Secretary of State Antony Blinken will confront China’s top diplomat over the regime’s human rights abuses during meetings that coincide with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D-CA) climate-themed trip to China.
“Talking about the issues where we see potential cooperation or even coordination does not mean we don't also raise the difficult issues,” a senior administration official said on Monday. “Diplomacy means talking about the hard issues as well as the issues for potential operation.”
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President Joe Biden’s team offered that forecast as the high-profile California governor began a week of travel in China for a series of climate change policy discussions. His apparent intent to avoid human rights controversies triggered congressional criticism, but Biden’s team allowed that his meetings could build on previous climate-related discussions between Biden and Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping.
“State-to-provincial engagement is an important part of diplomacy. … We look to Gov. Newsom’s visit as a chance to try to push forward some of those conversations,” the senior administration official said.
Yet a Newsom aide’s statement that “the trip is wholly focused on climate” drew a warning from a Senate Democrat who co-chairs the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China.
“It does great damage because it looks like the Chinese repression is accepted, and we cannot allow that to be the case,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) told Politico.
Merkley emphasized that Newsom should “speak very clearly against the repression of the Hong Kong people.”
Newsom, who joked “I wish I was president of the United States” after stopping Friday in Israel en route to Hong Kong, complimented the authorities for their climate policies.
“You guys inspired us,” he said, according to the South China Morning Post. “Hong Kong’s a remarkable place. You are demonstrating leadership in many different capacities.”
Newsom stopped at Hong Kong University for a “fireside chat” that brought him into contact with a Chinese Foreign Ministry official “whose last posting was in Xinjiang,” as Hong Kong-based political reporter Alvin Lum observed. Xinjiang is the home of the Uyghur Muslims, an ethnic and religious minority that Chinese Communist officials have targeted for a comprehensive set of repressions that the United States has declared a genocide.
“We must radically change the way we produce and consume energy, and it won’t be enough if we act alone,” he said in the statement. "This visit is an opportunity to share our successes, learn from one another and continue driving an ambitious climate agenda.”
Newsom offered no comment on those issues in his initial remarks at Hong Kong University and sidestepped the controversies during the question-and-answer session. “We can do many different things at once, but the issue of climate change is why I’m here and I’m going to aggressively pursue that agenda,” Newsom said, according to Bloomberg.
His team forecast that approach before their departure last week. “The trip is pretty wholly focused on climate, and we are obviously a state, so I think we look to our federal partners on federal issues,” Newsom spokeswoman Erin Mellon said last week.
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Newsom will spend six days in China, while Blinken will host the communist regime’s top diplomat in Washington from Thursday to Saturday.
“For Secretary Blinken in these upcoming engagements ... advocating for our values, standing up for key issues like human rights and religious freedom, and being absolutely candid and crystal clear about the depth of our concerns will certainly be on the agenda,” another senior administration official said Monday.