalists, lawyers, writers, bloggers, dissidents, petitioners, and others.” 

The new report additionally says this communist regime continued to hold out a coercive population-control coverage. 

“Enforcement of the decades-old population-control policy, which originally limited parents to one child, relied on social pressure, education, propaganda, and economic penalties, as well as on measures such as mandatory pregnancy examinations, forced contraception, forced sterilizations, and coerced abortions,” says this new report. 

Blinken flew to the town of Shanghai, China, the day after holding his press convention, releasing the human rights report, and personally describing China’s Uyghur inhabitants as “victims of genocide and crimes against humanity.”

Over the course of three days, the secretary of state met with a number of leaders of China’s communist regime. In public statements he made in China on April 24, 25, and 26, he by no means particularly cited the genocide he had famous April 22 in Washington. 

On the evening of April 24, after he arrived in Shanghai, Blinken attended the Chinese Basketball Association playoff recreation between the Shanghai Sharks and the Zhejiang Golden Bulls, in accordance with the State Department. 

The subsequent morning, Blinken met with Shanghai Chinese Communist Party Secretary Chen Jining in Shanghai. Before going into this assembly, he and Chen made public statements. The Communist Party secretary took notice of what Blinken had achieved the earlier evening. 

“Last night I watched the news, and I saw that you went to our Yu Garden to enjoy our local delicacy, and you also watched our basketball match,” Chen instructed Blinken, in accordance with a transcript revealed by the State Department. 

In his personal remarks, Blinken talked about constructing “cooperation” with this communist authorities. 

“I believe the route from President [Joe] Biden and President Xi [Jinping] was to proceed to construct these traces of communication, to maintain, and once more, to deal straight with our variations as we additionally search to construct cooperation, Biden’s secretary of state mentioned. 

Blinken then met with enterprise leaders in Shanghai, the place he talked about Biden’s assembly with Chinese Xi in California final November—and about America’s buying of Chinese imports. 

“And one of the things that President Biden and President Xi agreed when they met in San Francisco was that we have to—we need to find ways to put as much stability as possible into the relationships to make sure that we’re managing the relationship responsibly, which we’re committed to doing,” Blinken mentioned. “And a big part of that is making sure that the economic relationship is working in ways that it should work to mutual benefit.” 

“We have, as you know, a relationship that has us as the largest market for products that are made in China. That remains the case,” Blinken mentioned. 

In 2023, in accordance with the Census Bureau, the United States bought $427.22 billion in imports from China, whereas China bought solely $147.80 billion from the United States—leading to a commerce deficit of $279.42 billion. 

Blinken met April 26 with Chinese Foreign Minster Wang Yi.

“Overall, the China-U.S. relationship is beginning to stabilize,” Wang mentioned earlier than the 2 officers went into their assembly. “Across the areas, our two sides have increased dialogue, cooperation, and the positive side of the relationship.” 

Blinken then mentioned Biden had given him a selected instruction for this journey to Beijing: “to work on moving forward on the agreements that our two presidents reached in San Francisco at the end of last year: resuming cooperation on counternarcotics; restarting our military-to-military conversations; looking together at the future of artificial intelligence—its risks and safety issues; and trying to strengthen our people-to-people connections; but also, critically, managing responsibly our differences.” 

After assembly with Wang, Blinken met with Public Security Minister Wang Xiaohong. Then he met with Xi himself. 

“Now, even as we seek to deepen cooperation where our interests align, the United States is very clear-eyed about the challenges posed by the PRC [People’s Republic of China] and about our competing visions for the future,” Blinken mentioned in a press convention after the assembly. “America will always defend our core interests and values.” 

The U.S. secretary of state then did point out Xinjiang, citing what he referred to as “human rights abuses” there, not genocide. 

“I also raised concerns about the erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy and democratic institutions as well as transnational repression, ongoing human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Tibet, and a number of individual human rights cases,” Blinken mentioned. 

Blinken ought to have unambiguously condemned Xi for the genocide his communist regime has perpetrated. 

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