BEIJING (Dispatches) -- China on Sunday berated “the alienation and the malaises of democracy in the United States” in the face of Washington’s aggressive campaign to force other nations to conform to the Western democratic model.
In a report titled “the State of Democracy in the United States”, China’s Foreign Ministry called on Washington to improve its own system and practices of democracy and change its way of interacting with other countries.
The report, it said, aimed to expose the deficiencies and abuse of democracy in the U.S. and the harm which it poses to the world.
It was released ahead of a global democracy summit being hosted by President Joe Biden. Neither China nor Russia are among about 110 governments invited to Biden’s two-day virtual “Summit for Democracy,” which starts Thursday.
“Democracy is a common value shared by all humanity. It is a right for all nations, not a prerogative reserved to a few,” the report said, adding that democracy takes different forms, and there is no one-size-fits-all model.
It would be totally undemocratic to measure the diverse political systems in the world with a single yardstick or examine different political civilizations from a single perspective, the report said.
The political system of a country should be independently decided by its own people, it added.
Over the years, the report said, democracy in the U.S. has become alienated and degenerated, and increasingly deviated from the essence of democracy and its original design.
“What is also imperative for the U.S. is to undertake more international responsibilities and provide more public goods to the world instead of always seeking to impose its own brand of democracy on others, use its own values as means to divide the world into different camps, or carry out intervention, subversion and
invasion in other countries under the pretext of promoting democracy.”
On Saturday, China released a White Paper titled “China: Democracy That Works”, saying the Asian nation did not duplicate Western models of democracy, but created its own.
Top officials from China’s ruling Communist Party also questioned Washington’s motive behind the upcoming summit, saying its efforts to force the Western democratic model on others are “doomed to fail”.
“Such democracy brings not happiness but disaster to voters,” said Tian Peiyan, the deputy director of the Communist Party’s Policy Research Office.
He said a polarized country such as the United States is not in a position to lecture the rest of the world on “democracy”.
Xu Lin, the vice minister of the party’s publicity department, said the United States has long exploited the concept of democracy to interfere in other countries’ affairs.
“The U.S. calls itself a ‘leader of democracy’ and organizes and manipulates the so-called Summit for Democracy,” Xu said. “In fact, it cracks down and hampers countries with different social systems and development models in the name of democracy,” he added
Last week, China and Russia jointly condemned the planned summit, describing it as a product of Washington’s Cold War mentality that will create new rifts in the international community.
The participation of Taipei in the gathering has further angered Beijing, which has repeatedly warned that there is no room for compromise over the self-governed island and that Washington should not have any illusions about it.
China has sovereignty over Chinese Taipei, and under the “One China” policy, almost all world countries recognize that sovereignty. The U.S. also recognizes Chinese sovereignty over the island but has long courted Taipei in an attempt to unnerve Beijing.