(East-West Question) Tian Feilong: Why is the status of the "democratic leader" of the United States crumbling?
China News Agency, Beijing, January 19th, Question: Why is the status of the "democratic leader" of the United States crumbling?
Author Tian Feilong, associate professor at Beihang University School of Law, Ph.D.
The "Trump Doctrine" trade war with China has not yet finished, and the "Biden Doctrine" "Democracy War" has begun again.
Whether it is the "decoupling" of the trade war or the "antagonism" of the "democracy war", they are all selfish, willful and weak irrational responses of the US hegemony.
The U.S. government will hold the so-called "Democracy Summit" on December 9, 2021, to "reconfirm" American-style democracy and its discourse power and hegemony, and even initiate actions against other non-democratic or anti-democratic countries and entities based on the results of the summit. with personal sanctions.
American-style democracy is manifested in the tearing of political parties, social antagonism, and systemic racial discrimination at home, and populization and violence tend to appear. Destroy the "value-tightening curse" and "system weapon" of other countries' democratic forms.
American-style democracy has brought about domestic and international divisions, revealing that the so-called "democracy" hijacked by interest groups and hegemonic forces has seriously deviated from the right track, and has gradually lost its rational function of uniting society and promoting good governance.
America's status as a "democratic leader" is essentially shaky.
On September 18, 2021, in Washington, the United States, hundreds of people rallied near Capitol Hill. The police imposed martial law on the Capitol area, and a large number of police were on guard to prevent emergencies.
In January of that year, rioters stormed Congress in the United States, which had a bad impact.
Photo by China News Agency reporter Chen Mengtong
American democracy is gradually moving away from its original purpose
Due to the strong strategic pertinence and political hostility of the "Democracy Summit" in the United States, China and Russia both have discourse and political countermeasures in varying degrees and forms. There are also many countries, groups and individuals in the international community who have launched a sharp, profound and peaceful campaign against American democracy. Criticism from multiple angles.
The "Democracy Summit" of the United States has obvious "new Cold War" hostility, with the monopoly of democratic discourse, with the use of democracy as a weapon to continue to interfere in China's internal affairs (including Hong Kong, Taiwan, Xinjiang, Tibet and other issues) and seek to establish The intentions of a strategically offensive and provocative international political framework pose a serious threat to world peace and the development of globalization.
China released the white paper "Democracy in China" on December 4, 2021. This date is very representative and is China's Constitution Day.
Interpreting the Constitution with democracy and introducing the integrated concept of "people's democracy in the whole process" are the great political significance and theoretical value of this white paper.
On December 5, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs released the report "The Situation of Democracy in the United States", which exposed and criticized the alienation, defects and harm of American democracy at the legal and factual level.
The Sino-US Democracy Debate shows that: On the one hand, China's democracy has progressed, and it dares to present facts and reason with American democracy to compete in terms of discourse and system, let the people evaluate it, and let the international community rate it; on the other hand, American democracy has regressed, and its other "Election-centrism", kidnapping by interest groups, populization, and external hegemony have led to the weaponization, instrumentalization, and dogmatization of democracy, gradually moving away from the original intention of democracy to be "accurately responsible" to the people.
The founding spirit of the United States lies in constructing an elite representation system based on electoral democracy, combining popular elections with elite representation.
The Federalist Papers exemplifies the essence of American democracy.
American democracy later became truly popular through the "Jackson Revolution" of 1829, truly equalized through the "Lincoln Revolution" of the 1860s, and realized through the "Roosevelt New Deal" of the 1930s and 1940s and the "Civil Rights Movement" of the 1960s. This kind of inclusive constitutional equality and social integration has won a worldwide reputation for American political civilization.
As a result, American democracy has gained the status of a powerful or even the only "paradigm" in the world.
Serving strong and arrogant, flourishing and declining, American democracy, after its peak period, appeared imperial hegemony and moral degeneration of betrayal of the people, until it evolved into today's distorted form of internal and external alienation.
The understanding and evaluation of American democracy should objectively appeal to the changes in the history and value of democracy, which is conducive to the correct diagnosis and response to American democratic hegemony in the world.
Seven manifestations of the serious alienation of American democracy
Although American democracy has its historical achievements, it also has serious alienation:
First, American democracy focuses too much on elections and loses its attention to the entire democratic process and complete system and for system building. The people's democratic rights are severely restricted, and the people's participation in public decision-making and legislation and their ability to supervise suffer a serious "deficit".
Second, U.S. electoral democracy is dominated by money politics and monopolistic media, and is connected to the “fat distribution” mechanism of party politics, which pollutes the process of forming “public rationality” of electoral democracy, distorts the rational aggregation and expression of public opinion, and leads to elections. Distortion and failure.
Third, the decision-making and legislation of American democracy are bound and hijacked by vested interests. In actual operation, the phenomenon of "veto regime" has appeared. Violent and private fights between political parties have damaged the representative rationality of the parliamentary democratic system and cannot effectively convey public opinion and expression. Rational appeals have resulted in a decline in voter turnout, a sense of indifference in political participation, and severe "democracy fatigue".
U.S. President Donald Trump delivers his State of the Union address in the House of Representatives in Washington, U.S., February 4, 2020.
When Trump's speech ended, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tore up the State of the Union speech.
Photo by China News Agency reporter Chen Mengtong
Fourth, American democracy has failed to truly solve the problem of systemic racial discrimination at the level of social concepts and institutions. The "equal rights" norm in the Constitution has been resisted and eliminated by governments at all levels, social groups, and even the racist culture of white supremacy. Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr.'s agenda for equalization of civil rights is not over, and even reversed in the "Floyd case" and the "Black Lives Matter" movement.
On June 25, 2021, the police stand guard in front of the newly inaugurated George Floyd statue in New York, the United States.
On the same day, a judge in Hennepin County, Minnesota announced that Derek Chauvin, the principal in the Floyd case, was sentenced to 22 years and 6 months in prison.
Previously, the death of Floyd, an African-American man, caused by police brutality in the United States sparked a wave of protests against racial discrimination and police brutality in the United States and around the world.
Photo by China News Agency reporter Liao Pan
Fifth, American democracy is under the control of distorted elections and elites. Ordinary people are discriminated against and their interests are violated, but they lack democratic rights and effective voice channels, and lack a strict and enforceable instant accountability mechanism. The inability to achieve "precise accountability" has led to an internal rupture in the logical chain of the democratic accountability system in the United States, and democratic elections and periodic rotation in power have become a "house of cards game" for political careerists and interest groups.
Sixth, the alienation and defects of U.S. electoral democracy and its operation have stimulated voters to produce serious political anger and populist actions. "Trumpism" is a typical representative, and "zero yuan purchase" means that the bottom-level people in the United States have a strong sense of the whole. The despair of social justice and the future of democracy.
Seventh, American democracy has a certain ability of self-reflection and repair, but with the rigidity and hegemony of democratic discourse, the reflexivity of the United States has become increasingly sluggish and marginalized, and American democracy has entered a period of functional decline of "old age rigidity".
The hegemony of American democracy is a disaster, not a boon
While self-alienating, American democracy has also experienced serious hegemony, as its soft power pillar and implement tool for promoting imperialism and hegemonism.
In the report "American Democracy", China fully exposed the hegemonic and harmful nature of American democracy.
The gene of American democratic hegemony comes from the constitution of the Federalists in 1787. Hamilton, one of the founding fathers, declared in the first article of The Federalist Papers that the United States should explore a model of democratic political civilization for human society.
The Monroe Doctrine proposed in 1823 is isolationism relative to Europe, but in the Americas it has become a regional attempt of American "democratic interventionism" and the legal basis for establishing a sphere of influence. The Americas, especially Latin America, have become the "backyard" of American democracy. Suffering from illegal intervention, sanctions, subversion, rebellion and social division for a long time, it has not yet been relieved.
The Wilsonian Doctrine of 1917 and the later Roosevelt Doctrine realized the status of the United States as a "legislator" in the global governance system. The United States' democratic hegemony was basically formed, and it repeatedly went to other countries and regions to create "color revolutions" and forcibly spread the so-called democratic gospel.
The "long-arm jurisdiction" in the American tradition of rule of law is also rooted in the hegemonic nature of American democracy, which overrides and undermines the principles of international law and basic norms of international relations.
The hegemony of American democracy has generally brought disaster rather than gospel to world peace and development.
Under the coercion and inducement of the United States, many countries and regions "copy and copy" American democracy and try out elections and multi-party systems "living and living". As a result, political elites have generally become agents of American interests, and sovereign assets and the national economic system have become The prey of American capital, the people's democratic rights and happy life suffer from layers of oppression and damage.
The hegemony of American democracy and its global export satisfy the moral vanity of the American political elite, the global control desire of interest groups, and the market-oriented monopoly of American capital.
The 20 years of "democracy" in Afghanistan are the latest example of the failure of American-style democracy to export and the stagnation of development in the host country.
Democracy is by no means the patent or pillar of hegemony of any one country
Regrettably, judging from the so-called "democracy summit", the US government did not wake up and reflect on the political failure of the Afghan retreat, but intensified its abuse of democratic discourse in order to maintain its global hegemony and create a more divided world. Objectively There is a huge risk and danger of reintroducing the "Cold War".
In a word, democracy is the common value of all mankind and the political right of the people of all countries, and is by no means the patent or pillar of hegemony of any country.
Democracy in the United States needs to join the big family of human democracy and maintain humility and self-discipline, otherwise it will become the biggest destroyer of the human democratic process.
As a socialist democratic country, China, with its complete democratic normative legal principles and solid democratic system practice, explains its own democratic system, conducts objective diagnosis and discourse struggle on American-style democracy, and its fundamental purpose is to defend the legitimacy of Chinese democracy. Resist the democratic hegemony of the United States, firmly support all countries and civilized regions in the world to embark on a democratic path that suits their own realities and the well-being of their people, and enrich and develop new forms of human political civilization.
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About the Author:
Tian Feilong, a native of Lianshui, Jiangsu, is an associate professor at the Advanced Research Institute/School of Law, Beihang University, executive director of the One Country, Two Systems Legal Research Center, a master tutor, and a doctor of law from Peking University.
He was a short-term visiting scholar at the Federal Institute of Fribourg University in Switzerland (2009.8-2009.9) and served as a Leslie Wright Fellow of the Law School of the University of Hong Kong (2014-2015).
The main research directions are Constitutional and Political Theory, Comparative Law and Global Governance, and Basic Law of Hong Kong and Macau.
He is also a director of the National Hong Kong and Macao Research Association and a director of the Law Research Association on Cross-Strait Relations.
He has translated 12 books including "Introduction to Federalism" and "Constitutional Views of the American Revolution".
He is the author of 8 monographs including "The Road to Rule of Law in Modern China", "Observation on Hong Kong Political Reform", "The Chinese Way of Political Constitution" and "Hong Kong New Order".
Young academic representatives, government consultants and public columnists of the domestic "political constitutional science" genre have established good academic interaction with overseas think tanks and authoritative media, and have high academic and social influence at home and abroad.
Selected into the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics Youth Top Talent Program (Category A, 2019) and Beijing National Governance Young Talent Program (The Fourth Batch, 2019).