File photo: Xinhua

When China was suffering from poverty, the US and the West criticized China, saying it had a poor human rights situation. And when China eliminated absolute poverty, they still attacked China saying it had poor human rights. Why such a distorted logic?

If only the West could learn a little experience from Xinjiang's governance, it would be an improvement for de-radicalization in their own countries. But pitifully, the West's starting point is nothing but destabilizing Xinjiang, and the whole China.

Behind their recent smear campaign against Xinjiang cotton and rumors about "forced labor," the US and the West are actually afraid of seeing a peaceful and affluent Xinjiang. Their ideal strategy is for Xinjiang to remain backward and chaotic.

In some Western people's minds, the poorer Xinjiang is, the better. These Western people also hope that disputes between different ethnic groups in Xinjiang will deepen, so that Western NGOs can step in to promote so-called democracy, launch rallies, marches and instigate beating, smashing and looting in Xinjiang under the disguise of "aid." Xinjiang's turmoil would be a good opportunity for Western forces to get involved and ruin Xinjiang, as well as the stability of the entire country.

But with the Chinese government's policies, Xinjiang has stabilized and is regaining peace and prosperity. Xinjiang has not developed in accordance with the Western storyline, which was beyond the West's imagination. The West fears that an affluent Xinjiang will become a real model. When China's political system promotes economic development, people's livelihoods become better and society modernizes, isn't this human rights? In the past, terror attacks were frequent in Xinjiang. There was no peace and people were living in fear. But now, China's counter-terrorism has brought back peace and stability, and prevented Xinjiang from suffering similar chaos in Chechnya. Isn't this also a valuable experience for the West, which has also been hit by terror attacks? The hypocritical West does not want to face these problems directly.

If we formulate policies in accordance with Western values, there should be no solution to terrorism, and it should have been impossible to eliminate terrorism and absolute poverty like in Xinjiang. The US and other Western countries narcissistically believe that their values represent the values of all human beings. They really cannot think of any other way to completely defeat terrorism and successfully alleviate poverty like the way Xinjiang did. As they had no effective solution, they have also made up stories of the so-called concentration camps, genocide and forced labor according to their own record in history to make accusations against China.

To put it bluntly, a stable Xinjiang is not in the interests of Westerners, who only want to see a chaotic, divided, poor and weak Xinjiang. This is the fundamental reason of Western society to repeatedly smear Xinjiang. Through rumor-mongering and smearing, they try to force the Chinese government to give up its governance on Xinjiang and activate local separatist forces, suppressing Xinjiang's local industries and making the region poor and chaotic. They also aim to shape China's negative international image and jeopardize European and other countries' cooperation with China. 

Even Islamic countries understand China's approach without making irresponsible remarks. But the US-led Western countries have become the most active forces against Xinjiang. This is illogical. We also have enough reasons and room to tell the stories to people in Xinjiang and the Muslim world, so as to enhance China's discourse of power. Driven by geopolitical wills, Western forces attacked Xinjiang's governance, but they cannot affect it at all. 

The author is an editor of the Global Times. wangwenwen@globaltimes.com.cn