The allure of democracy: Even tyrants claim to be democrats

North Korea is among the world's most repressive dictatorships. The dictators named the country the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The DPRK holds elections and if you don't vote, you get shot dead, or maybe spoken to in stern terms. If you don't vote for the dictator, you get shot dead or put in work camps and worked to death. Voter turnout is above 95% and votes for the dictator are at least about 99%.

That is real democracy in action. Or maybe not.

Now, China is claiming that it is a better democracy than America. The New York Times writes:

As President Biden prepares to host a “summit for democracy” this week, China has counterattacked with an improbable claim: It’s a democracy, too.

No matter that the Communist Party of China rules the country’s 1.4 billion people with no tolerance for opposition parties; that its leader, Xi Jinping, rose to power through an opaque political process without popular elections; that publicly calling for democracy in China is punished harshly, often with long prison sentences.

“There is no fixed model of democracy; it manifests itself in many forms,” the State Council, China’s top governing body, argued in a position paper it released over the weekend titled “China: Democracy That Works.”

It is unlikely that any democratic country will be persuaded by China’s model. By any measure except its own, China is one of the least democratic countries in the world, sitting near the bottom of lists ranking political and personal freedoms.

Even so, the government is banking on its message finding an audience in some countries disillusioned by liberal democracy or by American-led criticism — whether in Latin America, Africa or Asia, including in China itself.  

China’s paper on democracy was the latest salvo in a weekslong campaign seeking to undercut Mr. Biden’s virtual gathering, which begins on Thursday.  

In speeches, articles and videos on state television, officials have extolled what they call Chinese-style democracy. At the same time, Beijing has criticized democracy in the United States in particular as deeply flawed, seeking to undermine the Biden administration’s moral authority as it works to rally the West to counter China.  

On Sunday, the foreign ministry released another report that criticized American politics for what it described as the corrupting influence of money, the deepening social polarization and the inherent unfairness of the Electoral College.

Here, China is making an obvious dark free speech ploy. People, including some or many Americans, are openly questioning the value and viability of democracy. That idea has been promoted for years by Russia, China and the American radical right, especially the Republican Party at least since the 1980s. China can and probably will convince nearly all of its people that it is a real democracy, and one that works better than American democracy. 

China's blast is another example of an intense global and radical right internal attack on true democracies. China and Russia attack us online all the time by sowing social distrust, disinformation and polarizing propaganda and lies. In the US, Republicans do the same, while they hob knob with European dictators, thugs and kleptocrats. They like what the see in dictatorship and kleptocracy, i.e., power and wealth. What could be more appealing to politically ambitious people with big egos than power and wealth?

Questions: 

1. Is American democracy under attack by China, Russia and the Republican Party?

2. Is China an honest democracy or a lying dictatorship?

Democracy in action -- see! Everyone agrees!