Kamala Harris slammed China last year for mass detention camps for Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang
Beijing:
China on Wednesday officially refused to respond to U.S. Democratic candidate Joe Biden’s decision to choose Indian-born Senator Kamala Harris as vice president, but state media here said his appointment would add “fuel to the fire.” to the current conflict between the two. sides given its strong stance on human rights issues related to Xinjiang and Hong Kong.
Biden picked Harris as his running mate on Tuesday, acknowledging the crucial role black voters and Indo-Americans could play in his bid to defeat Trump in the November U.S. presidential election.
Harris in the past has called for increasing pressure on China for human rights violations against Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang and the crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.
But she also rejected President Donald Trump’s tariff war on China, saying it would hurt business in the California of which she was a senator and raise the prices of consumer goods.
Asked Wednesday about his reaction to a press briefing about Biden’s bid for Harris as vice-presidential candidate, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian declined to comment.
“The presidential election in the United States is an internal matter. We have no interest in intervening,” he said, apparently referring to claims by US officials that China, Russia and Iran could attempt to influence the US presidential poll in November this year. .
William Evanina, head of the National Counter-Intelligence and Security Center (NCSC), said last week that China “prefers that President Trump – whom Beijing considers unpredictable – not to be reelected” and has “expanded its efforts influence “before the vote.
While Zhao was cautious in his reaction, the state-run Global Times cited Chinese observers who said Harris’s appointment would not help end the Chinese card game by both sides.
Harris once gave himself a Chinese name, He Jinli, which translates to “complex and beautiful,” while the last name means “to celebrate,” according to the Global Times report.
But this should not be misinterpreted as goodwill towards China. The senator expressed her criticism of China on several issues, including Xinjiang and Hong Kong, he said.
She criticized China last year for the mass detention camps for Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang and said Beijing had failed to respect the rights and autonomy of the people of Hong Kong.
She jointly launched the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act in 2019 and urged several US investigative agencies to investigate China’s “suppression” of Uighurs.
In October 2019, she announced her support for the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act.
“Harris’s appointment will only fuel the competitive game of the two parties on the China map and act harshly on China during their election campaign,” Zhang Tengjun, deputy researcher at the China Institute of International Studies, said. newspaper.
He said based on the positive response to Biden’s decision, the Trump team may escalate their “irrational” antagonism against China over the next few months, just to gain more attention and try to save their campaign. in decline.
