Democracy promotion is no substitute for diplomacy

AFTER four years during which the US president engaged in a bromance with Russia's Vladimir Putin, exchanged love letters with North Korea's Kim Jong-un and schmoozed with many of the world's authoritarian leaders, Western officials are applauding the new White House occupant who seems to have placed the promotion of his nation's democratic values on the top of his agenda.

In a way, President Joe Biden has been following in the footsteps of other American leaders who have employed human rights issues and the values that the US represents as a major tool in pursuing Washington's foreign policy, calling among other things for the creation of a coalition of democratic nations. Advancing human rights and promoting democracy is now seen as central to American efforts to build an international coalition aimed at containing a resurgent China, with the Biden administration trying to mobilise international support for punishing China for its repressive steps in Hong Kong and its mistreatment of the Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

That is quite different from the approach towards China that was pursued by former President Donald Trump who viewed US rivalry with China through the prism of national interests and as a competition in the geo-strategic and geo-economic realms and not as an ideological contest. President Biden, on the other hand, has framed the Sino-American relationship in terms of values represented, telling Congress in April that China's Xi Jinping, like other "autocrats", "think that democracy can't compete in the 21st century", suggesting that China is seeking to impose its model of authoritarian repression on the rest of the world.