U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's recent China-smearing remarks were just another display of the hubris and bias of some Washington politicians when it comes to the differences between the two countries.
In an Oct. 30 speech at the Hudson Institute in New York and on multiple other occasions, Pompeo repeatedly hyped up the so-called "China challenge." He defamed China's political system and policies, bombarded China on human rights, and attempted to drive a wedge between the Chinese government and the Chinese people.
Yet as history has demonstrated over and over again, such smear campaigns and vicious calculations against China are doomed to fail in face of hard concrete facts.
Since the founding of the People's Republic of China 70 years ago, China has made remarkable achievements under the strong leadership of the Communist Party of China. Despite persistent rumor-mongering by the likes of Pompeo, no one can deny that the well-being, rights and freedoms enjoyed by the Chinese people have witnessed world-wowing progress.
In Washington, however, some politicians have for quite some time gotten used to lecturing other countries over human rights, while turning a blind eye to the intensifying violations of human rights back in their country.
Data released last year by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation showed that there were 1.2 million violent crimes reported in the United States in 2017. Gun violence has become epidemic, and the long-standing systematic racial discrimination increasingly serious.
The troubling human rights situation in the United States did not stop Pompeo from pointing an accusing finger at China over Xinjiang, where the truth is that there has not been a single violent incident over the three years since the region rolled out preventive counter-terrorism and de-radicalization measures.
And his sympathy with the rioters in Hong Kong who have been wreaking havoc on the international financial hub and even committing horrendous crimes shows that the U.S. politician has no qualms about brushing aside the rule of law and the rights and interests of the broader Hong Kong public for his own political purposes.
In a parallel plot, Pompeo tried to convince his audience that Beijing's model of governance is posing a threat to the so-called Western values and the wider world.
The big irony is that China has never tried to impose its political system onto others, while it is the United States that has all along been trying to transplant its institutions and values to other parts of the world regardless of whether they are suitable or not, and even at the cost of bloody wars.
That said, Pompeo's China-bashing remarks have just revealed his prejudice and arrogance. Such politically motivated mud-slinging holds no water and cannot deceive any one with a sober mind.
At the end of his Hudson speech, Pompeo mentioned the need "to think anew, and unconventionally" about China. That is right, but for any new approach to be viable, it should start with U.S. policy-makers removing their colored glasses and showing respect for China's independently chosen path of development.
