In a virtual meeting with his US counterpart Joe Biden on Tuesday, President Xi Jinping highlighted that civilizations are rich and diverse, and so is democracy, which is not mass produced with a uniform model or configuration for countries around the world.

He also said that whether a country is democratic or not should be left to its own people to decide, and dismissing forms of democracy that are different from one's own is in itself undemocratic.

The president also said that China is ready to have dialogues on human rights on the basis of mutual respect, but opposes using human rights as a pretext to meddle in other countries' internal affairs.