Sanctions based on lies lay bare the West's intent: China Daily editorial

No matter how many Western countries impose sanctions on senior Chinese officials for alleged human rights abuses in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, it does not alter the fact that such claims are false; based on nothing but lies and disinformation.

The sanctions imposed by the European Union, with Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States quickly following suit, are motivated purely by the desire to cause trouble for China by interfering in its internal affairs.

China's measures to prevent Xinjiang from being destabilized by extremists and separatists, and to promote the development of the region are not only in the national interest, but the interest of all who live in the region as well. They are being misrepresented and distorted simply to vilify China.

The reason that such pernicious distortions of the facts can win a stage and ostensibly be a spur for policymaking in the West is because the Uygur secessionists, extremists and terrorists and the anti-China forces share the same putrid ambition to ruin Xinjiang and the rest of China.

These sanctions against China over Xinjiang should be strongly condemned by the rest of the international community, as they are further evidence that the West is still willing to undermine the peace and stability of other countries, as it has done in the Middle East and elsewhere, to promote its geopolitical and capitalist interests.

That's why Chinese Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Qin Gang summoned the head of the EU's delegation to China to protest against and severely condemn the EU's move on Monday, and why the tit-for-tat countermeasures China took on the same day to sanction 10 EU officials and scholars, and four entities that have played ugly roles in making up the so-called human rights issues in Xinjiang are timely and justified.

While the US, the UK and Canada have set out and established their anti-China stalls, the EU should not be enticed to join their hawking. It should not turn a blind eye to the development achievements of Xinjiang, and the remarkable progress it has made in protecting human rights which were recognized and endorsed by more than 80 countries in a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

China has refuted the groundless media and research reports on Xinjiang fabricated by some Western countries based on the words of Uygur interviewees who have invariably proved to be secessionists or advocates of extremism and terrorism funded by anti-China forces from the US and some European countries.

Imposing the sanctions on China to check its rise is like a mantis trying to stop a chariot by raising its forelegs. China's determination to stick to its own path will only be further consolidated by the conspiracies of anti-China forces.

Whether judged by population scale or the trend of the world, the Western world does not represent global public opinion. The West talks of China undermining the rules-based order with its actions. But as the sanctions show, that order is where the West's might makes right and damn the consequences.