A Chinese government panel recently invited gun control activists from the United States, along with diplomats and human rights activists for a hearing in Beijing on gun violence in the U.S.
In an article that appeared Wednesday on China’s state-run Global Times, China’s Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) conducted a hearing to determine whether the U.S. is safe enough for Chinese students and companies to continue their respective studies and business transactions within the U.S.
The article describes how Chinese human rights groups are also considering various efforts against the U.S. for what they have identified as a problem with guns. One proposal under consideration is a bill, the “US Human Rights and Democracy Act,” focused on solving the U.S. gun violence problem and submitting two separate annual reports to the Chinese government to urge the U.S. government to “attach greater importance to human rights issues.”
In another proposal for action, human rights activists reportedly considered preparing programs to bolster the efforts of U.S. anti-gun activists.
“Since Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, the debate over gun control has never ceased among Americans. Yet seven score and 14 years later, people in the country can still purchase guns easily in supermarkets,” authors of the Global Times article wrote.
The article breaks down U.S. gun culture in various statistical figures; such as comparing the number of U.S. guns, 393 million, to the U.S. population of 329 million.
“What’s more important: human rights or human life?” the article asks.
Despite the various proposals before the Chinese government, the article determined that China will ultimately decline to put any of them into practice.
“China is not a hegemon, nor will it seek hegemony. Even when China overtakes the US as the world’s largest economy, Beijing will not impose its political will on others,” the article reads.
Despite this apparent principle of non-interference, the article says the U.S. does not reciprocate the same principal.
“Some members of the US Congress, despite being very young, are used to the US hegemonic mind-set, pretending to be the ‘savior’ of the world,” the article explains. “At a congressional hearing on Tuesday, some US politicians invited young leaders of violent riots in Hong Kong, including Joshua Wong Chi-fung, to discuss the human rights issues in the city and the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019, which interferes in China’s domestic affairs.”
The Hong Kong protests described by the article came about as a result of activists rejecting a proposal to extradite Hong Kong citizens and even foreign visitors back to mainland China for criminal hearings in courts dominated by the Chinese Communist Party.
The bill has been seen by protesters as interference in Hong Kong’s governing and economic autonomy from the Chinese mainland.
Though Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam has pledged to withdraw the controversial extradition bill, protests have continued amid skepticism of Lam’s intentions and complaints against the brutal police tactics employed against protesters.
A Hong Kong police Union has recently called for the use of live ammunition against violent protesters, according to Radio Free Asia.
