China expressed strong displeasure and opposition over a recent resolution passed by the European Parliament (EP) criticizing China's human rights situation, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao told a regular press conference in Beijing January 25 afternoon.

The European Parliament assembly passed a resolution on China's human rights situation on January 20. Zhu said it was a document that "contains no objective facts, randomly criticizes China's human rights situation and its policy on ethnic minorities, has free and irresponsible remarks on China's decision to outlaw the Falun Gong cult, and deliberately distorts the implementation of 'one country, two systems' in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region."

Zhu said that the resolution even openly appealed to link the development of China-Europe relations and China's accession into the World Trade Organization with those so-called human rights issues. Also, the organization attempted to join the United States for a common anti-China resolution at the United Nations Human Rights convention.

The spokesman said that EP's this move "disregarded the marked achievements scored by China on the construction of democracy and rule of law and took no account of the growth of Sino-European relationship."

He reiterated that it was known by all without prejudice that the Chinese government has made great efforts to promote and protect human rights and scored noteworthy accomplishments in the regard. "To run the country by law has been added into China's Constitution. The construction of democracy and legal system has also seen active progress. Thanks to all these efforts, the Chinese people have enjoyed ever better social, economic and cultural rights and China now has the best human rights situation in its history," he noted.

He pointed out that China and Europe in recent years have had a series of dialogues on human rights, during which both sides developed sound ways to handle their differences with conversation instead of confrontation. "Past practices have proven that the conversation on the basis of mutual trust is an effective way to handle the differences between both sides. And there is no way out if the two sides handle them with confrontation," he said.

He urged that the European side to proceed from the overall growth of bilateral ties and take concrete measures to eliminate the adverse effect of the anti-China resolution so as to ensure the further development of China-Europe constructive partnership. (Xinhua)