World News : China hits back at critical U.S. human rights report

BEIJING (World News) - China hit back on Friday at the U.S. State Department's annual survey of human rights, saying that only the Chinese people could pass judgment on what the Foreign Ministry said were the country's obvious achievements in the area.

Asked about criticism of China in the report, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei condemned it for being prejudiced.

"The United States State Department's annual report on human rights maligns other countries, and the content concerning China ignores the facts and is filled will prejudice, confusing black and white," he told a daily news briefing.

Since the launch of landmark economic reforms more than three decades ago, Hong said: "China's human rights endeavors have made achievements that are plain for all the world to see. The Chinese people themselves have the most right to speak about China's human rights situation".

"In human rights, there is no such thing as the best; there is only doing even better," he added.

Human rights have long been a source of friction between China and the United St ates, especially since 1989 when the United States and other Western countries imposed sanctions on China after a crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.

China rejects criticism of its rights' record, saying providing food, clothing, housing and economic growth are far more relevant for developing countries like it, pointing to its success at lifting millions out of poverty.

Hong said each country could exchange views and lessons on human rights through "dialogue on an equal footing".

"By no means should these issues be used as tools to meddle in the domestic affairs of other countries. We hope that the United States will truly take a long, hard look at itself and put an end to its mistaken ways and thinking."

The Xinhua state news agency said the United States' own human rights problems showed it was "way off the moral high gr ound needed to make its argument convincing", giving the example of civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Official statistics and media reports showed that in recent years the numbers of the poor, hungry and homeless in the United States were on the rise, rampant violent crimes continued to plague the U.S. society, and racial and gender discrimination remained deeply entrenched," it said in an English commentary.

"CORROSIVE INFLUENCE"

The State Department said in its lengthy section on China the government had stepped up efforts to silence activists and rights lawyers, with authorities resorting to extra-legal measures including enforced disappearance and house arrest.

Under an "arbitrary arrest" section, the State Department catalogued harassment of blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng, who arrived in New York last w eekend after weeks at the centre of a U.S.-China standoff following his dramatic escape from house arrest and flight to the U.S. embassy in Beijing.

Chen, who is preparing to study at the New York University School of Law, has voiced fears his family and supporters will suffer more abuse.

In an interview with World News on Thursday, the self-taught lawyer urged the Chinese government to prosecute "lawless" officials who he said harassed and abused him, his family and supporters, saying such prosecutions could help China establish the rule of law.

While not naming Chen, China's top state newspaper accused the United States and other Western powers in two commentaries on Friday of exploiting human rights tension in a bid to subvert Communist Party rule and hobble the country's rise.

In one of the commentaries, researchers from a People's Liberation Army university demanded "high vigilance and precautions against the corrosive influence on our country of Western 'exporting of democracy and human rights'."