State-owned Chinese media says Christchurch shooting shows the West is weakening

China’s government-run populist newspaper has used the Christchurch shooting to troll Western civilisation, saying it shows we have major problems.

China’s populist Global Times newspaper has used the Christchurch shooting on Friday as the basis of a scathing critique of Western civilisation — saying it shows we have major problems.

In an editorial piece, the Communist Party-controlled­ newspaper warned: “The West is entering a problematic period that strikes at its very foundation.”

Saying the New Zealand shooting, which left 50 dead, “exposes Western flaws”, the paper went on to attack Muslim immigration and democracy.

“Immigrants, especially Muslims, cannot integrate into Western society,” the piece reads. “The Western political system discourages overall planning and long-term solutions. Poor political and social governance is common.

The state-owned Global Times took aim at Western civilisation. Picture: AFP

“There are numerous problems in Western society. Neither political forces nor strong leaders have appeared to encourage institutional reflection.

“The West’s fierce criticisms are political attacks between different factions. In the West, it is commonly and solidly believed that the West is generally perfect and superior.”

It goes on to argue the Christchurch gunman’s white supremacist beliefs “clearly reflected unfolding ultra-right populism” in Western nations.

“The Western established advantages are indeed tremendous, but its self-adjustment ability is weakening, and some so-called adjustments often surrender to populism,” it reads. “The West is entering a problematic period that strikes at its very foundation.”

Despite the strong comments, the Christchurch gunman’s online manifesto, posted online before Friday’s mass shooting, specifically pointed out China as the country he identified most with.

“The nation with the closest political and social values to my own is the People’s Republic of China,” he wrote, before going on to praise its “lack of diversity” — which he believed made it “strong”.

The Christchurch gunman said he admired China’s politics. Picture: AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

China has 56 ethnic groups, but 91 per cent of the population is ethnically Han.

While the government-owned Times is criticising the West over Muslim immigration, human rights groups around the world are attacking China over its treatment of Muslims in the far west region of Xinjiang.

They say China has locked up as many as one million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim minorities in internment camps — or “vocational education centres” as China likes to call them.

Inmates have said they found themselves incarcerated for crimes such as wearing long beards and face veils or sharing Islamic holiday greetings on social media.

China has hit back saying the camps are more like boarding schools, with students checking in voluntarily, and the program has helped them contain 13,000 “terrorists” since 2014.

Xinjiang, which shares a border with several countries including Pakistan and Afghanistan, has long suffered from violent unrest, which China claims is orchestrated by an organised “terrorist” movement seeking the region’s independence.

China says its Muslim detention camps are like boarding schools. Picture: AP Photo/Ng Han Guan

“Since 2014, Xinjiang has destroyed 1588 violent and terrorist gangs, arrested 12,995 terrorists, seized 2052 explosive devices, punished 30,645 people for 4858 illegal religious activities and confiscated 345,229 copies of illegal religious materials,” a government white paper released yesterday stated.

“The counter-terrorism work and the de-extremism struggle in Xinjiang have always been carried out in accordance with the rule of law.”

The paper was quickly condemned by a Uighur rights group, which called it a “a political excuse to suppress the Uighurs”.

“The purpose of releasing the so-called white paper is a means of getting local support for its extreme policies and to cover up human rights abuses,” Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the exiled World Uyghur Congress, said in a statement.

The Times’ comment piece is at odds with President Xi Jinping’s statement on Friday, following the terrorist shooting, in which he “expressed deep sympathy with and sincere condolences on behalf of the Chinese people”.

— with wires