US, Chinese Officials Hold High-level Meeting in Hawaii

By Staff, Agencies

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met over nearly nine hours at a Honolulu military base with senior Chinese official Yang Jiechi, in the two countries' highest-level meeting since the coronavirus pandemic sent tensions skyrocketing, according to a State Department official.

Just as Pompeo met Yang, Trump signed into law an act that authorizes sanctions for Chinese officials involved in the detention of about 1 million Uighur Muslims and other Turkic Muslims. Beijing quickly responded that the law "maliciously attacks" China and threatened consequences.

China will "resolutely hit back and the US will bear the burden of all subsequent consequences," the Chinese foreign ministry said.

And Pompeo and his counterparts from the other Group of Seven major industrial democracies put out a joint statement voicing "grave concerns" about a draft security law in Hong Kong.

China is moving ahead with a law that would prohibit subversion and other perceived offenses in the financial hub, to which Beijing promised autonomy before taking back the British colony in 1997.

China has been running what it claims to be a primarily educational program aimed at providing Uighur with the vocational and language training that comes as an alternative to Islamist extremism.

However, the program, which has been the subject matter of a number of leaks, has been widely condemned as an industrial-scale brainwashing operation relying on camps run like prisons and replete with abuse.