China is much more meaningfully democratic than Western countries, said Carlos Martinez, a political commentator with London-based platform Friends of Socialist China.

"People in the West tend to think of China as being an undemocratic system because it follows a different model to that of Western parliamentarism," Martinez said. "But the reality is Chinese democracy is far more effective than its Western counterpart in terms of representing the interests of ordinary people."

Carlos cited the different approaches to the COVID-19 pandemic taken by China and Western countries.

"In the US, over 1 million have died due to COVID, while in China just over 5,000 have died. If China had followed a similar strategy to that of the US, it would have expected to have suffered over 4 million deaths," he said. "But instead of following that approach, China carried out a nationwide mobilization to get the virus under control and to protect people's lives."

"China puts lives before profits, and this is the fundamental difference between governance in China and governance in the West," Martinez added.