Beijing warns EU on Xinjiang sanctions

Description

Context: China’s Ambassador to the EU warned against imposing sanctions on Beijing over its actions in the Xinjiang region, as the bloc decides how to respond to the crackdown on the Uighur minority.

Details:

The EU is currently drawing up plans to expand the bloc’s global human rights sanctions regime after sanctioning four Russian officials over the jailing of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.
European diplomats said the bloc’s 27 Foreign Ministers are expected to agree at a meeting on Monday to add a small number of individuals or entities in China to the blacklist over the treatment of the Uighurs and other Muslim minorities.
Officials in other countries including Russia, North Korea and Eritrea are also expected to be hit with asset freezes and visa bans over alleged human rights abuses.

Who are the Uighurs?

There are about 12 million Uighurs, mostly Muslim, living in north-western China in the region of Xinjiang, officially known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).
The Uighurs speak their own language, similar to Turkish, and see themselves as culturally and ethnically close to Central Asian nations.
They make up less than half of the Xinjiang population.
In recent decades, there's been a mass migration of Han Chinese (China's ethnic majority) to Xinjiang, and the Uighurs feel their culture and livelihoods are under threat.

Xinjiang:

Xinjiang lies in the north-west of China and is the country's biggest region.
Like Tibet, it is autonomous, meaning - in theory - it has some powers of self-governance.
But in practice, both face major restrictions by the central government.
It is a mostly desert region, producing about a fifth of the world's cotton.
It is also rich in oil and natural gas and because of its proximity to Central Asia and Europe is seen by Beijing as an important trade link.
In the early 20th Century, the Uighurs briefly declared independence, but the region was brought under the complete control of mainland China's new Communist government in 1949.