US President Joe Biden on Friday said democracy “knows no borders” as he closed a two-day summit on democratic freedoms while fending off a storm of criticism from China and domestic critics alike.
Biden’s presidency has focused on restoring the US to what former US president Ronald Reagan liked to call a “shining city on the hill,” or a beacon for freedom that other nations look up to.
Yet the Washington summit, held by video link because of COVID-19, underlined difficulties facing the US in resurrecting that ideal.
Photo: AFP
In closing comments to leaders from scores of nations, as well as representatives of philanthropical bodies and non-governmental organizations, Biden said democracy “knows no borders. It speaks every language. It lives in anti-corruption activists, human rights defenders, journalists.”
“We’re committed to working with all those who share those values to shape the rules of the road,” Biden said, adding that the US would stand by those “who give their people the ability to breathe free and not seek to suffocate their people with an iron hand.”
Biden has spoken repeatedly about the world reaching an “inflection point” in a struggle between growing autocracies and increasingly under-fire democracies.
On the first day of the virtual summit, he pledged US$424 million to support media freedom, fair elections and anti-corruption campaigns.
“Democracy needs champions,” Biden said.
However, as Biden hosted the summit on a wall of television screens in the White House, rival China was trolling the summit with mocking propaganda, including a rap song in English saying that Americans “sell democracy like they sell Coca-Cola.”
China and Russia, which Biden describes as the supreme leaders of the autocracies camp, were the highest-profile names left off the invite list to the Washington summit.
Both nations have responded angrily, accusing Biden of stoking Cold War-style ideological divides. China is especially upset because while it was not invited, Taiwan was.
“’Democracy’ has long become a ‘weapon of mass destruction’ used by the US to interfere in other countries,” a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson said in an online statement yesterday.
The ministry said the summit was organized by the US to “draw lines of ideological prejudice, instrumentalize and weaponize democracy ... [and] incite division and confrontation.”
Instead, Beijing vowed to “resolutely resist and oppose all kinds of pseudo-democracies.”
Biden’s democracy appeal also met a mixed reception at home.
On one side, Republican critics say he has not been tough enough on China or other adversaries.
“In Joe Biden’s first 11 months in office, he has failed to stand up for freedom across the globe and caved to those who want to dismantle it, emboldening our enemies and undermining our standing abroad,” the Republican National Committee said on Friday.
On another end of the political spectrum, Vietnam War-era whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg lashed out at the Biden administration for pursuing the extradition of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
On Thursday, Ellsberg wrote on Twitter: “How dare Biden lecture a @StateDept #SummitForDemocracy today while refusing to pardon” Assange.
He accused Biden of “killing freedom of the press for ‘national security.’”
Only 17 percent of people surveyed in 16 advanced economies “consider American democracy a good model for other countries to follow,” according to the Pew Research Center Spring 2021 Global Attitudes Survey.
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