Chinese Ambassador to Bangladesh Li Jiming recently pointed out that the so-called Summit for Democracy is a huge irony and that the U.S. has no right to be the sole judge of what democracy is.

The Daily Sun on Friday published an op-ed by Ambassador Li in the series China: Good Governance Rooted in an Ancient Civilization titled "Enough of Fundamentalism of Democracy."

Recognizing the detrimental consequences of  the "fundamentalism of democracy," Li called for expanding the bandwidth of democracy and allowing different political models to coexist and thrive.

"Assessing the myriad political systems in the world against a single yardstick and examining diverse political structures in monochrome are in themselves undemocratic," the ambassador said.

He said although historically the development of democracy in the U.S. was a step forward for humankind, as time passed, the U.S. "has grown increasingly self-inflated, arrogant and overconfident in its own democratic system."

Exemplifying his point with the situation in Afghanistan and Iraq, the ambassador said the United States exported "U.S. democracy" to the world as a tool to maintain its hegemony.

Li said the emerging tenets of the Biden presidency is that the U.S. and China are locked in ideological conflict over the fate of democracy, stressing that "Western democracies are rotting from within, not without, [and] a renewal is needed."

Expounding on China's standard for democracy, Li said, "Whether a country is democratic also depends on whether its people are truly the masters of the country, whether the people have the right to vote, and more importantly, the right to participate extensively."

He said whether the electorate was given verbal promises in elections and how many of these promises are fulfilled after elections is another critical element, adding that the political procedures rules, state systems and laws were also essential. 

"Whether these systems and laws are truly enforced, whether the rules and procedures for the exercise of power are democratic, and more importantly, whether the exercise of power is genuinely subject to public scrutiny and checks" are all a part of whether a country is democratic, Li continued.

He said China's democracy is "whole-process people's democracy," which integrates process-oriented democracy with results-oriented democracy, procedural democracy with substantive democracy, direct democracy with indirect democracy, and people's democracy with the will of the state, with the people's status as masters of the country being the essence of it.

(Cover: Chinese Ambassador to Bangladesh Li Jiming. /Chinese Embassy in Bangladesh)