June 7, 2022
The Xinjiang Police Files Should Prompt Action Against Uyghur Genocide
Looking through the photos of the 2,884 inmates in the Xinjiang Police Files <[link removed]> is not for the faint of heart. You scroll—as you would on Instagram—past face after face of a people unjustly detained by the Chinese government for no other reason than that they are Uyghur.

It is surreal to have photographic evidence of the victims of Beijing’s genocidal campaign—long known to those of us who work in this field. We have listened to the testimony of survivors and analyzed the satellite imagery of camps uncovered by journalists and experts. We didn’t need convincing. We had no doubt the atrocities were happening.

But these photos offer something new. Gazing at those photos, it is impossible to deny the humanity of each and every Uyghur. Heritage Senior Policy Analyst Olivia Enos writes <[link removed]> that it is impossible to deny what the CCP is doing to them today.

Beyond providing photographic evidence of their mass internment, the Xinjiang Police Files include speeches of Chinese leaders outlining plans to reeducate and mass-intern Uyghurs. There are PowerPoints providing security protocols, including shoot-to-kill orders to ensure that no one escapes. And there is a detailed analysis of the composition of the political reeducation camp population. The speeches alone are damning, as they show a direct linkage between top leaders in the Chinese government and the atrocities being committed. The speech from Zhao Kezhi, China’s minister of public security, included particularly striking revelations, as it directly implicates Xi Jinping in the mass internment Uyghurs.

Even though the U.S. government already determined that Uyghurs face ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity, the most difficult legal threshold to meet for genocide is demonstrating the Chinese leadership’s “intent to destroy, in whole or in part” a people group. The speeches in the Xinjiang Police Files go a long way toward proving intent and linking those intentions directly to culprits—culprits who should undoubtedly face consequences for their grave and harrowing actions.

Leaders around the globe have no excuse for inaction. The information revealed in these files should lead capitals around the world to strengthen efforts to hold China accountable. In, some cases, it already has.

Additional tranches of sanctions against the officials identified in the Xinjiang Police Files are, of course, in order. But the U.S. government should undertake far more concerted efforts to extend safe haven to Uyghurs by designating them a group of special humanitarian concern and giving them Priority-2 refugee status.

The U.S. cannot act alone. Countries around the globe should band together in offering shelter from the CCP’s human rights violations. At the very least, they should agree not to repatriate Uyghurs at Beijing’s request. Countries must also tighten up their efforts to combat the well-documented use of Uyghur forced labor. Complementary measures to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act signed into U.S. law last year should be implemented all across the world to ensure that no goods produced with forced labor make their way into any market around the globe.

Not a day should pass that the U.S. and other countries fail to advocate for the Uyghur people, pressing the CCP to close the camps and calling for the release of every last Uyghur held within their ironclad camp doors. The people looking back at us from the Xinjiang Police Files demand that it be so.
Biden's Explicit Promise to Defend Taiwan is Bad Policy
During his visit to Japan, when asked whether the U.S. would defend Taiwan militarily, President Joe Biden responded, “Yes, that’s the commitment we made.” He said a very similar thing involving this “commitment” during a CNN town hall last October.

Heritage ASC Director Walter Lohman writes <[link removed]> that the president is mistaken in two ways. One, the U.S. has no such “commitment.” And two, making such a promise is unnecessary and unwise.



In the Taiwan Relations Act, the mutual defense treaty’s security guarantee became a legal commitment to “consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means . . . of grave concern to the United States.” There is no reference to “act[ing] to meet the common danger.” In its place, the TRA directs the president to “inform the Congress promptly of any threat” to Taiwan and to work with the legislature to “determine . . . appropriate action by the US in response to any such danger.”

So, President Biden cannot be referring to a commitment made in the mutual defense treaty, which is now defunct, or in the TRA, which makes no promise to act. Thus, experts on the topic have assumed his assurances were gaffes. What has kept the peace since 1980 is the unstated prospect that the U.S. will defend Taiwan, the oft-referenced “strategic ambiguity.”

Ambiguity keeps the peace by keeping U.S. options open and keeping the Chinese guessing. Since the mutual defense treaty was abrogated, Taiwan has developed into a democracy. It has its own politics and a determined faction in favor of formal, expressed independence. For all practical purposes, Taiwan is already independent, as President Tsai Ing-wen likes to point out. Those in Taiwan lacking her subtlety and skill—and frankly, sense of responsibility—want to push the envelope. But a declaration of formal independence is for China (which would rather erase Taiwan’s existence altogether) a no-kidding casus belli. As such, a clear U.S. security guarantee for Taiwan puts the trigger for the use of American forces in the hands of Taiwanese politicians.

In the event of some sort of declaration of independence—something Taiwan flirted with seriously in the early 2000s—the U.S. will be left with two choices. It can go to war to back up its threats at a time and place chosen by some other capital. Or it can tell Taipei, “Sorry, you’re on your own. Didn’t mean to lead you on”—a breach of faith that would do calamitous damage to the range of global U.S. security interests.

By contrast, ambiguity means the Chinese must plan for the eventuality of the U.S. using force. And it certainly is. Everything about Chinese military planning, from doctrine to procurement, is centered around possible conflict with the U.S. over Taiwan. The objective of American policy is to sow enough doubt in the minds of Beijing decision makers that they never feel sufficiently prepared for a showdown with the U.S. Washington does this best not by rhetoric, but by demonstrating it has the capability to defeat China if it ever does go to war with it over Taiwan.

One could call this “tactical clarity.” With tactical clarity, strategic clarity is superfluous. Without tactical clarity, all the assurances in the world are meaningless. And the combination of strategic clarity with the U.S. military’s weakening capability to keep its promises is recklessly provocative.

The greatest irony of the current brouhaha over President Biden’s personal security guarantee to Taiwan is his apparent failure to grasp all of this. He actively participated in the Senate debate over the TRA in 1979 and supported it. He clearly understood the tradeoffs Congress made to maintain peace and security in the region. By contrast, President Donald Trump, with no prior experience in foreign affairs and not known for precision in his rhetoric, got the policy exactly right.

In August 2020, when asked about what he would do if China made a move on Taiwan, Trump said, “China knows what I’m gonna do. China knows...I don’t want to say I am gonna do this or I am not gonna do this.” This is strategic ambiguity in a nutshell. President Biden would do well to follow the advice of his staff and get back to it.

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