President Donald Trump signed legislation Wednesday that seeks to punish China for a crackdown on ethnic minorities, even as a new book by former national security adviser John Bolton said the American leader expressed support for the brutal campaign in a private conversation with his Chinese counterpart.

The Uighur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 passed with overwhelming support from Republicans and Democrats in Congress. Trump signed it with no ceremony, issuing a statement in which he said a sanctions provision intruded on executive authority and he would regard it as non-binding.

Still, Uighur activists see the approval as an important step. It is the first time any government has sought to punish China for a campaign of mass surveillance and detention of Uighurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic groups in the western Xinjiang region.

The bill, which includes sanctions on Chinese officials directly involved in the crackdown, was expected to further inflame already tense relations with China amid the Trump administration's criticism of Beijing's response to the outbreak of the coronavirus.

The signing came as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was meeting in Hawaii with a senior Chinese diplomat, and as revelations from the soon-to-be-released Bolton book were emerging.

The former national security adviser said Trump asked at a White House Christmas dinner in 2018 why the U.S. wanted to sanction China over the treatment of the Uighurs, who are ethnically and culturally distinct from the country's majority Han population and are suspected of harboring separatist tendencies.

Bolton wrote that at the opening dinner of the Osaka G-20 meeting in 2019, with only interpreters present, Chinese President Xi Jinping explained the Chinese campaign to Trump.

Source : VOA