Xinjiang: Chairs’ Statement on State and Commerce Department Actions

(Washington)— U.S. Representative James McGovern (D-MA) and U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), the Chair and Cochair, respectively, of the bipartisan and bicameral Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), issued a joint statement following the Department of Commerce’s October 7th decision to place 28 Chinese governmental and commercial organizations on the Department’s “Entity List” and the State Department’s October 8th announcement of visa restrictions against Chinese officials responsible for the “detention or abuse of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups” in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). The Commerce Department action constricts the export of items subject to the Export Administration Regulations (EAR), including U.S. made software and microchips, to entities complicit in the mass arbitrary detention and high-technology surveillance in the XUAR. The CECC has long pressed both the State and Commerce Departments to sanction Chinese officials and restrict U.S. exports to state security entities and to businesses profiting from the expansion of the XUAR’s surge in security spending.   

“We support the actions taken by the Administration to restrict visas for certain Chinese officials in the XUAR and to place 28 Chinese governmental and commercial organizations on the Commerce Department’s ‘Entity List.’ For too long, Chinese authorities and businesses have escaped accountability for their complicity in systematic and egregious human rights abuses in the XUAR. The Administration should encourage other nations to take similar measures because the mass internment of over a million ethnic Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims is one of the world’s worst human rights situations. We also call on the Administration to take further action by imposing Global Magnitsky sanctions, including closing access to the U.S. financial system, against Chen Quanguo, XUAR Communist Party Secretary and Politburo member, and other officials in the XUAR complicit in these gross violations of human rights.”                   

Background:  In April of this year, the CECC Chairs led a bipartisan and bicameral letter to the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Commerce urging that XUAR Public Security agencies and Hikvision, Dahua, and other companies be placed on the “Entity List.”