China Tells U.S. to ‘Do Some Soul-Searching’ and End ‘Systemic’ Racism

China’s Foreign Ministry demanded the United States end “systemic racial discrimination” and “do some soul-searching” on Thursday in response to news that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is reviewing a program to combat Chinese Communist Party espionage.

The DOJ’s China Initiative, launched under former President Donald Trump, is an attempt to focus law enforcement efforts on identifying Chinese government infiltration of academia and the technology and economic sectors meant to undermine the United States and enrich China’s intellectual property base. The DOJ under President Joe Biden is reportedly nearing the end of a review of the program. According to a report from Reuters this week, the Biden administration is expected to end a program focused on professors working illicitly with the Communist Party and remove “China” from the name of the “China Initiative” “amid concerns that label could fuel anti-Asian rhetoric.”

The program was launched in response to a growing number of incidents in which professors were caught illicitly working with Chinese government agents, or agents themselves were found inappropriately sharing technology and other intelligence with Beijing. {snip}

Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin described the program, and all national security protocol meant to protect the U.S. from Chinese government theft and espionage, as evidence of “systemic racial discrimination” in America.

“Both the so-called China Initiative and the rampant anti-Asian acts and words in the US boil down to its systemic racial discrimination and reflect the entrenched social problem in the US,” Wang claimed. “Statistics show that anti-Asian hate crimes rose 76 percent in 2020. A quarter of young Americans of Asian descent were targeted by racial discrimination and bullying over the last year.”

“These numbers are shocking and present a cause for widespread concern in many Asian countries and the wider international community,” Wang said {snip}

The Chinese Communist Party has repeatedly used alleged “systemic racism” – a common complaint from the American left – as a cudgel to condemn the American government while dismissing concerns about the ongoing genocide against Muslim ethnic groups it is currently perpetrating. {snip}

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