US secretary of state Mike Pompeo has imposed new sanctions on China and said its policies on Muslims and ethnic minorities in Xinjiang constitute a “genocide”.

Mr Pompeo made the determination just 24 hours before President-elect Joe Biden takes office. There was no immediate response from the incoming Biden team, although several members have been sympathetic to such a designation in the past.

Many of those accused of having taken part in repression in Xinjiang are already under US sanctions, and Tuesday’s move is the latest in a series of steps the outgoing Trump administration has taken against China.

Since last year, the administration has steadily ramped up pressure on Beijing, imposing sanctions on numerous officials and companies for their activities in Taiwan, Tibet, Hong Kong and the South China Sea.

Those penalties have become harsher since the beginning of last year when President Donald Trump and Mr Pompeo began to accuse China of trying to cover up the coronavirus pandemic.

On Saturday, Mr Pompeo lifted restrictions on US diplomatic contacts with Taiwanese officials, prompting a stern rebuke from China, which regards the island as a renegade province.

Five days ago, the administration announced it would halt imports of cotton and tomatoes from Xinjiang with Customs and Border Protection officials saying they would block products from there suspected of being produced with forced labour.

Xinjiang is a major global supplier of cotton, so the order could have significant effects on international commerce. The Trump administration has already blocked imports from individual companies linked to forced labour in the region, and the US has imposed sanctions on Communist Party officials with prominent roles in the campaign.

China has imprisoned more than a million people, including Uighurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic groups, in a vast network of concentration camps, according to US officials and human rights groups.

People have been subjected to torture, sterilisation and political indoctrination in addition to forced labour as part of an assimilation campaign in a region whose inhabitants are ethnically and culturally distinct from the Han Chinese majority.

China has denied all the charges, but Uighur forced labour has been linked by reporting from The Associated Press to various products imported to the US, including clothing and electronic goods such as cameras and computer monitors.

China says its policies in Xinjiang aim only to promote economic and social development in the region and stamp out radicalism. It also rejects criticism of what it considers its internal affairs.

Read more: Anger as China says that it is freeing Uighur women from being ‘baby making machine’

Jordan said on Thursday it would lead a campaign to raise funds for the U.N. agency that supports Palestinian refugees, to help it survive after the United States cut its funding.

Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said a meeting next month in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly would mobilise support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to continue core education and health services.

“Any shortage in funding will drive hundreds of thousands towards deprivation and despair,” Safadi, whose country has 2.2 million U.N. registered Palestinian refugees, said in Amman after meeting Pierre Krahenbuhl, the UNRWA head. Jordan will call for an Arab League meeting to lobby for donors to cover the $200 million shortfall needed to shore up UNRWA, Safadi said.

UNRWA has faced a cash crisis since the United States, long its biggest donor, earlier this year slashed funding, saying the agency needed to make unspecified reforms and calling on the Palestinians to renew peace talks with Israel.

The agency was founded in 1949 after the first Arab-Israel war, in the wake of the exodus of around 700,000 refugees who fled or were driven out of Israel on its founding as a state.

UNRWA now looks after more than 5 million descendants of those original refugees, in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“One cannot wish 5.3 million Palestine refugees away. These are people who have rights and for many years now, for decades have faced a plight and injustice that is simply immense,” UNRWA’s Krahenbuhl said at a news conference with Safadi.

“As long as a just a lasting solution has not found of the issue of Israel-Palestine conflict we will continue to implement the mandate that the General Assembly has given us.”

The Palestinians assert the right under international law to return to homes abandoned in Israel or be compensated. Safadi said funding cuts for UNRWA undermine that right.

“The continuation of UNRWA means continued commitment by the international community to working towards a just solution of the refugees that guarantees the right of return and compensation,” Safadi said.

Safadi last week raised the plight of UNRWA with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Washington where officials say he warned of “dangerous consequences” to regional stability if the financial crisis were not resolved.