Chinese officials three times in the past week criticized developments they perceive, in the context of their world view and understanding of the appropriate handling of international relations, as illegitimate or contravening established practice.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying (華春瑩) criticized US Secretary of State Antony Blinken for urging the WHO to invite Taiwan to join a meeting this month, saying that this touched upon Taiwan’s status, one of China’s core interests.
This is a conventional response from Beijing, but another dynamic could be discerned in its responses to two other matters.
First was a virtual UN meeting yesterday, organized by Germany, the US and the UK, on the repression of Uighur Muslims and other minorities in Xinjiang; the second was the Alliance of Democracies Foundation’s fourth annual Copenhagen Democracy Summit, which President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) addressed on Monday.
The Chinese mission to the UN accused the former event of being a bogus and politically motivated attempt to interfere in its domestic affairs. It is true that intervention in domestic affairs is not permitted between UN member states, but that does not give states free rein to, for example, commit genocide within its borders.
Hua mocked the latter by questioning its very premise, saying that it was unqualified to represent “true democracy.”
These two responses are part of Beijing’s concerted effort to hijack the narrative of democracy and change the international world order, replacing it with its own preferred version while pretending not only to adhere to it, but to be an exemplar of its basic tenets.
Beijing is doing this by redefining terms used by democracies — universal values, freedom and human rights — to describe its preferred system, the polar opposite of democracy, and legitimizing its version by evoking the compliance and support of its populace, to which it selectively feeds information while withholding dissenting ideas.
Criticizing the Copenhagen summit and Tsai’s participation, Hua said that she wished to offer some thoughts on democracy.
She said that democracy was a universal human value, although it comes in many forms, and that each country and its people had the right to determine this for themselves.
That is a wide application of the scope of possible permutations of democracy, almost to the point of rendering the description useless. It also ignores that Chinese do not have the opportunity to meaningfully elect a preferred option.
In other words, Hua subverted the word “democracy” to mean a system few would recognize as such.
She also said that the system had the full endorsement of Chinese. Again, a subversion, given the total absence of room for dissent or access to dissenting ideas.
Hua said that “democracy is not about organizing a summit and spouting political slogans, and it is certainly not about turning it into a political tool with which to oppress other countries.”
No, it is not, but redefining the terms is simply another way of fabricating the narrative. It also betrays a lack of understanding about what such summits seek to achieve. The only way in which the format does not work in a democratic system is when participants and recipients are handicapped in making their own minds up about what is being said because they have been denied access to information and dissenting voices, and have no freedom of speech.
It is important to understand Beijing’s attempt at fabricating this narrative, to guard against it.
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