China is a threat to democratic way of life, says Biden
President urges world leaders to ‘lock arms’ against autocracies at event seen as US-led counterweight to China’s growing global influence.
Beijing has erupted about its exclusion from US President Joe Biden’s democracy summit where the American leader urged his counterparts to “lock arms” against “autocrats”.
Revealing its deep anxiety about Mr Biden’s signature summit, the Chinese Communist Party went into overdrive about the gathering, which it cast as being entirely about attacking China and said was “weaponising democracy”.
The front pages of party-state media newspapers fumed that the American leader had not invited China, while China’s state broadcaster released a two-part documentary about the “chaos and retrogression” of American democracy.
Beijing was particularly vicious about the inclusion in the summit of a minister in Taiwan’s government, along with Nathan Law, a leader in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, who left the city after last year’s brutal crackdown.
Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said Mr Biden was correct to not invite China.
“It is a communist system. It’s a dictatorship. And if you look at what happened in the last few years, the Chinese political system is becoming more autocratic than ever,” Mr Wu told The Weekend Australian.
“The power is concentrated in one person, not just the communist party… It is not people’s democracy. It is one person ruling the rest of the country.”
Other nations that were not invited included Russia, Turkey and Hungary.
Mr Biden in his opening remarks for the summit underlined the importance of what he said would be annual even in his presidency.
“This gathering has been on my mind for a long time for a simple reason. In the face of sustained and alarming challenges … democracy needs champions,” he said.
Neither China or Russia was directly mentioned in his opening remarks, but Mr Biden did single out “autocrats” as part of a global challenge to democracies.
“They seek to advance their own power, export and expand their influence around the world, and justify their repressive policies and practices as a more efficient way to address today’s challenges,” he said.
“In my view, this is the defining challenge of our time.”
Mr Biden cited research by Freedom House that found 2020 marked the 15th consecutive year that its measures of political and societal freedom had fallen.
He also spoke openly about America’s own challenges, which was dramatically broadcast around the world this January as supporters of former president Donald Trump stormed Washington.
“Another recent report, from the International Institute of Democracy and Electoral Assistance, noted that more than half of all democracies have experienced a decline in at least one aspect of their democracy over the last 10 years, including the United States,” he said.
Russia has joined China in a joint effort to attack the three-day summit, publishing a joint essay describing the Biden administration as exhibiting a “Cold-War mentality” that would “stoke up ideological confrontation and a rift in the world”.
Speaking on the eve of the summit, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi further elevated Beijing’s outrage in a keynote speech claiming that since its inception the CCP “has been upholding the banner of democracy”.
“We have full confidence in our democracy, and we also fully respect other countries’ democracy,” Mr Wang said.
“Forming small groups and circles in the name of democracy in fact tramples on the spirit of democracy and is turning back the wheel of human history.”
The CCP organised a “seminar on democracy” in Hong Kong on the eve of the summit.
Liu Guangyuan, the Foreign Ministry’s commissioner in Hong Kong, told attendees those who bad-mouthed the democratic systems of China and Hong Kong at the “summit” will be condemned to “everlasting infamy”.
Last weekend, China’s State Council released a paper titled “China: Democracy That Works,” in which it argued that its one-party system of government was more democratic than that of the US.
The next day, China’s foreign ministry released a second lengthy paper entirely devoted to attacking America’s democracy.
“To be honest the propaganda organs are starting to sound a bit North Korean,” said Bill Bishop, author of the influential Sinocism newsletter.
“One of the dark jokes going around for years is that Xi’s vision for the PRC (People’s Republic of China) is to build ‘West Korea’”.
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