President Joe Biden, 79, announced today that he was slapping China with sanctions specifically related to suppliers and manufacturers in the Xinjiang Province, exploiting Muslim Uyghurs. Biden said the Commerce Department plans to target companies doing business in Western China where multinational corporations like Nike Inc. and Coca Cola have used Uyghurs in their factories. Commerce Departments said it will target China’s biotechnology sector, specifically China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences and 11 associated research institutes that supply the Peoples Liberation Army [PLA] with biotechnology weapons. U.S. officials think that China uses the biotechnology sector to manipulate and brainwash Muslim Uyghrus. Well, the same thing could be said for any U.S. behavior think tank that consults with the U.S. military on new-and-improved interrogation techniques.
Using China’s biotechnology sector to accuse it of nefarious purposes is a slipper slope any country can play. “The scientific pursuit of biotechnology and medical innovation can save lives. Unfortunately, the PRC [Peoples Republic of China] is choosing to use these technologies to pursue control over its people and its repression of members of ethnic and religious minority groups,” said Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. “We cannot allow U.S. commodities, technologies, and software that support medical science and biotechnological innovation to be delivered toward uses contrary to U.S. national Security. Biden has gone down a dangerous rabbit hole accusing China of the same thing the U.S. does with certain innovations. Can you imagine if China sanctioned the U.S. for using reverse SERE [Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape] training on battlefield detainees?
After Sept. 11, the U.S. government used military psychologists James E. Mitchell and Bruce Jensen to create “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques,” including water-boarding, hooding, sleep deprivation, stress postures, etc. to extract information from Islamic extremist plucked off the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan. Former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney thought Enhanced Interrogation Techniques were needed for U.S. national security, despite banned by the Geneva Convention as “torture.” So Raimondo now wants to define China’s biotechnology sector for developing techniques to deal with Muslim extremists in Western China. Raimondo said she’ll work closely with the Treasury Department to sanction Chinese companies, including Sense Time, for letting its technology to re-educate and brainwash Muslim Uyghurs.
U.S. officials claim that Sense Time biometric facial recognition software program has been used to control the Uyghur population. Claiming the Chinese officials “use biotechnology processes to support Chinese military and uses and end users, to include purported brain-control weaponry,” goes over the top, blaming China for doing the same thing the U.S. government did in the wake of Sept. 11 to control Islamic extremism from repeating another Sept. 11. China has faced suicide bombings and other acts of resistance in its Muslim Uyghur population in Xinjiang province. U.S. officials, without proof, claim that China uses biometric facial recognition software and DNA samples on residents 12-65 to suppress the Uyghur population. Commerce and Treasury Departments plan to ban any U.S. company for supplying software or hardware to Sense Time and other Chinese biotech companies.
Biden’s new sanctions against Beijing are bound to make a bad situation worse, including a diplomatic boycott of the Feb. 3 Beijing Winter Olympics. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Beijing’s “egregious human rights abuse and atrocities in Xinjiang,” prompted Biden to sanction Chinese biotech companies and boycott the Beijing Winter Games. Biden and 59-year-old Secretary of State Tony Blinken have accused Beijing of “genocide” against Muslim Uyghurs, when, in fact, they have no facts to back up such slanderous claims. Whether Xinjiang authorities impose re-education camps on Muslim Uyghurs or not, that’s a far cry from genocide, a label reserved only for systematic exterminations of ethnic minorities. Slapping Beijing with economic sanctions and boycotting the Beijing Winter Olympics is bound to sink U.S.-Chinese relations to new lows.
Biden administration officials have been overly critical of China and Russia since taking office. If there’s any hope of improving world peace, instead of pushing enemies into armed conflict, the White House must stop its condemning China for human rights abuses. Senior Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi told Blinken and 45-year-old National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan March 18 at an Anchorage, Alaska summit that the U.S. had no right to condemn other countries of human rights abuses when Biden admitted the U.S. was a “systemically racist” country with African Americans. Yet the Biden administration has now slapped China’s biotech industry with human rights abuses against Muslim Uyghurs in Western China. China never condemned the U.S. for developing Enhanced Interrogation Techniques for extracting U.S. national security intel from enemy combatants.
