Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a media interview Sunday (May 2) that the Chinese Communist Party is threatening the rules-based international order that has existed since World War II and is the greatest diplomatic challenge facing the Biden administration.
“When we see any country challenging that order, or trying to undermine it, we will act against it. We will stand up and defend it.” Blinken said on CBS’s “60 Minutes.
“Over the last few years, we’ve witnessed China (the Communist Party) behave more repressively at home and more aggressively abroad. That’s a fact.”
All along when the Western world has focused on the human rights persecution taking place in China, the Chinese Communist Party has often accused Europe and the United States of interfering in China’s internal affairs. Blinken emphasized that concern for human rights in China is in no way interference in China’s internal affairs.
In fact, no, they are not (internal affairs),” Blinken said. China has made a solemn commitment to human rights by signing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And it (the Chinese Communist Party) is violating those commitments.”
Last year, Chinese Communist authorities passed a new Hong Kong National Security Law in Hong Kong. Under the law, the CCP can arrest pro-democracy activists for “subversion of state power” and for expressing political demands. This year, the Chinese Communist Party changed Hong Kong’s electoral system to give it more political power in the Hong Kong government.
Blinken said the Chinese Communist Party’s crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong is in direct violation of international commitments.
“What the Beijing government has done, effectively suppressing democracy in Hong Kong… in doing so, has violated the commitments made by China when Britain handed over Hong Kong.”
Blinken is also concerned about the persecution of minority Muslims in Xinjiang by the Chinese Communist Party. It is believed that a large number of Uighurs from Xinjiang are still being held in Communist “re-education camps”.
Communist authorities argue that the purpose of the “re-education camps” is to prevent local extremism, and that the camps are only for vocational and Chinese language training. Blinken said the camps are actually genocide.
“We have seen forced sterilizations in an effort to suppress the fertility rate of the Uyghurs,” Blinken said, “and we have seen [the Chinese Communist Party’s] efforts to indoctrinate them, to deny their culture, to deny their heritage… and all kinds of repression and violence against them has occurred simply because they are Uyghurs.”
Blinken said he is working to rebuild relationships with allies around the world and “listen to them” while dealing with the Chinese Communist threat.
Blinken arrived in London on Sunday for a meeting of G-7 foreign ministers, with the Chinese Communist threat high on the agenda.
He said the United States will also stand with its allies in confronting the Chinese Communist Party’s theft of intellectual property that has cost the United States hundreds of billions of dollars or more.
“We will be more effective and stronger when we will unite like-minded countries that have also suffered losses and come together to say to Beijing, ‘This cannot be tolerated, and we will not tolerate it,'” Blinken said.
Earlier, Blinken expressed concern about the Communist Party’s threat of force against Taiwan and warned that anyone trying to change the status quo in the Western Pacific by force would be “making a big mistake.
Last Wednesday, during Biden’s 100-day speech, he also pledged to maintain a strong U.S. military presence in the Indo-Pacific region and to promote U.S. technological development.
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