Washington urged to fix own democratic deficits

China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin dismissed the "Summit for Democracy" launched by the United States and to be held for the second time later this month, saying that Washington is using democracy as a banner to divide the world.

"The so-called summit is actually a move against democracy," he told reporters at a news conference on Wednesday in Beijing.

According to the US State Department, the US will co-host the second such "summit" online with the governments of Costa Rica, the Netherlands, the Republic of Korea and Republic of Zambia on March 29-30.

Wang said the US had fully exposed its hypocritical nature of seeking hegemony in the name of democracy when Washington brazenly formed cliques with ideology as the yardstick when the first such event was held in 2021, drawing criticism and opposition from many countries.

"Some people in the US have claimed the country as the so-called beacon of democracy, but whether the US democracy is good or not should be decided by the American public and people around the world," Wang said.

A previous poll by the Pew Research Center showed that only 20 percent of the US public say they trust their government and 65 percent of them say most US politicians run for office only "to serve their own personal interests", the spokesman added.

Washington, according to him, is faced with its own huge democratic deficits. Instead of reflecting on itself and making corrections, it even further intensified its efforts to peddle the US-style democracy to the world and interfered in other countries' domestic affairs in the name of democracy.