Some Western countries continue to fabricate and spread falsehoods about China and exploit human rights issues for political purposes, while failing to safeguard the well-being of their own people, revealing a clear double standard in their approach to human rights, experts said.
At the general debate of the Third Committee of the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly on Monday, Sun Lei, China’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, said representatives of the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, Ireland, the Czech Republic and Lithuania had made baseless accusations against China and maliciously smeared its human rights record in their statements. China expressed strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition to their remarks.
Sun said these countries, which regard themselves as superior to others, frequently assume the role of “human rights lecturers”. Yet, their accusations regarding China’s human rights are unfounded and, given their own serious human rights problems at home, they are in no position to lecture others on human rights.
Sun pointed out that China has consistently worked to safeguard and improve people’s livelihoods while pursuing development, eliminating absolute poverty and lifting nearly 100 million people out of poverty.
By contrast, poverty in the UK, for example, has continued to worsen in recent years, with more than 14 million people living below the poverty line, half of them in “extreme poverty”, he said.
A 2018 report by Philip Alston, then UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said 14 million people, a fifth of the UK population, lived in poverty, and 4 million of these were more than 50 percent below the poverty line, and 1.5 million destitute, unable to afford basic essentials.
A study by the British Social Metrics Commission in 2024 found the cost of living crisis had plunged 2 million more people into severe hardship since 2019, meaning more than 16 million people in total are defined as living in poverty, or 24 percent of the UK population, the highest since comparable records began in 2000.
In Japan, Sun said, the relative household poverty rate stood at approximately 15 percent, while child poverty has become an increasingly pressing issue.
Sun added that China was deeply concerned by the human rights situation in Japan.
He said China urged certain countries to stop fabricating and spreading falsehoods about China and using human rights issues for political purposes. Otherwise, they will “only end up shooting themselves in the foot”, he said.
In his second right of reply to the Japanese representative’s statement, Sun told the Japanese side that only by strictly adhering to its international obligations, thoroughly eradicating the legacy of militarism, and committing to peaceful development can it truly shed the burden of its history.
Any attempt to whitewash its history of aggression, promote the resurgence of militarism, and challenge universal principles of justice and conscience through false narratives, such as “international contributions” and “existential crises”, will inevitably face historical reckoning and the judgment of justice once again, he said.
Chen Hong, director of the Asia-Pacific Studies Center at East China Normal University, said that the West’s “double standards on human rights” are, in essence, not merely a matter of applying inconsistent standards, but rather the complete instrumentalization and weaponization of human rights.
“When it comes to countries that they see as strategic rivals, human rights issues are blown out of proportion and used as a pretext to exert pressure, impose sanctions, interfere in their internal affairs, and even orchestrate international public opinion campaigns to isolate them,” he said.
What some Western countries are truly concerned about is not human rights, but whether human rights serve their strategic interests. When human rights align with their interests, they wave the banner of human rights and when they do not, they choose to remain silent, he said.
“Human rights have been distorted from a universal value into a tool for maintaining Western political dominance and hegemony in the international discourse,” Chen said.
He noted that countries such as the UK have long portrayed themselves as “preachers” of democracy, human rights and freedom, but this sense of moral superiority is becoming increasingly unconvincing.
“The human rights diplomacy of these countries increasingly resembles a political tool, serving not primarily to advance human rights but to maintain their moral high ground and influence over the international agenda,” Chen said.
Liu Shuliang, an associate researcher at the Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences, said that Japan has turned a blind eye to its own serious human rights issues, including the wealth gap, racial discrimination, gender-based violence and elder abuse.
In recent years, Japan has also attempted to distort historical facts and evade responsibility for its acts of aggression, while continuously pushing its security policies in an offensive, expansionist, and dangerous direction. It has shed the mask of a so-called “peace-loving nation” and is attempting to return to the old path of militarism, he said.
China Daily
