Dem mayor's spox defends meeting with controversial Chinese diplomat who praised CCP

A spokesperson for a Democrat mayor is defending a recent meeting with a controversial Chinese diplomat, who has repeatedly praised the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

"Met with Philadelphia's Mayor Parker together with Tianjin’s Executive Deputy Mayor Liu Guiping," Huang Ping, who's been the consul general of China's New York Consulate since 2018, recently posted on X.

"Exchanges at the subnational level keeps fueling China-US relations. Let's keep it going," he added.

Over the last year, Huang has appeared at several prominent universities to meet with officials despite his past statements as well as rising concerns from the American public about China’s aggressive presence in the United States.

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Huang, who met with Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker, has previously called the CCP a "great party" and has denied that China is targeting the Muslim Uyghur population in China.

"There are lots of lies here, fabricated by some people with their own political agenda," Huang said in an August 2021 interview, denying the existence of genocide and internment camps targeting Uyghurs. "As I said, there's no genocide, not a single evidence to prove that there's a genocide or something there. It's just a slandering."

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the State Department under both the Trump and Biden administrations have assessed that China is committing genocide against the Uyghurs. Since 2017, the Chinese government has reportedly imprisoned more than a million Uyghurs in concentration camps where, according to leaked documents from inside China, detainees are subjected to rape, torture, forced labor, brainwashing and forced