Chinese officials remain tight-lipped about how they plan to carry out diplomacy with the United States while America’s top diplomat, Marco Rubio, remains officially sanctioned for critical comments he made about Beijing’s treatment of Uyghurs and Hong Kong in 2020.
Rubio, formerly a Republican senator from Florida, was hit with retaliatory sanctions for “interfering” in China’s domestic affairs by criticizing its 2019 crackdown in Hong Kong and what the U.S. government calls a “genocide” against ethnic Uyghurs in the far northwestern Xinjiang region. Under China’s Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law, that puts Rubio on a travel ban list, potentially complicating U.S.-Chinese diplomacy.Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning was ambiguous at a briefing on Thursday when asked whether Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi would speak with Rubio by telephone given the sanctions.
