Commentary: America, an empire of lies

BEIJING, March 10 (Xinhua) -- Attempting to shift Washington's responsibility for instigating the Ukraine crisis, some U.S. politicians and media have recently fabricated false information about the conflict to mislead the world and blame China, once again laying bare America's nature as a notorious empire of lies.

To preserve its hegemony, the United States must invent falsehoods. These range from a pretext to invade Iraq in 2003 to misinformation, such as "the collapse of the Cuban medical system under the pandemic."

America plays the same tricks on China. To contain China, the United States has smeared the Asian country over so-called "genocide" and "forced labor" and labeled China's firm actions to defend its legitimate interests as "wolf warrior diplomacy" and "economic coercion."

Meanwhile, the United States has long employed its propaganda machine to peddle these lies. From films to media outlets, from NGOs to online spammers, different parts of the U.S. propaganda chain cooperate closely to indoctrinate people worldwide with hollow and ideology-biased slogans and fallacies.

Julian Assange understands this all too well. The founder of WikiLeaks and whistleblower could reportedly face life in prison -- even kidnapping or killing by the CIA -- for exposing U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq and intervention in the internal affairs of other countries.

For some time, China has been the main target of the smear campaign waged by the empire of lies, during which the U.S. government, political groups and news media platforms spread falsehoods about China.

For example, news agencies overseen by the U.S. Agency for Global Media are instructed to produce fake news reports about China's Xinjiang in dozens of languages. The agency also coordinates with media networks in U.S. ally countries to disseminate such disinformation.

U.S. news media outlets themselves downplay or ignore information released by China regarding Xinjiang while providing technical assistance for anti-China forces to spread false information related to the region. Such efforts are also financially supported by the U.S. government.

Lies are lies, no matter how dressed up. The more it attempts to distort China's image, Washington's credibility is at stake. As criticism mounts over America's violations of international rules and human conscience, the country's moral bankruptcy is all the more apparent.