BEIJING (Dispatches) – China branded U.S. democracy a “weapon of mass destruction” on Saturday, following the U.S.-organized Summit for Democracy which aimed to shore up like-minded allies in the face of autocratic regimes.
China was left out of the two-day virtual summit -- along with countries including Russia and Hungary -- and responded by angrily saying U.S. President Joe Biden is stoking Cold War-era ideological divides.
“’Democracy’ has long become a ‘weapon of mass destruction’ used by the U.S. to interfere in other countries,” a foreign ministry spokesperson said in an online statement, which also accused the U.S. of having “instigated ‘color revolutions’” overseas.
The ministry also said the summit was organized by the U.S. to “draw lines of ideological prejudice, instrumentalize and weaponize democracy... (and) incite division and confrontation.”
Instead, Beijing vowed to “resolutely resist and oppose all kinds of pseudo-democracies”.
Ahead of the summit, China ramped up a propaganda blitz criticizing U.S. democracy as corrupt and a failure.
Earlier, the U.S. announced new sanctions on dozens of people and entities in China, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and North Korea, accusing them of human rights violations.
The United States Department of Treasury on Friday also added Chinese artificial intelligence company SenseTime Group to an investment blacklist.
SenseTime, a leading developer of facial recognition technology, was placed on a list of “Chinese military-industrial complex companies” in which Americans are banned from investing. The firm is accused of having developed facial recognition programs that can determine a target’s ethnicity, with a particular focus on identifying ethnic Uyghurs.
Canada and the United Kingdom also joined the United States in imposing sanctions related to human rights abuses in Myanmar, where the military has persecuted Rohingya Muslims and other ethnic minorities.
The Chinese embassy in Washington denounced the United States move as “serious interference in China’s internal affairs” and a “severe violation of basic norms governing international relations.”