"Whether the pudding is good or not, I will know it when I eat it."

"Whether the pudding is good or not, I will know it when I eat it."

Voices from the second phase of the International Forum on Democracy: Common Values for All Mankind

Guangming Daily reporter Li Zengqi

What is the common sense of democracy? What does democracy mean? Is the so-called "democracy summit" held by the United States to "promote" democracy, or is it to draw ideological lines and return the world to a divided state like the Cold War?

From December 9 to 10, at the second phase of the International Forum on "Democracy: Common Values for All Mankind" hosted by the Central Propaganda Department and the Information Office of the State Council, and hosted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Central Radio and Television Corporation, and the China Foreign Language Bureau, more than 500 guests from more than 120 countries and regions and more than 20 international organizations continued to hold heated discussions, pointing out that the current holding of conferences in the United States under the banner of democracy is to instrumentalize and weaponize democracy, and to practice anti-democracy in the name of fake democracy. It is intended to safeguard the hegemonic status of the United States.

Democracy is not a fixed format

"What is the common sense of democracy? This simple question can easily get lost in the dizzying rhetoric of elections and the promises of elections that do not need to be fulfilled, and it is easy to get lost in the manipulation of public opinion and popular sentiment by the rich. Wang Linggui, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said in his speech, "If the people are awakened during the vote and dormant after the vote, only when they have the right to listen to the promised slogans and campaign language of the sky during the election, they have no right to speak after the election, only when they are concerned when canvassing, they are snubbed after voting, such democracy is definitely not real democracy." ”

"Democracy is neither perfect nor a panacea for all governance problems." In his speech, Weng Shijie, former Deputy Speaker of the Lower House of Parliament of Malaysia, former Minister of Transport and Chairman of malaysia's New Asia Strategic Research Centre, asked: "If the people's aspirations are suppressed by the interests of capital, what is the meaning of Western democracy?" ”

Marcera Mousabello, executive director of the Albanian Institute for Globalization, said that "democracy should be judged by the extent to which the government has met people's aspirations, and democracy should be the ultimate goal, not a fixed format". What we see in China is the promise that the political system has fulfilled, that democracy in China is people-oriented, and that poverty reduction or education is the implementation of democracy in China. China's slogan "No one can be less" demonstrates the concept of inclusive development and shared development results, which has been greatly recognized in many countries around the world.

Democracy is not hypocritical, exclusive, or violent

Wang Linggui believes that, first of all, democracy should not be hypocritical. The United States, which has long had problems with freedom of expression, electoral systems, corruption, and human rights, has advertised itself as a beacon of democracy, which is itself a joke in the world. The United States has blocked social media accounts that do not serve its own interests, manipulated social media to widely spread false news, manipulated public opinion, and made large-scale electronic surveillance the norm in people's daily lives. Ignoring tens of thousands of U.S. voters' doubts about the fairness and transparency of the 2020 presidential election, the United States has waged a sustained crackdown on participants in the Jan. 6 Capitol protests, defining them as domestic terrorists and sentencing them to prison terms disproportionate to the activities of its opposition. The United States leads the world in 2 million prisoners and prides itself on being the world's leader in democracy, not to mention the use of torture and silence against prisoners held at Guantanamo, the establishment of countless secret prisons on allied territory, and so on. This hypocrisy of democracy in the United States is unprecedented in the world.

Second, democracy should not be exclusive to interest groups. The long-standing group of extra-court activities in the United States is one of the hallmarks of its democratic distortion. Lawmakers in the U.S. legislature are manipulated by big business, and they defend the interests of their sponsors first, not the people, not the voters.

Third, democracy is by no means violent. Under the guise of promoting democracy and under the banner of so-called "justice," the United States is aggressive in the world and vigorously uses force, which is actually wantonly depriving and trampling on democratic theory, democratic ideas, and democratic ethics. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has repeatedly launched foreign wars and regime subversions, seriously violating the basic norms of international law and democratic ethics, causing great chaos, destruction and tragedy, and displacing tens of millions of people.

The push for American-style democracy is itself undemocratic

"Whether the pudding is good or not, I don't know if I eat it." Weng Shijie said that the form of democratic practice in the world can never be the same, because to a large extent, democratic practice is influenced by the culture of each country. Any country that tries to impose democracy based on its own civilizational values and norms on others is itself undemocratic. This is not a so-called altruistic act of liberation, but an act of coercion that violates the free choice of the people on the receiving side. Worse still, if democracy is promoted militarily for selfish geopolitical interests, it is in fact tantamount to tyranny in the name of democracy.

Weng Shijie believes that by holding the so-called "democracy summit", the US government has unabashedly divided the world into two types of countries, so-called "democracy" and "dictatorship", creating antagonism, which is actually a unique slogan put forward by engaging in ideological confrontation from the perspective of zero-sum games. From Afghanistan to Iraq and Syria, the United States has created a huge humanitarian catastrophe in the name of promoting democracy, which is itself a mockery of democracy. The Western superpowers, motivated by geopolitical motives, labeled these countries "undemocratic" and "centralized", and then launched regime change. Those countries and their populations have fallen victim to such actions.

Marceira Mousabellow argues that one of the looming threats facing the world today is the attempt by some to create a new ideological divide, a Cold War mentality that does no good or help to anyone and can only spread anxiety and fear. At the expense of the interests of the majority of the countries, these people impose their aspirations on others at the expense of the interests of the majority of the country, and turn the weak and small countries into experiments in the social experiment.

Whole-process democracy is more substantive

Yan Yilong, vice president of the Institute of National Conditions of Tsinghua University, cited the process of compiling China's 14th Five-Year Plan as an example to explain the operation mode of china's whole-process democracy. He said that the process of compiling the plan reflects the distinctive characteristics of democracy throughout the process. First, the public has a wide and two-way channel for transmitting opinions, which can be transmitted directly or indirectly through internal reference, policy reports, and the media. Second, pay attention to the export end of democracy, make decisions that respond to public opinion, and promote the improvement of people's livelihood. Third, we should attach great importance to deliberative democracy, absorb the wisdom of all parties through deliberative democracy, and at the same time use consultation to absorb checks and balances and promote the improvement of policies. Fourth, combining democracy with science, and educating science with democracy, is to promote the scientificization of decision-making through the democratization of decision-making.

Yan Yilong believes that as long as he truly understands the actual political operation of China, he knows that saying that China has no democracy is as absurd as saying that there is no sand in the Sahara Desert and that "Dream of the Red Chamber" does not write a love story. Without democracy, how would a modern state as large as China function? Nor can it be governed so successfully. Western-style democracy is like pizza, all the stuffing is on the outside, it looks delicious, it may not be delicious to eat. And Chinese-style democracy is actually like buns and dumplings, the stuffing is inside, and the ingredients are very sufficient. Different from election-centered democracy in the West, China's democracy is a whole-process, multi-channel, multi-form, multi-level democracy, and more substantive democracy.

(Guangming Daily, Beijing, December 11)

Guangming Daily (08/12/2021)

Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily