The Spokesperson of Chinese Foreign Ministry, Wang Wenbin has slammed the administration of President Joe Biden for seizing $7 billion in Afghan assets.
The US government froze the funds in Afghanistan’s foreign reserves in August last year when the Taliban regained control of the country.
“Without the consent of the Afghan people, the U.S. willfully disposes of assets that belong to the Afghan people, even keeping them as its own. This is no different from the conduct of bandits,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Tuesday during a press conference in Beijing.
According to Wang, “This latest example has once again laid bare that the rules-based order the U.S. claims to champion is not the kind of rules and order to defend the weak and uphold justice, but to maintain its own hegemony.”
He added that the U.S. “should unfreeze [Afghan] assets, lift unilateral sanctions on Afghanistan as soon as possible, and assume its due responsibility to ease the humanitarian crisis in the country.”
China’s response came after President Biden on Friday signed an executive order to confiscate more than $7 billion that the Afghan Central Bank has on deposit in the Federal Reserve.
Biden froze those funds as U.S. military and NATO forces withdrew from Kabul last year, and now he plans to divide them between the families of victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks and humanitarian aid for Afghanistan.
