China Responds To US Sanctions Over Xinjiang

China on Friday said it would take reciprocal measures against the US for sanctioning a senior member of the Chinese Communist Party and three other officials over human rights abuses in Xinjiang, home to ethnic Uighurs.

"China has decided to take reciprocal measures against relevant US institutions and individuals that have behaved badly over Xinjiang," said China's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Lijian during a daily news conference in Beijing, the daily Global Times reported.

The US Treasury Department on Thursday sanctioned the Communist Party Secretary of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR), Chen Quanguo.

Chen was appointed to the region in 2016, according to the US statement, with a "notorious history of intensifying security operations" in the Tibetan Autonomous Region to tighten control over the Tibetan ethnic minorities.

The senior government official is also known as the "architect" of mass detention camps in Xinjiang.

The sanctions designations are under the Global Magnitsky Act passed by the US Congress in 2016. -