Biden at Democracy Summit: “Things are going in the wrong direction”

American correspondent Marieke de Vries:

Biden had already announced this summit for democracy last March during his first press conference as president. He remained a spearhead of its foreign policy throughout the year. Biden sees the struggle between democracies and autocracies as the challenge of our time. He literally said, “I predict that our children and grandchildren will later graduate from what has triumphed: autocracy or democracy? Because that’s what it is.”

Russia and China find this summit presumptuous. Over the past year, American democracy has also taken a hit: with a former president refusing to accept election results, the capture of the Capitol, and election laws in several states being amended to make it more difficult to vote. of certain population groups. .

In such a year, the United States would be rather more modest, say Russian and Chinese state media. In doing so, they also try to divert attention from the content discussed at the top and thus spin their alternative vision of the concept of democracy.

Last weekend, China already hosted its own “Democracy Forum” with 120 international politicians and academics, where it was argued that “China’s one-party system as a democracy” works better than democracy. American. “