China hit back at the United States over its human rights record on Monday, bringing out government-backed academics to accuse Washington of everything from promoting Islamic State to being a racist plutocracy. China was infuriated last week when the United States and 11 other countries at the United Nations criticised China's crackdown on human rights and its detentions of lawyers and activists.
At a press conference arranged by the Cabinet's news department for mostly Chinese reporters, four academics at government-run bodies lambasted the United States for what they said was hypocritical criticism of China and others. Liu Hainian, director of the Human Rights Institution under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, blamed Europe's "refugee wave" on the United States' military involvement in the Middle East which was forcing people to leave their "beautiful homes". "Think about it: certain extremist groups that now exist, including Islamic State, wasn't it the Americans who first off promoted them from behind?" Liu said.
Closer to home, the United States has a terrible problem with racism, with police in 2015 killing about 1,000 people, he added. "Most of those were people of colour," Liu said. Chang Jian, vice director of the human rights research centre of Tianjin-based Nankai University, said the US electoral system was being increasingly controlled by Super PACs, committees well-funded by corporate interests. "There are fewer and fewer opportunities for ordinary people to participate in elections," he said. Chang made no mention of China's own tightly-controlled political system, which was run by the Communist Party without interruption since the 1949 revolution.