The US is trying to smear China's image and stir trouble, analysts said, as US Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday recognized 14 women for International Women for Courage Award, including Chinese activist  Ni Yulan.  

"The purpose of such an award is to demonstrate that the West supports and sides with justice, and therefore proves that China does not support justice and suppresses activists … Behind [the award] there is a hidden agenda to promote the political ideology of the West," Wang Sixin, a law professor at the Communication University of China, told the Global Times on Wednesday. 

Kerry on Tuesday recognized 14 women for the women's courage award for advocating for human rights, democracy and gender equality. One of the recipients, Ni Yulan, a Chinese activist, told the Voice of America's Mandarin service that she was barred from traveling to the US as local authorities refused to issue her a passport. 

"The fact that Kerry was present at the award ceremony shows that the award is guided by the US government with the help of the US media," Wang said. 

"The US media are in fact driven by politics and often serve US national interests," Wang noted. 

His opinion was echoed by Liu Huawen, a human rights scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. 

"The topic of human rights is an old Western trick of political correctness. They often choose to stir up stories of certain people that would spark public debate," the human rights scholar told the Global Times on Wednesday.

"Ni was an advocate against demolitions, female, disabled and a longtime dissident of the Chinese government. It's easy to label her [as a fighter] and achieve the best effect," Liu said. 

Ni, 56, is a self-proclaimed civil rights lawyer and allegedly began practicing in 1986. She was arrested twice, first in 2002 for "disrupting public services" and in 2011 for "fraud" and "trouble-making," Wu Danhong, an assistant professor at the China University of Political Science and Law, told the Global Times on Wednesday about his face-to-face talks with Ni.

According to an article published by the Southern People Weekly Magazine, prosecutors in the first trial claimed that Ni supported the use of violence to stop workers from demolishing a house and kicked a police officer in his private parts. 

Wu wrote on his blog in 2014 under the pen name Wu Fatian that he found Ni had lied about being a lawyer and faked her undergraduate and graduate degrees, after careful research.

Wu went on to question Ni's other records.