The Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) recently released its 2024 annual report. With customary dazzling arrogance, the CECC claims that it “once again stands with the Chinese people against the Chinese Communist Party”.

Its thunderous, sweeping assertions of grave wrong-doing in China are tainted by scant concern for evidence or truthfulness. This is unsurprising: The primary role of this report is to advance the United States’ obsessional China-containment project. The lists of claimed Sino-sinfulness and heroic legislative responses from the US Congress are spooky and intimidating — even a touch Orwellian.

Still more striking is how the CECC foundations are now so corrupted. Consider the pulpit from which it delivered this latest report. It stands in the middle of a widening lake of Palestinian and Middle Eastern blood.

The CECC is drawn jointly from the US government and Congress, each of which has played a fundamental role in funding and creating Israel’s genocidal hellscape in Gaza.

Almost a year ago, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that a plausible case could be made showing Israel has committed genocide in Gaza as it responded to the deadly, horrific Hamas attack of Oct 7, 2023. In July 2024, the ICJ found that Israel’s presence in Palestinian territory, including the West Bank, is unlawful.

In November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for war crimes concerning certain members of Hamas and the Israeli government, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the then defense minister Yoav Gallant. Israel has treated all these international law decisions with unalloyed contempt. They have even banned the UN secretary-general from visiting.

The distinguished former American diplomat Chas Freeman recently argued: “The hateful things Israel is doing have made it the most hated society on the planet. Netanyahu is seen as the moral equivalent of Adolf Hitler and Israel is a pariah everywhere outside the West.”

Israel has become a vengeful, predatory, massively armed, land-gobbling state. The US is grotesquely complicit in Israeli genocide and other war crimes through its colossal armament supplies combined with general military and substantial financial support, all aimed at advancing Israel’s abhorrent agenda.

The Roman Emperor Nero remains widely reviled. Legend has it that he arranged for parts of Rome to be set on fire, then fiddled as he relished watching the city go up in flames. Imagine if he had also boastfully drawn attention to some self-claimed status as a high priest of fire safety in Rome

As if this were not bad enough, President Joe Biden sped to the Middle East to hug Netanyahu publicly as Israel launched its homicidal, scorched earth response across Gaza in October 2023 and later, when this by-then-accused war criminal visited Washington in July 2024, US Congress gave Netanyahu over 50 standing ovations as he spoke by invitation.

An enduring principle that emerged from the operation of the Court of Equity as it developed in England after the Norman Conquest was that those approaching the court to seek justice had “to come with clean hands”. That is, a party should not obtain relief “when that party’s own wrongful conduct has made it such that granting the relief would be against equity and good conscience”.

When we apply even an abbreviated geopolitical version of this precept, it is plain that the CECC now approaches its self-appointed role of judging China with appallingly soiled hands. Its credibility is hopelessly compromised.

The Roman Emperor Nero remains widely reviled. Legend has it that he arranged for parts of Rome to be set on fire, then fiddled as he relished watching the city go up in flames. Imagine if he had also boastfully drawn attention to some self-claimed status as a high priest of fire safety in Rome.

The author is an adjunct professor in the Faculty of Law, Hong Kong University.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.