China hits back at US on rights

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China has accused the US of double standards over human rights in response to an official US report which labelled Beijing an authoritarian regime.

Beijing calls Washington's rights record "tattered and shocking".

The Chinese report cites rising violent crime in the US as posing a serious threat to the lives, liberty and personal security of its people.

The foreign ministry said the US should stop posing as a rights watchdog and concentrate on its own problems.

"Stop exercising double standards on human rights issues and wrongly meddling in the internal affairs of other countries," said ministry spokesman Qin Gang.

He added that China's achievements on human rights had been "widely recognised by the international community".

The Chinese report accuses the US of arrogance and is particuarly scathing about the Iraq conflict.

"The invasion of Iraq by US troops has produced the biggest human rights tragedy and the greatest humanitarian disaster in modern world," the document said.

Beijing's report, gathered from US and international news sources, quotes crime statistics and cites particular incidents such as the Virginia Tech massacre to back up its claims.

The report comes in response to the US State Department's annual survey of human rights across the world.

Although the report accuses China of denying its people basic freedoms, the country is not listed as one of the world's most systematic rights violators.