China imposes sanctions on US data firm over Uighur report

Beijing says measures against Kharon are a response to State Department criticism over Xinjiang.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said Beijing’s actions were a response to a recent State Department annual report.

China’s government hit back at US criticism of its human-rights record on Tuesday by imposing sanctions on a Los Angeles firm and two analysts involved in scouring the country’s supply chain for abuses.

Beijing said the actions under its Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law will be applied to Kharon, a research and data analytics firm, in response to its work monitoring Xinjiang, a far western region of China where the US government, Western media and independent researchers have documented human-rights abuses against ethnic minorities, including primarily Muslim Uighurs.

China’s government linked the sanctions with US policy moves.

“We again urge the U.S. side to stop smearing China, cancel the illegal unilateral sanctions on Chinese officials and companies, and stop implementing wrongful acts such as the Uighur Forced Labor Prevention Act,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told a Beijing news briefing, in announcing the action.

Beijing denies mistreatment of minorities in its population.

Mao said Beijing’s actions were “countermeasures” in response to a recent State Department annual report on human-rights conditions in Xinjiang, which prompted new US sanctions on two Chinese officials and three companies. In an early December report to congress, the State Department referred to a range of “ongoing human-rights abuses,” including torture, in Xinjiang against ethnic and religious minorities. The State Department didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The government in China has reacted angrily to US penalties against its officials and companies in response to human-rights conditions in Xinjiang, as well as Hong Kong and Tibet. Unlike American sanctions that can make it difficult for a target to travel internationally or retain banking services, China’s countermeasures have a limited impact because they have often hit individuals, companies and think tanks with little to no activity in China. Some of those sanctioned in the past by China include American military contractors Lockheed Martin and an arm of RTX plus former US officials and think-tank researchers.

The Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said Kharon has long collected sensitive information related to Xinjiang and provided “so-called evidence for America’s illegal sanctions”. Under the sanctions, Kharon and the researchers will have any assets in China frozen. The researchers will be banned from entering China and the measures “prohibit organisations and individuals in China from transactions and cooperation with them.”

Kharon’s website displays logos of a range of US and multinational corporations as organisations that trust its work.

The targeted researchers included Edmund Xu, who leads Kharon’s Asia research program, and Nicole Morgret, a longtime Xinjiang specialist now at the US-China Economic And Security Review Commission, which advises Congress, and formerly with the Centre for Advanced Defence Studies and Uighur Human Rights Project.

Kharon has published a number of reports that link Xinjiang production, a red flag for possible forced labour, to Chinese supply chains in the seafood, polysilicon and beer businesses.

In a statement, Kharon noted that other US businesses, organisations and people have faced similar sanctions by China and said it would continue to serve its clients. Kharon also said it disputes how China’s Foreign Ministry characterised its work, which the firm says is based on open-source information. The firm said Mr Xu was unavailable. Ms Morgret couldn’t be reached.

Washington-based Uighur Human Rights Project, which noted that one of its co-founders is among those already sanctioned by China, said Beijing’s latest move “is part of a longer pattern of attempts to deter investigations and silence critical voices and activists working to uncover human rights abuses in China”.

The Wall Street Journal