Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Wednesday that the United States will impose sanctions on some employees of Chinese technology companies like Huawei for their role in “facilitating human rights abuses.”
He told reporters that visa restrictions would be imposed on certain employees of Chinese technology companies that provide “material support to regimes involved in human rights violations and abuses worldwide.”
Pompeo later tweeted that this includes workers “involved in supplying surveillance equipment to repressive regimes.” He made it clear that this includes the Chinese government.
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Pompeo cited the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows the United States to deny entry to a foreign citizen if the secretary of state has reason to believe that his entry “would have potentially adverse consequences for the foreign policy of the United States.”
He specifically mentioned Huawei, and also praised the UK’s decision a day before banning Huawei from the country’s 5G networks due to U.S. sanctions. In a separate statement, Pompeo described Huawei as “an arm of the CCP surveillance state that censors political dissidents and allows mass internment camps in Xinjiang and contract bondage of its population sent to all of China.”
“Certain Huawei employees provide material support to the CCP regime that commits human rights abuses,” he said.
The move is the latest reversal by the Trump administration against Chinese expansionism abroad and human rights violations in the country. The State Department and the Treasury announced sanctions last week to Chinese Communist Party officials believed to be involved in the persecution of Uighurs and other minorities in China’s Xinjiang region.
On Tuesday, President Trump announced that he had signed an executive order ending the United States’ preferential treatment of Hong Kong in response to Beijing’s forays into freedom and human rights in the territory through its “security law national “recently approved.
Trump also enacted the Hong Kong Autonomy Law, which imposes sanctions on entities that help violate Hong Kong’s autonomy and the financial institutions that do business with them.
Meanwhile, China announced that it will impose sanctions on US defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. for its missile sales to Taiwan.
The sanctions represent another move in the rapidly deteriorating relationship between China and the United States. Tensions were exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, which originated in Wuhan and was suspected by Chinese authorities to have covered it up until it was too late to prevent it from becoming a global crisis.
The United States has highlighted the treatment of Muslim Uighurs, who are subjected to forced labor, forced abortion and sterilization, and other human rights abuses.
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The focus on Chinese tech companies comes amid fears that China has been using such tech companies for global espionage. Pompeo has said the United States is seeking to ban the TikTok app for fear of security.
On Wednesday, Pompeo said the United States’ measures are having an impact on Chinese behavior change.
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“You have seen the language they use, you can see that we are having a real impact and we will continue to do the things that we must do to make sure that the American people are safe and secure and that we have fair play and interaction,” he said.
“We want good things for the people of China, we have a Chinese Communist Party that is putting freedom and democracy at risk for its imperialist expansionist authoritarian behavior, that is the behavior we are trying to see changed,” he said.
Andrew O’Reilly and Andrew Craft of Fox News contributed to this report.
