The US president will attend the meeting of advanced economies in the UK in person in June, where he is expected to raise the Uyghur issue.
The United States will urge its Group of Seven allies to step up pressure on China over the use of forced labor in its northwestern province of Xinjiang, home to the Uyghur Muslim minority, a senior White House official said. .
US President Joe Biden will attend in person a meeting of the G7 advanced economies in the UK in June, where he is expected to focus on what he sees as a strategic rivalry between democracies and more authoritarian states, particularly the China.
Daleep Singh, deputy national security adviser to Biden and deputy director of the National Economic Council, said on Friday the G7 meeting in Cornwall would focus on health security, a synchronized economic response to the COVID-19 pandemic, concrete actions on climate change, and “raising the democratic values shared within the G7”.
“They are like-minded allies, and we want to take tangible, concrete steps that show our willingness to coordinate on non-market economies, like China,” said Singh, who helps coordinate the meeting, at the Reuters news agency. a meeting.
“The galvanizing challenge for the G7 is to show that open societies, democratic societies always have the best chance of solving the biggest problems in our world, and that top-down autocracies are not the best way,” he said. he declares.
Singh said Washington has already taken strong action against China for human rights violations in Xinjiang, but would seek to expand the effort with G7 allies.
Joint sanctions against Chinese officials accused of abuse in the province were announced last month by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom and Canada.
China has denied all accusations of abuse and has responded with its own punitive measures against the EU.
Biden’s first trip abroad
Singh said details were still being worked out ahead of the meeting, but the summit provided an opportunity for U.S. allies to show solidarity on the issue.
“We have made it clear our point of view that our consumers deserve to know when the goods they import are made with forced labor,” he said. “Our values must be imbued with our business relationships.”
Washington, he said, would like the G7 to take clear steps “to elevate our common values, as democracies and, and these certainly apply to what is happening in Xinjiang.”
UN rights activists and experts have said at least one million Muslims have been detained in camps in Xinjiang.
Activists and some Western politicians have accused China of using torture, forced labor and sterilization. China has said its camps provide vocational training and are necessary to counter extremism.
The White House said on Friday that Biden would also travel to Belgium in June for his first overseas trip since taking office, as well as to the UK, including a stop at the G7 summit in Cornwall from 11 to June 13.