Mao Zedong was an idiot who badly damaged China. Democracy requires the freedom to create new political parties and for anyone to run in honest elections. The fact that the CCP is the only political party allowed in China proves it isn't democratic by definition.
The US is absolutely not the gold standard for democracy. In fact the GOP's goal seems to be to become a single party dictatorship much like the CCP is.
I don't think there are many democracies in the world. Republics are not démocraties as you elect a master instead of giving power to the people. Corruption sets in and rot everything in due time.
Democracy mean that all citizen inherently have equal legitimacy and capacity to exert political power.
For true démocraties you either need random choice of citizens who decide, or votes by all citizen.
We currently have a bunch of oligarchies around the world bending the laws in ridiculous manners to answer to those with power (currently mostly, but not necessarily, the very rich).
You only need to study the past of our "démocraties" when violent and deadly répression of popular upheaval to the benefit of industry barons was a regular thing.
Nowadays you get more of these things in slightly indirect ways, ergonomic social and cultural violence. Also, a brief mention of the Epstein files make it pretty obvious that the people's will does not really matter.
And do not think one second this is unique to America. A few years ago in France you had the Europe referendum, a rare moment of democracy, where the people voted "the wrong way" according to the néolibérals in power, and thus they proceeded to simply ignore said vote.
The founders of our various political systems made it pretty clear they despised democracy in the first place. The word became popular relatively recently...
Democracy is a radical idea. I don't even think many people in this forum actually want democracy. They will think plumbers, or nurses, of people of the "opposite party" are subhumans unfit to decide for the good of the people.
The US is absolutely not the gold standard for democracy. In fact the GOP's goal seems to be to become a single party dictatorship much like the CCP is.