BEIJING - China's top newspaper slammed U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
on Thursday for comments she made lauding democracy and implicitly criticising
restrictions in China, saying those Asian countries that ape U.S. democracy
were doomed to fail.
Earlier this week, Clinton held
up Mongolia's sometimes messy politics as a democratic model for Asia. While
she did not directly name China, her comments appeared aimed partly at Beijing.
In China's first response to her
remarks, ruling Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily said Clinton was
acting as a "preacher for human rights" by praising certain countries
to obliquely attack China.
"Who is the United States to
haughtily appraise Asia's democratic position?" the newspaper said in a
commentary.
Asian countries were now booming,
unlike Western countries stuck in the morass of economic crisis, proving they
could go down "a path different from the West and create political systems
which suit their national characteristics".
"Experience proves that it
is those Asian countries which 'draw a tiger with a cat as a model' and
mechanically copy the U.S. democratic system which ... lag in development, and
even today some of these countries have not recovered," it said.
Clinton is due at a regional
security forum in Cambodia on Thursday, which Chinese Foreign Minister Yang
Jiechi will also attend.
China and the United States are
closely entwined economically and increasingly on the diplomatic front, but
they have clashed repeatedly over issues ranging from Tibet and Taiwan to trade
and the value of the Chinese currency.
The commentary added that the
United States had ulterior motives for pushing democracy in Asia.
"In reality, lauding
democracy and holding the flag for human rights is an important part of the U.S.
'return to Asia' strategy," it said.
But the United States has failed
to understand how Asia has changed because it has let its attention slip in the
region, the newspaper wrote.
The commentary was published
under the pen name "Zhong Sheng", meaning "Voice of China",
which is often used to give the paper's view on foreign policy issues.
Reuters
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