URUMQI, July 6 (Xinhua) -- No matter how hard the United States tries to spin it, the laws it imposed in recent years regarding the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in northwest China are nothing more than a crude and nasty web of lies.
The world has already realized that Washington's plan to use human rights as a tool to defame China, stifle its development, and maintain the waning U.S. hegemony lies beneath the so-called "Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act" and other similar laws.
These laws are fundamentally founded on outright lies. The immense strides Xinjiang has made in advancing human rights and improving the lives of its citizens have conclusively shown that claims of "genocide" and "forced labor" are completely untrue.
A few simple examples suffice to illustrate the point. The Uygur population in Xinjiang grew from over 8.3 million in 2000 to over 11.6 million in 2020, and the region's average life expectancy rose from less than 30 years in 1949 to 74.7 in 2019. From 1978 to 2020, the per capita disposable income of urban and rural residents in Xinjiang both saw an increase of over 100 times.
Those facts are well-documented and conspicuous to all open and fair minds. In recent years, more than 2,000 government officials, religious personnel, and journalists from over 100 countries and organizations have visited Xinjiang. What they have seen is a peaceful Xinjiang with steady development.
Ironically, as regards to forced labor, the University of Denver has disclosed that there are currently at least 500,000 people living under modern slavery and forced labor in the United States. The country is also the only UN member that has not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Even on its pet subjects of freedom of press and speech, Washington is glaringly hypocritical. For instance, while revving up its rumor-mongering propaganda machines on Xinjiang, the United States has been trying to silence and sideline anyone brave enough to challenge its narrative.
As a matter of fact, what the United States truly cares about, as has become increasingly clear, is how to contain China and maintain its own hegemony.
Lawrence Wilkerson, the chief of staff to former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, once publicly confessed that the best way for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to destabilize China would be "to foment unrest" in Xinjiang.
Washington is driving itself into a frenzy, frequently to the point where it is oblivious to the consequences of its actions. This includes distributing false information, enacting absurd laws, inflaming ethnic tensions, and banning products from Xinjiang.
But China has continued to grow, and Xinjiang has continued to prosper. Ironically, those conspiracies have only helped the world recognize the United States for what it truly is: an empire of lies. ■
