BEIJING IS LIKELY to bat aside as false and hostile the latest annual human rights report issued by the US State Department on March 30 as readily as it did a statement of concern by the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights the day before about allegations of the forced labour of Uighurs in Xinjiang.
The US State Department’s reaffirmation of its designation of China’s treatment of Uyghurs as ‘genocide’ will do nothing to reduce tensions in the China-US relationship. If anything, these have increased under the new Biden administration, not eased as expected.
Announcing the report, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also signalled a broadening of the US human rights focus from the previous Trump administration’s narrow concern with individual freedom and religious rights.
Further US economic sanctions and visa restrictions against Chinese officials are likely with Washington looking to act in concert with its allies.
Commensurate retaliation can be expected from Beijing, along with more rhetoric about Western nations’ hypocrisy over their domestic civil rights issues and Trump-like denigrations of Western media for not reporting the party line at face value.
More trouble for Western businesses seems likely as Beijing experiments with expanding consumer boycotts‘ scope to apply leverage on the US and other Western governments through their multinational companies.
However, Blinken made clear that human rights were ‘front and centre’ of the Biden’s administration’s foreign policy, and Beijing will find that US business does not have Biden’s ear in the way that it did Donald Trump’s.
Retaliation against European companies will also do little to encourage European countries to ratify the EU and China’s investment agreement that Beijing rushed to conclusion ahead of Biden taking office and which it saw as a potential wedge issue it could drive between Brussels and Washington.
China Bystander 
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