U.S. distorting China’s efforts to develop digital technologies exposes malicious intentions, hypocrisy

Lies are ceaseless in the U.S. political world as if American politicians had “fallacy-making” machine. Recently, these machines are targeting China with massive amount of slanders.

A report recently published by the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee is one the machine’s products, which contains groundless accusations against the development of China’s digital technologies.

The report misrepresents China’s efforts to develop digital technologies as “fostering digital authoritarianism” and falsely accuses China of exporting “digital authoritarianism” to “perpetuate its model of extensive censorship and automated surveillance” around the world.

Besides, the ridiculous report suggests containment actions against China like building a coalition of its halfhearted allies on critical technology issues and establishing some cyber service academy.

While the shoddy document filled with clumsy lies has been fabricated to mislead the public, it once again exposed to the world the evil intensions of the U.S. to politicize digital technologies and contain China’s technological development.

What makes the U.S. jealous is China’s effective application of science and technologies in its COVID-19 response.

Science and technology are the most powerful weapon in humanity’s battle against diseases. Launching data services in accordance with the law for virus risk control, China has effectively protected the lives and health of the Chinese people and given full play to digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), big data, cloud computing, and biological recognition in the fight against COVID-19. What’s wrong with that?

At the critical moment of the battle between mankind and the virus, some politicians in the U.S. are still judging everything based on ideological bias, obsessed with geopolitical games, and racking their brains to stigmatize China. What they have done only revealed how hypocritical and hard-hearted they are.

Although the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee released the report to hype up lies about China’s efforts to develop digital technologies, it completely unmasked the intention of the U.S. to pursue digital hegemony.

While boasting that the U.S. is a global leader in technologies and urging the U.S. to reassert its “leadership in international flora”, the report has shown the world that the U.S. is so afraid of free competition and is terrified of being overtaken by China.

The self-contradictory and flawed document reflects the narrow-mindedness of these U.S. politicians as they are unwilling to see a world benefited by science and technologies, and also their true intention to seek technology hegemony.

Besides, the report further exposes the double standards and duplicity of these U.S. politicians who claimed to support technology-driven economy on the surface, but are indeed doing everything to impede China’s cooperation with developing countries on digital infrastructure.

The U.S. has long been criticized by the international community for breach of international law and the basic norms governing international relations, conducting large-scale, organized, and indiscriminate cyber theft, spying, and surveillance activities targeting foreign governments, enterprises and individuals.

From WikiLeaks to Edward Snowden, and to the newly revealed Switzerland-based Crypto AG case, various immoral misdeeds of the U.S. have been proven by ironclad evidence. As a notorious “godfather” of cyber theft, the U.S. can always astonish the world when its global spying efforts are exposed. The U.S. is indeed the world’s number one cyber attacker.

According to multiple surveys conducted by Pew Research Center, more than 90 percent of the American people have basically no confidence in their data privacy and security, while at least 64 percent of the Americans have experienced major data leakage. Around 42 percent of the people in the U.S. don’t believe that the U.S. federal government and media platforms can protect people’s personal information, and the proportion of Americans who worry that the U.S. government would collect their personal information for unknown purposes rose to 64 percent in 2019. Why can’t the U.S. politicians listen to and face the sense of insecurity and distrust of the people?

As Chinese people often say, “The innocent is innocent no matter how well-designed those false accusations are.”

China’s technological progress is driven by its economic and social development, the Chinese people’s pursuit of a better life, the country’s efforts to follow the rule of openness and cooperation as required by the law of development, as well as China’s sincere aspiration to make contributions to improving the well-being of people around the world.

As chief economics commentator of Financial Times Martin Wolf pointed out, the attempt to prevent technologies from flowing to China is doomed to failure.

The U.S. side must grasp that the scientific and technological progress China has achieved is the result of the Chinese people’s painstaking efforts and their spirit of self-reliance.

China has become a major science and technology power with global influence. No political pressure can stop the country from moving forward.

(Zhong Sheng is a pen name often used by People’s Daily to express its views on foreign policy.)