Washington uses the rest of the world for its economic benefit, displaying “arrogance and prejudice,” the keynote document says
FILE PHOTO: US President Joe Biden participates in a virtual meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. © Alex Wong / Getty Images
The US has been abusing its hegemonic position in the world for decades to reap benefits for itself and sow rivalry and instability in other nations, a report published on Monday on the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s official website claims.
The document seeks to draw international attention “to the perils of the US practices to world peace and stability and the well-being of all peoples.” It offers examples of Washington’s purported selfishness in the areas of politics, the military, the economy, technology and culture.
For a century, the US has treated Latin America as its backyard, where those who resist the US face “political interference, military intervention and regime subversion,” the text claims. Elsewhere, it creates divisive blocs under its influence, and fosters “color revolutions” against opponents. Lately Washington has posited the false dichotomy of “democracies vs. autocracies” and arbitrarily labels nations as members of one of the camps.
The use of force has been a feature of US expansionism since its independence, the document says. Since 2001 alone, wars launched by Washington “in the name of fighting terrorism have claimed over 900,000 lives with some 335,000 of them civilians.”
The Pentagon has used an array of “appalling methods” of war, from biological weapons in Korea to depleted uranium munitions in more recent times, “causing… countless civilian casualties and lasting environmental pollution,” the piece notes.
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The US government has used the dollar’s status as the global reserve currency, and its influence on the international financial system, to quash competition and slap unilateral sanctions against opponents. Washington “is basically collecting ‘seigniorage’ from around the world,” and during the Covid-19 pandemic, disrupted the global economy by injecting trillions of dollars into it, the report says.
The report accuses the US of using its status as a leading technological power to conduct electronic surveillance and espionage, including against its closest allies, as well as cyberwarfare, noting that having the leverage of big tech companies allows the US government to censor speech online and push its narratives on a global scale, while silencing critics.
The document concludes that the US should do some “soul-searching” and change its approach, as “the historical trends of peace, development, cooperation, and mutual benefit are unstoppable.”
