US Sanctions on China in Response to Uighur Oppression Would Be Effective, House Panelists Say

New U.S. sanctions on China in response to the country’s oppression of Uighurs could be effective, but there’s a risk of retaliation, experts said while speaking at a House Financial Services subcommittee hearing. Uighurs are an officially recognized ethnic minority group in China and other parts of Asia, descended from ancient tribes in Mongolia.

Rep. Jennifer Wexton, D-Va., said during the May 15 hearing she is working to urge the Trump administration to introduce new sanctions on Chinese government officials for the country’s treatment of Uighurs, who are being held in “mass detention” camps in China, according to a Defense Department report this year. Wexton said she has bipartisan support from the House and the Senate and is planning to petition the administration to introduce Chinese sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act. She also said Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., is attempting to “expand export controls on U.S. businesses that provide technology training or other support and equipment to the Chinese government’s security apparatus.”

At the hearing, panelists agreed that the sanctions would get China’s attention. “It’s certainly credible that China may respond,” said Elizabeth Rosenberg, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, adding that China would view sanctions as an “inappropriate, extraterritorial exercise of U.S. power.” But Rosenberg said that should not “deter” the U.S. and said Congress should look into measures it can take to limit Chinese surveillance of the Uighur people, which Wexton said is happening in the U.S. “I’ve spoken to constituents who have reported intimidation and harassment by agents of the Chinese government here on American soil,” Wexton said, adding that the largest U.S. Uighur population lives in her district. Uighurs primarily practice Islam.

Matthew Zweig, a senior fellow with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that if sanctions are imposed, the U.S. should “expand the aperture to the specific companies providing surveillance equipment” to China. Rosenberg also said that the U.S. should “prohibit” U.S. companies from “in any way, participating in the provision of technology and equipment” used in the Chinese treatment of the Uighurs.

David Mortlock, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center, said the Global Magnitsky Act has been “a real highlight” in giving the U.S. “new authority in the human rights area,” and said the sanctions would send “a very strong message” to China. “I think given the horrific reports of the treatment of the Uighurs and the scale of those abuses, this certainly seems like a strong candidate for Global Magnitsky sanctions,” he said.

In April, Sherman, along with 13 bipartisan co-sponsors, sent a letter to the House requesting support for the “UIGHUR Act,” a bill that would impose sanctions on “senior regional officials in” China’s Xinjiang region who are “responsible for facilitating the mass arbitrary detention of Turkic Muslims within such region,” and restrict U.S. companies from doing business with anyone associated with the imposed sanctions. As of 2019, reports say, Uighurs in China primarily live in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. Officially, the UIGHUR Act is also known as the Uighur Intervention and Global Humanitarian Unified Response Act of 2019.