WASHINGTON—U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, in Hawaii to “exchange views on U.S.-China relations,” State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said late Wednesday.
The Trump administration’s newly signed Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 condemns “gross human rights violations of specified ethnic Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang region in China and other purposes, including specified authority to impose sanctions on certain foreign persons.”
Separately, foreign ministers of the G7 countries, including Pompeo, issued a statement calling on China not to follow through with the Hong Kong legislation.
Pompeo has been forceful in his criticism of Beijing and it was his first known contact with Yang since they discussed the coronavirus by phone on April 15. They had not met face to face since last year.
Experts say U.S.-China relations have reached their lowest point in years, and in mid-May Trump went so far as to suggest he could cut ties with Beijing.
The bill Trump signed calls for sanctions on Chinese officials responsible for oppressing Uyghurs, including on one of Yang’s colleagues on China’s powerful Politburo.
Trump tempered that possibility with a signing statement saying that some of the bill’s sanctions requirements might limit his constitutional authority as president to conduct diplomacy so he would regard them as advisory, not mandatory.
Neither side has outlined an agenda for the Hawaii talks, but diplomats and other sources have said the meeting was requested by China.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer also told a congressional hearing that Chinese officials had repeatedly affirmed their commitment to buy more U.S. goods and services under a Phase 1 trade deal signed in January and that some $10 billion in purchases had been recorded thus far.
Lighthizer also said, when asked about exports of products made by Uyghurs and other ethnic minority groups in camps in China, that Washington would “strongly enforce” U.S. laws banning the import of goods made by forced labor.
Among his criticisms of China, Pompeo has said it could have prevented hundreds of thousands of deaths from the global coronavirus pandemic by being more transparent, and accused it of refusing to share information.
Trump has initiated a process of eliminating special U.S. treatment for Hong Kong to punish China for curbing freedoms there, but has stopped short of immediately ending privileges that have helped the territory remain a global financial center.
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