Halifax, Canada — One of the main outcomes of the November 15 meeting between President Joe Biden and Chinese general secretary Xi Jinping is a deal aimed at restricting the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. Washington lifted sanctions targeting the Chinese Ministry of Public Security’s Institute for Forensic Sciences, which was blacklisted by the U.S. Commerce Department in 2020 for its alleged complicity in abuses against Uyghurs, in exchange for vague promises from Beijing on the trafficking of fentanyl precursors.
Nury Turkel, who was born in a Chinese prison camp in the Xinjiang region and is the most senior political appointee of Uyghur heritage in U.S. government, told me he’s “very disappointed” that Beijing convinced the U.S. to take the deal.
Although it has gone unnoticed beyond Washington’s China-watcher circles, amid other takeaways from the U.S.–China talks and the ongoing war in Gaza, it is in fact a monumental deal: It is the first instance in which the U.S. has rolled back one of the measures it has brought to bear on the Chinese Communist Party atrocities against Uyghurs. The administration itself labeled the abuses “genocide.”
In an interview Sunday on the sidelines of the Halifax International Security Forum, Turkel, a member of the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom and until recently its chairman, said: “I feel like we got ourselves into another trap, with the Chinese making a promise or symbolic gesture or pledge to address this public-health crisis.”
“Instead of going further to stop this genocide, rolling back [the 2020 listing of the institute] is a disappointment,” said Turkel, who was appointed to the commission by former House speaker Pelosi in 2020. “The U.S. government, the Biden administration started much of their initial actions with very promising initiatives.” Biden-era measures he cited include U.S. sanctions targeting party officials implicated in the genocide, restrictions on investment in complicit Chinese firms, enactment of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, and other targeted sanctions. “From that starting point, to dropping the globally known entity that is responsible for scheming, carrying out, and expanding the modern-day tech concentration camps and genocide is perplexing,” he said.
Citing the high death toll of the fentanyl crisis, he believes that, since the deal has already been agreed to, it should be provisionally kept in place. In his view, the Biden administration should give China six months to a year before reversing this decision and slapping the restrictions back on if Beijing does not follow through with its commitments.
The State Department defended the deal. “As the president said — trust but verify,” a spokesperson told me, adding that the administration is “encouraged” by a series of recent steps China has taken to crack down on precursor chemicals and pill presses. Those steps include a Chinese-government regulatory notice on the enforcement of counternarcotics laws, law-enforcement actions that have put some Chinese drug and chemical suppliers out of business, resumed Chinese cooperation with an international counternarcotics database, and plans to continue cooperation with the U.S. on this front.
“Of course, we are clear-eyed and will continue to work intensively on this issue across the U.S. government and through this process with the [People’s Republic of China]. But make no mistake — this is an extremely important step,” the spokesperson added.
Addressing the fact that this is the first time the U.S. has rolled back sanctions related to the Uyghur genocide, the spokesperson said that “the promotion and respect for human rights remains a central goal of U.S. foreign policy” and that the U.S. will continue to use its tools to promote accountability for Chinese human-rights abuses. This person also noted that “to address the ongoing genocide, crimes against humanity, and other abuses being committed in Xinjiang, during this administration alone, we have taken action against 73 PRC individuals and entities using a variety of authorities; 30 of those are Entity List designations.”
For years, Turkel, who was born in a Chinese reeducation camp during the Cultural Revolution and later emigrated to the U.S., becoming a lawyer and American citizen, has been at the forefront of advocacy efforts to get Washington to recognize the Chinese Communist Party’s repression of Uyghurs. He was instrumental in advancing the State Department’s 2020 determination that Beijing is carrying out genocide.
In 2007, the Chinese government barred his parents from leaving Xinjiang. Turkel’s father, Ablikim, died there last year; he is trying to get his mother, Ayshem Mamut, out of the region, with members of Congress earlier this month asking Biden to raise her case directly with Xi during their meeting in San Francisco.
Turkel explained that the MPS forensic institute is believed to be directly implicated in Beijing’s genocide of Uyghurs, as it sequenced DNA samples that the government demanded from Xinjiang residents around 2016. His late father was forced to comply with this demand.
“Right around that time, I had a conversation with him. And he said, well, this is too much for me to swallow. He said things like, ‘I wish I’m dead. I could’ve left this world with a good taste in my mouth, with good memories.’”
Turkel added that, while it’s not yet clear what the MPS will use the DNA samples for, the program was “chilling” and solidified views within the Washington policy community that the U.S. must take action against the Chinese security agency — which operates many of the party’s notorious camps in Xinjiang. The restriction that was reversed by the recent deal was the forensic institute’s being placed on the U.S. Entity List, which prohibited Americans from exporting technology that the institute could use in its mass DNA-collection campaigns. When asked if the U.S. would reverse the forensic institute de-listing if China fails to hold up its end of the deal, the spokesperson said that State does not “preview possible changes or upcoming actions” related to the Entity List.
The alarming rise of fentanyl-related deaths across the U.S., Turkel said, is a crisis that government must address — but one that China is unlikely to genuinely take action to stop. Despite cracking down on the export of fentanyl itself a few years ago in a deal reached with then-president Trump, Chinese exports of precursor chemicals have continued, fueling Mexican drug cartels’ fentanyl-export business. Tens of thousands of people in the U.S. die of fentanyl-related overdoses every year.
Getting Beijing to crack down on the precursor market has been a bipartisan focus, and a triumphant Biden said soon after his meeting with Xi last week that the U.S. and China have resumed cooperation on counternarcotics, along the lines that the State Department spokesperson described. But experts remain skeptical that Chinese promises of a crackdown will pan out. Xi has previously made promises to U.S. leaders that he has swiftly broken, including his pledges to President Obama not to militarize the South China Sea or engage in hacking operations.
Turkel told me that the question is whether Americans are getting anything tangible at all out of this deal: “Are we getting the Chinese to agree on lifting exit ban on American citizens who are stuck in China who could not leave the country? Does it include the release of Uyghur-American family members, specifically, the family members of Radio Free Asia reporters? Half of them have family members in the camps; some of them have two siblings” detained there.
He added: “If the Chinese deliver, it may be worth it, because at the end of the day, the U.S. government’s No. 1 priority is to save American lives. I’m very clear-eyed about it, and I don’t second-guess any government official trying to save American lives, American youth.”
But he’s concerned that the Chinese Communist Party will just use this decision to further integrate U.S. tech into its program of genocide without delivering anything in return.