China and the United States are at loggerheads over President Joe Biden’s upcoming congressional hearing, which the Communist Party sees as a challenge to its sovereignty.
The group maintains China has its own version of democracy and plans to release a report entitled China: Democracy that Works on Saturday, five days before the opening of a two-day conference in Biden and about 110 other governments.
The White House backed Thursday against Chinese criticism of the Biden Convention on Democracy, after a Chinese top official said he was dividing the country and pointing fingers at others.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said participants would discuss how they could work together to represent democracy around the world.
That is not what we will apologize for, he said.
He was responding to an opening remarks by Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Le Yucheng at an expert forum on the topic of government coverage of foreign journalists in Beijing.
It says this is for the sake of democracy, says Le, without naming the US. “But this is in stark contrast to democracy. It will not help global unity, cooperation and development will not help.
Biden has made the rivalry between democracy and democratic governments such as Russia and China the main focus of his presidency, saying democracy must prove that it can bring success. Russia or China have not been invited to its conference.
The Communist Party responded that its program benefited the people of the country, citing its rapid development into a middle-income country with limited success in reducing the number of deaths from COVID-19. Authorities frequently point out the shortcomings of the American democracy, from gun violence to insurgency in the United States Capitol after the last presidential election.
Bonnie Glaser, a Chinese specialist and director of the Asian Program at the German Marshall Fund in the United States, said the Chinese were right in viewing the conference as a dictatorship and a political system in China.
The Chinese Communist Party may have felt threatened by the democratic issue in Biden and felt compelled to reaffirm its commitment, “he said in an email. Yes people come after the party and retain their role, but that is not said. ”
The US has also angered China by including Taiwan in the summit. China claims an independent island as part of its territory and opposes having separate contacts with foreign governments.