Blinken’s comments came just hours after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the Trump administration’s new determination that China was committing crimes against humanity and genocide against the Uygurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minority groups in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region.

The Biden campaign had already called China’s actions in Xinjiang a genocide during the presidential campaign.

At the hearing, Blinken was asked by Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, if he agreed with the label.

“That would be my judgment as well,” Blinken said.

“Forcing men, women and children into concentration camps, trying to in effect re-educate them to be adherents to the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party, all of that speaks to an effort to commit genocide,” he added later.

As Biden prepares to take office and Blinken awaits Senate approval, Tuesday’s genocide declaration was perhaps the final punitive act towards Beijing from an administration that once seemed to view China through a much rosier lens but now sees it as a dangerous and threatening power.

Earlier in his administration, President Donald Trump had called the Chinese leader an “incredible guy” and “friend”, and reportedly encouraged him to continue carrying out his human rights abuses against the Uygurs.

Mike Pompeo’s curiously timed Taiwan shift turns focus on Biden’s approach

In his own confirmation hearing nearly three years ago, Pompeo spoke about cooperating with the Chinese “where it makes sense for America” – a point Blinken also echoed in his own testimony on Tuesday – and did not mention the words “Chinese Communist Party” or “Xi Jinping” once.

But as Xi has a taken a harder line in China, and the Trump administration’s actions and rhetoric toward China have also escalated – including a trade war, sanctions, visa bans and the genocide declaration on Tuesday – Pompeo has emerged as one of the administration’s most assertive voices denouncing Beijing.

In interviews and speeches, he frequently condemns the Chinese Communist Party as a danger to the free world. He has rejected China’s controversial claims to the South China Sea, pushed American allies to stay away from Chinese 5G telecommunications technology and sanctioned Chinese officials responsible for rights abuses in Hong Kong and Xinjiang.

Blinken, who served as a senior foreign policy official in the Barack Obama administration, faced some questions during Tuesday’s questioning about whether he fully understood the nature of China today.

“Do you have any doubt in your mind that the goal of the Chinese Communist Party is to be the world’s predominant political, geopolitical, military and economic power? And for the United States to decline in relation?” asked Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican.

“I do not,” Blinken said. “I have no doubt.”

He was also asked about a range of other aspects of the US-China relationship, from technology to Taiwan to Hong Kong. He said the Biden administration’s commitment to making sure Taiwan can defend itself against any Chinese aggression “will absolutely endure”.

And if China, which he called a “techno-autocracy”, attacked the island: “That would be a grievous mistake on their part,” he said.

Tense times in Washington as US prepares for an inauguration like no other

Blinken said “democracy is being trampled” in Hong Kong, and said the US should have acted sooner in response.

“This is not this is not going to fix the problem, but I’d like to see us, for example, be able to take in some of those fleeing Hong Kong, fleeing the repression, for standing up for their democratic rights,” he said.

“I think we have to take a hard look about what our position should be on the presence of institutions and companies there,” he added. “Is it going to remain a hub and a financial centre? Does Beijing then get the benefit – both sides of the benefit? We should take a hard look at that.”

Blinken was one of a handful of Biden’s nominees to testify before Senate committees on Tuesday, and was also not the only one to express alarm about Beijing.

Avril Haines, Biden’s pick for US intelligence chief, told a Senate panel that the counter-intelligence threat from “assertive and aggressive” China would be a top priority if she is confirmed.

Janet Yellen, the nominee to run the Treasury Department, which oversees the US government’s powerful economic sanctions regime, criticised China’s “horrendous human rights abuses” and accused the country of stealing American intellectual property.

“[These] are practices that we’re prepared to use the full array of tools to address,” Yellen said during her hearing.

Biden, for his part, met Xi on numerous occasions when he was Obama’s vice-president and called him a “thug” during the campaign.

All of the incoming president’s cabinet nominees will need to be confirmed by the US Senate before they can start their jobs. With Democrats taking control of the Senate on Wednesday, none are expected to be rejected.