Criticized, China in return accuses the United States of being “the empire of lies”

2023-10-01 07:48:41

Beijing and Washington are currently playing the diplomatic version of the card game “The Liar”. China thus accused the United States on Saturday of being an “empire of lies”, after the publication of a report it considers “biased” from American diplomacy which affirms that Beijing is spreading disinformation throughout the world.

This report from the Global Engagement Center (GEC), a service of the US State Department claiming to combat disinformation, accuses Beijing of spending billions of dollars each year on operations to “manipulate information abroad”.

The GEC fears a destruction of “democratic values”

According to the document published Thursday, China notably promotes “digital authoritarianism”, by financing propaganda, removing critical information or even controlling Chinese-language media. GEC coordinator James Rubin said that if nothing is done, “a slow and steady destruction of democratic values” is feared.

In a press release published on Saturday evening, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs denounced a report “contrary to the facts and biased” which “in itself constitutes disinformation”. “The United States itself is the pioneer of information warfare aimed at public opinion,” he accuses.

Chinese diplomacy cites the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird during the Cold War, intended to influence the American and foreign media, or the intervention of former American Secretary of State Colin Powell before the Security Council of the UN in 2003 to denounce Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. “Facts have proven time and again that the United States fully deserves its title as the empire of lies,” says the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

“More and more people are seeing through the layers of lies woven by the United States to cover up its own misdeeds and its inglorious way of maintaining its hegemony by smearing others,” he emphasizes.

Standoff over the Uighur issue

Beijing also accuses Washington of spreading “the lie of the century” about Chinese policy in Xinjiang (northwest China). The United States accuses China of carrying out a “genocide” in this vast region long affected by bloody attacks attributed to Islamists and separatists – mainly from the Uyghur Muslim ethnic group. For several years, Xinjiang has been the subject of a draconian security policy carried out in the name of anti-terrorism.