China Promotes Most Sanctioned Xinjiang Official in Snub to the West

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Beijing has promoted a senior official whose name appeared on multiple Western sanction lists for his role in suppressing Uyghur communities in China’s far-western Xinjiang region, which several countries have labeled a constitute genocide.

Wang Junzheng, 58, has taken over the top Chinese Communist Party (CCP) post in Tibet after serving as the Party boss of Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), a paramillitary group in Xinjiang accused of serious human rights violations.

His promotion was announced on Chinese state media on Oct. 19 along with the installations of six other regional chiefs. This comes as the CCP gears up for the 20th National Party Congress new year that would mark the biggest leadership reshuffle in five years.

Wang was one of four Chinese officials sanctioned by the United States, Canada, the U.K., and the European Union earlier this year, making him one of the regime’s highest-ranking figures hit with such punitive measures.

He told state media at the time that the sanctions were “a piece of waste paper,” saying that he had no interest to travel to these countries and “not a penny” in their banks.

Workers walk by the perimeter fence of a labor camp in Xinjiang on Sept. 4, 2018. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)

From 2019, Wang became the head of the regional Political and Legal Affairs Commission in Xinjiang, a powerful political organ responsible for law enforcement and public security. He also assumed the roles of deputy security chief at the region’s Party committee the following year, and became the political commissar at the XPCC, which has also been sanctioned by the U.S. administration.

Wang will be taking over the post from the retiring official Wu Yingjie, who in an Oct. 19 speech characterized the personnel changes as Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s “thorough affirmation” to their handling of Tibet. At the same conference, attended by all major officials in Tibet, Wang vowed to devote himself to the Party and to build a “loyal, clean, and responsible” cadre team.

Beijing took over Tibet in 1951 after promising the region’s people the right to exercise autonomy. Over the years, however, the regime has continued to intensify its control over the local population, forcing monks and nuns to resume secular life and promoting Mandarin Chinese over the Tibetan language.

In August, Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang told Tibetans to accept the Party’s leadership, claiming it to be the only way for Tibet to prosper.