The US has just announced sanctions on the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), for complicity in repression.

This is HUGE. This is the big, meaningful, non-symbolic, biting sanctions action that human rights advocates have pushed for. https://www.axios.com/us-sanctions-china-paramilitary-xinjiang-xpcc-41e29c92-9649-4e47-9e91-a7f78330d4d8.html

You've probably never heard of the XPCC but it's a BFD. It's a paramilitary organization that also controls vast swaths of Xinjiang's economy. It employs around 12% of Xinjiang's population, comprises around 1/5 of Xinjiang's economy, and produces around 1/3 of China's cotton.

The XPCC also directly operates some of the concentration camps in Xinjiang, and has been directly involved in implementing the extreme repression that Uighurs there have suffered.

I almost can't comprehend how much effort it will take to enforce this, or what the effects of full enforcement might even be.

I'm not speculating here. If this is fully enforced, it could cripple parts of China's economy.

At the very least, this action could result in a pretty full decoupling of all US companies from Xinjiang.

It could, perhaps, even result in the decoupling of CHINESE companies from Xinjiang, if they have strong ties to international trade.

Which brings us to how Beijing is likely to react to this action. Which is likely with absolute outrage.

China hates unilateral sanctions as a matter of course, it views them as violations of domestic sovereignty.

If Chinese companies start to change their behavior domestically based on US sanctions, Beijing will be furious. I don't know how they will try to prevent that or what action they might take to stop it.

Also -- I'm pretty certain these sanctions will impact the Belt and Road.

The best article I've ever read on the XPCC is this 2014 article by @ael_o, strong recommend. https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/10/08/chinas-vast-strange-and-powerful-farming-militia-turns-60/

I'm still just sitting here, having a hard time grasping the magnitude of this action by the administration.

I mean...this is the thing. This is the thing that the Global Magnitsky Act was made for. It's just amazing to see it being used the way it was intended.

But here's the big big challenge. The XPCC is both secretive and opaque (i.e. opaque on purpose). That's why I say that so much depends on how this is enforced.

To fully enforce, this will take countless hundreds (thousands?) of hours of investigations.

And the XPCC, obviously, is based in Xinjiang, which is an enormous information black hole.

And SINCE so much depends on enforcement, which itself requires the institutional will to carry it out, that makes this sanctions action--inserting my personal opinion--particularly dependent on the political will within the Trump administration as to how deep they want to dig.

As I wrote for Axios, "Enforcing sanctions on such a sprawling and secretive organization is an enormous undertaking. How much these sanctions bite depends a great deal on how many resources the administration is willing to commit to uncovering violations and enforcing them."