Senior China Official Says Biden Democracy Summit Will Be ‘Joke’

(Bloomberg) --

U.S. President Joe Biden’s planned democracy summit next week will be a “joke” and the American political system doesn’t represent a real democracy, senior Chinese officials said on Saturday.

“Under the American democratic system, U.S. politicians are the agents of interest groups, and don’t represent interests of majority voters nor national interest,” Tian Peiyan, deputy director of the Policy Research Office of the Communist Party’s central committee, said at a press conference in Beijing on Saturday for the release of a white paper on democracy.

U.S. politicians would promise anything just to get elected and rarely delivered on their commitments, he said. “This is not real democracy, Chinese people don’t like and don’t want such a democracy,” Tian said. 

The “revolving door” phenomenon in the U.S. system means that politicians are swayed by interest groups and lobbyists, said Xu Lin, deputy head of the Publicity Department in the party’s central committee. 

Biden has frequently characterized democracies’ battle against autocracies as an essential geopolitical challenge of the 21st century. Chinese authorities have criticized the U.S. president’s planned virtual summit next week, with Taiwan among the more than 100 invitees. China Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng said in a call with his Russian counterpart on Friday that the event was a “complete farce.”

China has ratcheted up military, economic and diplomatic pressure on democratically run Taiwan since Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s election win in 2016. Beijing says the island is part of its territory, a claim refuted by Tsai and her ruling party.

“The U.S. is a self-styled leader of democracy, but its so-called summit of democracy is only aimed at suppressing and containing countries with a different development model,” said Tian, “it is set to become a joke and will not be popular.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

With assistance from Bloomberg