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WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 (PTI) Several influential Republican lawmakers on Wednesday urged Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to tell Chinese leaders that their flagrant aggression against Taiwan and India in the Himalayas was “unacceptable.”
Lawmakers have sent letters to Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen ahead of an upcoming trip to Beijing.
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Republican senators, led by Marco Rubio of Florida, urged them to avoid giving the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) a propaganda victory and let the CCP deal with its egregious human rights abuses, unfair trade practices, fentanyl crisis leading role and responsible for China’s aggression. Allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific.
India, the US and several other world powers have been talking about the need to ensure a free, open and prosperous Indo-Pacific against the backdrop of China’s increasing military operations in the resource-rich region.
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China claims almost all of the disputed South China Sea, but Taiwan, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam all claim parts of it. Beijing has built artificial islands and military installations in the South China Sea.
China and Japan also have territorial disputes in the East China Sea.
“China has stepped up its aggression in the Indo-Pacific and beyond,” they wrote.
In addition to Rubio, the letter was signed by Senators Chuck Grassley, Bill Cassidy, Eric Schmidt, Dan Sullivan, Kevin Kramer, Ted Budd, Rick Scott, Martha Blackburn, Lindsay Graham, Shelley Moore Capito, Pete Ricketts, John Hoven and Bill Haggerty.
According to the Biden administration’s national security strategy, China is “the only competitor with both the intention to reshape the international order and the growing economic, diplomatic, military, and technological capabilities to reshape the international order.”
In his report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping noted that the Chinese Communist Party “demonstrated a fighting spirit and firm determination that will never yield to coercion.”
“As we have seen recently, General Secretary Xi has engaged in unacceptable provocative actions in the Taiwan Strait and the Himalayas along the border with India,” the letter said.
“Outside of the Indo-Pacific region, the CCP has intelligence-gathering outposts in the U.S., Japan, and across Europe to suppress dissent and keep tabs on those Beijing deems a threat. and partners to use coercion and aggression to achieve their geopolitical goals. Therefore, preventing China from achieving these goals must be our top priority,” the senators wrote.
The senators believe that China is the worst human rights violator. Both the Biden and Trump administrations determined that Beijing’s actions against Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) — including its mass surveillance and detention regime, deprivation of individuals’ rights to peacefully practice their religion Rights and the use of forced labour, sexual violence, forced abortion and forced sterilization of women – constitute genocide and crimes against humanity.
In addition, the CCP continued to deny the basic human rights of other groups deemed a threat by the authorities, such as Tibetans, Christians, and Falun Gong practitioners. The CCP is also responsible for fueling America’s fentanyl crisis, a scourge that has and will continue to kill Americans.
“Finally, the CCP continues its horrific wrongful detainment of U.S. citizens and family members of U.S. citizens, including David Lim, Mark Swedan, Li Kai, Gulshan Abbas, Ekpar Asat, and Zhou Deyong. You must make it clear that the United States will not cooperate with a regime that uses hostages as leverage,” the letter read.
Beijing also has a long history of unfair trade practices and industrial espionage that have done enormous harm to American workers and our economy, they said.
“Over the past few decades, China has systematically stolen American intellectual property and research, often using the acquired technology for military purposes. It has repeatedly abused its privileged position in the world trading system to take advantage of our nation’s Open up the economy and establish yourself as a leader in key industries, including commodities like pharmaceuticals, rare earth minerals, and steel,” the senators wrote.
“We are pleased that the U.S. Trade Representative continues to impose Section 301 tariffs on certain products made in China in response to its “unreasonable” and “discriminatory” non-market practices, and this tool should continue to be used to combat unfair trade practices in China policy. In the meantime, more needs to be done to rebalance our economic relationship with Beijing,” the senators wrote.
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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