The Biden-Xi summit yielded little surrounding the issue of human rights. This is mostly due to The United States and China having very different political systems and cultures, which has produced a lasting debate about the role of the issue. The United States has been a promoter of global human rights. However, Xi Jinping summed up Chinese disinterest with the maxim, “Your god for you, my god for me.”

 

Much of the human rights contention at the summit took shape around China’s oppression of its over 11 million Uyghur Muslims, particularly in the Eastern province of Xinjiang. According to a report released by the U.S. State Department in 2021, Chinese authorities have “damaged, destroyed, or desecrated approximately 16,000 mosques,”  and “detained more than one million Uyghurs […] in specially built internment camps or converted detention facilities” since April 2017. Another 2021 report released by Amnesty International concluded that the Chinese government had committed several crimes against humanity in Xinjiang: “imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law; torture; and persecution.”

 

The possibility of Biden getting China to make concrete commitments on the issue was questionable to begin with, as China has a record of obfuscating its resistance to international pressures with “dialogues.” For example, in February 2022, then-Foreign Minister Qin Gang lauded the “constructive dialogue and cooperation with the UN High Commissioner [to] advance the reform and development of the global human rights governance system.” In an effort to create a uniform culture across China, the Chinese government has enforced a recent law focused on targeting Muslims in Xinjiang, masking its mass detainment of Uyghurs as a campaign against “terrorism, extremism, and separatism.”

 

President Biden has faced mounting pressure at home and abroad to take a tougher stance on China’s human rights abuses. In addition to facing thousands of pro-Uyghur protesters in San Francisco during the summit, Elfidar Iltebir, president of the Uyghur American Association, demanded from Biden and the U.S. government “to not put human rights on the side of the table.” Moreover, international organizations like Article 19 (which gets its name from the 19th article of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights) released a public plea for Biden to “promise to impose consequences” on China for its “crimes against humanity in the Uyghur region.”

 

According to a White House press release, Biden “underscored the universality of human rights,” and “raised concerns regarding PRC human rights abuses, including in Xinjiang.” However, the report does not describe the actual discussion in specific detail. This foreshadows the possibility that issues regarding political and religious rights may take a backseat to the looming security competition between the U.S. and PRC. It is also possible that Biden may have seen the use of terms like “genocide,” or even seriously discussing the issue of Uyghur internment, as unnecessarily inflammatory when trying to focus on security issues. Former President Donald Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo even waited until Janurary 19, 2021––the day before the next administration would come into power to explicitly accuse China of committing a “systematic” and “ongoing” genocide.

 

There is some indication that the U.S. government is willing to impose punishments on China for its transgressions in Xinjiang. Namely, Congress nearly unanimously passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in July 2021, which imposes penalties on any company that imports goods produced by forced labor in Xinjiang. Still, the bill faced opposition, not least from China, with a Foreign Ministry spokesman calling U.S. accusations of forced labor a “huge lie” made up “to denigrate China.” Otherwise, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sent a letter to Congress saying the bill “would prove ineffective” and may actually “hinder efforts to prevent human rights abuses.” The American Apparel & Footwear Association also opposed the act, with its president Stephen Lamar saying that while the legislation would “no doubt make headlines,” it would “wreak unending havoc to human rights […] and legitimate supply chains.”

 

Another instance of human rights contention in the meeting manifested around the numerous detained American citizens in China. The State Department says three American citizens specifically are being wrongfully detained in China: Mark Swidan, a natural-born American businessman from texas, has been held in Jiangmen Prison since 2012, after being sentenced to death for drug trafficking in a Chinese court; Kai Li, a naturalized citizen native to Shanghai, was arrested in 2016 immediately upon traveling to China, and convicted of espionage two years later; and David Lin, a pastor from Orange County, California, was arrested in 2006 for attempting to build a church, and is set to be released in 2030. Though only a single sentence is devoted to the topic in the official White House readout of the meeting, the issue still retains significant political charge, and remains one of the President’s “priorities” to resolve. As of 2023, the U.S. State Department has relisted the PRC as a “Level 3: Reconsider Travel” destination due to the record of wrongfully detaining American citizens. 

 

The families of all three detainees have joined a campaign called “Bring Our Families Home,” which advocates for the approximately sixty Americans wrongfully detained around the world. The organization, led by its spokesman Jonathan Franks, has called on Biden to pressure Xi into releasing the three American citizens. Additionally, multiple U.S. lawmakers have spoken out for the detainees. For example, Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, sent a statement to Voice of America Mandarin saying the Biden administration “must stop making any concessions” and “hold the [CCP] accountable.” Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) also sent a letter to Biden with a similar request: “I implore you to secure commitments from President Xi to release these Americans immediately.”

 

Despite these pleas, the release of the three prisoners are still under negotiation, and it seems unlikely that the public will receive frequent updates on their status. A State Department spokesman has said that because of the “sensitive nature” of the negotiations, “we aren’t going to publicly discuss our efforts.”

 

In the post-meeting press conference, Biden called his meeting with Xi “some of the most constructive and productive discussions we’ve had.” Few concrete gains were made in terms of resolving the political contention between the superpowers or forwarding the protection of human rights. Indeed, Biden also laid bare the perhaps irresolvable difference between the U.S. and PRC when he reassured the public that Xi was a “dictator” who “runs a country […] based on a form of government totally different than ours.” Needless to say, the Chinese government was infuriated by the comment. Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning called the comment “extremely incorrect and irresponsible political manipulation.” Spokesman Liu Pengyu of the Chinese Embassy in Washington called the remarks “erroneous, absurd, and irresponsible.” And while the comments specifically apparently did not warrant a material response from Beijing, nor can it be discounted when faced with the modest returns of the actual summit. 

 

Ultimately, the meeting failed to secure real progress on human rights. Indeed, it was unlikely that such sensitive issues were to be resolved in a single meeting. The real fruits of the San Francisco summit were to establish a dialogue in which these issues can hopefully be settled in the future.

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April, 2024