US commerce secretary isn’t swayed by Xi Jinping’s ‘broken heads’ speech

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo appeared unmoved by ​Chinese President Xi Jinping’s stark warning to his country’s adversaries this week, vowing business as usual for the US.

Speaking to CNBC’s “Closing Bell” Thursday afternoon, Raimondo made the comments after being asked about Xi’s speech earlier that day marking the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party.

In it, he warned that any country that attempts to “bully” China would “face broken heads and bloodshed.”

“We’ll do everything we can to make sure that our US companies are treated fairly and are able to have access to the Chinese market,” Raimondo said, “We will make sure that that is the case, that the Chinese play by the rules, protect [intellectual property], allow our markets, our companies to access that market.”

“That’s obviously, you know, a lot of bluster and rhetoric. I think US companies need to focus on doing their business,” she continued, brushing off Xi’s warnings and vowing the US would “just play our game.”

Asked about Beijing’s human rights abuses against Uighurs and other ethnic minorities, Raimondo replied that the US was working with allies to “stand up” against China.

“It’s going to take not just America but the allied countries that believe in democracy and have shared values to put enough pressure on them to stop these clear and unjust and inhumane actions.”

China, a nation that has faced a wave of international scrutiny over the past few years relating to its activities in dismantling democracy in Hong Kong and its refusal to accept responsibility for negligence and a lack of transparency at the onset of the coronavirus outbreak, has not let global tensions stop its mass internment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang province or its aggressive behavior in the South China Sea.

China, the world’s second-largest economy behind the US, also continues to use unfair trade practices and steal intellectual property. 

Xinjiang is a province in the Communist country where an estimated 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities have been detained since 2016.

These ethnic minorities are held in internment camps and prisons where they are subjected to ideological discipline, forced to denounce their religion and language and physically abused.

Chinese Communist Party officials claim to have long suspected Uyghurs of harboring “separatist tendencies” because they have their own culture, language and religion.

In his speech, Xi also defiantly predicted that China would one day have the world’s greatest fighting force, which he pledged the CCP would remain in control of.

“​The Chinese people will absolutely not allow any foreign force to bully, oppress or enslave us and anyone who attempts to do so will face broken heads and bloodshed in front of the iron Great Wall of the 1.4 billion Chinese people,” ​he told those celebrating near Tiananmen Square, which was filled with thousands of people waving Chinese flags and singing patriotic songs.