In negotiations, it's always good to know some background on who's sitting across from you.  And my hunch is that the information contained in a shocking Reuters story about detention camps in China plays a key role in the president's assessment of China's leadership.

United Nations panel has accused China of turning its far-flung western region of Xinjiang "into something that resembled a massive internment camp shrouded in secrecy, a 'no rights zone'."  It estimates that there could be as many as one million Muslims who have been detained there.  Former detainees describe being tortured during interrogation, living in crowded cells and being subjected to a brutal daily regimen of Communist Party indoctrination that drove some people to suicide.  Most of those who have been rounded up by the security forces are Uighurs, a Muslim ethnic minority that numbers some 10 million.  Muslims from other ethnic groups, including Kazakhs, have also been detained.

Vice President Pence may have had the camps in mind during his recent speech on China at the Hudson Institute.

Today, China has built an unparalleled surveillance state, and it's growing more expansive and intrusive – often with the help of U.S. technology.  What they call the "Great Firewall of China" likewise grows higher, drastically restricting the free flow of information to the Chinese people.  And by 2020, China's rulers aim to implement an Orwellian system premised on controlling virtually every facet of human life – the so-called "Social Credit Score."  In the words of that program's official blueprint, it will "allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven, while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step."

And when it comes to religious freedom, a new wave of persecution is crashing down on Chinese Christians, Buddhists, and Muslims.

The Reuters report and the Pence speech are well worth reviewing as events unfold this weekend at the G20 meeting. 

Leaders assembled for a "family picture" at the beginning of the G20 meeting (video screen grab via Time).

Certainly, for the Chinese, there's a new sheriff in town – one's who clear-eyed and candid.  The U.S. is no longer represented on the world stage by naïve, Pollyannaish pacifists.