CHINA has hit back at the United States after 11 Chinese companies were barred from buying US technology and other goods for supposedly being linked to alleged abuses of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province.

Beijing accused Washington of abusing export-control measures on the false pretext of defending human rights after the US announced sanctions against a list of companies, including biotech firms and home-appliance manufacturers.

It is not clear which US companies are involved with the Chinese firms, but Apple, Calvin Klein and Nike are among those partnered with some of the businesses on a leaked list that Washington claimed showed “evidence of forced labour involving Uighurs and other Muslim minority groups.”

US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said the sanctions would ensure that US goods are not used in what he called “the Chinese Communist Party’s despicable offensive against defenceless Muslim minority populations.”

But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said: “This violates the basic norms of international relations, interferes in China's internal affairs, and harms China's interests.”

The US State Department claims that since 2015 as many as two million Muslim-majority Uighurs have been held against their will in mass re-education camps in Xinjiang, and that Uighur women have been forcibly sterilised.

But neither claim has been substantiated, and both emanate from a single source – the far-right evangelical Christian and anti-communist Adrian Zenz.

He gleaned the allegations from the Turkish-base Istiqlal television channel, which regularly hosts guests from the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a separatist terrorist group that aims to establish an independent homeland in Xinjiang.

The group, which is linked to al-Qaida, has carried out numerous terrorist attacks in the province and sent units to fight alongside jihadists in Syria.

Nonetheless, Mr Zenz’s unsubstantiated claims have entered the mainstream narrative, with the alleged mistreatment of Uighurs and the Hong Kong issue being used to leverage public opinion for a new cold war against China.

Washington’s dangerous escalation, which has also seen a trade war and the mobilisition of warships to the South China Sea, is further fuelled by the World Uighur Congress, a shady CIA-backed umbrella organisation based in Munich.

Many of its senior officials previously held posts at US government propaganda agencies Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

They have been crucial in disseminating false anti-China news stories, including that Muslim names and the marking of Ramadan have been banned in Xinjiang and that the population has been subjected to forced DNA testing.