Human Rights Is the CCP’s ‘Biggest Weakness’: Miles Yu

‘We cannot just engage China on what China is good at [while] ignoring the weakness, [the] vulnerability of that regime.’

Washington should challenge the Chinese communist regime on its human rights record in every engagement with Beijing because it’s the regime’s greatest weakness, according to Miles Yu, director of the China Center at the Hudson Institute.

“We cannot just engage China on what China is good at [while] ignoring the weakness, the vulnerability of that regime,” Mr. Yu said in a recent interview with NTD, a sister media outlet of The Epoch Times. “The biggest weakness and vulnerability of the Chinese communist regime is human rights.

“Human rights will basically decide the future relationship of the two nations, and the relationship between China and the rest of the world.”

When Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited China earlier this week, he threatened to take action if China continued to support Russia’s war machine, and raised concerns on issues including Beijing’s nonmarket economic practices and human rights violations.

Mr. Blinken said he brought up the case of U.S. citizens who have been wrongfully detained or subjected to an exit ban, during meetings with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping and senior Chinese officials.

“I also raised concerns about the erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy and democratic institutions, as well as transnational repression, ongoing human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Tibet, and a number of individual human rights cases,” Mr. Blinken told reporters as he wrapped up three days of talks in China.

For Mr. Yu, a former China policy adviser to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, human rights should feature more prominently in direct contact between U.S. and Chinese officials.

“China is trying its best to stop all discussion about the human rights conditions in China, because abuse and suppression of human rights is the innate nature of the communist regime,” he said.

The United States focusing on the CCP’s human rights record is something Beijing would be “really be afraid of,” Mr. Yu said, calling it “the biggest bargaining chip” the United States has in negotiations with China.

By Dorothy Li and Steve Lance

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