The Communist Party of China published its annual report listing alleged human rights grievances in the United States on Wednesday, listing robust and free political debate and America’s federalist system – which allows states to determine much of their own destinies independent of Washington – as human rights atrocities.
The report opened with “I can’t breathe,” reportedly the last words of late Minnesota man George Floyd, whose death sparked nationwide riots in summer 2020.
China’s State Council Information Office, the formal propaganda arm of the Communist Party leadership, publishes a similar report every year, typically in response to the U.S. State Department’s annual global human rights report. Past reports have listed American comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s television show as a human rights violation against the American people.
This year, state newspaper Global Times explained, the office chose to publish its report without waiting for the State Department’s research in response to growing concerns over China’s genocide of the ethnic Uyghur people and other Muslim-majority groups in Xinjiang, its westernmost territory.
Extensive evidence, including eyewitness testimony, has revealed that, since at least 2017, the Communist Party has engaged in a campaign to eliminate the Uyghur population through imprisonment in concentration camps, mass displacement of their children, enslavement, forced sterilization and abortions, state-organized gang rape, and live organ harvesting.
A report published in mid-March by the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy, citing international legal experts, concluded China is committing every element of the international crime of genocide against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz people, and other groups in Xinjiang.
In its report on Wednesday, China insisted the true human rights criminal is the U.S. government.
The report focused largely on two claims: America’s response to the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, which began in China and erupted from a regional outbreak to a pandemic largely due to Communist Party policies, violated human rights; and that America’s treatment of its ethnic and racial minorities is inherently bigoted.
“[T]he United States, which has always considered itself an exception and superior, saw its own epidemic situation go out of control, accompanied by political disorder, inter-ethnic conflicts, and social division,” the report proclaimed in its introduction. “It further added to the human rights violations in the country, the so-called ‘city upon a hill’ and ‘beacon of democracy.'”
“The epidemic went out of control and turned into a human tragedy due to the government’s reckless response,” the report stated definitively, blaming American federalism.
Citing an article in CNN, without actually linking to it, the “human rights” report complains “that there were no national guidelines and no organized efforts to reopen the country beyond what measures states had taken.”
“The article also said that in terms of pandemic control and prevention, public health officials say one thing while governors say another and the national leader says something else entirely,” the report contended, later adding, “During the [Chinese coronavirus] pandemic, frequent contradictions have taken place between the Republican president and the Democrats-dominated House of Representatives, and between the federal government and Democratic ‘blue states.'”
The “contradictions” in question are part of America’s political system, which does not imprison individuals who publicly dissent from the core beliefs of the ruling party. In China, public disagreements typically result in criminal charges for those implicated, usually the poorly defined “crime” of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” No party other than the Communist Party has power in the executive, legislative, or judicial branches, nor do they operate as separate entities.
China’s provinces also have no independence from Beijing. Dictator Xi Jinping regularly purges state-level officials considered disloyal to the party and imposes policies on states that their residents do not agree with. The latter resulted in a gigantic protest in March 2020 on the border between Hubei province, where the pandemic originated, and Jiangxi province in which residents overturned police cars and violently assaulted officers. Beijing had forced Jiangxi officers to open the border to Hubei, a policy local officers refused to implement, resulting in thousands of Hubei residents attacking them and overrunning the border.
Elsewhere in its “human rights” report, China complained that “hate politics evolved into a national plague” in America in 2020.
“Disagreement between Democrats and Republicans has gradually changed from policy differences to identity battles with increasingly obvious political tribalism,” the report detailed. “There has been an increasingly stark disagreement between Democrats and Republicans on economy, racial justice, climate change, law enforcement, international engagement, and a long list of other issues.”
The report particularly lamented that “unchecked public opinion manipulation and rampant lies” in politics remained legal.
The report elsewhere described the legal right of Americans to purchase firearms as a human rights violation and claimed that America is committing “genocide” against its native population.
“In the United States, racism exists in a comprehensive, systematic, and continuous manner,” the report claimed, then proceeding to quote America’s first black president, Barack Obama.
Communist China has never had a dictator who did not belong to the ruling Han ethnicity, and ethnic minorities – Uyghurs, Tibetans, Mongolians, and others – endure strict government pressure to conform to Han culture. This includes the erasure of their native languages in local schools, repression of religious practice, and internment in concentration camps for communist indoctrination.
The report follows a week in which China has very publicly declared diplomatic victory against the administration of President Joe Biden, following a disastrous meeting for American diplomats with Chinese Communist Party elites in Alaska.
At the meeting, senior Politburo member Yang Jiechi used the far-left Black Lives Matter movement to discredit American concerns about the genocide of the Uyghur people and proclaimed, “the United States does not have the qualification to say that it wants to speak to China from a position of strength.”