Lacking validity, human rights smears fail to stick

The United States Congressional-Executive Commission on China issued its 2024 Annual Report last week, which is supposedly intended to provide "a detailed account of the People's Republic of China's systematic abuses of human rights" in the Xinjiang Uygur and Xizang autonomous regions and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

The commission has always made groundless accusations against China's internal affairs for political purposes, and has no credibility at all. The agency has fabricated reports like this one year after year, continuously slandering China's human rights situation and threatening to escalate sanctions against China, which fully exposes the ignorance, prejudice and arrogance of relevant US politicians.

Such a state-funded and organized systemic smear campaign smacks of "despicable political manipulation with ill intentions", as the Hong Kong SAR government said in a statement released on Saturday refuting the US' report.

No matter how many such reports it releases, via whatever agencies, the US cannot shake China's social stability and national unity, cover up the fact that the rights and freedoms of the Chinese people, including all those living in Xinjiang, Xizang and Hong Kong, are fully protected, or halt China's development.

The series of sanctions the US has imposed on Hong Kong and Xinjiang have already affected local people's livelihoods. It is the US politicians that are violating the human rights conditions in these regions through illegal long-arm jurisdiction and weaponizing so-called human rights issues with sanctions. When local residents in these regions suffered tremendously from the turmoil several years ago, the US politicians lauded the instigators of the turmoil as "brave fighters for democracy and freedom", irrespective of them being separatists, extremists or terrorists. Now that China has effectively put an end to the turmoils and restored social order in these regions, it is the same group of US politicians that are accusing China of "human rights violations".

In fact, what the US politicians call for is not the protection of the human rights of local residents, but to let the US' proxies have the means to advance the "pro-democracy" agenda of Washington in these regions.

The three regions have enjoyed good development momentum since the strict enforcement of the rule of law brought an end to the chaos orchestrated by the US.

Before lecturing other countries on their human rights affairs, the US should first address the ongoing humanitarian crises it has created in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Gaza.