Before Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman arrived in Beijing for a major visit late last month, he was the target of an intense lobbying effort at home and abroad. Members of the Uighur diaspora in Saudi Arabia and beyond hoped the young, powerful royal would acknowledge China’s nationwide crackdown on its own Muslim population. For the past year, a state-sponsored campaign against expressions of Islamic piety has roiled Muslim communities throughout China—especially in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, where analysts now estimate that more than 1 million ethnic Uighurs have been detained in so-called “re-education camps.” Instead, as he [...]
On Monday, China accused Michael Kovrig, a former Canadian diplomat detained in December, of espionage, though authorities stopped short of announcing formal charges. Kovrig was taken into custody in the aftermath of Canada’s arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou at the request of U.S. authorities. Along with the detention of another Canadian national, the businessman Michael Spavor, Kovrig’s arrest was widely seen as a tit-for-tat move by China to gain leverage against Canada as the hearing over Meng’s extradition to the U.S. proceeds. In an email interview, Sophie Richardson, the China director for Human Rights Watch, explains recent high-profile cases [...]
QUETTA, Pakistan—Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visited Pakistan last week and promptly pledged twice the amount of Saudi investment in infrastructure that observers had expected: $20 billion. Though it may not all be delivered, the promised money signaled the growing Saudi role in major infrastructure development in Pakistan. Until last year, such projects were being funded prominently, and almost exclusively, by China. But last fall, soon after Prime Minister Imran Khan took office, Pakistan unexpectedly invited Saudi Arabia to join the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC—the big-ticket Pakistan component of China’s huge Belt and Road Initiative, which was previously only [...]
