China claims it is “the largest democracy”

U.S. President Joe Biden hosted world leaders including Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the second day of the Democracy Summit on Friday. The Chinese government ended a week of criticism of freedom and democracy by attacking the “democratic malaise” in the United States. System movement.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday that democracy is “a common value of mankind, not a geostrategic tool” and that this week’s summit aims to “defend the outright anti-democratic hegemony of the United States”.

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“A self-styled’democracy beacon’,” said spokesperson Wang Wenbin. “Democracy has obvious drawbacks and a huge democracy deficit.” On the eve of the summit, the Chinese government and the official media launched a two-pronged campaign to demonstrate the advantages of China’s political system, and pointed out at the same time Insufficiency of the democratic system. A week before the summit, the Chinese government released a white paper on democracy, which shockingly declared that a one-party ruling China presided over the world’s largest democratic election process.

“In 2016 and 2017, more than 900 million voters participated in the elections of the people’s congresses at the township and county levels-this is the world’s largest direct election,” the white paper said. However, it does not mention that the lower and national congresses are mainly rubber stamp institutions, and rarely question the policies of the Communist Party, or the so-called “single candidate election”, which includes the position of president and prime minister, which is not uncommon.

Foreign models

While defending that the Communist Party’s governance is “democratic,” the newspaper also warned of the dangers of countries adopting foreign political models. “Blindly copying other democratic models is a problematic effort-it may cause cultural conflicts, political turmoil and even social unrest, and cause great suffering to the people,” the paper said.

To prove this, Chinese official media often cited the “chaos” or “inefficiency” of India’s political system as a reason why it is better for large developing countries to follow China’s authoritarian model. This week, the official English broadcaster China Global Television Network published a comment entitled “The Status of Women in China and India: Who Has Human Rights and Democracy?” The author is a foreign scholar at Beijing Renmin University.

“The Biden summit may try to argue that the Indian system embodies democracy and human rights, while China does not. But this purely verbal claim cannot change the fact that the lives and actual rights of Chinese women are far superior Indian women,” commented, adding, “Just look at the comparison in life. One in five Chinese and Indian women see that China has achieved “people’s rule” on a huge scale, far more than worshipping. Denn chose a completely unrealistic standard.”

The white paper entitled “Democracy Effective” issued by the State Council or Cabinet of China stated that “The leadership of the Communist Party of China is the fundamental guarantee of the so-called “full-process people’s democracy” and added that “China has not copied the Western democratic model.” Democracy, But created its own.” “The best way to assess whether a country’s political system is democratic and efficient,” the paper concluded, “is to observe whether its leader’s succession is orderly and in compliance with the law.” This formulation allows Some observers are confused and believe that Xi Jinping lifted the term limit in 2018, which is a key part of the succession system, and has achieved three smooth transfers of power in the past 30 years.