10 Questions for American Democracy

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Executive Summary

● The “Summit for Democracy,” a new international charade by the United States of America, will take place on December 9 and 10, 2021. This move has raised doubts and even dissatisfaction in many countries. At present, even many scholars, media, and relevant organizations from all walks of life in the United States have expressed their concerns that American democracy has caused social disorder at home and created turmoil abroad. As a new variety of think tank been engaged in global governance for years, the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China, has sorted out many American literatures and articles, releasing the research report “Ten Questions for American Democracy” on December. The report raises ten pointed questions to American democracy, hoping to help the world fully understand democracy and promote shared values for all humankind.

● Question 1: Democracy for the majority or “democracy” for the minority? “Minority rule has metastasized like a cancer,” power serves the capital, and more and more politicians don’t put the real interests of voters first. Can today’s American democracy be called people being the masters of the country? 

● Question 2: Ensure checks and balances of power or lead to abuse of power? There has been “hyperpolarization” in the political operation. The tactics of American politicians far exceed those in the TV series House of Cards. The American people’s trust in the U.S. government has also “dropped to near freezing point.”

● Question 3: Improve people’s well-being or increase people’s suffering? By the end of 2020, more than 50 million Americans faced food insecurity, a nearly 50% increase from 2019. More than 220,000 people are homeless. The American household wealth has not increased for almost 20 years. The wealthiest 1% of Americans hold about 43.27 trillion U.S. dollars, 14.3 times the bottom 50% of Americans (3.03 trillion U.S. dollars). U.S. Senators and House Representatives rely on the wealthiest 1%’s money for re-election, serve the wealthiest 1%, and even gain rewards from the wealthiest 1% when they leave office.

● Question 4: Defend freedom or hinder freedom? “Overloaded freedom” leads to a cultural war that exhausts energy and wastes resources, “which may lead to the disillusionment of democracy, delay the pandemic prevention in the United States, and is killing Americans.” Hypocritical freedom of speech amplifies hatred and extreme emotions through social media. 64% of Americans believe that social media has a negative effect on the direction of the United States.

● Question 5: Protect human rights or violate human rights? More than 38,000 deaths are related to gun violence each year, 20% of which are children and adolescents aged 1-17. The United States accounts for only 4% of the world’s population but 35% of the world’s firearm suicides. Hate crimes against Asians increased by 150% in 2020. The numbers of COVID infections and deaths are the highest in the world. Some cry, “this is a massacre”!

● Question 6: Promote unity or lead to division? 52% of Trump voters and 41% of Biden voters believe that separating the red and blue states from the union may be a better choice for the United States today. The United States is plunging into a “cold civil war.” The proportion of people who agreed that “African Americans suffer a lot of discrimination” increased from 19% in 2013 to 50% in 2020. The shadow of slavery still exists in the United States. Between 2016 and 2017, the number of attacks by far-right perpetrators quadrupled.

●Question 7: Realize dreams or bring nightmares? Americans are so in despair for the American dream that many people write obituaries for the American dream. 59% of Americans believe that journalists deliberately mislead people. Americans are becoming more and more pessimistic about the country’s development path. The number of Americans dissatisfied with the direction of the United States has risen from 33% in 2017 to 50% in 2021. 85% of Americans believe that the United States’ political system needs significant changes or complete reforms.

● Question 8: Improve national governance or lead to system failure? Infighting between the two parties has repeatedly shut governments down. The mutual obstruction between the federal and state governments leads to internal friction, impediments of federal decrees, and poor implementation of infrastructure projects. California has been preparing for high-speed rail construction for more than 25 years and has not yet fully started. “Collapsed” disaster response, inadequate risk prevention, slow rescue and relief, and officials’ indifference, all kinds of documents of the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency express a central idea: don’t rely on us.

● Question 9: Bring development and prosperity, or disaster and turmoil to other countries? Some 241,000 Afghans were killed in the war beginning in 2002. 183,000-206,000 Iraqi civilians have died in violence since the war in 2003. Yemen currently has some 20.7 million people (71% of the total population) in need of humanitarian assistance. The United States is a veritable “refugee maker” in the world today, making at least 37 million people destitute and homeless by the war launched by the United States after the September 11 attacks.

● Question 10: Safeguard world peace and development or undermine international order? As of 2017, the United States had conducted 392 foreign military interventions since 1880. The United States has been at war more than 92% of the time since its founding. The United States maintains approximately 750 overseas military bases in 80 foreign countries and colonies (territories). The United States spends about $778 billion on the military, accounting for about 39% of the world’s total. The Middle East and North Africa still have about one in five people living on the brink of conflict. America’s currency, the world’s problem.

● 57% of people outside the United States said that democracy in the United States “used to do well, but it has not done well in recent years”; another 23% said that the United States has never been a model of democracy for other countries.

● In the name of “democracy,” the only ones in the United States that can reflect their will are Money-cracy, Gun-cracy, White-cracy, Media-cracy, Milita-cracy, and Drug-cracy. It is not the people who can make the decision, “six masters in one country, there is no democracy.” 

● Democracy is a common value of all humanity. There is no universal democratic model in the world. Democracy is a rich and diversified path independently chosen by all countries, rather than a single routine forced to be imposed upon others. We suggest that the U.S. government might as well ask itself the above ten questions when organizing the so-called “Summit for Democracy.”

More than 270 literatures are cited in this paper, which were omitted when published in the newspaper. 

You can download the full report on www.rdcy.org.

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RDCY

中国人民大学重阳金融研究院（人大重阳）成立于2013年1月19日，是重阳投资向中国人民大学捐赠并设立教育基金运营的主要资助项目。

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