China's crimes against humanity

U.S. Blacklists 28 Chinese Entities Over Abuses in East Turkestan

By Ana Swanson and Paul Mozur

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration said Monday that it had added 28 Chinese organizations to a United States blacklist over concerns about their role in human rights violations, effectively blocking those entities from buying American products.
The organizations have been implicated in China’s campaign targeting Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities in the colony of East Turkestan, according to a Commerce Department filing.
Among the entities being placed on the list are Hikvision and Dahua Technology, two of the world’s largest manufacturers of video surveillance products. 

It also hits China’s well-funded, newly emerging class of artificial-intelligence start-ups. 

Together, the companies’ products are central to China’s ambitions to be the top global exporter of surveillance technology.
The list also includes companies that specialize in artificial intelligence, voice recognition and data as well as provincial and local security bureaus that have helped construct what amounts to a police state in East Turkestan. 

These entities have been involved “in the implementation of China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention and high-technology surveillance,” the filing said.
The move was announced just days before high-level Chinese and American officials meet in Washington to try to resolve a trade war that has begun mounting pain on China.
The blacklist’s impact on the companies is likely to be mixed.
In many cases, they could find ways to replace American components and have likely already stockpiled key parts, limiting the short-term impact.
Over the longer term, it could hamper their access to United States and European markets, as well as damage recruitment efforts. 

American customers, universities and others will likely look askance at striking up relations with Chinese companies on the blacklist.
A Commerce Department spokesman said Monday that the action was not related to those talks. 

But the decision is likely to rankle the Chinese government, which has helped support some of these companies as they have developed into cutting-edge technology firms.
“The U.S. government and Department of Commerce cannot and will not tolerate the brutal suppression of ethnic minorities within China,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement.
Hikvision said in a statement that it strongly opposed the decision and had been trying to address the administration’s concerns for the past year. 

The punishment will “hurt Hikvision’s U.S. business partners,” the company said.
China has faced growing condemnation from human rights groups in recent months for its detention of up to one million ethnic Uighurs and other minority Muslims in large internment camps in East Turkestan.
Beijing has constructed an advanced surveillance system, in what it describes as an effort to fight Islamic extremism among the Uighurs, the largest ethnic group in East Turkestan. 

But Uighurs and others around the world say Chinese officials are trying to suppress their culture and religion.

Human Rights Watch has said the violations are of a “scope and scale not seen in China since the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution,” and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called China’s treatment of the Uighurs the “stain of the century.”
Yet administration officials have wavered on how much to keep human rights and economic concerns separate in their negotiations with China. 

Many officials emphasize that the topics are separate, but the administration has shelved several proposals that would have shined light on China’s abuses over concerns that a tough stance could upset trade talks. 

And President Trump himself has often linked national security and other concerns to trade talks.
On Monday, President Trump said “bad” action in Hong Kong, the site of violent protests, would hurt progress on trade and urged China to find a “humane solution.”
“I think they’re coming to make a deal,” he said of the Chinese. 

“It’s got to be a fair deal.”
The Trump administration has steadily ratcheted up pressure on China through tariffs on more than $360 billion of Chinese products and other restrictions on Chinese investment in the United States. The administration has also begun looking to restrict exports to China.
This year, the administration placed Huawei, the Chinese telecom equipment giant, on the blacklist, saying it posed national security concerns. 

It added five Chinese entities to the list in June, also citing national security.
American companies can still apply for licenses to supply products to organizations that have been placed on the Commerce Department entity list, but the government may deny the applications.
The companies on the list help illustrate the breadth and development of China’s surveillance industry, which increasingly uses predictive technology to track its own citizens, or spot potential protests or crimes as they occur.
The new additions include several artificial intelligence start-ups: Megvii, SenseTime and Yitu Technologies. 

They also include iFlytek, which makes voice recognition software; Xiamen Meiya Pico Information Company, a data forensics company; and Yixin Science and Technology Company, which makes nanotechnology.
The listed government entities include East Turkestan’s public security bureau and 19 subordinate bureaus and institutes.
Several of the firms have grown into global operations while servicing an extensive market in China. Hikvision said it had more than 34,000 employees and dozens of divisions worldwide, and it has supplied products to the Beijing Olympics, the World Cup in Brazil and Linate Airport in Milan. Dahua Technologies has more than 16,000 employees, according to its website, with divisions in North America, Europe and Latin America.
The companies run the gamut in terms of capabilities and focus. 

Some are specialists in facial-recognition systems, voice-recognition software, surveillance cameras and phone tracking systems that are sold largely to China’s security forces. 

Others have ambitions of building systems that can filter social media content and products that could help doctors reach cancer diagnoses.
As a result, the impact of the bans will be varied. 

For the surveillance camera maker Hikvision, which makes a significant portion of the world’s security cameras, the impact could be significant. 

A block could have a roughly 10 percent impact on revenue, technology research firm Sanford Bernstein said in a Monday note. 

While the company would have to replace some American-made chips placed in its high-end cameras, most of the impact would come on the back-end servers that help analyze footage as part of its security systems.
The impact could be larger in terms of broader sales ambitions. 

Hikvision has worked to court the American market, including a number of government-connected customers.
For those focused on artificial-intelligence software, like Yitu and Megvii, the direct hit could be small. 

Nonetheless, the blacklist could impact them in other ways. 

The artificial intelligence start-ups on the list have partnerships with American software firms, connections to American universities and have been active in trying to hire foreign talent. 

In all those cases, the blocks will likely hamper their efforts.

Trade War

President Trump planning more restrictions on tech exports to China

By ADAM BEHSUDI


The Trump administration is taking steps toward issuing even more restrictions on exports of high-tech goods to China as the U.S. ratchets up its trade war with Beijing, according to two people familiar with the plans.
The Commerce Department will soon recommend rolling back regulations making it easier for U.S. companies to export certain goods that have both civilian and military purposes, the people said. Commerce will also recommend ending a general policy of approving export licenses for that group of goods if they go to civilian use and instead require reviews on a case-by-case basis.
The expected moves would make it harder for China to acquire U.S. technology. 

They come on top of actions President Donald Trump has taken since U.S.-China trade talks ground to a halt earlier this month, such as raising tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods. 

His administration also put Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei on a trade blacklist and is considering similar actions against other Chinese tech companies.
How President Trump is willing to use these actions as leverage could become clearer next month when he may meet with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping in late June on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Japan, though no formal plans have been set.

“It seems to me we’re still turning up the pressure to try to get a deal,” said Scott Kennedy, a senior adviser and China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Commerce is drafting the recommendations as part of a review required by an export-control law recently passed by Congress. 

A Commerce spokesperson said the department is finalizing the review, which has a May 10 deadline, but declined to confirm specific actions the administration is weighing.
Commerce is considering at least four regulatory actions targeting China under the Export Control Reform Act, said the two people, who declined to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the deliberations.
Two of those options would involve revoking two license exceptions U.S. companies can get for shipping restricted technology to China. 

U.S. firms can avoid an export license requirement to China if they can prove the good is bound for civilian end-use or if a U.S.-origin good is approved for re-export to China from an allied third country.
Another option would be expanding a prohibition on any U.S. goods bound for military use in China on par with restrictions now applied to Russia and Venezuela.
Finally, Commerce could look at changing its general policy of approving export licenses for goods bound for civilian uses.
One of the people close to the deliberations said the actions appear to be “a direct response to the civilian-military fusion that is happening in China.”
The U.S. already maintains relatively tight restrictions on exports to China of technology and goods that have both civilian and military uses. 

Tough U.S. export controls aimed at China have long riled Beijing and Chinese officials have raised objection to mounting restrictions with previous administrations.
The additional restrictions would add to the recent Commerce Department decision to blacklist Huawei, forcing most of the company’s U.S. suppliers to obtain a special license for export transactions. 

Commerce has a general policy of denying license applications for blacklisted companies.
The Commerce Department is also considering similar action against a number of other Chinese companies, including Hikvision and Dahua Technology, which manufacture sophisticated video surveillance technology, according to the two people familiar with the plans.
Those companies have been implicated in human rights abuses as a result of the monitoring and mass detention of members of the Muslim Uighur group in China’s East Turkestan colony.
Any final actions related to the surveillance companies are complicated by the scope of a broader proposed package of sanctions the administration is considering. 

Officials are looking at using a law that would allow the U.S. to ban Chinese government and business officials accused of human rights abuses in the region from entering the U.S. or holding assets in America, said a lobbyist familiar with the matter.
“There is broad disagreement over both timing and which tools to use here,” the lobbyist said. 

“In any case, this will really piss off Beijing.”
The Trump administration had held back on several actions — including punishing China for its activities in East Turkestan as well as Huawei’s blacklisting — in the hopes that a deal could be reached with Xi to draw down trade tension. 

But talks fell apart earlier this month amid accusations from U.S. officials that Beijing had backtracked on commitments to codify under domestic law obligations to address intellectual property theft and forced technology transfers.
“China’s backtracking in a massive way at the eleventh hour from four months of shuttle diplomacy has fed a view in the administration that there is no reason to hold back from these types of actions,” said one person close to the internal deliberations.

Rogue Investment

Think twice about your investment portfolio. It likely undermines human rights in China.
By Marion Smith

Rushan Abbas, 51, of Herndon, Va., holds a photo of her sister, Gulshan Abbas, last year in Washington. Her sister is among the many Uighurs detained by China. 

Does your retirement plan or investment portfolio undermine human rights in China?

For millions of Americans, the answer is yes. 

They unwittingly hold or benefit from investments in companies that enable the Chinese Communist Party’s oppression and imprisonment of the Uighur people.
Consider two Chinese firms, Hikvision and Dahua Technology. 

They supply about one-third of the world’s security cameras, but in their home country, both companies have received government contracts — totaling more than $1 billion — to install a vast surveillance apparatus in the western colony of East Turkestan. 

“The projects include not only security cameras but also video analytics hubs, intelligent monitoring systems, big data centers, police checkpoints, and even drones,” Charles Rollet wrote in June in Foreign Policy.
Beijing has deployed the system to try to control the predominantly Muslim Uighurs, viewed by the Communist Party as a threat to its power in that region. 

The surveillance equipment helps authorities identify supposedly dangerous individuals, many of whom are then shipped to concentration camps that Beijing calls “vocational training centers.” 

Of a total population of about 11 million, 2 million Uighurs may have been thus imprisoned.
In these camps, Uighurs are subjected to torture and brainwashing intended to eradicate their culture and force them to embrace communist ideology. 

The Post’s editorial board has decried this “massive campaign of cultural extermination.”
For their part, Hikvision and Dahua have not directly addressed their involvement in Beijing’s surveillance of the Uighurs. 

The companies have pointed with pride to their contribution to "anti-terrorism" efforts generally, and Hikvision last year lamented how “Western media” has distorted its image with “alarmist headlines.”
But the surveillance state that Beijing has established in East Turkestan would not be possible without the companies’ help. 

Most Americans would not willingly support companies that enabled such oppression, but many investment funds and state pension plans own shares in Hikvision and Dahua Technology, likely without individual investors’ knowledge.
The investments occur through several different channels. 

Most directly, U.S.-based funds purchase shares of the two companies. 

The New York State Teachers’ Retirement System (NYSTRS) owned more than 26,000 Hikvision shares at the end of last year. 

The California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS), which represents nearly 1 million members and beneficiaries, owned more than 4.3 millionshares in Hikvision as of last June. 

NYSTRS did not respond to a request for comment. 

A CalSTRS spokesperson said they are “researching the issues surrounding the company.”
Another path for investment comes through the influential MSCI Emerging Markets Index. 

Many funds invest directly in the index, while others follow its portfolio. 

The MSCI index is currently tracked by $2 trillion in assets. 

The index added Chinese A-Class shares from both Hikvision and Dahua last year. 

Any time a fund invests in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index, it buys positions in both businesses.
Through both active and passive investment funds, Americans also hold stock or bonds in many other questionable or dangerous Chinese companies, including subsidiaries of firms affiliated with the Chinese military. 

According to RWR Advisory Group, U.S. investment funds rarely conduct due diligence to identify and avoid companies complicit in human rights abuses or connected to China’s defense industry. 

The Financial Times reports that public attention to their investments in Hikvision has prompted at least seven U.S. equity funds to divest from the company, but the better path is to be proactive, not reactive.
Fortunately, the U.S. government and lawmakers can force change.
In the short term, Congress should hold hearings on Chinese companies suspected of aiding Beijing’s sinister activities while benefiting from U.S. financial markets. 

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) deserves credit for bringing this matter to his colleagues’ attention. 

Longer term, Congress could pass legislation creating the equivalent of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which determines whether foreign acquisitions of American firms pose a national security risk. 

The White House could also direct the National Security Council, the Treasury Department, and the Securities and Exchange Commission to establish a screening mechanism for Chinese entrants into U.S. capital markets.
Outside of Washington, each state should commission a report on all Chinese debt and equity holdings in its public-pension systems and other state investment portfolios. 

For their part, pension funds should immediately divest from Chinese companies and their subsidiaries — as well as funds such as the MSCI Emerging Markets Index that include them — if they facilitate human rights abuses or otherwise undermine U.S. values and interests.
Americans deserve to be able to invest with confidence that the free-enterprise system isn’t being exploited to fund communist tyranny. 

Buying stock in Chinese companies complicit in the terror against Uighur people might earn plenty of money, but it’s a bad investment.

Chinazism

U.S. Weighs Sanctions Against Chinese Officials Over Muslim Detention Camps

By Edward Wong

The Id Kah mosque in China’s East Turkestan colony. The mass detentions in East Turkestan are the worst collective human rights abuse in China in decades.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is considering sanctions against Chinese senior officials and companies to punish Beijing’s detention of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Uighurs and other minority Muslims in large internment camps, according to current and former American officials.
The economic penalties would be one of the first times the Trump administration has taken action against China because of human rights violations. 

United States officials are also seeking to limit American sales of surveillance technology that Chinese security agencies and companies are using to monitor Uighurs throughout northwest China.
Discussions to rebuke China for its treatment of its minority Muslims have been underway for months among officials at the White House and the Treasury and State Departments. 

But they gained urgency two weeks ago, after members of Congress asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to impose sanctions on seven Chinese officials.
Until now, Trump has largely resisted punishing China for its human rights record, or even accusing it of widespread violations. 

If approved, the penalties would fuel an already bitter standoff with Beijing over trade and pressure on North Korea’s nuclear program.
Last month, a United Nations panel confronted Chinese diplomats in Geneva over the detentions. 

The camps for Chinese Muslims have been the target of growing international criticism and investigative reports, including by The New York Times.
Human rights advocates and legal scholars say the mass detentions in the northwest colony of East Turkestan are the worst collective human rights abuse in China in decades. 

Since taking power in 2012, Xi Jinping has steered China on a hard authoritarian course, which includes increased repression of large ethnic groups in western China, notably the Uighurs and Tibetans.
On Sunday, Human Rights Watch released a detailed report that concluded that the violations were of a “scope and scale not seen in China since the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution.” 

The report, based on interviews with 58 former residents of East Turkestan, recommended that other nations impose targeted sanctions on Chinese officials, withhold visas and control exports of technology that could be used for abuses.
Any new American sanctions would be announced by the Treasury Department after governmentwide consultations, including with Congress.

Chinese Muslims in the camps are forced to attend daily classes, denounce aspects of Islam, study mainstream Chinese culture and pledge loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party. 

Some detainees who have been released have described torture by security officers.

Uighurs and their supporters near the United Nations in March protested Chinese surveillance of the ethnic group throughout northwest China.

Chinese officials have labeled the process “transformation through education” or “counter-extremism education.” 

But they have not acknowledged that large groups of Muslims are being detained.
The discussions over the mass detentions in East Turkestan highlight American efforts on issues that diverge from the president’s priorities. 

Trump has rarely made statements criticizing foreign governments for human rights abuses or anti-liberal policies, and in fact has praised authoritarian leaders, including Xi.
The Trump administration has confronted China over economic issues — the two countries are in the middle of a prolonged trade war — but has said little about rampant abuses by its security forces.
“The scale of it — it’s massive,” Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said of the Muslim detention centers in an interview. 

“It involves not only intimidating people on political speech, but also a desire to strip people of their identity — ethnic identity, religious identity — on a scale that I’m not sure we’ve seen in the modern era.”
Ethnic Uighurs are a Turkic-speaking group that is mostly Sunni Muslim. 

With a population of around 11 million, Uighurs are the largest ethnic group in East Turkestan. 

Some of the desert oasis towns and villages that they consider their homeland are being emptied out as security officers force many Uighurs into large detention centers for weeks or months.
Gulchehra Hoja, a Uighur-American journalist who works for Radio Free Asia, which is financed by the United States government, said at a congressional hearing in July that two dozen of her family members in East Turkestan were missing, including her brother.
“I hope and pray for my family to be let go and released,” Ms. Hoja said. 

“But I know even if that happens, they will still live under constant threat.”
A Chinese law student in Canada, Shawn Zhang, has compiled satellite images that show the scale of some of the detention centers.
In their demand last month, Mr. Rubio and other lawmakers urged officials at the State and Treasury Departments to impose sanctions on Chinese companies that have profited from building the camps or the regionwide surveillance system, which includes the collection of biometric and DNA data. They singled out Hikvision and Dahua Technology for the surveillance.
Mr. Rubio said the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, of which he is a chairman, will also ask the Commerce Department to prevent American companies from selling technology to China that could contribute to the surveillance and tracking.
Congressional lawmakers singled out Chen Quanguo, who became party chief of East Turkestan in 2016, for sanctions among seven Chinese officials.

For many years, Chinese officials have talked about the need to suppress what they call "terrorism", separatism and religious extremism in East Turkestan. 

In 2009, ethnic violence began soaring in the region. 

Security forces carried out mass repression in response, but large-scale construction of the camps, which now hold as many as one million people, did not begin until the arrival of Chen Quanguo, who became party chief of East Turkestan in August 2016, after a stint in the Tibet Autonomous Region.
The congressional demand, outlined in an Aug. 28 letter, singles out Mr. Chen among the seven Chinese officials who would be sanctioned.
In Washington, officials grappling with the plight of the Uighurs and other Chinese Muslims are doing so in the shadow of the mass murders, rapes and forced displacement of Rohingya Muslims by Burmese military forces that began in Myanmar in August 2017. 

More than 700,000 Rohingya fled to neighboring Bangladesh and live in squalid camps.
American officials see the actions of the Chinese government as another form of the genocide that occurred in Myanmar, according to people with knowledge of the continuing discussions.
Sam Brownback, the State Department’s ambassador at large for international religious freedom and former governor of Kansas, supports taking a hard line against the Chinese government on the issue of East Turkestan, they said. 

Mr. Brownback declined to be interviewed.
In April, Laura Stone, an acting deputy assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs, told reporters on a visit to Beijing that the United States could impose sanctions on Chinese officials involved in the East Turkestan abuses under the Global Magnitsky Act. 

The law allows the American government to impose sanctions on specific foreign officials who are gross violators of human rights.
That same month, Heather Nauert, the chief spokeswoman for the State Department, called on China to release all those “unlawfully detained” after meeting in Washington with Ms. Hoja and five other ethnic Uighur journalists who work in the United States for Radio Free Asia. 

The journalists shared details of the mass detentions and of harassment of their own family members in the region.
The issue of the Uighurs was raised in July at the first international minister-level forum on global religious freedom, over which Mr. Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence presided. 

Ahead of it, Mr. Pompeo wrote an op-ed that listed the Uighurs among several groups suffering religious persecution. 

“These episodes and others like them are abhorrent,” he wrote.
In a statement to The Times, the State Department said officials “are deeply troubled by the Chinese government’s worsening crackdown” on Muslims.
“Credible reports indicate that individuals sent by Chinese authorities to detention centers since April 2017 number at least in the hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions,” the statement said.
The Trump administration has used an executive order tied to the Magnitsky Act once to impose sanctions on a Chinese official. 

In December, the White House announced sanctions against Gao Yan, who was a district police chief in Beijing when a human-rights activist died in detention.