Chinese officials took the anniversary of the violence at the U.S. Capitol as an occasion to extol the communist system of governance as an alternative “path to democracy,” in a potential portent of Beijing’s public diplomacy.
“The storming of the Capitol Hill one year ago shocked the world and set people thinking,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Thursday. “No democracy is superior to others and no democratic model fits all scenarios. The exploration of a path to democracy by a country’s people in light of national realities is the only right way to achieve and develop democracy.”
Chinese officials long have denied that the United States has the standing to criticize their system of governance or object to the repression of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, which the State Department has deemed a genocide. Yet the insistence that their political model qualifies as a democracy represents a diplomatic innovation, according to analysts, that could forecast their plan to forge additional political links with fellow travelers in other governments.
“They’re doing three things at the same time: They’re discrediting U.S. attacks, they’re giving cover to themselves, and they’re giving cover to other authoritarians,” U.S. Army War College research professor Evan Ellis told the Washington Examiner. “It’s an emerging tactic.”
The argument isn’t unprecedented, Center for New American Security Chief Executive Richard Fontaine observed, given that the Chinese Communist constitution pays lip service to rights such as freedom of speech. But the claim that “theirs is just a different kind of democracy” has become more pronounced over the last year, he concurred.
“This is a new narrative,” Fontaine told the Washington Examiner. “It’s no model of intellectual consistency, but they seem to think that this has some potential as a counternarrative to the Biden administration’s, in particular, approach of [touting] democratic cohesion, the strength of democracy, the utility and efficacy of democracy, the democracy summit — all of these kinds of things.”
The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman’s derisive characterization of the U.S. political system followed the release of a new mandate from Beijing’s chief ideologist, who urged regime propagandists to tout Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping’s status as the “core” of the Chinese Communist Party, which is now guided by his interpretation of “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”
“To do well in this year’s work on propaganda and thought, [we] must highlight the historical significance of the ‘two establishments,’” said Chinese Communist Politburo member Wang Huning, using the term of art for the centrality of Xi and his ideology.
The Politburo member, who has a reputation as the “ideas man” behind Xi, signaled his desire to improve international public relations. “He also called for innovation in international communication and strengthened party leadership over the publicity work,” Xinhua, a state media outlet, relayed Wednesday.
That messaging could resonate in other countries with leaders prone to indulge in authoritarian tendencies. “There’s an inherent Chinese [Communist] interest in rallying together all of those who share an interest in not being [criticized] for being undemocratic,” said Ellis, who specialized at the State Department in Chinese overtures to Latin America. “There’s something about this new approach that’s just like, ’OK, raise your head with pride and do what you want, and it’s just a different kind of democracy.’ That kind of defense of authoritarianism 2.0 is what’s new and kind of scary here.”
Only time will tell how much success they will have in advancing that argument, Fontaine said, but the dilapidation of many democratic governments in recent years doesn’t bode well.
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“If it was just the Chinese narrative, I don’t think it would have a lot of uptake other than for would-be authoritarians looking for some justification to be authoritarian,” he said. ”I would prefer to be in a situation where China rails about the incompetence and lack of efficacy and unity of ‘western-style democracy,’ as they would call it, and people just dismiss that out of hand the rantings of an authoritarian power that is trying to hold on to its privileges. But you can’t quite do that because we’ve supplied a lot of ammunition.”
