TEHRAN (FNA)- The United States has slapped sanctions on 33 Chinese companies and institutions, putting them on so-called entity lists as it dials up the hostility during the lowest point in US-China relations in decades.
Two dozen government institutions and Chinese companies were placed on the first list for “supporting procurement of items for military end-use in China,” according to a statement by the US Department of Commerce.
The latest sanctions add to the litany of grievances between the two largest economies on earth, as the jostling from almost two years of the US-China trade war extended into disputes in technology and cybersecurity, access to Wall Street’s capital market and even to the origin of the current coronavirus pandemic.
As always, there are many reasons for the latest gambit in Washington.
The US frequently accuses countries (including, for example, China) that protect their citizens against destructive, fraudulent governments and terrorises. The US imposes sanctions or threatens those countries with economic boycotts should they not accept its self-serving views and narratives on these internal issues.
The US is the only country in the world that attempts to strong-arm other countries, its enemies in particular, into accepting its foreign policy views on the proxies it supports – including separatists and deposed puppets and dictators. In this case, the US is more than willing to support the separatist currents in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
The US chides friends and foes for alleged spying and human rights violations, but consistently and deliberately refuses to acknowledge and address its own dismal record of spying on almost all other nations and its own citizens and human rights violations as well as those of its allies Israel and Saudi Arabia. For instance, the US uses differing measures to falsely claim that Saudi-led allies are not violating human rights law when they kill civilians in the illegal war on Yemen. The US uses the same rhetoric when Israeli regime kills unarmed Palestinian protesters.
The US refuses to address or agree with outspoken critics like the UN Human Rights Council, Amnesty International, UNICEF, Human Rights Watch, and other rights groups and aid agencies that believe America's attitude toward International Law and International Humanitarian Law - including its fight against the International Criminal Court, its indiscriminate bombing runs in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, or its inconsistent application of the Geneva Conventions - presents a serious threat to the international community.
All this and more are the reasons why China is reacting with great concern to the way the US tries to justify its latest sanctions against Chinese entities. Beijing has vowed to shield the Chinese government institutes and companies sanctioned by the US over alleged human rights violations.
After all, President Trump refuses to abandon his anti-China rhetoric, and found a path to the White House through a campaign marked by racism and xenophobia. He is not going to respect and promote human rights in China or elsewhere, much less uphold America’s trade deal obligations with China.
In the prevailing environment, it’s a waste of time for Beijing to urge Washington to reverse its decision and stop stretching the concept of national security to meddle in China's internal affairs and harm its interests. Washington is deliberately pushing both sides to the brink of a new Cold War.
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