A Chinese state-run media outlet published an article this week in which select “experts” called for countries around the world to sue the U.S. for gun crimes and racial unrest that they say is causing terrorism around the world.
On Wednesday, China’s state-run Global Times tabloid cited unnamed “analysts” who said the U.S. should be treated as the “biggest producer of the terrorism” in the world. They further encourage victims around the world to sue the U.S. government through any relevant international legal institutions.
Throughout the article, the Global Times cited unnamed “analysts” and Lü Xiang — a researcher on the U.S. at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences — who argued a link between gun crimes and race-related conflict in the U.S. and violence and war around the world.
“Analysts said the U.S. government who fails to protect its own people from gun shootings and spreads chaos worldwide is the ‘biggest producer of the terrorism,’ whether within or outside the U.S.,” the Global Times article reads.
The article goes on to state, “The [U.S.] president is unable to solve the problem and the two-party political structure of Congress just makes all gun control efforts about ‘fixing the surface’ and a gun ban is impossible for the country with such a special culture and an ‘out-of-date’ Constitution, analysts said.”
Global Times then went on to quote Lü saying U.S. politicians are sincere about addressing gun violence within the country “but on the issue of weapons exports to other countries that would kill non-Americans, U.S. politicians never care, and they even try to maximize their profits.” The article then notes examples of U.S. lawmakers owning stock in U.S. and aerospace firms like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon.
“Compared to the gun business in the U.S., the arms sales around the globe is the real major profit center of the military industrial complex, and using defense cooperation with its allies to impose influence over more countries and to instigate wars and tensions in many regions to boost the international weapons market, U.S. arms sales or weapons transfers could also help terrorists and criminals worldwide, said analysts,” the Global Times article reads. “On U.S. human rights abuses like the gun issue and the racial problem, as well as the disasters it has brought to other countries like wars and chaos, some analysts said the U.N. and relevant international organizations should launch an investigation and hold the U.S. accountable.”
The Global Times article also noted current U.S. funding for Ukraine’s ongoing war with Russian forces inside Ukraine’s borders. The Chinese state-run media outlet put quotation marks around the phrase “the Russian invasion to Ukraine” implying that is a subjective term for the ongoing actions of tens of thousands of Russian forces within Ukraine’s sovereign borders. The Chinese government has, thus far, avoided referring to Russia’s actions in Ukraine as an invasion and instructed its various media outlets to avoid sharing content that is “not positive toward Russia” or that is “positive toward West.”
Global Times said U.N. Human Rights Chief Michelle Bachelet responded to a question about whether the organization would investigate allegations of human rights violations in the U.S. Bachelet reportedly said the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights presented a report at the Human Rights Council that discussed problems of racial discrimination and issues in law enforcement in many countries, including in the U.S.
Global Times also said even if the types of lawsuits that “analysts” encouraged against the U.S. did succeed, no one could force the U.S. to abide by a court decision.
“However, these legal efforts should be supported by the international community so that they could put pressure on Washington and at least restrain US hegemonic acts in the future, experts noted,” the article said.
While the entirety of the Global Times article emphasizes allegations of human rights abuses by the U.S., the article makes no mention of human rights abuse allegations against China, such as the internment and forced sterilizations of Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang province, or practices like forced labor, disappearing dissidents, torture and forced confessions.
