The so-called Summit for Democracy knocked together by the US is announced with great fanfare. While people from nearly half of the global, including Bangladesh, are questioning the roster of summit participants, China is questioning something else: What is true democracy? Is the US eligible to define democracy? And how to realize and evaluate a democracy?

All too often, democracy is narrowly interpreted as whether there is a rotation of the ruling party. China believes, however, that whether a country is a democracy depends on whether its people are truly the masters of the country. If the people are awakened only for voting but enter a dormant period soon after, if they are given a song and dance during campaigning but have no say after the election, or if they are favored during canvassing but are left out in the cold after the election, such a democracy is not a true democracy.

The word "democracy", if we trace back to its ancient Greek root, means "rule by the people". Therefore, whether a country is democratic or not should be judged by its people, not a self-styled judge from outside. Likewise, since the world is diverse, it is in itself undemocratic for a few countries to use a single yardstick to measure the rich and varied political systems and the diverse political civilizations of humanity from a monotonous perspective.

On the path towards comprehensive socialist modernization, China has achieved considerable progress in developing its whole-process people’s  democracy. Same for Bangladesh, which has also achieved huge progress in socio-economic development and democracy. If a country with a government that enjoys elevated levels of public support is not recognised as a democracy, maybe it’s time to either rethink the definition of democracy, or to question the intention behind this definition.

Don’t you think so?