Africa -China Review Africa -China Cooperation and Transformation
Published: May 07,2024
By Gerald Mbanda
A homeless encampment on a sidewalk in San Francisco, California, United States on September 2, 2023. (TayfunCoskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images). Story by Fox News Published November 11, 2023.
When one reads stories in western media on human rights in China, it is quite the opposite of what you see when you visit China. According to western human rights organizations like Human rights Watch, Amnesty International and others, China is ranked among the worst human rights violators in the world. However, the reality is that China is among the safest countries in the world with its people enjoying the best socio-economic amenities provided by the government.
When one reads the 2024 Human Rights Watch (HRW)report about China, it clearly reflects a political witch hunt meant to tarnish the image of China against the international community. “Ten years into President Xi Jinping’s rule, repression deepens across the country,” HRW report 2024 says. When there is repression in any country, there is resentment among the people. I have travelled in many parts of China and instead, I met people who are happy and supportive of the achievements of Communist Party of China (CPC) led government, led by president Xi Jinping.
The World Bank Report 2022 notes that, “over the past 40 years, the number of people in China with incomes below $1.90 per day – the International Poverty Line as defined by the World Bank to track global extreme poverty– has fallen by close to 800 million. With this, China has contributed close to three-quarters of the global reduction in the number of people living in extreme poverty. At China’s current national poverty line, the number of poor fell by 770 million over the same period.”
Such miraculous record of poverty alleviation unmatched in human history so far, should alone place China among the first country in the world to place such opportunity to millions of people to improve their living standards. China puts the well-being of its people first, and their governance model is people centred. If this is not considered as an act of protecting human rights, then this calls into question what the west bases on to measure observance of human rights. Secondly, in the different parts of China that I visited, Inever found homeless people such as those found living on the streets of western countries.
In 2023, when President Xi Jinping visited the US for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit (APEC), the Fox Newspaper published on November 11, 2023, ran a headline, “California City removes homeless in beautification before Biden’s summit with Chinese President Xi. You can imagine the richest country in the world hiding homeless people from the eyes of visitors is like sweeping the dirt under the carpet. The house remains unclear. The fact that the homeless people were removed from the streets did not solve the problem neither did it change anything on what the world already knows.
During the COVID 19 pandemic, the US came as number one with most cases and the highest number of deaths, despite having advancement medical facilities. A total of more 11 million cases and more than one million deaths were recorded. Many of those who died were from poor neighborhoods with no financial means to afford specialized healthcare. To the contrary, the Chinese government cared for everyone irrespective of the financial status and recorded 503,302 cases with 5,272 deaths.
In general, the Chinese government has established a healthcare insurance system that covers almost 96% of the population. This system includes basic medical insurance conducted by the government and commercial health insurance provided by various companies. By 2025, China’s basic pension insurance coverage is projected to reach 95 percent. This is tangible evidence that China cares for the fundamental human rights of her people.
The HRW report, 2024, criticizes China’s Belt and Road initiative as well as the Global Security Initiative, Global Development Initiative and Global Civilization Initiative, claiming that each is designed to challenge existing global governance, security and human rights norms and institutions. It is only perplexing as to how the above initiatives constitute to violation of human rights.
The fact is that the US policy makers believe that they are the best at everything and their position on all aspects should be the global standard to be followed by other countries. The fear of the US is one, that China initiatives are challenging The US hegemony, calling for cooperation and inclusivity for a much safer world, shared development, and respect for one another and creating a multipolar world.
In terms of security, China is far much safer than all western countries combined. In all the cities that I have visited so far in China, I never came across any case of gun violence, mass shootings and police brutality against civilians. In 2023, there were more than 630 mass shootings across the US and on average; morethan 50 people are killed each day by a firearm in the US.
According to crime rates and statistics 1960-2024 Macrotrends, China is rated at 4.9 and ranked 97th, while the US is rated at 88.8 and ranked the first, (18 times more than China). The general crime rate in China is ranked as very low at 19.56, despite having the largest population in the world, while the US crime index is as high as 47.56. It is evidently clear that people in China are better protected and safer that those ling in the US.
Have you ever asked yourself why the west wants to beseen as the watchdog of human rights in the world and uses it as a political tool against other countries? When you look at the political history of these countries, they have the worst human rights record in the world. Take for example the US and Canada. These are countries that massacred the indigenous people and forcefully occupied their land. In the US, over the period of the Atlantic Slave Trade, from 1526 to 1867, some 12.5 million captured men, women, and children were shipped out of Africa and 10.7 million are estimated to have reached the Americas. IN Europe, countries Portugal, Spain, Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden were all involved in the worst violation of human rights which was slave trade. Between 1662 and 1807 British and British colonial ships purchased an estimated 3,415,500 African slaves.
In Germany, during World War between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population. The killing was named the Holocaust, which is the genocide of European Jews. The murders were carried out primarily through mass shootings and poison gas in extermination camps,mainly, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibbor and Chełmno in occupied Poland. In Africa, between 1904 and 1907, Germany military forces committed genocide against the Herero and Namapeople in Namibia to gain control over their land.
The Berlin Conference of (1884-1885) recognized the sovereignty of King Leopold II of Belgium over the Free State of the Congo which is the current day Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). King Leopold ruled the Congo as his personal property from 1885 to 1908. During this period, the country was forced to experience systematic exploitation of its natural resources, especially ivory and rubber. According to historical documentation, between five and 10 million people died as a result of the colonial exploitation under the rule and administration of King Leopold II and his functionaries. There was no condemnation of such inhuman acts.
When South Africans under the Africa National Congress (ANC) were fighting against the white minority racist Apartheid regime, the US and European countries supported the Apartheid regime. Thousands of Africans were killed between 1948 and 1989, and western human rights organizations did not condemn this as human rights violation; meaning that Africans were not considered as humans. Nelson Mandela who led anti-Apartheid movement was considered by US and European countries as a terrorist. Even when Apartheid was defeated and Nelson Mandela became the present of South Africa, he remained on US terror watch list until 2008. The US government was wellaware that the apartheid system in South Africa was not democratic yet they supported it and Western human rights organizations did not raise an accusing finger, simply because Apartheid was against Communism.
China is not a perfect country. It has challenges like any other and such challenges are handled in the interest of the people, rather than working against them. China never colonized other countries and never engaged in slave trade. For the west to be respected by other civilizations, it should not hide its own wrong doings and find courage to blame others. “You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” The wise quote above is not mine, but read from the Holy Bible in the book of Mathew chapter 7 verse 5.
When Human Rights Organizations like HRW were set up, the primary objective was not about promoting human rights globally, it was about covering up human rights violations of the west both past and present. Today, the west also uses the human rights notion as a political weapon against countries they perceive as their enemies, not subscribing to their interests. A lie told and repeated so many times does not become the truth.
Gerald Mbanda is a Researcher and publisher on China and Africa.
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