China terms United States democracy as weapon of mass destruction
China branded US democracy a ‘weapon of
mass destruction’ on Saturday, following the
US-organised Summit for Democracy which aimed to shore up like-minded allies in
the face of autocratic regimes.
China was left out of the two-day
virtual summit along with countries including Russia and Hungary and responded
by angrily accusing US president Joe Biden of stoking Cold War-era ideological
divides.
‘Democracy’ has long
become a ‘weapon of mass destruction’ used by the
US to interfere in other countries,’ a foreign
ministry spokesperson said in an online statement, which also accused the US of
having ‘instigated ‘colour
revolutions’’ overseas.
The ministry also claimed the summit
was organised by the US to ‘draw lines of ideological prejudice,
instrumentalise and weaponise democracy incite division and confrontation.’
Instead, Beijing vowed to ‘resolutely
resist and oppose all kinds of pseudo-democracies’.
Ahead of the summit, China ramped up
a propaganda blitz criticising US democracy as corrupt and a failure.
Instead, it touted its own version
of ‘whole-process
people’s democracy’ in a white
paper released last week that aimed to shore up legitimacy for the ruling
Communist Party, which has become increasingly authoritarian under president Xi
Jinping.
While the US has repeatedly denied
there will be another Cold War with China, tensions between the world’s two
largest economies have spiralled in recent years over issues including trade
and technological competition, human rights, Xinjiang and Taiwan.
The US treasury on Friday sanctioned
two high-level Chinese officials for human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region
and placed Chinese AI surveillance firm SenseTime on a blacklist for its facial
recognition technology targeting the Uyghur minority.
Taiwan, a democratic self-ruling island
that is claimed by China, was invited to the US summit in a clear snub to its
larger neighbour.
But Beijing got a boost in the
middle of Biden’s summit when Nicaragua dropped its
previous diplomatic alliance with Taiwan, saying it only recognised China.
The announcement leaves Taiwan with
only 14 diplomatic allies. In response, the US state department called on ‘all
countries that value democratic institutions’ to ‘expand
engagement’ with the island.