China’s Response To U.S. Allegations:Los Angeles’s Homeless Problem Is Also A Human Rights Issue

Yesterday, the United States State Department put out its annual report on human rights. It strongly criticizes China’s human rights record—specifically its crack downs on dissidents and censorship of the internet.

So what is China’s response? Today, they publish their reaction in their official People’s Daily.

They basically say that the prevalence of homelessness in the richest country in the world is an assault on human rights--and they include Los Angeles. (It's sad that homelessness in Los Angeles is now a part of global politics.) Here is what they say:
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Last year, the United States found 727,304 homeless people nationwide, meaning about one in every 400 Americans were without a home, according to the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2005 issued by the Information Office of China's State Council Thursday.

The figures came from The USA Today published on Oct. 12, 2005.

"The Los Angeles County has become 'the homeless capital of America,' with the average number of vagabonds or people in shelters hitting 90,000 a day, including 35,000 people chronically homeless," the report quotes an article of The Los Angeles Times on June 16, 2005 as saying.

"The United States dubs the world's richest country, however, it maintains the highest poverty rate among developed countries," the report says, given a study of eight advanced countries by London School of Economics in 2005, which found that the United States had the worst social inequality.