President Donald Trump's new national security adviser is criticising what he says is silence from the rest of the world over China's confinement of more than 1 million Muslims in reeducation camps, linking the lack of a global outcry to China's economic clout.
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National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien also questioned whether international leaders will stand up if Beijing carries out a Tiananmen Square-style crackdown on the pro -democracy protests in Hong Kong.
O'Brien met with journalists and was interviewed by a moderator at the Halifax International Security Forum on Saturday.
China is estimated to have detained up to 1 million minority Muslims Uighurs in prisonlike detention centres. T
China has denied committing abuses in the centres and has described them as schools aimed at providing employable skills and combating extremism.
China and the US are locked in a mutual trade war, and the Trump administration has alternated between blasting the country's leadership and reaching out to it.
O'Brien said an initial trade agreement with China is still possible by the end of the year, but said the US won't take a bad deal and won't ignore what happens in Hong Kong.
O'Brien also said US allies should think hard before allowing Chinese technology giant Huawei into their next generation of telecommunication networks.
"What the Chinese are doing makes Facebook and Google look like child's play as far as collecting information on folks. Once they know the full profile of every man, woman and child in your country, how are they going to use that?" he asked.
Dolkun Isa, President of the World Uyghur Congress, said at Saturday's conference that Trump himself has not addressed the camps publicly. Isa said his mother recently died in one of the camps.
O'Brien responded that the administration has spoken out about it. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is among the Trump officials who have raised China's mistreatment of the Muslim Uighur minority, including citing it as a violation of religious freedom in a speech last month.
O'Brien declined to say what the US would do if there were a crackdown in Hong Kong that rivals the Tiananmen Square in 1989. More than 100,000 Americans live in Hong Kong.
"I don't want to get into tools or what the US might or might not do," he said
"But much of the world and many or our allies, and many of the countries represented at this conference, have been willing to forget Tiananmen Square and are heavily engaged in business with China."
Australian Associated Press
