By Jun Sheng

At the critical juncture when the Ukraine crisis is weighing on our minds, the US, the initiator of this crisis, is picking up its old trade of blame-shifting and buck-passing in the attempt to mislead the public, scapegoat other countries, and divert attention from its accountability by fabricating and spreading disinformation.

New York Times recently quoted the so-called western intelligence agency as saying that China warned Russia not to take action in Ukraine during Beijing Winter Olympics, even claiming that China was somewhat familiar with Moscow’s military plan. Coincidentally, an unnamed American senior official reportedly told China about Russia’s plan to attack Ukraine, whose warning however fell on deaf ears. The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson solemnly dismissed such reports as fake news, saying that China firmly rejects the disinformation fabricated by the US to smear China.

It’s crystal clear why and how the Ukraine issue has evolved to what it is today – it is the US-led NATO and its aggressive actions that have, step by step, pushed the Russia-Ukraine conflict to the brink of outbreak. During the leadup to the ongoing war, Washington had kept hyping up tension and fanning up flames in Ukraine, but as soon as the fire caught on, it began to twist facts, deflect attention, and scapegoat China by making groundless accusations, pretending not to see its own blood-covered hands. What a brilliant show of lying through its teeth and pinning the blame on others!

The past few decades are a track record of America’s misdeeds on this account. In 1999, holding up the banner of “preventing a humanitarian crisis in Kosovo”, the US-led NATO blatantly bombed the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia without authorization from the UN Security Council. The then Department of State Spokesperson Rubin publicly accused Kosovo of a “racial cleansing”, which later proved to be disinformation according to NATO spokesperson Jamie Shea.

In 2003, the US and its western allies started the eight-year-long Iraqi War on the grounds that the country owned weapons of mass destruction, which, however, still haven’t been found today.

In early April 2018, several American and western media reported “chemical weapon attacks” in Douma, Syria, following which the US attacked Syria. However, a British media producer Riam Dalati said in his article on social media in 2019 that his six-month-long investigation convinced him that the so-called “chemical weapon attack” in Douma was intentionally directed and staged.

An unlimited number of facts tell us that for the US, lying is just a normal part of its daily tricks and cheating the world is a necessary sleight of hand to preserve its hegemony. Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs Rodríguez called the US adept at achieving its political goals through lying.

For some time now, the US has been calling black white, distorting facts, and concocting and spreading China-related rumors and lies in the international community to besiege and suppress China. The US government and some of its political groups and media platforms have all played a contemptible role in this.

The US government has spread rumors about China’s Xinjiang in a well-planned and well-organized manner. The news agencies under the US Agency for Global Media knocked up fake news about Xinjiang in a dozen languages and asked media outlets in American allies for wider coverage. During Trump’s term, the Republican National Committee circulated a 57-page memo to all factions in the party, which listed in great detail the anti-China assault moves and “standard answers” to be used when answering COVID-related questions.

Such tricks of confusing right and wrong and manipulating public opinions seriously deviate from the basic norms governing international relations and the human values of honesty and honor. America’s lies have been constantly debunked both by facts and visionary figures. We urge the US side to come back to its senses. Going further down the current path of lying and mudslinging will only accelerate the collapse of its credibility.