Beijing sanctioned two Americans in retaliation for U.S. measures against Chinese officials over human rights abuses earlier this month.
The Chinese foreign ministry announced an order on Dec. 23 targeting Miles Yu, the principal China policy adviser to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Todd Stein, the deputy director at the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China, an influential congressional advisory body. The ministry claimed that the two had “acted egregiously on Tibet– and other China-related issues.”
The ministry described the action as a response to what it described as “illegal sanctions” leveled by Washington on Chinese officials over Tibet on Dec. 9, the eve of Human Rights Day.
The U.S. sanctions were levied in response to rights violations in Tibet and during the regime’s ongoing persecution of the spiritual group Falun Gong. The restrictions were imposed on: Tibet’s former Party chief Wu Yingjie, police official Zhang Hongbo, and Tang Yong, the former deputy director of the Chongqing Area Prisons in southwestern China, who was identified by the State Department as involved in the “arbitrary detention of Falun Gong practitioners, which also amount to particularly severe violations of religious freedom.”
Under the Friday order, the communist regime will freeze all Chinese assets of Yu and Stein, and ban any organization or individuals in China from engaging in transactions with them. Both men and their direct families will also be barred from entering China.
Yu, now a senior fellow and director of the China Center at the Washington-based think tank Hudson Institute, called the sanction “silly.”
“It doesn’t mean anything to me,” he told The Epoch Times. “It actually proved that
what I’ve been doing and what I’ve been saying turned out to be right.”
For “anybody who said anything or done anything the Chinese government doesn’t like, this will be the natural consequence anyway,” he said. “Anybody who the Chinese government doesn’t like, they’re going to freeze your assets, they can deny your visa to visit. So this is not surprising to me at all.”
Yu added that he has received a lot of support from people in mainland China despite the hostility from the ruling regime.
“I think the Chinese government doesn’t know how to conduct diplomacy,” he said. “Because the United States sanctioned Chinese officials for egregious violations with specific evidence. Their announcement against me is just a passive-aggressive reaction without any kind of justification.”
Like some vocal China critics placed on the regime’s blacklist in the past, Yu said he considered the pre-Christmas announcement from Beijing a mark of distinction.
“It’s really a badge of honor. And it’s a gift to me by the Chinese government for Christmas.”
Stein and the State Department didn’t immediately return inquiries from The Epoch Times.
Eva Fu is a New York-based writer for The Epoch Times focusing on U.S. politics, U.S.-China relations, religious freedom, and human rights. Contact Eva at eva.fu@epochtimes.com
