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Again, the United States has performed its Art of Slander against China.

"The Chinese government has invested billions of dollars to spread propaganda and twist the global information environment," U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed at the third "Summit for Democracy" in South Korea this week, groundlessly accusing China of "buying cable TV platforms in Africa and excluding international news channels from subscription packages."

Pouring dirty water on Beijing, Washington has not provided any single piece of evidence. The so-called "Summit of Democracy" is, in essence, a gathering that the Biden administration initiated to confront countries it deems as rivals – or in Washington's words "autocracies." "Democracy" is an empty slogan that the Biden administration has repeatedly shouted to woo allies in its pursuit of camp confrontation.

Thus, Blinken's words on China are unsurprisingly full of blatant lies.

But Blinken has rightly pointed out that the challenge of disinformation "has become increasingly complicated and increasingly consequential," and that "state and non-state actors are undermining the objective truths on which open societies depend." Interestingly, the Secretary of State has failed to remind the world that the U.S., not China, is instead the master of disinformation.

The "democratic" U.S. has a long record of propagating disinformation, deliberately deceiving the public for selfish political goals. In the Cold War era, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) launched the Mockingbird Project, purchasing and bribing media personnel worldwide to manipulate public opinion in an attempt to pressure its rivals.

In 2003, then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell presented a test tube containing washing powder, claiming it as evidence of Iraq developing chemical weapons. The washing power eventually paved the way for Washington's invasion of Iraq. While Washington has successfully topped the regime that it disliked and American munitions merchants reaped colossal profits from arms sales, the Middle Eastern country was plunged into an abyss of misery with tens of thousands of innocent civilians losing lives.

In the 2010s, the U.S. government galvanized the White Helmets – a non-governmental organization in Syria – into making fake videos and spreading false information to smear the Bashar al-Assad government. The fabricated videos – widely spread out for "humanitarianism" purposes – turned out to be an excellent excuse for the U.S. to wage war against Syria. Again, more than 300,000 civilians were killed during the war, according to the UN Human Rights Office.

To woo support for its ally, the U.S. has again demonstrated its unrivaled skills in disinformation in covering the Gaza conflicts. A certain segment of CNN staff, according to media reports, have penned an open letter detailing how their network is heavily slanted in favor of Israel in the Gaza "genocide."

"We have a corporate media system in the United States that our government likes to pretend is separate from our government. But in fact, they're all connected to the same entities, the same massive corporate powers," said American Jewish comedian and writer Lee Camp.

China, unsurprisingly, is also a key target of Washington's disinformation campaign. As Reuters revealed this month, former U.S. President Donald Trump had authorized the CIA to launch a small team of operatives to spread negative narratives about the Chinese government and leak disparaging intelligence to overseas news outlets – in an attempt to turn public opinion against China, according to former American officials with direct knowledge of this operation.

No matter how the U.S. government has tried to label "disinformation" onto other countries, facts have proved how the U.S. has established itself as the "empire of lies" guised under the cloak of "democracy."

This is even admitted by some in the United States. "Do you know who the greatest propagator of disinformation in the history of the world is? The U.S. government!" claimed Senator Rand Paul.

Blinken pledged in Seoul that "the United States is equally focused on promoting an open, resilient information environment globally." Perhaps stopping playing the old trick of a thief crying "stop thief" will be the first step.

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