U.S. President Joe Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yue issued a joint statement on Wednesday (March 29), stating that South Korea will take over hosting the third Summit for Democracy.
“The United States and the Republic of Korea have deep ties rooted in our shared democratic values and respect for human rights, and we are committed to further strengthening our sound political, economic, security, and people-to-people ties,” the statement said.
The statement mentioned that South Korea has become a global leader in recent years, largely due to South Korea’s permanent commitment to improving government transparency, ensuring effective checks and balances, and enacting laws that respond to public needs.
The statement said, “The Democracy Summit aims to strengthen democratic governance, protect human rights and advance the fight against corruption. Strengthening transparent, accountable governance rooted in the principle of the consent of the governed is a fundamental imperative of our time.”
On March 29, 2023, US President Biden hosted the second online meeting of the Democracy Summit. In the upper left corner of the screen is Xiao Meiqin, Taiwan’s representative to the United States who attended the meeting on behalf of Taiwan. (Source: Twitter account of Hsiao Mei-qin, Taiwan’s representative to the United States.)
The Democracy Summit will be hosted by the United States as early as December 2021. The second summit was held online this Wednesday (March 29), with the participation of 120 countries, civil society groups and technology companies, and was co-hosted by the United States, Costa Rica, Zambia, the Netherlands and South Korea. The third summit has been confirmed to be hosted by South Korea, but when it will be held and whether there will be other co-host countries is currently unknown.
At the summit, Biden pledged to spend $690 million to promote the development of global democracy, including helping fight corruption, supporting free and fair elections, and advancing technology that can support democratic governments. Participants worried that China is using ever-sophisticated surveillance tools to hide everyone.
“We are at a turning point in history, and the decisions we make today will certainly shape the course of the world for decades to come,” Biden said.
The United States is trying to use the Democracy Summit to strengthen the position of democracies. At the same time, authoritarian governments are also trying to expand their power, such as Russia’s 13-month-old invasion of Ukraine and Beijing’s alliance with Moscow.
Regarding the Democracy Summit, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning criticized the United States for “false democracy and real hegemony” at a regular press conference on March 28. The CCP’s official media Global Times also issued an editorial on the 29th, writing: “The so-called ‘democracy summit’, both in its motives and results, is anti-democratic and completely serves the diplomatic and geopolitical interests of the United States.” The article also criticized the United States. Using ideological lines to divide the international community into so-called “democratic and undemocratic camps”, creating division and confrontation in the world.
The Xinhua News Agency report on the 29th quoted Wang Honggang, assistant to the president of the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations and director of the Institute of American Studies, as saying, “The ‘democratic summit’ peddled by the United States is not even a ‘fake show’, let alone There is no substance. This ‘fake summit’, designed to sow division and confrontation, is doomed to fail.”
(This article refers to the Reuters report.)
