Hua Chunying File photo:CGTN

 The so-called “Xinjiang Uygur question,” is nothing but a strategic US plot to destabilize China from the inside, as former US senior official Lawrence Wilkerson has admitted, said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying on Friday.

“It’s time to end the ‘drama’ from the US side,” she noted.

Hua showed journalists at the ministry’s regular press conference on Friday a video of Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired US Army Colonel and former chief of staff to US Secretary of State Colin Powell, giving a speech in August 2018. 

If the CIA wanted to destabilize China, that would be the best way to do it – to form unrest, and join with Uygurs in putting pressure on China internally rather than from outside, the video showed Wilkerson saying.

Wilkerson’s remarks echoed comments from former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a lecture in April 2019. The CIA “lied, cheated, stole,” he said, and “had entire training courses” devoted to such tactics. “This is what the US says and does,” Hua noted.

This shows the unseemly role played by the US and some of its allies and a few media outlets when they attack China, Hua said. Colluding with anti-China forces, they make groundless rumors against China, she added.

Now the US and some of its Western Allies are targeting Xinjiang’s cotton, saying that there are “crimes” including forced labor, forced sterilization and even genocide. They have also imposed sanctions on Chinese institutions and personnel with these excuses, Hua said.

Probably out of ideological bias, they would rather believe the lies fabricated by a small number of anti-China forces than listen to the common aspirations of more than 25 million people of various ethnic groups in Xinjiang. They are reluctant to face up to the basic fact of the region’s development and progress, Hua noted.

“So, after seeing the Wilkerson video, do they trust the words of their own top officials?” Hua asked.

Facts have proved time and again that the Xinjiang question is not an ethnic, religious or human rights issue, but a case of fighting against separatism, violence, terrorism and interference, Hua said. The US cooked up the so-called “Xinjiang problem” not because it cares about Uygur people, but to undermine China’s security and stability, and to hinder its development and growth, she said.

Otherwise, the US wouldn’t attack several Muslim countries after 9/11 in the name of combating terrorism, and nor would it enact the Muslim travel ban, or discriminate against its domestic minority groups including Muslims, Hua said.

Hua gave other examples of efforts by the US and its Western allies to stir up conflict.

In 2003, the US launched military strikes against Iraq on the grounds that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction,” which caused hundreds of thousands of casualties and left more than one million people homeless. Years later, the US admitted that there was little evidence for the so-called “weapons of mass destruction.”

In 2018, countries including the US, the UK and France launched air strikes against Syria on the grounds that “Syrian government used chemical weapons against its people,” which was also based on dubious evidence.

In 2019, the CIA and its “white glove” groups including the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) sponsored and instigated anti-China separatists in Hong Kong to riot in the city and violently storm the local Legislative Council (LegCo) building. 

“I want to warn the US that today’s China is not Iraq, nor Syria, nor the late Qing Dynasty (1644–1911) under the ‘Eight-Nation Alliance’ forces,” Hua said, noting that Chinese people have sufficient determination, will and capability to resolutely safeguard China’s sovereignty and security, and to defend national interests and dignity.

China is open and aboveboard, and facts will expose all the malicious lies and rumors, said Hua.


Global Times