A California-based consulting firm and its two researchers were sanctioned by the Chinese government over their work related to human rights issues in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region.
In accordance with its Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law, China will freeze the mainland property of Kharon as it has long collected Xinjiang-related sensitive information and provided so-called evidence for America’s illegal sanctions related to Xinjiang, said Mao Ning, a spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
Edmund Xu, director of investigations of Kharon, and Nicole Morgret, former researcher of the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, will be prohibited from entering mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau, Mao said. Their property will also be frozen while organizations and individuals will be prohibited from having transactions and cooperation with them, she said.
The curbs came after two Chinese officials and three Chinese companies were sanctioned by the US for allegedly suppressing Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
The two Chinese officials are Gao Qi, chief inspector of the Yili Prefecture Public Security Bureau in Xinjiang, and Hu Lianhe, deputy director general of the United Front Work Department’s Eighth Bureau on Xinjiang.
They were accused of having arbitrarily detained and imprisoned Uyghurs and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups in vocational skills education and training centers in Xinjiang since 2017.
The duo were among the 37 people, who were sanctioned by the US, the United Kingdom and Canada under the Global Magnitsky sanctions program on December 8, ahead of the Human Rights Day on December 10.
Xinjiang report
The US government also published a report on December 8 to criticize China for the alleged forced labor problems in Xinjiang.
“By issuing the report, the US once again spread false stories on Xinjiang and illegally sanctioned Chinese officials and companies citing so-called human rights issues,” Mao said in a regular daily briefing on Tuesday.
“The move is designed to vilify China and undermine the lawful rights and interests of relevant Chinese officials and companies,” she said. “We firmly oppose and strongly condemn the move and have made serious démarches to the US over this.”
She said the US should stop smearing China, cancel the illegal unilateral sanctions on Chinese officials and companies and stop implementing wrongful acts such as the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. She said if the US refuses to change course, China will not flinch and will respond in kind.
According to its website, Kharon helps its clients “identify a wide range of sanctions and compliance risks, critical to managing financial crimes, supply chain exposure, export controls, investment risk, and more.” It helps companies avoid compliance risks related to forced labor issues and sanctions.
Last year, the company held an online briefing to explain the possible impact on its clients’ businesses in China of the United States’ Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which was enacted on December 23, 2021, and took effect on June 31, 2022.
“China’s sanctions are powerful and will create a deterrence against the US,” Li Xiaoyao, a Chinese writer, says in an article published on Tuesday. “While the US imposes more curbs, China will also unveil more countermeasures.”
“China can actually retaliate against all the US sanctions but it does not want to do this, which will hurt both sides,” he says. “The US is willing to ‘kill 1,000 enemy troops by losing 800 of its own,’ but China doesn’t want to lose even a hundred.”
He does not elaborate how the US will hurt itself with its curbs imposed on China. He says China wants to achieve mutual benefits with the US but it can no longer tolerate the intimidation of the US.
Mintz’s case
In March this year, Mintz Group, a New York-based due diligence firm, had its Beijing office raided by Chinese authorities. All five Chinese nationals working there were detained.
Randal Phillips, Mintz’s head of Asia who had spent 28 years with the Central Intelligence Agency’s Directorate of Operations, was not arrested as he managed his team outside China.
On July 14, the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics said in a statement that Mintz violated China’s Statistics Law as it had not gotten approval from the government before doing foreign-related statistical work in the country.
The company was fined a total of 10.68 million yuan (US$1.5 million), which is double its “illegal revenue” of 5.34 million yuan made in China. It has the right to appeal within 60 days or file a lawsuit in court within six months.
This verdict was not reported by global media until August 22.
“It’s vague to say that Mintz was doing foreign-related statistical work without approval,” Sha Zhiping, an associate professor at the Shandong Youth University of Political Science, says in an article published on August 24. “Actually, this firm was spying on our country in the disguise of doing statistical work.”
Sha says, as Mintz has failed to pay its fine for more than a month, China should consider launching an anti-spy investigation against it.
He says the US has adopted many different methods, including the use of consulting firms, overseas Chinese students and hackers, to spy on China over the past decade, aiming to push forward a “color revolution” in the country.
He adds that if China does not curb the spying activities in the country, it will also be unable to achieve its reunification with Taiwan in the future.
As of late November, the five arrested local employees of Mintz still had not been released, according to the Financial Times.
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