Is the US really a beacon of freedom for people?

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in his recent speech at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, negated every aspect of China-US relations, maliciously attacked the leadership of the Communist Party of China and China's political system, and attempted to drive a wedge between the CPC and the Chinese people. He also wantonly criticized China's domestic and foreign policies, spread the so-called "China threat", and called for an anti-China alliance to contain China's development.

Pompeo's baseless, fact-distorting speech misrepresents history and the reality. It is full of ideological prejudice and driven by a Cold-War mentality. His remarks have not only been condemned by the Chinese people, but also criticized and opposed by sensible people in the United States as well as the international community.

To debunk the lies fabricated by Pompeo, let the facts speak for themselves.

Rumor: Mike Pompeo: The United States is a beacon of freedom for people all around the world, including people inside of China.

Fact:

The United States proclaims itself as a "beacon of freedom," which is no more than an illusion that deceives both its people and the world. According to a survey conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 80 percent of Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction, an all-time high in AP-NORC surveys. According to a poll published by the Pew Research Center on July 1, only 12 percent of Americans say they are satisfied with the way things are going in the country, while 87 percent say they are dissatisfied, and most Americans are dissatisfied with how the government operates. According to a Gallup poll, American pride has reached the lowest point in two decades, with only 20 percent of Americans satisfied with the way things are going in their country. Extreme pride among whites has fallen below 50 percent for the first time and non-whites 24 percent.

-- The United States is highly unpopular around the globe, as only one third of people across the world acknowledge the United States' leading position. A survey by the European Council on Foreign Relations shows that people from multiple countries are losing their trust in the United States. Researchers conducted the survey among 11,000 people from nine European countries, and over two thirds of respondents from Germany, France, Spain and Denmark said that their views of the United States have worsened. The country's reputation dropped particularly drastically in France and Germany, as 46 percent of French respondents and 42 percent of German respondents said the United States' image has "severely worsened" due to COVID-19. The 2020 Best Countries report also showed that the world's trust in the United States has dropped by more than 50 percent since 2016, the sharpest drop of any country assessed in the report.

-- An annual survey report published by Gallup on July 27 showed that "US leadership remains unpopular worldwide." The "free world" proclaimed by the United States, in particular, disapproves US leadership. The approval of US leadership is at its lowest among the country's traditional allies in Europe, where 61 percent of respondents disapprove of its performance, and only 24 percent approve of it. In the United Kingdom, the figure is 65 percent disapprove, with a similar outcome in France. In Germany, the US stature is even worse, as 78 percent disapprove the leadership coming from Washington. In Australia, whose government follows closely its US counterpart, there is deep skepticism about the United States as well, with 67 percent disapproving its performance.

-- Tara D. Sonenshine, former US undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs and currently a fellow in public diplomacy at the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs, recently said that the United States is losing its global leadership, with its international reputation hitting the bottom and its allies giving up on it. Over the past few years, many of the key policies put forward by the United States are broadly unpopular around the globe, especially the "America-first" principle which provoked discontent among many of its allies. According to a new Pew Research Center survey spanning 37 nations, just 20 percent of the respondents has confidence in Trump to do the right thing when it comes to international affairs.

-- US citizens' personal dignity and privacy suffer systematic violation. The Dallas Morning News reported last December that Texas is home to eight secretive surveillance centers, supported jointly by federal, state and local law enforcement departments, which share information and monitor social media and other online forums for potential threats. A report of the US Government Accountability Office released in June 2019 said that the FBI's Facial Analysis, Comparison, and Evaluation Services Unit may search at its will in the database of over 641 million face photos without any legal permission.

-- The United States lacks sufficient protection of ethnic minorities' human rights and fundamental freedoms. Ethnic minorities in the country suffer bullying and exclusion, facing long-term, widespread and systematic discrimination in the political, economic, cultural and social areas. For American Indians alone, the US government, for a long time, implemented compulsory policies of ethnic extinction, isolation and assimilation against them.

In nearly 100 years after the United States of America was founded, the country drove out and killed American Indians on a large scale during the Westward Movement. By the beginning of the 20th century, the number of American Indians within the border of the United States dropped sharply to 250,000 from five million in 1492. Currently, American Indians only account for two percent of the country's total population.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, African Americans are over four times more likely to catch the disease than white Americans, with much higher mortality rates as well, highlighting racial inequality in the country. Fatal police shootings are not uncommon either, with the number of such cases reaching 1,004 in 2019 alone. Among the 7,036 bias-induced hate crime cases reported by US law enforcement agencies in 2018, 57.5 percent were motivated by a race, ethnicity or ancestry bias. Furthermore, of hate crimes motivated by race, ethnicity or ancestry, 46.9 percent were against African Americans. African Americans accounted for 47.1 percent of the 5,155 victims of race-based hate crimes. On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, an African American man in the state of Minnesota, was killed by a white police officer, triggering large-scale protests across the United States. The United Nations Human Rights Council held an urgent debate and adopted a resolution, strongly condemning the incident and calling for the United States to take concrete measures to protect the human rights and fundamental freedoms of African Americans.

-- The United States has the widest wealth gap among Western countries. In January 2017, the Business Insider published a chart by Torsten Slok, Deutsche Bank's chief international economist, which showed the share of US household wealth by income level. Notably, the top 0.1 percent of households hold about the same amount of wealth as the bottom 90 percent. From 1989 to 2018, the bottom 50 percent of families saw basically no net increase in their wealth. In light of COVID-19, employers in the United States have laid off tens of millions of employees since this February, dealing a particularly heavy blow to low-income workers and dragging the employment rate 35 percent lower than the pre-COVID-19 level.

-- The United States suppresses the media and restricts freedom of the press. The Washington Post reported in April 2019 that for the third time in three years, the United States' standing in an annual index of press freedom declined. In 2019, 38 journalists in the country suffered attacks; journalists were rejected from attending government open events for 28 times; and nine journalists were arrested or faced criminal charges. Media organizations including The New York Times and The Hill in the United States and The Guardian in the United Kingdom frequently reported news of journalists being attacked or arrested while reporting the protests concerning George Floyd, with 148 journalists involved from May 26 to June 2 alone -- 40 journalists were shot by gun; 34 physically assaulted by police; 33 arrested or detained; and one female photojournalist even permanently lost vision in her left eye after being shot by a rubber bullet. A report by The Guardian in December last year said the current US administration "has dealt the most sustained assault on press freedom in US history."

-- Abusing the concept of national security, the US administration uses national resources to smear, attack, encircle and contain Chinese private companies including Huawei, ByteDance and Tencent, forbid US service providers from purchasing equipment made by Huawei and ZTE, and ban Chinese social media applications such as TikTok and WeChat. The acts violate market principles of fair and free competition. This is sheer daylight robbery. How can such a country serve as the beacon for the Chinese people?

-- On July 25, The Atlantic published an article titled "Pompeo's surreal speech on China" by Thomas Wright, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He pointed out that Pompeo said the United States will organize the "free world" while alienating and undermining the "free world." Pompeo extolled democracy while aiding and abetting its destruction at home in the United States. Pompeo praised the Chinese people while generalizing about the ill intent of Chinese students who want to come to America. Pompeo's tirade will discredit the case for competition with China among US allies, in Asia and Europe, who are petrified of a full-blown Cold War between the United States and China, Wright said.