Xi Jinping's US envoy invokes Lincoln in declaring China a democracy

A top Chinese diplomat claimed that China is a democracy, arguing its political system exemplifies the ideals of former US President Abraham Lincoln and the ancient Greeks who invented a representative form of government.

Qin Gang, China’s ambassador to the US, on Wednesday cited the right of Chinese people to participate in certain elections and consultations over major policies as evidence of a democratic system not unlike that in America.

“Isn’t it obvious that both China’s people-center philosophy and President Lincoln’s ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’ are for the sake of the people?” Qin said in a virtual conference organized by US think tanks The Carter Center and The George H.W. Bush Foundation for US-China Relations. “Shall we understand China’s socialist whole-process democracy as this: from the people, to the people, with the people, for the people?” 

Qin’s speech was the latest effort by China to redefine some key Western concepts, such as human rights and multilateralism, in pursuit of greater “discourse power” as President Xi Jinping has instructed. Chinese diplomats have frequently argued that the values of some Western countries, such as the US and Japan, “don’t represent the international community.”