Photo taken on Oct. 24, 2019 shows a cotton harvesting machine working in a field in Awat County, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. With a long history of cotton planting, Awat is known as the "Town of Cotton" in China. The county boasts high-quality cotton and high-efficiency in production. Photo: Xinhua

The latest bill passed by the US House Foreign Affairs Committee accusing China of human rights abuses in its northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is only aimed at containing China, and China should hit back with countermeasures, including sanctions on US politicians involved in introducing bills slandering China over Xinjiang-related issues.

The bill, which is referred to as the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2019 on the website of the US Congress, was passed by voice vote. The bill was introduced by Senator Marco Rubio in January and was passed in the Senate on September 11.

Chinese analysts said the bill wrongly accuses China of detaining Uyghurs in Xinjiang without solid evidence and only serves a political purpose. The bill was introduced and sponsored by some politicians who maintain contact with overseas Xinjiang separatists, Chinese analysts said. 

"There is high possibility that the bill will become a law, which the US will purposely use to play games with China and impose sanctions on Xinjiang officials," said Sun Chenghao, an assistant research fellow with the Institute of American Studies of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.

The US wants to draw international attention to China's Xinjiang policies and create public opinion pressure on China, Sun said, noting that it also shows US hegemony by using its national laws to interfere with other countries' domestic affairs.

This is not the first time the US has played the Xinjiang card against China - it announced visa restrictions on some Chinese officials who it said were involved in "the detention or abuse" of Muslims in Xinjiang and blacklisted Chinese organizations and companies for alleged similar reasons. 

The US will never give up using human rights issues to pressure China, and it will play this card even more often in the near future, Liu Weidong, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of American Studies, told the Global Times. 

Anti-China forces in the US have been active in recent years, especially politicians and members of the US Congress who have close interactions with separatists from Taiwan and Xinjiang, Zha Xiaogang, a research fellow at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies, told the Global Times.

"The US has taken frequent moves targeting China recently since China's quick development has made them anxious. By passing the bills on China's Xinjiang and Taiwan, they want to disturb China's development plans," Zha said.

Chinese experts reached by the Global Times said that aside from expressing strong oppositions to moves that hurt China's core interests, China should hit back and impose sanctions on US politicians who introduced and have strongly supported these bills against China. 

Sun said that "we should not be concerned by what the US has done. We should have confidence in our country's development. A prosperous Xinjiang region and people's better life in our country will speak louder than US' accusations," Sun said.