FM strips US attempts to gain moral highland

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying.

Blocking the UN Security Council meeting on Gaza, posing to "stand with" Australia in the face of China's "economic coercion," and then stand with Honduras on China's "political use of COVID-19 vaccines," the US attempts to pillar itself on a moral highland have been slammed by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, who used facts to expose US hypocrisy.

The spokesperson said at Thursday's briefing that the US deserves the "largest mirror in the world" to look at themselves, in response to the latter's false and malicious remarks on China's human rights.

When asked to comment on the US block of a public virtual meeting of the UN Security Council to address the escalating conflict in the Gaza Strip, Hua Chunying, spokesperson of the ministry, said that the US has repeatedly said it cares about the human rights of Muslims, yet has turned a blind eye to the suffering of Palestinian people, and even blocked a UN Security Council meeting on Gaza.

Almost all members of the UN Security Council supported making a short statement on the Israel-Gaza tension, but the US blocked the council from doing so, said Hua.

"I wonder if the US can answer this question straightforward: Why it is doing so?"

Hua also compared the US negligence of Palestinian people to a "political farce," which refers to the US colluding with its allies, such as Germany and the UK, holding a "pointless" meeting at the UN on issues about Xinjiang recently.

During the conference, representatives from Western countries accused China of detaining and torturing Uygurs and other minorities at the so-called concentration camps in Xinjiang. Hua said such statement is based on "lies and political prejudice."

"What is the US' purpose to do so? The US should realize that Palestinian people's lives are equally precious."

At the Friday briefing, Hua also chided the US, after it said it will stand with Honduras in the face of China's "political use of COVID-19 vaccines." The Latin American country, which is one of the last 15 countries and regions that keep "diplomatic ties" with the island of Taiwan, said Monday that its neighboring country El Salvador will help it get Chinese mainland vaccines.

Without naming China, a US State Department spokesman told Reuters that "We condemn the cynical use of potentially life-saving medical assistance to advance the narrow political agenda of certain donors."

It seems like the US is not only posing itself on a moral high ground on human rights issues, it is doing so on COVID-19 vaccine issues, said Hua, urging Washington to publish how many countries it offered vaccines to.

The US has a population of 330 million, accounting for only 4 percent of the world's total, yet it has snapped up 2.6 billion doses of vaccines, accounting for one-fourth of the COVID-19 vaccines the world has, Hua added.

She said the fact that the US is sitting on its stockpiled vaccines and stressing US first on vaccine distribution, while others are begging, reminds people of a Chinese poem: "Behind the vermilion gates meat and wine go to waste while out on the road lie the bones of the frozen."

Yet Honduras is not the only country the US is posing to stand with. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday said the US will not leave Australia "alone" and linked China's behavior toward US allies to Sino-US relations.

Hua pointed out that coercion is the specialty of the US, which achieved its strategic goals through military threats, political isolation, economic sanctions and technology blockade, offering the world's textbook cases.

The notion of coercion diplomacy, Hua noted, was invented by the US by a US professor to describe US policies on Laos, Cuba and Vietnam.

"It occurred to us that the US is proud of 'coercion diplomacy,'" Hua said, noting that victims of US economic coercion include countries such as Iran and Venezuela, and high-tech companies like France's Alstom, Japan's Toshiba and Chinese telecommunication companies.

Hua said China has noticed that a growing number of people in the US are calling for dialogue and cooperation between the two countries.

Global Times