China hits back at US after Blinken’s remarks on Tiananmen incident

China has hit back at the United States, asking Washington to face up to its own human rights violations after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s remarks on the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident.

On the eve of the anniversary of the protests, Blinken on Thursday said Washington would “honor the sacrifices of those killed 32 years ago” and continue to back Chinese activists.

On June 4, 1989, student-led protests in Beijing turned violent when the government sent in the military to deal with the turbulence. The military confronted the demonstrators who were trying to block the troops’ advance towards Tiananmen Square. Estimates of the death toll vary from several hundred to a few thousand.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin on Friday urged the US to “face up to its own serious human rights problems”, and stressed that Washington needed to hold itself to account for a range of abuses, from minorities to its treatment of migrants.

“Considering its irrefutable misdeeds on human rights, what qualifies the United States to lecture others?” he said.

In 2019, China defended government action during the Tiananmen Square incident, accusing the West of stirring up public opinion against Beijing over the matter.

China has successfully become “the world’s second-largest economy, with rapid improvement of people’s living standards” since the government’s decision to deploy troops to Tiananmen Square to disperse the protesters there on June 4, 1989, the state-run newspaper Global Times said in an editorial published in its English-language edition.

“Young people in China will get education and enlightenment from history… and continue to unswervingly follow the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics,” Wang said.

Ties between the US and China have hit the lowest in decades as the two sides are at loggerheads over a host of issues, including trade, a new security law introduced in Hong Kong, the origins and handling of the coronavirus pandemic, Chinese Taipei, and the disputed South China Sea.