China expressed "strong dissatisfaction and opposition" Tuesday to a U.S. State Department report denouncing the country for what Washington said was a long list of human rights violations.
The annual report, released Monday, said China had maintained its less-than-stellar record, which included "instances of extrajudicial killings, torture and mistreatment of prisoners, forced confessions, arbitrary arrest and detention, lengthy incommunicado detention and denial of due process."
But the report also credited the government for releasing a number of prominent dissidents and granting permission for senior representatives of the Dalai Lama to visit China.
At a regularly scheduled briefing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao vehemently dismissed the report as having "no regard to the facts."
"We wish to express our strong dissatisfaction and opposition. We have been protecting and promoting human rights and basic freedom," Liu said. "We have made great strides forward.
"We would like to use the opportunity to ask the United States not to interfere in other peoples' internal affairs, not to have a double standard and not to lose the trust of the people around the world."
The U.S. government usually attempts to censure China on human rights at the annual meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva, now in its third week.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell declined on Monday to say whether Washington will introduce a China resolution at the commission meeting.
China routinely rejects scrutiny of its human rights record as interference in its affairs. But the communist government has begun in recent years to acknowledge a need for change albeit on Chinese terms and to accept foreign technical advice on improving its courts and some other institutions, which includes guidance aimed at improving respect for human rights.
In December, China agreed to invite U.N. investigators to study issues of torture, religious freedom and arbitrary detention a sign that the communist government might be serious about trying to improve its human rights record.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Lorne Craner, who was visiting Beijing, said Chinese officials also promised to invite leaders of a U.S. government-financed commission on religious freedom. No dates were set.
The new state department report, which covers almost 200 countries, also mentioned the Israeli and Palestinian authorities, the Eritrean government and Uzbekistan.