China trolls U.S. on 'arbitrary police killing of African-Americans' after U.S. human rights rebuke

China criticized America&#039;s race relations, a day after the U.S. criticized China&#039;s human rights record

(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

last updated 26 June 2015

On Thursday, the U.S. State Department released its annual report on human rights around the world, finding fault with the records of Cuba, Iran, Russia, Myanmar, and China, among other nations. In China, the report said, "repression and coercion were routine" against journalists, dissidents, ethnic minorities — Uigurs and Tibetans, especially — and lawyers that took on sensitive cases, and censorship was rampant.

China, as always, wasn't amused, and on Friday it issued its own human rights report on the United States, criticizing everything from decade-old CIA torture to campaign finance abuses to unequal pay for women to gun violence — "the U.S. was haunted by spreading guns," for example. And China's State Council Information Office spent a lot of the report poking at U.S. race relations, declaring America "a country with grim problems of racial discrimination, and institutional discrimination against ethnic minorities continued."

"Police killings of African-Americans during law enforcement have practically become 'normal' in the U.S.," China's report said, mostly citing U.S. media reports. "In 2014, multiple cases of arbitrary police killing of African-Americans have sparked huge waves of protests, casting doubts on the racial 'equality' in the U.S. and giving rise to racial hatred factors."

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You can read the entire report yourself, at China's state-run Xinhua news agency, and marvel at China's mastery of English-language trolling. The critique of America's racial record would have had more of a sting, though, if U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry hadn't brought it up himself, first. You can watch Kerry preempt China below. Peter Weber

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.