With US President Donald Trump showing no signs that he will gracefully step down after his defeat to President-elect Joe Biden in the US presidential election, experts and former officials say they fear a risk. growing that he can take disruptive action to double down on priorities and tie the hands of his successor in his final months in the White House.
Experts added that China could be a particular target, given Trump’s repeated efforts to blame Beijing for the Covid-19 pandemic and U.S. economic conditions, Mark Magnier says in the South China Morning Post.
“Trump has promised to punish China for Covid-19, so the question is, what does that mean?” Said Jeff Moon, director of China Moon Strategies and a former National Security Council official. -Relations with China and to undermine the Biden administration’s move to enhance bilateral cooperation on global health and environmental issues, possibly involving Taiwan.
Beyond taking the potentially explosive step of labeling China guilty of genocide for the mass detention of Uighurs in Xinjiang, Trump could attempt to block visas for more Communist Party officials, or create problems by trying to order American athletes to skip. the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
Trump’s other options may include subjecting more Chinese state-owned companies to sanctions, expanding restrictions on civil-military “dual-use” exports, banning more Chinese apps after his TikTok and WeChat campaigns, and blocking all semiconductor sales to Huawei Technologies beyond 5G. networks.
Even without disturbing last-minute moves, an incoming Biden administration will face a more emboldened Beijing, SCMP reported.
“The power of China has increased considerably in the last four years … Therefore, I would expect many of Biden’s policies to resemble the Trump administration,” said Sarah Kreps, professor of law and government at Cornell University. .
According to the Pew Research Center, 73 percent of Americans have a negative opinion of China, 13 percentage points more than last year and 20 points more than in 2017, when Trump took office. Moments after the president was projected Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden would be the winner. of the US presidential election, Trump refused to admit defeat, saying the election was “far from over” and promised legal challenges for his re-election campaign.
Meanwhile, the US government had previously removed the East Turkestan Islamic Movement from its list of terrorist organizations after nearly two decades that has led to the weakening of China’s counterterrorism pretext for a draconian crackdown on Uyghurs in the Region. Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous.
The US move comes amid worldwide condemnation of China’s policies in Xinjiang, where a large population of Muslim minorities is being held in re-education camps.
About seven percent of the Muslim population in Xinjiang have been imprisoned in a sprawling network of “political re-education” camps, according to US officials and UN experts.
However, China regularly denies such mistreatment, saying the camps offer vocational training.
People in internment camps have said that they are subjected to forced political indoctrination, torture, beatings and denial of food and medicine, in addition to being prohibited from practicing their religion or speaking their language.
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