(Beijing) China has accused the United States of being an “empire of lies”, after the publication of a report it considers “biased” from American diplomacy which claims 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 “information manipulation operations abroad”.
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 statement 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 is itself the pioneer of information warfare aimed at public opinion,” he accused.
He 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 UN Security Council in 2003 to denounce Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.
“Facts have proven time and again that the United States richly 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.
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.
More than a million Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minorities are or have been detained, according to Western studies taken up by human rights organizations. Beijing strongly denies these allegations.