China Demands U.S. Take More Refugees While Accepting Zero

China’s state-run Global Times on Tuesday insisted the United States should accept more refugees from Afghanistan while calling it a “fantasy” for the civilized world to expect China to welcome any refugees itself.

The Global Times whined that America still dares to criticize China and Russia for their human rights abuses and lack of charity, taking particular umbrage to a tweet that pointed out Beijing is accepting no refugees despite constantly posturing as the rising global superpower:

In a Twitter post, US political scientist Ian Bremmer touted that “Almost 100 govts have pledged support in facilitating the free travel of Afghans that have worked with them or that are considered to be at risk (not participating: China, Russia).”

What he referred to was a statement signed on August 29 by the US and 97 other countries which pledged to ensure Afghans to travel freely to destinations outside Afghanistan and issue travel documents to designated Afghans.  

Compared to the chaos and misery the US has brought to Afghanistan and its people, facilitating the free travel of Afghans is the least the US should do, rather than something that is worth touting about. While the US ensures Afghans to travel freely to other countries, the number of Afghan refugees the US has received is only a drop in the ocean. 

The Global Times admitted that “drop in the ocean” represents at least 50,000 Afghan refugees coming into the United States, but hectored the U.S. to take in many times more, unfavorably comparing U.S. resettlement of Afghan refugees to the estimated 2.6 million living in Pakistan and Iran.

“The U.S. has all the reasons to accept the most Afghan refugees, as it is the culprit of the Afghan war,” the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) paper snarled, “But even if the U.S. accepts Afghan refugees, it cannot make up for the suffering of the Afghan people, let alone what the U.S. is actually willing to do is very limited.”

The Global Times was outraged at the notion China, which is salivating over the huge profits it plans to rake in from Afghanistan’s mineral resources, should do anything to help people fleeing for their lives from Beijing’s Taliban business partners:

Asking China and Russia to clean the mess created by the US in Afghanistan is beyond ridiculous. How could US elites have the nerve the raise it up? Russia said it will render civil aviation services for the evacuation of Afghan nationals seeking asylum elsewhere. China has also called on all sides to guide the Taliban actively and try to engage in the reconstruction of Afghanistan. Aren’t these responsible responses? 

Instead, those terrified Taliban victims must settle for China’s platitudes about “win-win cooperation”:

The US withdrawal from Afghanistan has become the laughing stock of the world. But it seems that the US and its elites think it had done something noble. US elites tend to assume all countries should follow the US lead or even make up for US mistakes, but they ignore the fact that there are countries which have made contributions in their own way. Years of wars the US waged in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan have generated huge numbers of refugees, but the way China engages with other countries – by promoting win-win principles and through infrastructure building for the welfare of local people – will never create refugees.

While China pats itself on the back for doing so much to help the developed world by luring its nations into debt traps, the U.S. and Europe are coping with the immense cost of accepting tens of thousands of refugees. 

The European Union (EU) on Wednesday proposed a $355 million program to resettle about 30,000 Afghans, plus some other refugees. EU ministers hope the initiative will forestall a migrant wave like the one that rolled over Europe during the Syrian civil war.

“The EU will engage and strengthen its support to third countries, in particular the neighboring and transit countries, hosting large numbers of migrants and refugees. The EU will also cooperate with those countries to prevent illegal migration from the region,” the bloc said after an emergency meeting on Tuesday.

The Washington Post observed on Wednesday that China and most of Afghanistan’s other close neighbors have loudly declared their unwillingness to accept refugees, or in the case of Pakistan and Iran, not to accept any more of them. The Post cheekily noted that keeping Afghan refugees out is one of the few things rivals Turkey and Greece agree on at the moment.