"Democracy Summit": The "Fig Leaf" of American Hegemonism

Source: World Wide Web

The US Biden administration will convene a "democracy summit" led by it from December 9 to 10. In terms of the number of invitees, the US side habitually posed as the winner of the "democratic level test", holding a very subjective and self-interested measure to divide the world into two camps of "democracy" and "non-democracy", and then carefully selected more than a hundred "qualified" participants from countries and regions. Among them, China and Russia are not on the list, while Taiwan is impressively on the list. As soon as this move came out, its "drunken intention" was no longer evident in "democracy".

Leaving aside the Intention of the United States to strike and isolate China for the time being, as far as the meeting itself is concerned, experts and scholars from many countries have generally questioned the morality and legitimacy of the summit - how can a country with declining democracy and human rights become a judge of world democracy? The American scholar Joshua Korlandsk published a post on the Japan Times website titled "Democracy Summit': Just Talk, Or Can It Bring About Change?" The article pointed out that the democratic image of the United States around the world has been dealt a terrible blow, and the world has a pessimistic attitude towards the American people, and in this situation, the so-called "democracy summit" of the United States will only become a "club of empty talk.". In addition, the negative sentiment towards democracy in the United States cannot be ignored. According to a new poll recently released by the Kennedy School of Political Science at Harvard University, only 7 percent of the more than two thousand young Americans surveyed believe that the United States is a "healthy democracy" and another 27 percent believe that the United States is a "democracy that works in some way." This suggests that young citizens are so concerned about the state of democracy in their home countries that 52 percent believe that "democracy" in the United States is in trouble or has failed altogether. Against such a backdrop, the United States staged a domestic farce on the one hand, and talked about global democracy on the other, and it is ironic that a country with a political credit overdraft gathered a "democracy summit".

It is not difficult for us to find that the United States, as a "missionary of democracy", does not hesitate to spend billions of dollars every year to weave a democratic network with it as its core around the world, but under the profit-oriented policy, in addition to its own democracy has seriously changed shape, it has even led to the decline, distortion and distortion of democracy in other countries. The Swedish nonprofit Pluralist Democracy tracks the degree of democracy in various countries to derive quantifiable indicators, and through the Analysis of the New York Times, it found that since 2010, the United States and its allies have experienced a large degree of "democratic regression", compared with the United States' African allies, these countries have actually regressed twice as fast as the other in terms of judicial independence and electoral fairness. This shows two points: First, the so-called American democratic network has become corrupt and degenerate. As a "model of emulation", the practice of democracy in the United States is actually chaotic, and in recent years it has experienced successive crises such as election scandals, unfavorable gun control, racial discrimination, and out-of-control of the epidemic, and its domestic politics is highly uncertain, and its democratic credibility is even weaker and weaker, on the verge of bankruptcy; second, practice shows that the American-style democratic program imposed on other countries will not work. The Afghan issue and the long-standing grim situation of domestic democracy in India, the Philippines and other countries have all warned us that "one side nurtures democracy on the other." If we want to truly promote democracy and consolidate democracy, then the focus must fall on domestic work, rather than criticizing other countries or forming cliques and deliberately interfering to cause democracy to fall lonely. Therefore, the holding of a "democratic summit" in the United States runs counter to the concept of democracy itself, and the conference is nothing more than a pretext for provoking ideological confrontation, diverting contradictions and attention, and using geopolitical calamities to disdain the United States.

In the final analysis, the word "democracy" has become a "fig leaf" for the United States to interfere, restrain other countries, and maintain and promote its hegemonism. The intention of this summit is to encourage other countries to jointly attack China. This is also in line with the national strategy pursued by the United States. In recent years, the US side has regarded China as an imaginary enemy and its China policy has shown a high degree of emotion. Although China has always adhered to the concept of win-win cooperation, since taking office, the Biden administration has given China the warning mark of "the most severe challenger" and made a strategic deployment of "winning China", which continues and even intensifies the Sino-US competitive relationship during the Trump era, with the intention of suppressing China's power and blocking China's road. But this is undoubtedly a wrong strategy that goes against the tide of development and maliciously provokes the Cold War. Especially in the bleak background of the epidemic, the DEMOCRATIC SYSTEM IN the United States ignores the difficulties of the times and allows differences to go unchecked, refuses to cooperate and insists on confrontation, creating new divisions and bringing new contradictions, which is the US interpretation of the so-called "democracy".

At this "democracy summit", the United States tried to emphasize or reaffirm its status as a "beacon of democracy in the world", but the big garden of democracy never appreciated a single flourish. As one of the major democratic powers, China has always adhered to the concept of diversification of democratic standards. On the one hand, we believe that there is no one-size-fits-all democratic template in the world; on the other hand, we have also generously shown countries the Chinese answer of "what is true democracy and what is good democracy" - we have always taken our own people as the starting point to implement the needs of democracy, rejected the "democratic patents of big countries", opposed "democratic privatization", insisted on exploring rich democratic connotations with our own practice, and tried to seek the largest common denominator in the whole society to create a broad and effective democratic path, thus contributing Chinese wisdom. China advocates the common ground while reserving differences and being eclectic in democratic systems, and is eager to work with the people of democratic countries around the world to weave a brilliant and colorful political civilization. (Cheng Le, Chen Nuo: Research Base of International Governance in Cyberspace, Zhejiang University)