A top White House official said the US will urge its Group of Seven allies to increase pressure on China over the use of forced labor in its northwestern Xinjiang province. This province is home to the Muslim Uighur minority. The deputy national security adviser to Biden and deputy director of the National Economic Council, Daleep Singh said, “The G7 meeting in Cornwall would focus on health security, a synchronized economic response to the COVID-19 pandemic, concrete actions on climate change, and elevating shared democratic values within the G7″. Point to be noted that President Joe Biden will attend a meeting of the G7 advanced economies in person in Britain in June 2021. He is expected to focus on what he sees as a strategic rivalry between democracies and autocratic states, particularly China.
Singh added, “These are like-minded allies, and we want to take tangible and concrete actions that show our willingness to coordinate on non-market economies, such as China. The galvanizing challenge for the G7 is to show that open societies, democratic societies still have the best chance of solving the biggest problems in our world and that top-down autocracies are not the best path”. He said Washington has already taken strong measures against China over human rights abuses in Xinjiang, but would seek to expand the effort with G7 allies. Joint sanctions against Chinese officials were announced last month by the United States, the European Union, Britain, and Canada, for allegedly abusing in its northwestern Xinjiang province.
However, China denies all allegations of abuse and has responded with punitive measures of its own against the EU. Singh also said, “We’ve made our views clear that our consumers deserve to know when that the goods they’re importing are made with forced labor. Our values need to be infused into our trading relationships. Washington would be looking for the G7 to take clear steps to elevate our shared values, as democracies and, and those certainly apply to what’s going on Xinjiang”. Activists and UN rights experts said that at least 1 million Muslims have been detained in camps in Xinjiang. There are activists and some Western politicians alleging China using torture, forced labor, and sterilizations. China responded and said that its camps are providing vocational training, essential to fight extremism.