Human rights and democracy advocates have rightly urged President Biden to take advantage of his meeting with Xi Jinping in the Bay Area

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Wednesday will address China’s crimes against the Uyghur minority and other acts of repression in the country and around the world. But we must also be realistic about what tough talks with China can yield.

If the results of previous dialogues with the Chinese government are any indication, Washington should not have high hopes for sensible talk in Beijing. Instead, the U.S. government must find ways to apply meaningful pressure to compel regime action. That means using the economic power of the United States and its allies to punish China’s use of forced Uighur labor and other abuses.

The Chinese government has a reputation for using dialogue to mask its fundamental resistance to international pressure. We have established constructive dialogue and cooperation with the UN High Commissioner and other countries, and contributed to the reform and development of the global human rights governance system, then Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang said at a meeting of the United Nations in February. (Qin has since been purged for unknown reasons.) Similar platitudes are found throughout Beijing’s official statements.

The truth is that under this smokescreen of constructive dialogue, win-win cooperation and other such slogans, Beijing has launched a systematic attack on the UN human rights system. The Chinese government wants to rewrite norms and manipulate procedures to minimize scrutiny and accountability. for themselves and for other repressive governments.

The Chinese regime is also receptive to climate change. Despite yet another meeting between US climate envoy John

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Kerry and his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua, last week called China the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases

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continues to build new coal-fired power stations, accounting for two-thirds of the planned such installations worldwide. The regime has also harassed climate activists, cracked down on environmental groups, strangled independent journalism on the subject, and silenced the populations most vulnerable to climate change.

The United States is not the only democracy trying to persuade Beijing to do better. The European Union and China have had an ongoing human rights dialogue since 1995, apart from a suspension that ended last year. At this point, it is crystal clear that three decades of dialogue have not only failed to deliver real improvements in China, but have also undermined the EU’s credibility. A number of human rights groups have called on the EU to end the dialogue.

Biden must heed this history. To convince China to change course on human rights, the administration must be willing to use American economic power without Beijing’s consent or participation.

For example, the Biden administration should vigorously enforce the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. The law, which passed in 2021 with bipartisan support, restricts the import of goods made in whole or in part in the Uighur region of Xinjiang unless it can be proven that they were not made with forced labor. The law could have a major impact: 20% of the world’s cotton and 45% of polysilicon, a material used in solar panels, is produced in Xinjiang. But many contaminated goods are slipping into the United States as companies learn to cover up their supply chains.

Biden should also impose the strongest possible targeted sanctions on perpetrators of transnational repression and impose export controls on companies that knowingly provided technology, goods or services to facilitate Beijing’s rights abuses outside China. Freedom House research shows that the Chinese Communist Party is responsible for the world’s most sophisticated, widespread and thoroughgoing campaign of transnational repression, targeting minorities, activists and defectors in other countries.

While American leadership is crucial, these measures are unlikely to be effective if imposed unilaterally. Forced labor products excluded from the US can simply be diverted to other markets; companies in other countries can support China’s repression beyond its shores. The Biden administration will need to work with other governments to impose effective, multilateral curbs on Beijing’s abuses.

The Biden-Xi summit in California may be necessary, but it is far from sufficient. Biden must ensure that his human rights pushes are backed by strong material incentives and a determined coalition of international partners.

Yaqiu Wang is Freedom House’s research director for China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.