Chinese Ambassador Publishes Op-Ed on Democracy in Zambian Media

On March 28, 2023, Du Xiaohui (杜曉暉), China’s ambassador to Zambia, published a signed op-ed titled “Whether Democracy Is Good, the People Decide” (民主好不好，人民說了算) simultaneously in two Zambian newspapers: the Daily Nation and The Mast. The article argued that democracy takes multiple legitimate forms and that no single model should be imposed on other countries — a standard formulation in CCP discourse used to deflect Western criticism of China’s political system. Invoking Xi Jinping’s dictum that “whether a shoe fits, only the foot knows,” the piece framed China’s “whole-process people’s democracy” (全過程人民民主) as a valid alternative to liberal democratic norms and held up the National People’s Congress session then underway in Beijing as evidence of popular participation in governance. The op-ed dismissed the U.S.-hosted Summit for Democracy as geopolitical bloc-building designed to stoke “camp confrontation and ideological antagonism” (煽動陣營對立和意識形態對抗), and attacked the U.S. State Department’s 2022 Country Reports on Human Rights for its criticism of Zambia and other countries as an affront to “civilizational diversity.” The piece also invoked Xi Jinping’s concept of a “community of shared future for mankind” (人類命運共同體) as the normative framework for international cooperation, in explicit contrast to what it characterized as American hegemonic interference in sovereign affairs. The placement of the op-ed in The Mast — an independent newspaper founded in 2016 by journalist Fred M’membe as a successor to The Post after the latter’s government-pressured liquidation, and one of Zambia’s most prominent critical voices — is notable as an instance of Chinese Embassy messaging reaching beyond state or pliant media.