The 17-minute opening remarks by the Chinese side at the U.S.-China strategic dialogue were truly remarkable. At the time, Yang Jiechi said, “The United States has its style -- United States-style democracy -- and China has the Chinese-style democracy. It is not just up to the American people, but also the people of the world, to evaluate how the United States has done in advancing its own democracy.” Such remarks appear to be very grand on the surface, but they are actually a slap in the face. China has always insisted that there should be no foreign intervention in Hong Kong’s affairs. According to Yang Jiechi, “improving” the democratic framework in Hong Kong today should not be evaluated by the Chinese alone, but also by the people of the world! For the sake of a war of words, they could not care less about contradicting themselves!

The Chinese-style of democracy is a Chinese Communist model promoted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) worldwide and a project to establish Chinese standards. Xi Jinping believes that the “Chinese-style democracy is feasible and has worked well in China.” He emphasized that Chinese-style democracy is a practical and constructive democracy rooted in the foundation of Chinese society and plays an important role in the governance of the country. What is “Chinese-style democracy”? It is what the White House had accused the Chinese government of two years ago, Orwellian Nonsense, which originated from the fictional language “Newspeak” described in George Orwell’s “1984.” Newspeak is the language created by the centralized autocratic superstate to be used by the people of the country, which is constantly modified according to the needs of the party. By controlling the language, the party further manipulates the people’s thinking. One of the rhetorical features of Newspeak is called “doublethink.” The language designed by the party is fundamentally self-contradictory and illogical, a modern version of calling a stag a horse, such as freedom is slavery, war is peace, and ignorance is power. Chinese-style democracy is doublethink where autocracy is democracy.

Stags are different from horses because they have some characteristics that horses do not have, such as antlers. Democracy is not just about the electoral voting system but is characterized by a popular mandate process. You cannot call it democracy just because you say that in your heart you are “ruling for the people” because the CCP operates without the mandate from the public. You can call it the Chinese system or the Chinese governance system, but you simply cannot call it democracy. Yang Jiechi’s promotion of Chinese-style democracy and his high-profile rebuke toward the U.S. were part of a global ideological tug-of-war over human rights issues, which are the West’s main tool in dealing with China. China and the U.S. will continue to have fierce debates on matters concerning values. Before taking office, Biden’s national security advisor Jake Sullivan cautioned against assuming China’s plan was to gain power through seizing territory in the Pacific. Instead, he said that Xi Jinping may expand China’s influence through “increasing emphasis on shaping the world’s economic rules, technology standards and political institutions.” The “Chinese-style of democracy” is China’s political narrative for autocratic regimes around the world. That is, democracy is relative and there is no one-size-fits-all definition. You have democracy in the U.S., France, Germany, and the UK; I have mine in China, Hong Kong, Kyrgyzstan, and South Sudan. And since democracy is a relative concept, we go our own way and you have no moral superiority to point fingers at me.

The CCP has learned to use left-wing arguments, such as gender and racial equality, against Western left plastics, as a way to criticize the U.S. The theory of democratic relativism is just the same old trick because the leftists promote cultural and moral relativism, believing that nothing is absolute, that there are intrinsic differences, and that everything is just a matter of discourse and power. Wang Yi and Yang Jiechi attacked the decline of democracy in the U.S.; the rise of Chinese-style democracy is the beginning of the CCP’s discourse on shaping the world’s political system, just like the 5G, the coronavirus vaccine and microchips. What Xi Jinping is seeking is as Sullivan put it - the establishment of a “Chinese standard” on all fronts, including politics.

If we look at the “improvement” project of democracy in Hong Kong, isn’t it the reality of the Orwellian nonsense of “doublethink,” where autocracy is democracy, castration is improvement, regression is progress?

(Simon Lau Sai-leung, political commentator)

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