MONDAY, AUGUST 10 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
it’s pretty clear both chambers of
Congress, both parties, and a num-
ber of key officials see this to be
aligned with what they want to see
happen,” Chu said of the adminis-
tration’s actions.
Chinese officials and its state
media have responded to the U.S.
sanctions and rhetoric by calling
Trump and his aides hypocritical
and duplicitous, pointing to the
administration’s attempts to use
federal authority to tamp down
protests over racial justice in
American cities and Trump’s de-
nunciations of some protesters as
“terrorists.”
Beijing has said its new national
security law in Hong Kong is
aimed at restoring order after
months of street protests, al-
though critics have said the
sweeping language lays the
groundwork to for authorities to
jail protesters and censor political
dissidents.
In a tweet Saturday, Pompeo
wrote: “The world has witnessed
more examples of the Chinese
Communist Party’s efforts to co-
erce and control its citizens in-
cluding the arrests of pro-democ-
racy activists in Hong Kong and
the control Muslim minorities in
Xinjiang. These actions aren’t
one-offs.”
Some analysts have noted that
the language used by Pompeo and
other China hawks within the ad-
ministration has edged closer to a
call for political upheaval in Bei-
jing, which U.S. officials have de-
nied is part of the Trump adminis-
tration’s policy.
In an essay for the National
Interest, Gordon Chang, a foreign
affairs analyst who appears on Fox
News, cited Pompeo’s speech on
China last month at the Richard
Nixon Presidential Library and
Museum in which he said the Unit-
ed States “must engage and em-
power the Chinese people — a
dynamic, freedom-loving people
who are completely distinct from
the Chinese Communist Party.”
The remarks, Chang wrote,
amounted to a new policy of “re-
gime change.”
Bonnie S. Glaser, a China securi-
ty expert at the Center for Strategic
and International Studies, said
Trump aides “talk more explicitly
about empowering the Chinese
people to challenge or overthrow
the Party, although they do not use
those words. Maybe there’s a camp
in the White House driven by the
election, but there are others who
are driven by different motiva-
tions.”
[email protected]lapse of bilateral trade negotia-
tions.
Human rights advocates wel-
comed the administration’s more
forceful tone and applauded the
sanctions on Hong Kong officials.
But they cautioned that Trump’s
inconsistent and opportunistic
application of human rights policy
could impede the effectiveness of
its efforts to punish and rein in
Beijing.
“He’s come around belatedly to
a strong human rights policy on
China, but it would have been seen
as stronger if it was part of a
consistent policy toward China,”
said Kenneth Roth, executive di-
rector of Human Rights Watch,
who was denied entry to Hong
Kong in January.
Roth said the Trump adminis-
tration’s credibility is “weak be-
cause it comments almost always
on perceived adversaries rather
than as a matter of principle wher-
ever the most severe abuses occur.”
In this regard, Trump has been
perhaps the most unreliable
champion of democratic values
within his own administration. Heavoided direct criticism of Chinese
President Xi Jinping as the two
sides spent more than 18 months
in trade negotiations, refraining
from publicly mentioning sensi-
tive issues for Beijing, such as the
repression of the Uighurs.
The president went so far as to
reportedly promise Xi — in a
phone call in June 2019 ahead of
their meeting at the Group of 20
summit in Japan — that he would
not talk about mass pro-democra-
cy protests in Hong Kong in a bid
to rekindle the trade talks.
Trump’s former national security
adviser John Bolton wrote in his
memoir that Trump told Xi that
China was justified in building the
detention camps for the Uighurs.
In recent months, however,
with trade talks on hold and the
election looming, China hawks in
the administration have been giv-
en greater leeway from the White
House.
T op Trump aides, including Sec-
retary of State Mike Pompeo and
Attorney General William P. Barr,
delivered speeches last month on
China policy that emphasizedthemes of democracy and free
speech. Pompeo also has made a
belated effort to rally European
nations to collaborate against Bei-
jing, after years in which the presi-
dent has attacked the allies over
defense spending and other is-
sues.
In his Rose Garden announce-
ment last month, Trump — who
had been muted during months of
protests in Hong Kong — said of
the residents in the territory:
“Their freedom has been taken
away. Their rights have been taken
away.”
The about-face has fanned a
perception that Trump is willing
to employ the cudgel of human
rights only when it is expedient —
which Trump has concluded is the
case now, in an election year, as he
seeks to shift blame over his han-
dling of the coronavirus pandemic
and paint presumptive Democrat-
ic nominee Joe Biden as soft on
China.
“If these human rights designa-
tions are seen as transactional and
a cudgel, and not really about our
values and the rule of law, overtime it has a corrosive effect on our
ability to curb Chinese behavior
and the ability to rally others,” said
a Democratic aide on Capitol Hill
who has been involved in legisla-
tive efforts on China policy and
who spoke on the condition of
anonymity because they were not
authorized to speak on the record.
Samuel Chu, managing director
of the Washington-based Hong
Kong Democracy Council, ac-
knowledged that the administra-
tion’s moves on Hong Kong are
tied, to a degree, to Trump’s reelec-
tion strategy. But he noted that a
growing bipartisan consensus on
Capitol Hill has also pushed the
president to take stronger actions,
even when he has been reluctant.
In June, Trump signed the legis-
lation authorizing sanctions on
China over its mistreatment of the
Uighurs, which had passed Con-
gress with only one “no” vote. The
president signed the bill in pri-
vate, rather than hold a public
announcement as he did with his
executive order on Hong Kong.
“Everybody has their interests
in mind, but at the end of the dayJABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POST
Recent moves by the Trump administration have provided the White House with another set of tools with which to try to outflank Beijing.BY DAVID NAKAMURAAs President Trump accelerates
his pressure campaign on China
ahead of the U.S. presidential elec-
tion, his administration has begun
to hit Beijing more directly in a
manner that the president had
long been reluctant to pursue —
over human rights abuses.
The latest move came Friday
when the Treasury Department
sanctioned Hong Kong Chief Ex-
ecutive Carrie Lam and 10 other
officials over Beijing’s declaration
of a new national security law that,
U.S. officials said, seeks to curb
“freedom of expression and as-
sembly, and democratic process-
es” in the semiautonomous terri-
tory.
Trump aides said the penalties
were prompted by the president’s
executive order, which he an-
nounced last month in a Rose Gar-
den event, that declared a national
emergency over China’s efforts to
exert greater control. In late July,
the administration sanctioned a
paramilitary group in Xinjiang, a
region in western China where
authorities have jailed an estimat-
ed 1 million or more Uighur Mus-
lims in detention camps.
And this week, Health and Hu-
man Services Secretary Alex Azar
will become the highest-level gov-
ernment official to visit Taiwan
since 1979, prompting a warning
from Beijing. U.S. officials said
Azar will celebrate shared demo-
cratic values “in contrast to au-
thoritarian systems.”
Taken together, the moves have
provided the administration an-
other set of tools with which to try
to outflank Beijing amid rapidly
rising tensions over fallout from
the coronavirus pandemic, which
Trump has tried to blame on the
Communist Party, and the col-
Trump hits
China on
issue he
had avoided
Administration moves
to use human rights
abuses as a cudgelHosted by The Post’s Jacqueline Alemanyon Tues. August 11 at 12:00 p.m ETTo receive a live stream reminder for this eventvisit: wapo.st/youthvote202 0the
2020Electionthe youth voteAlexis Confer
Executive Director,
March For Our LivesDavid Hogg
Co-Founder,
March For Our Lives