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 Both U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and U.S. ambassador to
China Max Baucus issued statements on Wednesday to mark
International Human Rights Day in which they mentioned cases such as
the imprisoned Chinese Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said it was hypocritical
of the United States to do this considering its own poor record, in
apparent reference to recent protests over the killings of unarmed
black men and a U.S. Senate report on the torture of detainees after
the Sept. 11 attacks.
"The United States has no right to pose as arbiters and at every
turn point their fingers at other countries' human rights as racism
and mistreatment of prisoners and other serious problems in the
United States are facts now known to all," Hong told a daily news
briefing.
 China and the United States often spar about each other's human
rights records, and on Wednesday, Beijing urged Washington to
"correct its ways" following the torture report.
China's criticism of the United States has come in the same week
that a Chinese court handed down sentences of up to eight years in
prison to seven students of jailed scholar Ilham Tohti, a member of
the Muslim Uighur minority, in the western region of Xinjiang, in a
case that has attracted concern in the West.
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The United States was ignoring the facts about the great strides
China has made to improve human rights, Hong said.
"The United States is not looking at the facts and intentionally
smearing China's rights situation, exposing even more the U.S.
hypocrisy and double standards on the issue of human rights," he
added.
"We advise the U.S. side to reflect on and correct its own human
rights problems and stop their unwarranted attacks on China."
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Ryan Woo)
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