A group of Republican lawmakers is urging Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen to hold China’s communist regime accountable during their upcoming trips to China.
Blinken and Yellen are both slated to visit China in the coming weeks, marking the highest level diplomatic visits by the United States to China since 2018.
A Feb. 1 letter drafted by GOP lawmakers to Blinken and Yellen warned that the pair should not allow their trips to become propaganda victories for communist authorities.
US Must Avoid ‘Propaganda Win for the CCP’
The drafting of the letter was led by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and was signed by fellow Republican Sens. Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), Ted Budd (N.C.), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), Bill Cassidy (La.), Kevin Cramer (N.D.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Chuck Grassley (Iowa), Bill Hagerty (Tenn.), John Hoeven (N.D.), Pete Ricketts (Neb.), Eric Schmitt (Mo.), Rick Scott (Fla.), and Dan Sullivan (Ark.).The letter singled out the CCP’s ongoing human rights violations against ethnic and religious minorities in China’s Xinjiang region, which the United States recognizes as genocide.
It said that the United States must hold the CCP regime accountable for its “system of mass surveillance and internment, denial of individuals’ rights to peacefully practice their religion, and use of forced labor, sexual violence, forced abortion, and forced sterilization of women.”
“Moreover,” the letter said, “the CCP continues to deny basic human rights to other groups whom the regime deems a threat, such as Tibetans, Christians, and Falun Gong practitioners.”
The letter drafted by Rubio went beyond human rights issues, however, and also urged Blinken and Yellen to stand up to the CCP for the regime’s efforts to wrongfully detain U.S. citizens, conduct industrial espionage and transnational repression schemes, and for its part in exporting precursor ingredients for fentanyl, which has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.
“You must make clear that the United States will not cooperate with a regime that uses hostages as bargaining chips,” the letter said.
Ultimately, the letter warned that Blinken and Yellen must use their visits to ensure the CCP was held to account for its malign behavior, or else risk giving the regime another propaganda victory to use against the United States.
“We respectfully request that you use your visits to impress the aforementioned points upon your PRC [People’s Republic of China] counterparts, as well as convey that the United States will no longer tolerate such abuses against American citizens, American businesses, and American allies,” the letter said.
“If you fail to do so, we fear that these meetings will simply become a propaganda win for the CCP and bring no material benefit to the American people or our allies and partners.”
The Epoch Times has requested comment from the State Department and the Treasury Department.
