The U.S. State Department’s Office of the Legal Advisor concluded earlier this year that China’s mass imprisonment and forced labor of ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang amounts to crimes against humanity—but there was insufficient evidence to prove genocide, placing the United States’ top diplomatic lawyers at odds with both the Trump and Biden administrations, according to three former and current U.S. officials.
The revelation comes nearly a month after then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Jan. 19, one day before U.S. President Donald Trump’s presidency ended, that China was carrying out a genocide against Chinese Muslims, primarily the ethnic Uighur population, in the western region of Xinjiang. The Biden administration has reaffirmed Pompeo’s stance and backed off a recent claim Biden’s United Nations envoy pick, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, made in her confirmation hearing that the State Department, under the Biden administration, was conducting a review of the designation.
