Swedish think tank Frivärld’s recent report on China distorts facts, and makes groundless and malicious smears against China, which is totally unacceptable.

Freedom is a shared value of all mankind, but freedom of speech is not without limits and boundaries. The boundaries are that speech needs to be based on facts, and should not spread lies, still less hatred. Frivärld uses “freedom of speech” as a pretext to lie about issues related to China, which inflicts the worst harm on the real freedom of speech.

As is known to all, it is an important job of all diplomatic missions to communicate the real situation and policies of the home country to the public of the host country. In the face of lies and smears about China in the host country, the Chinese Embassy is obligated to communicate China’s positions and refute wrongful remarks, to protect the public’s right to be informed.

However, Frivärld uses “freedom of speech” as an excuse, to label our clarification of facts as “threat” or “harassment”. When they try to distort facts and confuse the public to such an extent, how are they qualified to lecture freedom of speech? Instead, this is typical “dictatorship of speech”, a desecration of the real freedom of speech.

Frivärld does not allow the existence of opinions and voices that are slightly different from their own. In their mind, they are the only ones entitled to “freedom of speech”, and no one else is. What kind of “freedom of speech” is that?!

We cannot help but be reminded by Frivärld, that there are a handful of self-obsessed people in the world that believe, without them, the earth stops spinning and the world stops existing. But the fact is, the earth belongs to all mankind, and the world belongs to seven billion people. Without these self-obsessed people, the earth still spins and spins better. Without them, democracy, freedom and human rights of the world would become better, and people around the world would live a better life! The fact that the US and some other countries suffered a crushing defeat when trying to use force to plant their so-called “democracy” and “freedom” in Afghanistan, which led the Afghan people into disasters, is a clear example.

We hereby reiterate that we are open to dialogue and communication with anyone in Sweden that holds different ideas and opinions, and we hope relevant individuals at Frivärld will do the same.