Why is China imposing visa restrictions on US individuals? China has launched a tit-for-tat measure against the United States, only days after the country imposed travel restrictions on its diplomats.
According to a Chinese Foreign Ministry official, the government will impose visa restrictions on Americans who disseminate rumours to malign or have long meddled in Tibet-related problems on a reciprocal basis.
Why is China imposing visa restrictions on US individuals?
Spokesperson Wang Wenbin told a daily news briefing that the US imposed illegal sanctions on Chinese officials based on fabricated lies about Tibet while ignoring the facts, claiming that this action gravely interferes with China’s internal affairs, harms China’s interests, and violates basic international relations norms.
“We once again call on the U.S. side to respect facts, change course, stop spreading disinformation on Tibet, and stop using Tibet-related issues to interfere in China’s internal affairs,” elaborated Wang.
The reaction stems from the US imposing sanctions explicitly for the alleged involvement of Chinese authorities in the “forced assimilation” of over 1 million Tibetan youngsters in state-run boarding schools.
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In this regard, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken did not divulge the names of those who face restrictions, but asked Beijing to halt its “coercive” tactics in the region in August.
“These coercive policies seek to eliminate Tibet’s distinct linguistic, cultural and religious traditions among younger generations of Tibetans,” Blinken said in a statement.
“We urge PRC authorities to end the coercion of Tibetan children into government-run boarding schools and to cease repressive assimilation policies, both in Tibet and throughout other parts of the PRC,” he said while referring to the People’s Republic of China.
The United States is not the only factor pressuring China to reconsider its approach; in February, a delegation of United Nations experts voiced concern that the system of residential schools looked to ‘function as a required large-scale plan’ aimed at assimilation of Tibetans into majority Han culture.
The current visa restrictions come after the two countries severed ties over a variety of concerns, primarily trade, the COVID-19 outbreak, the persecution of the predominately Muslim Uighurs, and the situation in Taiwan.
The Chinese government, on the other side, condemned the visa restrictions as “smears” that “seriously undermine China-US relations.”
According to Liu Pengyu, a spokeswoman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, DC, the schools were established to meet the needs of the local community.
“Boarding schools have gradually developed into one of the important modes of running schools in China’s ethnic minority areas, and the centralised way of running schools effectively solves the problem of ethnic minority students’ difficulty in attending school at a distance where the local people live scattered,” he said.
