The State Council Information Office issued a report on Sunday titled Human Rights Record of the United States in 2012. This is the 14th consecutive time that China has hit back at Washington's yearly assessment of human rights around the world.

China observers are paying close attention to this war of words over human rights, which has long been a source of tension between the two largest economies.

In the past couple of years, there has been a subtle change in the international rivalry over the human rights issue.

In October 2012, Russia's Duma, the lower house of parliament, for the first time, held a three-hour hearing on US human rights abuses and issued its first annual report criticizing US human rights violations.

Last year there was also a wave in which various countries, including China, Russia, Singapore, Venezuela, Cuba and Colombia, questioned the credibility of Washington's judgment of worldwide human rights conditions.

The human rights issue is a worldwide problem, and it seems that both the offensive and defensive positions in this arena are gradually shifting.

The double standards that Washington has been exploiting on human rights are clear-cut in its latest report as well.

For instance, the report slams "deteriorating" human rights in China and Vietnam while approving significant progress in Myanmar which is "in a historic transition toward democracy." The assessment is a well-manipulated political tool.

As to China specifically, there is an increasingly evident contrast between the human rights conditions that the US accuses it of and those which the Chinese themselves feel in everyday life.

Washington ignores the general tendency of human rights record in China, but instead picks out several individual dissidents and from them concludes China's "systematic" use of laws to silence individuals and suppress freedom.

As experts have pointed out, among various strategic cards the US has against China, a consistent human rights attack is the most cost-effective one.

But the Chinese should not be overly bothered by these periodic accusations.

On the one hand, we should be open-minded to external criticism, which can be integrated into the driving force of domestic progress. There is certainly vast room for us to solve domestic problems and improve human rights. This will also help ease off strategic pressure from Washington.

But on the other hand, we should stay cool-headed as China cannot abandon its political characteristics.

After all, the nation will never meet the standard set by Washington in the human rights issue, for Washington's standard literally means to transplant the US model and accomplishments with its own will.