Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua released an op-ed written by commentator Li Li Monday, titled “Commentary: Ferguson riot reveals U.S. racial divide, human rights flaw.”
The author begins by briefly mentioning the progress America has made in advancing its civil society, from Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” to the first black president in Barack Obama. However, he notes that despite the US’s progress in race relations, there is still a “racial divide” that “remains a deeply-rooted chronic disease that keeps tearing U.S. society apart, just as manifested by the latest racial riot in Missouri.”
The Chinese journalist then delves into a deeper issue, contrasting his state, with its ethnic unanimity, with the United States and its “melting pot” society. Li argues that racial tension is “unavoidable” in a society “where people from virtually every corner of the world converge and seek common lives.”
Li somehow fails to mention the atrocities committed by the Chinese Communist Party that runs his country as well as the newspaper that employs him. During China’s “Great Leap Forward” under Mao Zedong, some estimates state that upwards of 50 million Chinese citizens were killed – some because they were deemed “counter revolutionaries,” others simply due to starvation, as the failed policies of the Communist regime apexed with the Great Chinese Famine. Historian Frank Dikotter wrote of the time period, “coercion, terror, and systematic violence were the very foundation of the Great Leap Forward,” which “motivated one of the most deadly mass killings of human history.”
Li continues, accusing the US of being racist against African Americans in “every aspect” of our lives, including “social lives… employment, housing, education, and particularly, justice.”
The author concludes that the United States should drop what it is doing overseas and turn its attention inward. “Each country has its own national conditions that might lead to different social problems. Obviously, what the United States needs to do is to concentrate on solving its own problems rather than always pointing fingers at others.”
Chinese state media outlets frequently assert that the American civil society sanctions human rights abuses. In its most recent “human rights report,” the Communist party claimed comedian Jimmy Kimmel was guilty of “promoting racial hatred.”