The president of the United States, Joe Biden, suggested founding a move from democratic countries to the trillion-dollar Belt and Road infrastructure initiative of rival China as tensions spark between the Western countries and China. Late Friday, Biden said that he soared the proposal in a call with Boris Johnson, the U.K. Prime Minister, because of a row over sanctions against abuses against the Uyghur Muslim community in the northwestern Xinjiang region of China.

Biden told reporters, referring to Belt and Road, that he suggested a similar initiative coming from the democratic countries, helping those communities across the world that, in fact, need help. The influence of China increased in some countries in recent years via loans and projects under the initiative, raising worries among Western governments and regional powers. China helped several countries to develop or build dams, railways, roads, and ports.

Chinese President Xi Jinping promised to initiate clean co-operation under Belt and Road, yet Chinese banks continued to finance coal projects as China uses the initiative to make an overseas coal play. According to Boston University’s statistics on China’s global energy financing, during eight years from 2000 to 2008, China’s two biggest policy banks invested around 23.1% of the $251 billion on overseas energy projects was spent on coal projects.

At least one million Uyghurs, Primarily Muslim Groups, held in Camps in Xinjian

The U.K., in its data of the call between Joe Biden and Boris Johnson, didn’t mention the American president’s proposal for a Western response to Belt and Road but did note that both these leaders discussed weighty action to slap sanctions on human rights violators in Chinese province Xinjiang.

Furthermore, the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada sanctioned many members of the political and hierarchy of Xinjiang this week in coordinated action over human rights allegations, prompting retaliation from China in the form of sanctions on people from Britain and the E.U.

Beijing insists that the crisis in Xinjiang is an internal affair of the country. Additionally, it announced sanctions on Friday against nine U.K. nationals and four entities, saying that they had maliciously spread disinformation and lies over the treatment of the residents of Uyghur. According to the rights groups, who blame authorities for sterilizing women and imposing forced labor by force, the authorities held almost one million Uyghur residents and people from other groups (predominantly Muslim) in prison camps in Xinjiang.

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