China Responds to US Criticism

Last Friday, following China's crackdown on dissidents and activists, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed that she was "deeply concerned" about the issue and cited "negative trends" such as the Ai Weiwei arrest.

"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." - Reuters

China's foreign ministry has, in turn, dismissed the report as meddling and issued a counterattack in its own annual report on US human rights. In an attempt to delegitimatize the concerns expressed by the American government, the report accuses the US of ignoring its own human rights problems, citing poverty, hunger, homelessness, violent crime, etc. as threats that face many Americans.

The Reuters article concludes by pointing out that foreign governments are not the only ones criticizing China's actions, as rights lawyers and advocates within China have also been dismayed by the serious crackdown.

With these official reports released by China and the US, it seems as if relations between these two world powers have become extremely strained. This was exactly what I had been fearing since the start of China's crackdown. China is continuing a long streak of bad decisions in human rights policy and only doing harm to the peaceful image that it wants to project. One can only hope that these recent occurrences will not escalate into nationwide uprising and unrest as seen in the Middle East and North Africa.

-Annie-