China's rulers seem a bit confused, if this report is anything to go by. They say that the US has no authority to criticize other governments over human rights issues.
A U.S. State Department report on global human rights released on Friday said Beijing had stepped up restrictions on lawyers, activists, bloggers and journalists, and tightened controls on civil society.
It has also increased its efforts to control the press, Internet and Internet access, the report said.
But China has shown no sign of bowing to foreign pressure.
Its Foreign Ministry on Saturday dismissed the U.S. report as meddling, and its own annual report about U.S. human rights stressed Beijing's dismissive view.
"Stop the domineering behavior of exploiting human rights to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries," it said, according to excerpts published by the official Xinhua news agency.
"The United States ignores its own severe human rights problems, ardently promoting its so-called 'human rights diplomacy', treating human rights as a political tool to vilify other countries and to advance its own strategic interests," said a passage from the Chinese report[.]
Produced by the State Council Information Office, the government's public relations arm, the report dwelled on what it said were severe deprivations and threats facing many Americans, as well as Washington's invasion of Iraq.
The confusions here are several. First, criticizing a country is not the same as interfering in its internal affairs - not, anyway, in the sense that counts as a breach of sovereignty. If it were the same, everyone would have to shut up about all countries other than their own, not really a desirable state of things. Second, how can the Chinese properly criticize America for its human rights record if criticism of this kind is improper meddling? Third, the tit-fot-tat nature of this Chinese response will not blind anybody to the comparative dimension: that the US fares a whole lot better than China does on human rights indices.