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One head start for Biden in unifying Americans

On one foreign-policy stance – stopping genocide in China – the Trump administration gave official support for Mr. Biden’s view, offering a template for bipartisanship in Washington.

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A protester from the Uighur community living in Turkey holds an anti-China placard during a protest in Istanbul against Beijing's oppression of Muslim Uighurs in western Xinjiang province.
  • By the Monitor's Editorial Board

In his inaugural speech Wednesday, President Joe Biden set a task for himself to bring “America together, uniting our people.” As big as that task might be, it was made slightly easier Tuesday by the outgoing Trump administration. The State Department agreed with a key foreign-policy position of Mr. Biden and officially designated China’s treatment of its minority Uyghurs as genocide. In a rare case of unity, two presidents have now given voice to at least a million voiceless people in secret concentration camps in China where they are being tortured, forcibly sterilized, or even killed.

Unlike many domestic issues, American leaders have worked hard to maintain a bipartisan foreign policy, especially in trying to prevent mass atrocities. Such unity remains a template for tackling issues such as race, poverty, and lately, the coronavirus. It has been sustained by the fact that the United States has a record of trying to end genocide based on the ideal of protecting innocent people during a conflict or under a dictatorship.

Since 2017, China’s rulers have ruthlessly repressed the mostly Muslim ethnic minorities in its northwestern region of Xinjiang. The 11 million or so Uyghurs and other groups have found few countries to defend them. Now the U.S. has put the Chinese government on notice that bilateral ties depend on Beijing adhering to the international convention against genocide.

In his designation of genocide inside China, Mike Pompeo, Mr. Tump’s secretary of state, said: “So long as we remain silent, party elites will continue to commit human-rights abuses against the people of China with impunity. We cannot allow this cycle of evil to continue.” Mr. Biden, meanwhile, has made clear his commitment to preventing genocide by nominating Samantha Power as a member of his National Security Council and as administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Author of the book “A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide,” Ms. Power is a “leading voice for humane and principled American engagement in the world,” Mr. Biden said.

Rallying Americans around the task of ending the most heinous of crimes has a long history, going back to the liberation of Jews during World War II. Once again, the U.S. appears committed to helping a minority group under threat, this time in China. For Mr. Biden, such unity abroad is a good start to finding the unity at home he promises as the new president.

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