U.S. and Chinese officials may have struck conciliatory tones at high-level talks this week amid festering mutual mistrust, but their annual bickering over human rights has resumed unabated.

A day after the U.S. State Department issued global human-rights scorecards that included criticism of China, Beijing offered a scathing rejoinder that accused Washington of “showing not a bit of regret for or intention to improve its own terrible human rights record."

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