In an interview with the Voice of America, Republican U.S. Congressman Chris Smith reaffirmed Congress’ commitment to sanctioning forced labor in Xinjiang, and said he will keep pressure on the Chinese government and its leader Xi Jinping on human rights issues.
In the interview with VOA, Congressman Smith of New Jersey spoke about two bills that Congress passed just last month to address forced labor in Xinjiang.
We know that 22 percent of the world’s cotton comes from Xinjiang,” said Congressman Smith, a Republican. You know, our bill could ban them completely from being exported to the United States. Our assumption is that any goods that are exported from the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China are probably the product of gulag labor, slave labor, so we’re banning those goods from coming into the United States.”
In late September, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Forced Uyghur Labor Disclosure Act and the Forced Uyghur Labor Prevention Act, respectively. Both bills require companies with commercial operations in the United States to certify that goods produced in Xinjiang do not involve forced labor.
As a co-sponsor of the Prevention of Forced Uighur Labor Act, Congressman Smith has long been a heavy-handed advocate for the Chinese government and Chinese President Xi Jinping on human rights issues in China. Last year, he authored the Hong Kong Bill of Rights and Democracy, which was later passed.
In an interview with VOA, he drew an analogy between Xi and President Lukashenko, who is sparking massive protests in Belarus, saying that dictators have a tendency to stall in the face of sanctions from the U.S. and wait for them to taper off. But Smith said lawmakers from both parties would pledge to keep up the pressure on China.
You know, that’s how long Xi Jinping is going to drag his feet on U.S. sanctions against Hong Kong,” Smith said. I was the principal author of the Hong Kong Bill of Rights and Democracy. This bill was passed in the House of Representatives last year, and here it is. China expects to wait for us, you know, for our hard-line approach to wane. That’s not going to happen.”
At the end of the interview, Congressman Smith also addressed China’s harassment and persecution of its citizens abroad, particularly the Uighur community.
Smith said, “The Chinese people are good people, but their leaders are not good people.”
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