By Mark Magnier From South China Morning Post

• It’d be great if we had more immigrants from Hong Kong. They’re terrific people,’ US National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien says
• O’Brien also said that the US was encouraging Taipei to build up its defences to ward off a military assault by Beijing

Hong Kong residents wishing to leave after the passage of Beijing’s national security law are welcome in the United States, a senior US official said Friday, adding that he hopes China is not an enemy even as it adopts increasingly assertive policies.Speaking at an event sponsored by the non-partisan Aspen Institute, US National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien added that “something close to” a genocide of Uygurs was happening in Xinjiang and called on Taiwan to bolster its defences against Chinese bullying.

O’Brien said the door was open for people from the city. “It’d be great if we had more immigrants from Hong Kong. They’re terrific people,” he said, adding that he would rather see them move to Los Angeles or New York than London. “Anyone who’s been to Hong Kong and spent time there, it’s sad what’s going to happen. Hong Kong has been fully absorbed into China.”Early this month, Washington announced that Hong Kong residents facing persecution would receive special consideration under US immigration law. This follows a similar move by Britain. The security law, which Beijing unveiled in late June, imposes many of the same press, speech and assembly restrictions found on the mainland.

National Security Law: The impact on Hong Kong’s activists

National Security Law: The impact on Hong Kong’s activists

O’Brien pushed back on criticism that President Donald Trump has done little personally – distinct from his administration – to call out Beijing over its deteriorating human rights record.Former national security adviser John Bolton wrote in his recent book, The Room Where It Happened, that Trump was uninterested in supporting Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters last year and told President Xi Jinping that building camps in Xinjiang to detain hundreds of thousands of Uygur Muslims was “exactly the right thing to do”.

Trump has denied Bolton’s account.

When disruption is ‘subversion’, what’s left for Hong Kong’s opposition?13 Oct 2020

O’Brien said the administration has sanctioned Chinese and Hong Kong officials, spoken out against Uygur camps – which Beijing claims are employment centers – and sanctioned “massive numbers” of hair products produced in Xinjiang.

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“The Chinese are literally shaving the heads of Uygur women and making hair products and sending them to the United States,” he said, adding that “if not a genocide, something close to it is going on in Xinjiang”.

Xinjiang’s vanishing mosques reflect growing pressure on China’s Uygur Muslims

Xinjiang’s vanishing mosques reflect growing pressure on China’s Uygur Muslims

In a press conference Friday in Beijing before O’Brien spoke, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian pushed back. “Xinjiang affairs are purely China’s internal affairs,” he said. “The so-called ‘persecution’ of Muslims and ‘crimes against humanity’ in Xinjiang are deliberately fanned up by some anti-China forces to smear, attack and suppress China.”

The Trump administration official, previously a US special envoy on hostage issues, said Chinese are smart, diligent people who fought with the US during World War II. But the Chinese government is increasingly aggressive, he added.Beijing has tightened its grip over Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet, its troops have engaged in armed clashes with India, it has expanded in the contested South China Sea, is “bullying Taiwan again” and making assertive moves in cyberspace and outer space, he said.

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“China is truly the challenge for the United States for this generation,” O’Brien said, crediting the Trump administration for having “awakened” the American public. “I hope we’re not enemies, although I understand that Xi Jinping was telling his troops this morning to prepare for war.”

China is unlikely to mount a military takeover of self-governing Taiwan any time soon given difficulties in mounting an amphibious attack and the expected global condemnation that would follow, although the risk remains, the senior security official said. Beijing has vowed repeatedly to reunify with Taiwan by force if necessary.

O’Brien said the best way to avoid war is for the US to remain strong, including bolstered naval forces and the transfer of troops from Afghanistan and Iraq to Guam, Hawaii, Palau and other Pacific locations. “We have a lot of tools in the toolkit that, if we got involved, could make that a very dangerous effort for China to engage in,” he added.

Xi Jinping tells marines to focus on ‘preparing to go to war’ in military base visit

Xi Jinping tells marines to focus on ‘preparing to go to war’ in military base visit

But Taiwan also needs to fortify its own defences, he added, using the metaphor of a porcupine. “Lions generally don’t like to eat porcupines,” he said. “They can, but they prefer not to.”

Analysts said Washington and Taipei are moving to bolster the island’s security.

“The US and Taiwan are trying to come up with things that make Taiwan more survivable and, if China lands on the beach, ensure they have the capability to continue to fight,” said Bonnie Glaser, director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “There are lots of ways to think about deterrence.”

Earlier this week, the Trump administration reportedly notified Congress that it planned to sell drones, anti-ship and precision-strike missiles, truck-mounted rocket launchers and equipment to enhance the capability of Taiwan’s F-16 jets.

Donald Trump ‘plans more US arms sales to Taiwan including MQ-9 drones’14 Oct 2020

The proposed arm sales “fit within a strategy of deterrence by denial, that is, having the ability to deny the aggressor … a path to a quick victory”, said Jacob Heim, a defence policy researcher at think tank Rand Corporation. “The ability for the defender to deny that high confidence quick victory is the most direct way to try to deter that aggression.”

O’Brien said that China represents an enormous US challenge given its intellectual property theft and espionage activities to its growing strength in producing health care products, semiconductors and processing of rare earth elements.

“We’ve really had a win-lose relationship where China has won and we’ve lost,” he said Friday. “We’re having to stand up to them.”

Additional reporting by Robert Delaney

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