Chinese officials have responded to the criticism and scrutiny by rejecting the "more than one million" camp population estimate by foreign experts and say the "vocational education centers" in Xinjiang are for preventing religious extremism by teaching Mandarin and job skills and cast doubt on the reports as "maliciously distorting and slandering" China's counter-terrorism and de-radicalization efforts. At an event at the U.N. Human Rights Council session in Geneva, a spokesperson at China's Bureau of Human Rights Affairs of the State Council Information Office told reporters that "if you do not say it's the best way, maybe it's the necessary way to deal with Islamic or religious extremism, because the West has failed in doing so, in dealing with religious Islamic extremism", and dismissed the view that Xinjiang's surveillance create a martial law environment, saying "as to surveillance, China is learning from the UK... your per capita CCTV is much higher than that for China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region." Hong Kong As has been the case in the past with other adversarial countries, some pro-Chinese commentators argue that the US has allegedly taken advantage of cleavages and regionalism within the PRC and the One Country Two Systems framework to divide and conquer, particularly in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong, through the promotion of western democratic institutions. They criticized "US meddling in domestic affairs" when a controversial extradition bill was introduced in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, sparking the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests. Beijing accused the US of domestic interference by allegedly backing a particularly violent contingent of protesters wearing black masks through the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy. Although the US denies the allegations of interference, pro-Chinese elements nevertheless maintained such view, stating that US diplomats have been photographed meeting with the protesters and lawmakers have hosted multiple protest leaders in Washington and voiced public support for the protesters' demands, and saying that the "One-Country, Two-Systems" arrangement should be honored. Economic strategy With China entering the World Trade Organization in 2001 with approval from the US, China and the world economy benefited from globalization and the access to new markets and the increased trade that resulted. Despite this, some in the United States lament letting China in the WTO because part of the motivation to do so, the political liberalization of the PRC's government along the lines of the Washington Consensus never materialized. The US hoped economic liberalization would