<![CDATA[US hasn't ruled out sanctions on China as it pushes 'religious freedom agenda' with Beijing, American envoy says]>

The US envoy responsible for religious freedom urged China on Friday to correct its religious policies while noting the possible sanctions available if Beijing fails to end violations of religious freedom.

Sam Brownback, the Trump administration's ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, criticised the Chinese government for being "at war with faith", citing its worsening persecution in Xinjiang of Uygur Muslims and other faith groups.

"The US feels very strongly about it and is aggressively pushing for the religious freedom agenda [with China]," said Brownback in an interview with the South China Morning Post during a trip to Hong Kong.

Despite growing pressure from the US Congress and civil groups, however, Brownback sidestepped questions about whether the Trump administration would impose sanctions on Chinese officials responsible for religious persecution.

"It would be inappropriate for me to characterise internal discussions other than [saying] there are tools that exist," he said.

"The wheels of justice turn slowly and these are matters that are being investigated, reviewed and gathering ... often they can take long periods of time as the government assesses the severity and the nature of actions to cause a better outcome," Brownback added.

Representative Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China, recently criticised previous US responses to Beijing's persecution of religious groups, saying that for years those efforts had "not been enough".

American faith groups unite to decry restrictions on religious freedom in China

This week US-based religious rights campaigners formed the Coalition to Advance Religious Freedom in China to pressure the Trump administration into taking actions against Beijing over what they called continuing repression of religious practitioners in China.

Earlier on Friday, Brownback spoke at the Foreign Correspondents' Club, offering a survey of every major religious group in China, and Beijing's repressive policies towards them.

In the interview with the Post, he built on that, trying to describe what the US could do to effect change without going into policy specifics.

Brownback said he hoped to work with Beijing to get China off the list of "countries of particular concern" by developing an action plan.

"There are sanctions for countries of particular concerns that exist and there are other tools that can be used. And the Congress has expressed more interests in this ... so there is bipartisan support for this push," he said.

"We'll see where it ends up."

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Last July, the Trump administration hosted the first "International Religious Freedom Ministerial" in Washington, hosted by the State Department and involving more than 80 delegations, including dozens of minister-level representatives from around the world.

In his remarks then, US Vice-President Mike Pence lashed out on China over the arbitrary detention of more than one million ethnic Muslims in China's far-western Xinjiang region in internment camps.

Chinese officials have denied the existence of such arbitrary detention and defined the practice as vocational training centres to "educate and transform" people influenced by extremism.

China and the US remain entangled in a protracted trade war, and Brownback said there was no better time to press China on religious freedom issues. But the US currently has no dialogue with China over such issues, Brownback said.

Brownback added that his office would leverage the ministerial meeting this year, July 16-18, to drum up efforts to advance religious freedom in China and at the same time lobby for greater international pressure.

"This is really a way to accentuating of what's happening in this space particularly when you have this large violator like China ... there is keen interest in this topic. We use this to leverage and push," Brownback said.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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