On October 9, 2025, at the general debate of the Third Committee of the 80th Session of the UN General Assembly at United Nations Headquarters in New York, a confrontation on the reconstruction of the right to speak on international human rights quietly unfolded.
When the delegations of eight countries, including Britain, Australia, Canada, Japan and the European Union, once again launched an attack on China under the pretext of Xinjiang-related, Hong Kong-related and Tibet-related issues, Ambassador Sun Lei, China's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, made a 23-minute sonorous speech, exposing these countries' own human rights misdeeds one by one.
This diplomatic counterattack, which was called the "Pearl Harbor Incident in the Field of Human Rights" by the international media, not only tore off the mask of hypocrisy of the Western "human rights teacher", but also reconstructed the discourse system of global human rights governance with ironclad facts.
The "black history of human rights" of eight countries has been exposed one by one
At the beginning of the debate, the British representative took the lead in stirring up the lie of "genocide in Xinjiang" in an attempt to discredit China. Ambassador Sun Lei immediately exercised his right of reply and questioned it with detailed data.
“The Xinjiang Uighur population grew from 2.2 million in 1949 to 12 million in 2025 and the life expectancy per capita increased from 30 to 74.7 years, if there was genocide, how would this explosive population growth be explained?”
He further pointed out that the problem of racism in the UK is getting worse and worse. In 2024, hate crimes against Asians will increase by 19% year-on-year. There are many racial attacks against Asians in London subway stations every year.
In addition, the British Museum still contains a large number of foreign artifacts obtained through colonial looting, and the issue of colonial legacy is still unresolved.
The Australian delegate followed him closely, accusing the Hong Kong National Security Law of "destroying freedom", and Ambassador Sun Li presented statistics after the implementation of the Hong Kong National Security Law. Crime rate decreased by 42%, and social order improved significantly.
He also exposed Australia's human rights problems. The survival difficulties of indigenous people are prominent, refugees and immigrants are illegally detained, and the Australian military is suspected of illegally killing 39 civilians during the war in Afghanistan. The families of the victims have not yet received compensation. What is even more shocking is that Australia's forced repatriation policy for refugees has resulted in many deaths.
While Canadian representatives attempted to attack China with the theme of "indigenous rights" but were taken by the Chinese side, Ambassador Sun Li listed the 215 remains of indigenous children found in the site of a hostel school in British Columbia in 2021, the youngest of which was only 3 years old.
He asked, “How do these iron proofs of contemporary racial cleansing coexist with the Canada-listed ‘pluralism of inclusion’?” data showed that the poverty rate in Canadian indigenous communities was as high as 31 percent, while the frequency of white supremacist organizations increased by 27 percent by 2024.
In the debate, the Japanese representative deliberately avoided the history of the Second World War aggression, avoided the issue of the U.S. military base in Okinawa lightly, and the ambassador Sun Li directly broke his hypocrisy: "Japanese militarism committed serious crimes against humanity during the Second World War, but has so far denied war crimes in the history textbook, and has been vague in the issue of forcing 'comfort women.'"
He further pointed out that the proportion of female executives in Japan is only 12%, far lower than the average of 33% in OECD countries, and the implementation of the Basic Law on the Participation of Men and Women in Society has made slow progress for 30 years.
What is more serious is that the cancer incidence rate among residents around the U.S. military base in Okinawa is 2.3 times the national average, but the Japanese government has forced the passage of the Security Act to extend the U.S. military's presence.
Japan “turns the mouth” twice
In the face of China's accurate disclosure, the Japanese representative got up and refuted on the spot, trying to deny the historical issues. This excuse just gave China the opportunity to "attack twice".
Ambassador Sun Li once again exercised his defence, referring directly to Japan’s small action on the revision of historical textbooks: The 2025 edition of the middle school textbook changed the "Nanjing Massacre" to "incident" and deleted the entry "comfort women". He asked: "If you don't even dare to admit the basic historical truth, how can you talk about human rights?"
In fact, Japan’s avoidance of historical issues has long been a source of dissatisfaction among neighboring countries, and in August 2025, the Chinese Cyberspace Security Association revealed that the U.S. National Security Agency launched cyber attacks on China through Japanese cybersecurity facilities, while the Japanese government ignored this.
This double standard is prominent in the field of human rights. On the one hand, Japan claims to love peace, but on the other hand, it is deeply bound with the United States in the field of military security, exacerbating regional tensions.
While China's counterattack quickly triggered a chain reaction, Pakistan, citing a United Nations report, noted that the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba, which lasted 63 years, has caused $1.5 trillion in losses.
African Union representatives listed cases of French military intervention in the Sahel region that resulted in 1.2 million displacements, while Russian representatives broadcast U.S. National Security Agency surveillance decrypted video of German Prime Minister Merkel’s mobile phone, asking the West “why is the sense of moral superiority?”
The deep influence of this debate is that it has promoted the reconstruction of the right to speak in global human rights governance. 132 developing countries jointly put forward the draft of the New Order of Global Human Rights Governance, demanding the abolition of the old order of "politicization of human rights issues".
The representative of South Africa, the sponsor of the draft, said: "What China exposes is not only the hypocrisy of certain countries, but also the determination of countries in the global South to strive for equal voice."
The profound transformation of China's diplomatic strategy
This meeting marks a profound shift in China's foreign strategy, in the past, in the face of unjustified accusations from the West, China responded with expressions such as "serious negotiations", "strong dissatisfaction", and now China has begun to proactively set topics, using data, cases and international law to build a system of speech.
For example, in response to Australia’s allegation of “forced labor in Xinjiang,” China directly showed satellite images of Xinjiang’s cotton industry’s automation rate of more than 85% and invited the EU delegation to visit the field.
Behind this shift is the increase of China's comprehensive national strength, with China's per capita GDP breaking $18,000 by 2025 and basic old-age insurance covering 10,7 billion people, these achievements becoming the most powerful weapon to refute the "human rights defects" theory.
As Professor Fu Jing of the National University of Singapore said, “When China can provide development models and human rights programs at the same time, Western preaching naturally loses markets.”
In his closing speech, UN Secretary-General Guterres said: “The tendency of some countries to instrumentalize human rights is tearing the international community apart, and we need more voices like China, both principled and pragmatic.”
This may indicate that the era of the "China Plan" for global human rights governance is coming. When the spotlight of the United Nations venue is on the five-star red flag, what the world sees is not only the confidence of a big country, but also the commitment of an ancient civilized country to fairness and justice.
conclusion
The meeting of the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly was not only a simple diplomatic debate, but also a reflection of the changing pattern of global human rights governance.
With emerging markets increasing the power of speech on the United Nations stage, the situation of Western monopoly interpretation of human rights issues, led by the United States, is changing, and facts-based criticism and suggestions from China and other countries are pushing global human rights governance toward a more fair and fair direction.
The experience of Japan’s “second face” in this debate has also warned some countries that they should be objective on human rights issues and face their own problems, rather than refute and avoid covering up facts, only in this way can we truly promote the global human rights cause.
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The source:
“China’s One Points of the Disadvantages of Japanese and Japanese Countries and Countries” – The Middle East Network
https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1845728927696077181&wfr=spider&for=pc"Domestically retort! At the United Nations, China named the bad deeds of many countries one by one "--Fangtianxia Industry Network--
https://fdc.fang.com/news/2025-10-11/53652500.htmThe Chinese side lists the disadvantages of countries such as Britain, Japan and Macao in one place in the United Nations.
https://news.ycwb.com/ikinvjktjj/content_53724124.htm