China scolded the US yesterday over everything from the war in Iraq to racial clashes in Cincinnati, in a report that highlighted the ideological rift dividing two powers that have increasingly friendly ties.
Beijing's annual assessment of human rights in America came in retaliation to the US report on 191 countries last week, which upbraided China for "backsliding." A US official also said Washington was heading in the direction of a UN resolution on China's rights record.
"As in previous years, the United States is again playing the part of the world's `human rights police,'" the Chinese report began. "And as in previous years, the US report again leaves out the United States' age-old malpractices and problems with human rights.
"Because of this, we also cannot but do as we've done in previous years, and help the United States fill in its record on human rights," said the report, released by the spokesman's office of the State Council, China's cabinet.
Whereas US charges target abuses of individual liberties, Bei-jing insists that basic human rights means putting priority on sheltering, clothing and feeding its 1.3 billion people -- and preserving social stability at almost any cost.
The government also bristles at what it deems to be perennial US meddling in others' domestic affairs.
Last week, China flatly rejected US accusations of extrajudicial killings and torture, suppression of political and religious groups and foot-dragging on steps toward democracy in Hong Kong.
The Foreign Ministry stopped short of warning of a setback in ties with Washington. Sharp differences notwithstanding, the two countries engage in a human rights dialogue.
But Beijing has sought to respond in kind. The English-language China Daily unleashed a scornful rebuttal on Saturday.
"China is no paradise for human rights," its editorial said. "But our culture has no respect for gossipmongers who wag their tongues freely in disregard of the truth."
It was the fifth straight year Beijing has issued a report on the rights record of the US.
This year, the government embargoed the document and gave it to some foreign media three days ahead of time.
The 22-page appraisal, based on articles in US newspapers and US government statistics, reeled off snapshots of America's social ills, from murder, rape and homelessness to the scandal over fabricated stories that befell the New York Times.
It seized on nationally publicized incidents like the fatal clash last November between Cincinnati police and a 41-year-old black man, the latest incident of racial tension in the Midwestern city which was hit by race riots in 2001.
"Forty years after Martin Luther King's ``I Have a Dream' speech, the equal rights pursued by America's blacks and other minorities remains a dream that can be aspired to, but not attained," the report said.
China also tried to expose the weight big business exerts on the American electoral process, quoting Britain's Independent newspaper as saying President George W. Bush's had amassed US$200 million for this year's campaign.
"The presidential election, viewed as a symbol of American democracy, in reality is a money game played by the rich," the report said.
Beijing reserved one of its harshest indictments for American actions abroad since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Quoting another report in the Independent, it said 13,000 unarmed men, women and children died in attacks led by US-led forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, calling the Iraq campaign the bloodiest for civilians since the Vietnam War.
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