Washington again lays bare its hypocrisy in saying it seeks to mend relations with Beijing: China Daily editorial

In groundlessly accusing China of carrying out "genocide and crimes against humanity" in its Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region in a speech on Monday, and by announcing new visa restrictions on Chinese officials for repressing ethnic and religious minorities both within and outside China on the same day, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken once again laid bare the United States' hypocrisy on human rights.

If not for the earnestness with which US President Joe Biden claimed to want to bring Sino-US relations back to the right track in his video call with President Xi Jinping on Friday, Blinken's remarks could have been regarded as run-of-the-mill given the current frosty relations between Washington and Beijing and the disinformation campaign the US is waging against China.

Blinken's call for China to "end its ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity" in Xinjiang was nothing new in the systematic smear campaign Washington is carrying out against China with the help of various think tanks, human rights organizations and the Xinjiang secessionists it has on its payroll.

And this is just one part of it disinformation campaign that includes scapegoating China for the COVID-19 pandemic, smearing China for "conniving with and supporting" Russia's "invasion" of Ukraine, and demonizing China as a "debt trap layer" for African and Pacific island countries, an intimidator of its small neighbors and a spier via technology.

Instead, by shamelessly negating on the I-want-to-mend-the-fence statements Biden made, Blinken called into question the possibility of any improvement of ties under the current US administration.

Although the Chinese Foreign Ministry's response to Blinken's speech and the new sanctions announced may also seem routine given what has transpired in the past, Blinken's words have merely reinforced Beijing's conviction that the Biden administration's hypocrisy is incorrigible and it will forever say one thing while doing another.

When Blinken claimed, "Perpetrators of human rights abuses must continue to face consequences", he casually ignored the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Ukraine which the US has engineered, neglected to mention the nearly 1 million COVID-19 deaths on US soil because of the political power games in Washington, and disregarded the humanitarian crises the US has caused in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and other countries with its interventions.

In their substantive talk on Friday, the two leaders discussed the importance of managing competition between the two countries and maintaining open lines of communication. But such communication should not be just empty words or chicken-and-duck exchanges.

If the Biden administration really wants to mend the US' relations with China, it should first mend its ways and demonstrate that when it talks, it is doing so with sincerity.