Commentary: A summit for democracy or dominance?

BEIJING, March 30 (Xinhua) -- A year and a half after the first version, the United States staged the second "Summit for Democracy" in high-flown rhetoric, despite a complete mess in human rights at home and criticism worldwide.

Is this summit a noble event for the world's democracy or simply a political drama for the dominance and hegemony of the United States itself?

The answer is crystal clear if we look at who the organizer is and the summit's agenda.

Harboring and hyping up a new Cold War mentality, the United States openly draws an ideological line, handpicking participants and splitting the world into two camps of what it defines as "democracies and non-democracies."

Over the years, American electoral democracy has been substantially hollowed out and become an oligarchy, putting aside matters regarding people's livelihood and welfare while centering on partisan and capital interests.

A few figures point to the failure of U.S. democracy. In the United States, the average life expectancy dropped by 2.7 years to 76.1 years from 2019 to 2021, the lowest since 1996. In 2022, the number of school shootings reached 302, the highest since 1970; a record 1,239 people died due to police violence; money spent on elections set a record high to nearly 17 billion U.S. dollars.

In short, if democracy had worked in the United States, it should have helped solve or alleviate its domestic crises and issues including widened wealth gaps, rising gun violence, widespread discrimination and drug abuse.

Media freedom was reportedly one of the agendas of the summit. Yet when an investigative report by Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh exposed U.S. involvement in the Nord Stream blasts, the mainstream media outlets of the U.S. and the West unanimously kept silent.

The United States has become the least qualified country to promote democracy. The hegemonic country is the most authoritarian in international relations.

The United States is the No.1 warmonger in the world, instigating about 80 percent of all post-WWII armed conflicts and causing humanitarian catastrophes. The U.S.-led NATO is responsible for wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria that killed more than 900,000 and created 37 million refugees. The U.S. unilateral sanctions and "long-arm jurisdiction" against countries such as Cuba and Iran seriously damaged their economic development and people's livelihood in a systematic and massive violation of human rights.

The so-called "summit for democracy" is nothing but a talk shop used by the United States to check how various countries have performed in meeting U.S. standards for democracy and to issue new orders. It is a blunt tool for the United States to maintain its hegemony by playing bloc politics. Therefore, it is not a summit for democracy but one for the hegemony of the United States. And this destructive pursuit creates new divisions and instabilities across the world.

With several years to go to realize the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, poverty, hunger, the COVID-19 pandemic, and other common challenges make it more urgent than ever for all countries to promote cooperation rather than confrontation. The world needs a global partnership for sustainable development, not a U.S.-led camp to oppose others and serve its dominance.

When the United States is busy with its democracy summit, the annual conference of the Boao Forum for Asia -- an event aimed at pooling positive energy for the development of Asia and the world -- is also underway in south China's tropical province of Hainan, calling for solidarity and cooperation amid challenges.

As one of the world's developed countries, the United States should assume more shared responsibility to promote world peace and development. The "summit for democracy" pools only negative energy. The United States should stop mongering its own corrupt and fake democracy to poison others, reflect on its problems and system, and respond with practical action to the global aspiration for peace and prosperity, as we are a human community with a shared future.