(Washington) In a rare joint forum, the Chinese and Russian ambassadors in Washington criticized the exclusion of their country from the virtual summit for democracy that President Joe Biden will organize in December.
That the United States allows itself to define “who is a ‘democratic country’ and who is not eligible for this status” is a “Cold War mentality”, write with a single pen Anatoly Antonov and Qin Gang in the conservative journal National Interest.
“This will rekindle the ideological confrontation and global fractures and create new lines of division,” they warn, echoing the criticisms expressed in Moscow and Beijing as soon as the announcement on Tuesday of some 110 countries and territories invited .
Rejecting the idea of a single model of democracy, the two diplomats praise their respective regimes based on Chinese “realities” or Russian “traditions”.
“There is no need to worry about democracy in Russia and China,” they continue. “Some foreign governments would do better to watch what’s going on at home. Can we speak of freedom when demonstrators are dispersed with rubber bullets and tear gas? ”
The ambassadors also call on the West not to “interfere in the internal affairs” of other countries “under the pretext of promoting democratic values” and advocate “true multilateralism” operating around the United Nations.
Upon his arrival at the White House in January, Democrat Joe Biden placed the fight between democracies and “autocracies”, embodied in his eyes by China and Russia, at the heart of his foreign policy.
The “summit for democracy”, a campaign pledge the first version of which will take place online on December 9 and 10 before a face-to-face meeting a year later, is one of the cornerstones of this priority.
Among the guests are India, Pakistan, Brazil, despite mixed human rights records, but not Turkey or Hungary.
The United States also invited Taiwan, which was strongly criticized by Beijing. However, the ambassadors’ platform does not refer to it.
The Asian giant considers Taiwan to be one of its provinces although it does not control the island of 23 million people.