The US embassy and consulates in China have drawn ridicules and an angry backlash from netizens after posting an apparently photoshopped clothes tag that said “made by slave labor in China.”
Many netizens ridiculed the US, saying it had been dedicated to smearing China and selectively forgotten its brutality toward American Indians while groundlessly accusing other countries of human rights abuses.
The US embassy and consulates in China claimed “many products made in China are made by slave labor,” and asked businesses to check their supply chains to ensure they are not profiting from “China’s human rights abuses against Uygurs in Xinjiang” in a tweet on Sunday. It also tweeted a photo of a clothes tag in Chinese which said “made by slave labor in China.”
The US embassy’s tweet was a Chinese translation of a tweet by Morgan Ortagus, spokesperson for the US State Department, who first posted a photo of a clothes tag with the English version of “made by slave labor in China.”
The US embassy’s tweet immediately met with a backlash from netizens, who criticized the embassy for making accusations against other countries by using a photoshopped picture, and said the US embassy’s Twitter account was a purely “anti-China” account and has been working very hard in its main job of making up and spreading rumors.
“The US is now tearing off its disguise. Previously, it liked to play ‘hiding a dagger in the smile,’ but now it’s slinging mud at China and showing its true face of ferocity,” a Twitter user named Jacky commented.
One Twitter user even photoshopped the clothes tag in the embassy’s post to say that the embassy was the “rumormonger department head.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying commented on Twitter: “Such a low lie and clumsy frame-up! What a pity that Cheating, Lying, Scapegoating and Sanction have now become the name cards of Washington,” while forwarding Ortagus’ post.
“They insult their own wisdom, to which I have no objection. But we firmly oppose their use of such a low lie to stigmatize and slander China. It proves once again that some people in the US have come to the point of no bottom line in order to attack China,” Hua remarked at Monday’s media briefing.
She said that some of the false accusations made by the US side on Xinjiang are some of the biggest lies of this century.
“Has the US seen such a genocide when the population of Uygurs in Xinjiang increased from 5.5 million to 11.7 million, and has the US seen such repression of religious freedom when Xinjiang has one mosque for every 530 Muslims, more than 10 times as many as in the US?” Hua said.
Hua said she also has friends who are Uygurs, and “I know that they are very happy in Xinjiang. They breathe freely, sing and dance freely, which is totally different from the treatment of African Americans like George Floyd.”
Some netizens also reposted the tweet on Chinese social media, including Weibo, and condemned the US for selectively forgetting its own brutality against American Indians while smearing other countries.
“A slave nation that massacred Indians, took their land, and bought and sold African slaves is now groundlessly accusing other countries of using slaves. What a typical slave owner!” a Weibo user commented.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has repeatedly slammed the US for smearing Xinjiang’s human rights conditions and reiterated that Xinjiang is part of China, and its affairs are purely domestic affairs.
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