Sculpture loan plan a nudge to Britain

China on Thursday urged the United States to reflect on its own “democratic deficit” and stop acts of imposing its model overseas and creating division and confrontation in the world with so-called democracy as a cover.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin made the remarks at a daily news conference when commenting on the anniversary of the Jan 6 insurrection at the US Capitol by supporters of former president Donald Trump.

Polls have shown strong concerns among people in the US on the state of the country’s democracy, Wang said, including a recent NPR poll which found that 64 percent of US respondents believe their democracy is in crisis and at risk of failing.

US democracy is in a ramshackle state, Wang said, adding that the US’ hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan further exposed the harm of imposing US-style democracy upon others.

However, he said, instead of drawing a lesson, Washington styles itself as a leader of Western democracy and hosted the so-called Summit for Democracy to serve its interest at the cost of international division and confrontation.

This is bound to be rejected and criticized by the world and the summit fizzled out hastily, the spokesman added.

Democracy is a common value of humanity instead of a tool for political manipulation, Wang stressed, adding: “There is no hierarchy when it comes to democracy, and there is no one-size-fits-all democratic model.”

Moves to put a label on democracy — while weaponizing and politicizing it — are not a grand show, but a low trick, Wang said.

An Italian museum is lending a fragment of the Parthenon Sculptures to Greece, in what both sides hope will become a permanent return that might encourage others — the British Museum in particular — to send their own pieces of the works back, too. Sicily’s regional archaeological museum said on Wednesday that it had signed an agreement with the Acropolis Museum in Athens for a once-renewable, four-year loan of the small white marble piece it has in exchange for a loan of a statue and vase. But the ultimate aim, Sicily’s A. Salinas Archaeological Museum said, is the “indefinite return” of the fragment to Athens. About half of the surviving 5th century BC sculptures that decorated the Parthenon temple on the Acropolis are in the British Museum, which has long resisted Greek appeals for their return.