Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) says hes introduced legislation to block the World Bank from giving any more loans to China.
The United States is the largest contributor to the World Bank, and Grassley said its important to ensure that U.S. taxpayer dollars arent going to fund the Beijing regimes abuses of human rights.
He labeled as “nonsense” the claim by China that facilities widely documented as camps of mass detention in Xinjiang Province are just ordinary vocational and training centers.
He spoke at a Feb. 23 event sponsored by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a nonprofit organization established by Congress under the Clinton administration. The event, which Grassley helped to facilitate, was held in a Senate meeting room in the Capitol Visitors Center.
“It is shameful that that World Bank continues to operate a technical and vocational educational project in Xinjiang,” Grassley, who serves as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said.
“Just having such an ongoing project in Xinjiang with that name, and the seal of approval of the World Bank, lends legitimacy to Chinas disingenuous claim to be concerned about vocational skills for local Muslims,” Grassley said.
Reliable reports state that the Chinese government is holding up to a million Uyghurs against their will, forcing them into re-education programs designed to detach them from Islam and re-orient them psychologically to accept a fully secular Chinese identity.
Referring to secret documents that have recently come to light, Grassley said that “these schools purchased barbed wire, tear gas, body armor, using other funds.”
But those purchases involve the United States because “funds are fungible,” Grassley said, meaning that the funds used to buy those instruments of repression are impossible to distinguish from the funds used to build the “training center” in the first place.
China shouldnt have access to World Bank loans in the first place, Grassley argues.
“China is the second-largest economy after the U.S., yet it continues to claim it needs World Bank loans,” he said.
“The World Bank was created to help economic development in the worlds poorest countries,” Grassley said. “China ought to be embarrassed claiming it is a developing country.
“Its time to end the World Bank funding for China.”
Chinas Influence
Kyle Bass, founder and principal of Hayman Capital Management, agrees.
Bass, a longtime China critic, said that “over time and especially under the supervision of World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim, the World Bank has grown to be under the increasingly outsized influence of China.”
The World Bank, he pointed out, was created in 1944 for the purpose of aiding war-torn and poor nations to rebuild and to develop.
“Why does the world continue to lend development money to China?” Bass asked.
Grassley noted that China passed its “graduation date” from the World Bank in 2016, when its income level exceeded the World Banks own threshold for loan qualification.
“How can we fight [the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP)] infiltration and exploitation of the World Bank?” Bass asked.
The World Bank appointed Hua Jingdong, a Chinese national, as its treasurer, effective in January 2019.
Hua oversees a “US$200 billion debt portfolio and an asset portfolio of nearly US$200 billion” as well as a “derivatives portfolio of US$600 billion … and annual cashflows of over US$7 trillion equivalent,” according to his official profile.
The World Bank has the right to require changes of policy in countries to which it lends money, Bass said, although policy changes dont appear to have been required, however, for loans to China.
Since fiscal year 2016, when China should have no longer been eligible for loans, Beijing has received $8 billion in World Bank funding.
Chinas influence at the World Bank has also been bolstered by Yang Shaolin, a Chinese national who is managing director and World Bank Group chief administrative officer.
According to the World Banks biographical data, Yang previously served as “Director General for International Economic and Financial Cooperation at the Ministry of Finance of China, in charge of economic and financial cooperation between China and foreign governments as well as international financial institutions.”
Such senior Chinese government positions are almost invariably filled by those holding CCP membership.
Public World Bank documents detail the Procurement Plan for the Xinjiang project identified by both Grassley and Bass. The project, known as “China: Xinjiang Technical and Vocational Education and Training Project”, or TVET, Project ID P147367, was revised on Jan. 3, 2020.
Line items for “School-based reform and innovations” include a comprehensive training center for an actual amount of just over $5 million.
According to the World Bank document, goods to be procured include a ”Xinjiang Uygur medical college new campus network campus construction plan” for nearly $2 million, nearly $143,000 for a “Virtual reality training room of Urumqi Vocational University and school-enterprise cooperation,” as well as close to $24,000 for a “Xinjiang Uygur Read More – Source
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