President Biden’s administration condemned China’s Inauguration Day sanctions against former Trump officials, calling them “unproductive and cynical.”
Emily Horne, Biden’s National Security Council (NSC) spokesperson, called China’s move to sanction officials from the former administration “seemingly an attempt to play to partisan divides,” according to Reuters.
“Americans of both parties should criticize this unproductive and cynical move,” Horne said. “President Biden looks forward to working with leaders in both parties to position America to out-compete China.”
The rebuke of China’s actions came hours after Biden was inaugurated as the nation’s 46th president.
China responded to Horne’s remarks by further blasting the Trump administration and calling for an improved relationship between the U.S. and China.
“I believe if both countries work together, better angels in the U.S.-China relations could defeat evil forces,” Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a briefing on Thursday, according to NBC News.
On Inauguration Day, China sanctioned 28 Trump officials, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former trade adviser Peter Navarro and former Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, for allegedly violating “China’s sovereignty” and promoting “selfish political interests and prejudice and hatred against China.”
The sanctions forbid the former officials and their immediate family members from entering China, Hong Kong or Macao and bans them from doing business with China and its associated companies.
China’s move to sanction the former Trump officials follows four years of high tensions between the countries and more recently Pompeo’s measures against China in his final weeks.
This week, Pompeo declared that China has committed “genocide and crimes against humanity” against its Uighur Muslim population. The country has vehemently denied the accusations, but the United Nations has reported that at least 1 million Uighurs and other Muslims have been put in detention camps in the Xinjiang area.
In response to Pompeo’s labeling China’s treatment of Muslims as “genocide,” the foreign ministry spokesperson said the former secretary of State “is turning himself into a doomsday clown and joke of the century with his last madness and lies of the century.”