US law on Xinjiang tramples human rights, market

US President Joe Biden signed the "Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act" into law on Thursday which bans imports from China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region on the pretext of so-called forced labor being used to produce goods in the region, fully displaying the farce being played by the US administration, the two political parties, Xinjiang separatists outfits and other anti-China elements.

It seems the United States has not been able to break free of the illusion of being the "beacon of human rights" and stop wantonly pointing fingers at other countries and interfering in their internal affairs.

Most surprisingly, the administration behaves as if everything is hunky in the US and wants the world to either forget or do not believe that more than 800,000 people have died of COVID-19 thanks to the government's indifference to human lives and inefficient handling of the pandemic. It cannot hide the fact that more than 500,000 children have been forced to work on farms, 240,000-325,000 women and children have been forced into sexual slavery, and that nearly 100,000 people have been coerced or tricked into forced labor annually over the past five years.

The US has accused China of carrying out "genocide" and using forced labor in Xinjiang, but has not produced even an iota of proof to back its claim. But how can it do so when its claim is baseless? The only evidence it has displayed is the clumsy performance of some notorious Xinjiang separatists and terrorists.

Perhaps we have become way too tolerant of the US bullying prompting it to believe that it could label anyone guilty by passing an acidic comment and pretending indignation for the imagined violation of human rights beyond its borders. At home, though, its history and present is stained with the blood of millions of slaves who toiled to pick and clean cotton in plantations in the recent past and way too many George Floyds have lost their lives in the "beacon of human rights" in contemporary times.

How can the US rack its brains to "safeguard" the human rights of the Uygur people when it couldn't protect that of its own? People can't help but wonder whether the US has ever been sincere in its policies and actions, whether it has ever said and done the same thing. Time and again, its designs have been exposed as devilish, Machiavellian, self-serving or deceptive. The design to invade Iraq in 2003, for example.

The real intention of the "Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act" is to create chaos in Xinjiang. It aims to trigger social unrest in the region by reducing the employment and income of people in Xinjiang, to prevent China from catching up with the developed world by interfering in its internal affairs.

By passing the bill, the US has lived up to its reputation as the biggest troublemaker in the world. The fact that from 2014 to 2019 the number of people employed in Xinjiang increased from 11.35 million to 13.3 million, up 17.2 percent, and the income of residents and workers increased steadily is what has upset the Joe Biden administration. Because peace and prosperity are the last things the US government wants to see in Xinjiang.

Apart from harming the livelihoods of people in Xinjiang, the US move will also disrupt the global supply chains and international trade and put enterprises into an extremely difficult situation. Which shows Washington respects neither human rights nor the market. It will trample on both to get what it wants.

If unchecked, the US will continue to trigger more turbulence. What it has done in the name of human rights protection should be seen as what it actually is: an impulsive act of bullying.

The author is a writer with China Daily

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