Is Biden’s democracy summit the start of a new world order?
- Both Beijing and Moscow have taken umbrage at Washington’s attempts to ‘seek supremacy at the expense of others’
- Some suggest the meeting next week will signal what comes next after the US’ unipolar moment
China’s disdain for the Western-style democracy and its hypersensitivity to any questions relating to Taiwan – “the mother of all core interests” – are no secret.
“The US regards itself as a world leader and requires all countries to follow its leadership, which violates the democratisation of international relations,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi remarked bitterly on Friday in a meeting with his counterparts from Russia and India.
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Xi Jinping and Joe Biden call for mutual respect and peaceful China-US coexistence
China’s top envoy to the US, Qin Gang, also lashed out at the Biden administration in a rare joint op-ed last week with his Russian counterpart Anatoly Antonov, a sign of closer alignment between Washington’s top two geostrategic rivals. Russia is also excluded from the summit.
In the article published on the website of National Interest journal, the pair questioned Washington’s role in defining what is and what isn’t a democratic country, accusing the US of trying to seek supremacy at the expense of others.
“An evident product of its cold-war mentality, this [trend] will stoke up ideological confrontation and a rift in the world, creating new ‘dividing lines’,” they wrote. “This trend contradicts the development of the modern world. It is impossible to prevent the shaping of a global polycentric architecture but could strain the objective process. China and Russia firmly reject this move.”
They went on to blame Washington and its efforts to spread the word about democracy, its political system and values, for war and turmoil around the world. “Bombings of Yugoslavia, military intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, and ‘democratic transformation’ do nothing but harm,” Qin and Antonov wrote. “Countries should focus on running their own affairs well, not condescendingly criticising others.”
Their argument about the making of a new world order is especially intriguing. There has been a debate about what’s next after the end of America’s unipolar moment, with China’s rapid rise and the steady decline of the US-led liberal international order.
The deepening US-China schism and ideological wrangling since the Trump era have widened economic and geopolitical fault lines, prompting forecasts of a bipolar world, with one camp led by Washington and the other Beijing.
French President Emmanuel Macron admitted in a speech two years ago that Western hegemony over the world was probably coming to an end. “The world will be centered around two main focal points: the United States and China. And we will have to choose between the two powers,” he said.
Against this backdrop, Biden has made it a priority to host the summit for democracy to help heal the wound of domestic division, restore international confidence in the US and stop democratic backsliding internationally.
It is commendable for democracies to stand up to authoritarianism, but it remains far too early to tell if this summit could be any different from other international gatherings that are high on pomp and ceremony and low on substance.
That said, the summit may further accelerate the stiff competition between Washington-led democracies and authoritarian rule championed by Beijing, in another sign that marks the beginning of a new world order.
