Early Warning Brief: All-Out Defense of “Chinese-Style Democracy” Exposes Cracks in Xi Jinping’s Armor (Willy Wo-Lap Lam, The Jamestown Foundation)

In the run-up to the U.S. “Democracy Summit” hosted by President Joe Biden on December 9-10, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) pulled out all the stops to convince the world that China’s “whole-process democracy” (全过程民主, quanguocheng minzhu) is superior to the democratic ideals championed by the United States and its partners. The White Paper on Democracy issued by the State Council Information Office (SCIO) and other documents published by party and government units claim that the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) “whole-process democracy” has realized the “processes of democracy and the fruits of democracy” (SCIO, December 4). The White Paper avers that in China there is a “synthesis between the people’s democracy and the will of the state,” and asserts that Chinese democracy is “the most comprehensive, most realistic, and most effective socialist democracy” (China Daily, December 8; Xinhua, December 4).

Early Warning Brief: All-Out Defense of “Chinese-Style Democracy” Exposes Cracks in Xi Jinping’s Armor – Jamestown