China Serves Up a Few Unexpected Tips on Democracy
A fulsome white paper released days ahead of Washington’s Summit for Democracy won’t convince anyone of Beijing’s credentials, but it does offer a useful to-do list for democracy’s champions.
Democracy, Chinese-style.
Photographer: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images AsiaPacIf you ask Beijing, democracy is thriving in China. Human rights are respected, there are genuine elections and citizens have the freedom to criticize. Those are quite the claims for a one-party autocracy that has silenced a tennis star who has said she was coerced into an affair with a high-ranking official, crushed Hong Kong opposition voices and imprisoned as many as 1 million ethnic Uyghurs in labor camps. No matter. Uninvited and unimpressed by U.S. President Joe Biden’s virtual Summit for Democracy this week, China is taking the opportunity to lay out an alternative reality.
The report released over the weekend and a companion piece on the failings of U.S. democracy are filled with outlandish claims aimed less at changing minds overseas than at chipping away at Washington’s reputation and bolstering officials at home. Inadvertently, though, Beijing has served up the ingredients for a credible to-do list.