The United States on Monday imposed additional visa restrictions on Chinese officials over alleged human rights abuses, taking further action against Beijing in the final month of US President Donald Trump’s term.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the restrictions affected officials believed to be responsible for or complicit in repressing religious practitioners, ethnic minority groups, dissidents and others.
“China’s authoritarian rulers impose draconian restrictions on the Chinese people’s freedoms of expression, religion or belief, association, and the right to peaceful assembly. The United States has been clear that perpetrators of human rights abuses like these are not welcome in our country,” he said in a statement.
US-China relations have plunged to their worst level in decades as the world’s top two economies spar over issues ranging from the coronavirus outbreak, Beijing’s national security law for Hong Kong, trade and espionage.
Wolf did not elaborate, but he was apparently referring to a broad import ban on all cotton and tomato products from Xinjiang that the Trump administration considered this year before opting for narrower bans on products from specific entities.
US apparel makers have criticized a broader ban as impossible to enforce.
Wolf said DHS would soon issue a business advisory cautioning against using data services and equipment from firms linked to China and said it was “reviewing entities such as the Chinese manufacturer TCL,” the world’s third largest manufacturer of TV sets.
Wolf said it had been discovered this year that the firm had “incorporated backdoors into all its TV sets, exposing users to cyber breaches and data exfiltration.”
