12月6日，由中国人民大学重阳金融研究院（人大重阳）主办、中国人民大学中美人文交流研究中心承办的《十问美国民主》研究报告发布暨研讨会在京举行，会上发布了《十问美国民主》研究报告。美国《全球策略信息》杂志社华盛顿分社社长威廉•琼斯(William Jones)在会上发言，以下为发言视频及中英文实录：

视频时长约5分45秒，以下为中文发言实录：

极具讽刺意味的是，当几乎所有这些国家都面临着严重的危机，并质疑其自身治理形式的有效性时，拜登政府选择这个历史上的特殊时刻将所谓“西方民主国家”聚集在一起。所有这些国家都面临着严重的民众信任问题。在美国，很大一部分选民甚至相信上一次的总统大选完全是一场骗局。

这些国家从未在自己的人民中面临过如此严重的信任危机。尽管新冠疫情和应对该疫情所需的措施加剧了这个情况，但这场危机已经酝酿了很长时间。根本问题在于，控制“西方民主国家”政府的政治精英在很大程度上已经远离了人民的需求。不断扩大的贫富差距、持续的种族歧视、对城市内部和农村的大量贫困地区的忽视，导致很大一部分人认为政府已经完全忘记了他们。1月6日大批民众暴力闯入美国国会大厦，这反映了全国上下的情绪。

但这次民主峰会的真正目的是集结西方联盟、北约国家来跟随美国展示武力，反对被拜登政府称为“专制国家”的俄罗斯和中国。但是，这两个国家都是民主国家，每个国家都有自己独特的民主模式，这在很大程度上取决于与西方不同的历史和文化环境。

实践证明，特别是中国已经探索出一种非常有效的治理体系，在这种体系中，基层人民有能力提出问题，如果是重要问题的话，那么可以通过他们在全国人大或全国政协的代表参与立法讨论，其中大部分问题将随着习近平主席提出的新的“全过程人民民主”而得到改善。这一特殊治理体系的运作使超过8亿多人摆脱了贫困，帮助中国实现了全面小康。

尽管执政的共产党直接致力于满足中国人民不断变化的需求，但大多数西方政党，例如在美国，则更关心如何满足公司和资本利益集团的需求，包括军工复合体，这些人为竞选活动提供了资金，并将他们推上了权力宝座。如果在美国选出一个真正想为人民做些好事的“独立人士”，但反对当权者的一些特权，那么这个人很快就会被打上烙印，被诽谤，也许会被以莫须有的罪名扔进监狱，甚至更糟。我有朋友有过这样的亲身经历。这不是该体系创造者的初衷，但随着金融和银行寡头权力的不断壮大，它现在的运行方式基本上是这样的。

一种特定的治理或民主形式是好是坏，必须根据它是否为普通人提供的利益这条唯一标准来决定。如果我们使用这个标准，我们肯定会发现，中国共产党的政策所得到的民众支持远远大于我们任何一个政党，或对两个政党同时得到的支持。但是没有人敢做这样的比较，因为今天华盛顿出台的政策与“民主”和“专制”没有什么关系，而是一种赤裸裸的政治企图，维护以伦敦和纽约主要银行为中心的金融寡头统治者的持续统治，并以美国领导的军事联盟为后盾。任何像中国这样的“发展中国家”呼吁建立一个新的、公正的、公平的世界秩序的尝试，都将被他们视为对自身体系的威胁，他们会竭尽全力阻止这种威胁的形成。他们愚蠢地认为，世界上的其他国家，或者至少是大部分国家，会支持他们的努力。

但是，鉴于“西方民主国家”在非洲和拉丁美洲等地的记录与中国的记录相比，“民主国家联盟”是否会成为除了完全忠于这一失败体系的国家，或者被美国的经济或军事压力所要挟而跟随他们步伐的国家的集结号，这都是值得怀疑的。对于世界上大多数国家，特别是非洲国家，中国的记录已经非常清楚，那里和其他地方的国家只是在等待这一明显转移的烟雾消散，以便继续沿着他们和中华人民共和国共同走上的发展道路前进。

以下为英文版

威廉•琼斯(William Jones)

It is highly ironic that the Biden Administration would choose this particular time in history to gather together the “Western democracies”  when almost all of those countries face serious crises placing into question the effectiveness of  their own form of governance. All of these nations are facing serious questions of trust by their populations. Here in the United States, a large portion of the electorate is even convinced that the last presidential election was a total fraud.

Never before have these nations faced such a crisis of confidence among their own people. While the Covid epidemic and the measures required to deal with it have aggravated the situation, that crisis had been brewing for a very long time. The fundamental problem is that the political elites controlling the governments of the “Western democracies” have largely distanced themselves from the needs of the people. The growing disparity between rich and poor, continued racial discrimination, the neglect of the great pockets of poverty in the inner cities and in the countryside, have led to the sense among a large portion of the population that government has completely forgotten them. The great mass of people that violently broke into the U.S. Congress on January 6 was simply a reflection of the mood throughout the nation.

But the real objective of this gathering is to rally the forces of the Western alliance, the NATO countries, and their satraps to follow the US in a show of force in opposition to Russia and China, whom the Biden Administration have labeled “autocracies.” Yet both these countries are democracies, each with their own particular brand of democracy, which is largely determined by different historical and cultural circumstances than in the West.

China in particular has proven to have developed a particularly effective system of governance, one in which the people in the grass roots have the ability to raise issues which, if important, can then be then taken into the legislative discussion through their representatives on the NPC or the CPPCC, and much of this will be improved with the new Whole-Process People’s Democracy proposed by Xi Jinping. The workings of this particular system of governance has pulled over 800 million people out of poverty and helped to raise the nation to a position of moderate prosperity.

While the ruling Communist Party is directly focused on meeting the changing needs of the Chinese population, most Western parties, such as here in the United States, are more interested in meeting the needs of the corporations and the moneyed interests, including the military-industrial complex, who have helped finance the campaigns that brought them into power. If an “independent” were elected in the United States who really wanted to do some good for the people, but who opposed some of the prerogatives of the powers that be, that person would soon be branded, slandered, and  perhaps thrown into jail on trumped-up charges, or worse. And I have friends who have personal experience in this respect. That’s not how the system was intended to operate by the Founding Fathers, but it is largely the way it now works with the growing powers of the financial and banking oligarchy.

Whether a particular form of governance or democracy is good or bad has to be decided on the sole criteria of the benefit it has provided for the common man. Were we to use that criteria, we would surely find that the popular support engendered by the policies of the Communist Party of China is far greater than the support engendered for either of our political parties, or for both of them together.  But no one dares make that comparison, since the policy coming out of Washington today has little to do with “democracy” vs. “autocracy”, but is rather a raw political attempt to assert the continued domination of the ruling financial oligarchy centered in the major banks of London and New York, and backed up by the military alliance led by the United States. Any attempt by “developing countries” like China to call for a new, just, and equitable world order will be deemed by them to be a threat to their system and they will do whatever they can to prevent that from taking shape. And they foolishly believe that the rest of the world, or at least a large part of it, will support them in that endeavor.

But given the record of the “Western democracies” in places like Africa and Latin America as opposed to the record of China, it is doubtful that the “alliance of democracies” will become a rallying cry for any but those totally wedded to this failed system, or blackmailed by economic or military pressure from Washington to follow their lead. For most of the world, particularly in Africa, the record of China is already very clear, and the countries there and elsewhere are only waiting for the smoke from this obvious diversion to settle in order to continue along the path of development on which they have embarked upon together with the People’s Republic of China.

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