A top Chinese diplomat on Wednesday claimed that China is a democracy, saying that its political system exemplifies the ideals of former US president Abraham Lincoln and the ancient Greeks, who invented a representative form of government.
Chinese Ambassador to the US Qin Gang (秦剛) cited the right of Chinese people to participate in certain elections and consultations over major policies as evidence of a democratic system not unlike that in the US.
“Isn’t it obvious that both China’s people-centered philosophy and President Lincoln’s ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’ are for the sake of the people?” Qin told a virtual conference organized by US think tanks the Carter Center and the George H.W. Bush Foundation for US-China Relations.
“Shall we understand China’s socialist whole-process democracy as this: from the people, to the people, with the people, for the people?” he asked.
Qin’s speech was the latest effort by China to redefine some key Western concepts, such as human rights and multilateralism, in pursuit of greater “discourse power” as Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has instructed.
Chinese diplomats have frequently said that the values of some Western countries, such as the US and Japan, “don’t represent the international community.”
The comments sought to focus on similarities between the world’s biggest economies, as they spar over everything from imports of advanced technology to forced labor allegations in Xinjiang and democracy in Hong Kong.
Qin said that Washington must act first to improve ties and “lift up the iron curtain” thwarting exchanges between US and Chinese students, academics and artists.
He urged the US to adopt a less hostile strategy toward working with China, while calling for “strategic courage and political resolve to chart a new course in China-US relations.”
Xi first publicly used the phrase “whole-process democracy” in 2019 to describe how the government listens to voices outside the party, and it has since gained traction in official rhetoric.
Traditionally, more obviously Marxist terms such as “democratic dictatorship” and “socialist democracy with Chinese characteristics” have distinguished the Chinese political system from Western liberal democracy, in which election outcomes are not preordained.
Qin also said that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had the popular support of “more than 90 percent” of Chinese, without mentioning that Beijing routinely jails critics and dissidents.
He heaped praise on Xi, who in 2018 oversaw a move to scrap presidential term limits that had been in place for more than three decades.
Xi’s rise from “a farmer in a poor village” to work his way through the party ranks, Qin said, embodied Greek philosopher Plato’s vision that “prime ministers must have served as local officials.”
He did not mention that Xi’s father, Xi Zhongxun (習仲勛), was a CCP revolutionary who fought alongside the party’s founding father, Mao Zedong (毛澤東).
Xi “is loved, trusted and supported by the people,” Qin said. “This is why you often find China’s senior officials elected with an overwhelming majority of votes or even unanimously.”
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
Four contenders are squaring up to succeed Antonio Guterres as secretary-general of the UN, which faces unprecedented global instability, wars and its own crushing budget crisis. Chile’s Michelle Bachelet, Argentina’s Rafael Grossi, Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan and Senegal’s Macky Sall are each to face grillings by 193 member states and non-governmental organizations for three hours today and tomorrow. It is only the second time the UN has held a public question-and-answer, a format created in 2016 to boost transparency. Ultimately the five permanent members of the UN’s top body, the Security Council, hold the power, wielding vetoes over who leads the
A humanoid robot that won a half-marathon race for robots in Beijing on Sunday ran faster than the human world record in a show of China’s technological leaps. The winner from Honor, a Chinese smartphone maker, completed the 21km race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, said a WeChat post by the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, also known as Beijing E-Town, where the race began. That was faster than the human world record holder, Ugandan Jacob Kiplimo, who finished the same distance in about 57 minutes in March at the Lisbon road race. The performance by the robot marked a significant step forward
RSS