CCP promotes one-party rule ahead of Biden democracy summit

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials attacked America’s democratic system of government on Saturday, saying countries who try to emulate it are “doomed to fail” while praising the virtues of single-party rule.

America’s poor coronavirus response was proof of Western-style democracy’s shortcomings, said Tian Peiyan, the deputy director of the Communist Party’s Policy Research Office, who blamed its high COVID death toll on political disputes and a divided government.

“Such democracy brings not happiness, but disaster to voters,” Tian said at a press conference unveiling a paper titled “China: Democracy that Works,” in which it defends one-party rule as another form of democracy.

“One person, one vote is a democratic principle, but it is by no means the only principle, nor does it of itself create democracy. However, it has long been misinterpreted and its meaning distorted by a small number of countries,” the paper said.

The escalating rhetoric is likely a preemptive strike targeting President Joe Biden’s “Summit for Democracy” next week, which will “focus on challenges and opportunities facing democracies” and make commitments to defend against authoritarianism, fight corruption, and promote human rights.

China and Russia are not among the 111 governments invited to particiupate. The fact that Taiwan, a self-governing democracy China claims should be under its rule, was invited and will be representing itself has further angered Beijing.

The party defended centralized government as the best way to maintain stability in countries as large as China and the U.S.

“In such a large country with 56 ethnic groups and more than 1.4 billion people, if there is no party leadership, ... and we uphold the so-called democracy of the West, it will be easy to mess things up and democracy will work the opposite way,” Tian said, again casting is own system of government as the real, better form of “democracy.”

China has been criticized of abusing its centralized authority and silencing dissent, as well as the severity of its own COVID response. Amnesty International covered how Wuhan police silenced Li Wenliang, a doctor at Wuhan Central Hospital, when he tried to issue the first warnings about novel coronavirus in December 2019. Li later died of COVID in February 2020.

“The case of Li Wenliang is a tragic reminder of how the Chinese authorities’ preoccupation with maintaining ‘stability’ drives it to suppress vital information about matters of public interest,” said Amnesty International’s Regional Director Nicholas Bequelin after Li’s death.