Editor's note: The U.S. State Department released its annual International Religious Freedom Report on May 15, criticizing China on religious issues with biased summaries and unverifiable data. What's the real intention of the U.S.? Why does the country keep playing the old tricks of crying "wolf" while eating the sheep? In today's Reality Check, Einar Tangen, current affairs commentator, shares his views. The commentary reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.

Hi, I'm Einar Tangen, and this is Reality Check. Accusing others of what you do is what you would expect at a grade school playground, but for the U.S., it has become its primary domestic and international strategy, a political and ideological smoke screen to divert attention from internal divisions and international failures, as it seeks to its political, economic and military hegemony in an increasingly multi-polar world.

Every day, Washington talks about the "international rules-based order." Note: Not an international law-based order. Why? Because the U.S. has always selectively made, or broken the rules according to its own interests.

In regard to China, the State Department issued its annual International Religious Freedom Report to Congress on May 15. There was a half paragraph, which admitted that there were no facts, just estimates. Unfortunately, the cites to the estimates have problems. "Due to a lack of transparency regarding law enforcement's persecution of religious followers, estimates of those imprisoned during the year for their religious beliefs ranged from the low thousands to over 10,000."

First, the report never gives a source for "over 10,000" number. Second, it cites Human Rights without Frontiers estimate of "2,649 individuals imprisoned," but no such number can be found on the foundation's website database. The misinformation was then followed by 49 pages of biased summaries of Chinese laws on religion and unverifiable anecdotes.

In my own limited experiences in China since 2000, people, while curious about Christian beliefs, tend to stick more with traditional spirituality, like Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism.

In Xinjiang, when I visited in 2014 and 2022 respectively, in spite of the extensive travels, I observed no religious persecution. I did note in 2022, the call to prayers was no longer broadcast from the mosque minarets. I was told everybody now used their phones instead. There were also fewer young adults at the mosques as well, but according to the Iman, it was because the women were working, having fewer children, but with higher ambitions, like college, for the children they had. While my account is anecdotal, it strikes me that those outside China do not see the reality inside it.

Is anybody fooled? Apparently some in the press are, the ones who breathlessly repeat, without regard to verifying facts, the absurd hypocrisies issued by their governments.

Actually, what America is doing is a form of self-justification. Even if I do terrible things, I am no different from anybody else. It's the victim's calling card and a marker of the criminal mind. As a prosecution intern and then defense attorney, every hard-core criminal always insisted that the world had been unfair to them, that they were the victims. Everyone else is just as bad, so don't blame them for trying to get even. Their only crime was getting caught.

How the U.S., the richest, most powerful political, economic and military power in the world is a victim, might surprise those in the third world who were ravaged by European and American colonialism.

In the end, it is a waste of time to try to refute a negative. It's the old game of asking questions with false premises, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" There is no answer to a false premise, and no point in listening to an unreliable country which is always crying "wolf" when it is eating the sheep.

Script: Einar Tangen

Editors: Yang Yutong, Liang Zhiqiang, Duan Jiaxin

Producer: Wang Ying

Chief editor: Li Shouen

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