China might receive some flak from the U.S. for its poor human rights policies, but China is firing right back and says the U.S. is no better, according to a report issued by the state council and reported by the official Xinhua news agency.
Human rights has been a source of contention between the two nations, especially since 1989, when the U.S. imposed sanctions on China after the incidents in Tienanmen Square. This disagreement reached a boiling point on Wednesday after the U.S. released a report which criticized Beijing's crackdown on local lawyers and law firms handling cases China deems politically sensitive.
China, which has long rejected criticism of its rights record, citing its success at lifting millions out of poverty, said enough is enough and issued a report of its own.
"The United States made comments on the human-rights situation in many countries while being tight-lipped about its own terrible human-rights record and showing not a bit of intention to reflect on it," Xinhua said. "Since the U.S. government refused to hold up a mirror to look at itself, it has to be done with other people's help."
Specifically, the report referenced the "wanton infringement" of civil rights and "rampant gun-related crimes" in the United States, which apparently left 13,136 dead and 26,493 others injured. The report goes on to allege that 965 of those deaths came at the hand of cops.
"The frequent occurrence of shooting incidents was the deepest impression left to the world concerning the United States in 2015," the news agency said.
The report continued to cite other numbers as evidence of the U.S.'s poor human rights policies, such as the fact that 560,000 people were homeless and 33 million Americans don't have health insurance.
China put one last nail in the coffin by pointing out America's actions overseas which it referred to as a "gross violation of other countries' human rights." The report tallied more than 6,000 airstrikes in Syria and Iraq, allegedly causing "between 1,695 and 2,239" civilian deaths.
The numbers are quite eye-opening, but their veracity remains dubious, especially since China's report was clearly a retaliatory one. At the very least, it's a well-known fact that gun violence was the highlight of 2015, especially in its latter half.
The report also begs the question of whether China and the U.S. are using the same definition of human rights in their reports. Fore example, it's one thing for "human rights violations" to occur by accident or through the acts of a regular citizen, but it's a different thing entirely when they come at the hands of the government itself. It appears at least one user on China's Twitter-like Weibo social network sees a distinction between these as well.
"If America has no human rights, why are rich Chinese going there?" one user asked.
