This past week was filled with symbols from China suggesting a shifting world order. Sunday and Monday leaders gathered in Tianjin for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meeting. Wednesday morning, the People’s Liberation Army marched across Tiananmen Square to commemorate the end of the Second World War. As the West is falling apart at the seams, Beijing’s message was one of confidence that the new world is China’s to shape.
Both events represented the two components of official Chinese world views. The SCO summit promoted an illiberal approach to global governance. The military parade signalled Chinese nationalism. The countries in attendance represent what Beijing proclaims is the ‘genuine’ international community. Perhaps smaller than the previous parade, the group’s more clearly defined boundaries show a coagulating core as Beijing grows in its conviction that this is China’s Moment in History.
Multipolarity is still our planet’s most likely future. Arrogance too often comes before the fall. Yet, that lesson applies to all countries involved. The warning signals from Tianjin and Beijing indicate that many states are eager to move on from the US-led liberal order. Whether China’s confidence that the developing world will rally to its option is justified, only time will tell. However, if Europe does not awaken to the game underway, the only player may win by default. For Xi Jinping is already getting started with his own international community.
I spend my days reading to explain contemporary China and Taiwan to you. You can support me on ‘Buy Me A Coffee’ to contribute towards my never-ending subscriptions and book purchases! 🙏🏻
Global governance
The SCO summit in Tianjin was a platform to advertise Beijing’s approach to global governance. There were important practical parts to it, such as the movement on the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline from Russia to China, the promise of a new bank to reduce dollar dependency and the widely reported meeting between India’s Modi with Xi and Putin. However, most relevant for today’s story is that Xi Jinping used the meeting to launch a new initiative: the Global Governance Initiative (GGI) (全球治理倡议 quánqiú zhìlǐ chàngyì).
This GGI follows Xi Jinping’s earlier introduction of the Global Development Initiative (GDI) at the 2021 UN General Assembly, the Global Security Initiative (GSI) at the 2022 Bo’ao Forum for Asia, and the Global Civilisation Initiative (GCI) at the 2023 CPC in Dialogue with World Political Parties High-Level Meeting. All of them fall under the umbrella of the Community of Common Destiny for Mankind (人类命运共同体 rénlèi mìngyùn gòngtóngtǐ).
It is tempting to dismiss this collection of unwieldy names as empty propaganda. Europe should take it seriously. In Beijing’s Leninist party-state, slogans such as these serve as work instructions for party cadres. Abroad this leads to concrete projects. However, for liberal democracies the main concern ought to be how they combine to form a control mechanism. The collection of different governance techniques for different ‘arenas’ represented by these Initiatives weaves into a single ‘Leninist Leash’.
The GGI’s launch is the final stage in a gradual expansion of Beijing’s toolkit for shaping the international order. What does the GGI officially entail? Its ‘concept paper’ calls for the principle of the sovereign equality. It opposes ‘unilateral’ sanctions and under-representation of the Global South. The solution is to reform the international order to bring back the United Nation (UN) to its core.
Chinese nationalism
Respect the ‘correct’ international order. That is the message that Beijing repeated ad nauseam in recent days. In his opinion piece for the EU Observer ahead of the WWII victory parade, the Chinese ambassador in Brussels repeated the familiar claim that this international order is a product of the glorious victory of 1945 that must be defended. That raises the question: how does Beijing understand the WWII victory and why is the UN so essential?
Whereas the SCO summit was China’s global moment, the parade was its nationalist moment. Xi Jinping’s message was clear: with its great victory in 1945, China regained its status as a superpower. China’s resurgence is unstoppable. Peace can only be maintained through equality and respect (for China’s claims). Beijing also stresses that victory over Japan ‘returned’ Taiwan to China. The above outcomes were anchored in the body that the Allies created in 1945: the United Nations, with a key role for permanent UN Security Council (UNSC) member China.
Under Xi, Beijing has begun using the WWII victory to claim international greatness. China’s People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression is framed as the country’s important contribution to the final victory in what Stalin termed the World Anti-Fascist War. Xi, not without reason, stresses that China and the Soviet Union were the two main theatres of this war. However, just as Vladimir Putin lies about the Soviet Union‘s role in starting the war in Europe in 1939, so does Xi lie about the Communist Party of China (CPC)’s relative unimportance in the war in China. Both Xi and Putin share resentment about the lack of acceptance of their false narratives and what they see as attacks at their countries’ rightfully-won dominant role at the top of the UN.
Their view of the legitimate international order that came out of WWII is that of the 1945 Potsdam Declaration. Important too are the preceding conferences of Yalta and Cairo that gave regional dominance to respectively Moscow and Nanjing. Putin and Xi find each other in their desire to move ‘back’ to this ‘order of 1945’, away from the the US-led Cold War system that arose out of the ‘illegitimate’ San Francisco Treaty of 1951.
Xi’s real international community
The real international community – according to Xi – is not the West. It is the Rest. This is what is behind repeated calls in bilateral meetings for ‘genuine multilateralism’. According to Beijing, in this New Era, it is time for the ‘bourgeoisie’ of the G7 to make way to the ‘masses’ of the developing countries in the Global South. Weakened Europe is not essential to the dialectic struggle of this Moment in History. Momentum is with the rise of the developing countries.
Regional initiatives such as SCO and BRICS are not Beijing’s only efforts to mobilise coalitions. The centre of gravity is in the UN. Years of painstaking diplomatic work have made it so that China and its allies in groups such as G77 and the ‘Like-Minded Group’ can now often boast majorities in UN fora. This makes defending the 1945 promise – that the United Nations of Allied Countries would govern the world with the new United Nations Organisation (UNO) – a lot more appealing.
This UNO – now just called UN – did not work as intended. The Cold War paralysed many of its functions. The rich countries became outnumbered by newly independent developing countries with different interests. After 1989, however, there was a shift back to universal organisations. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is one example. The UN family expanded again.
However, many of the informal international cooperation mechanisms from the US-led bloc of the Cold War have remained in place to this day. The G7, NATO, and the Quad exemplify the ‘old ways’. Developed countries still desires mechanisms that get things done quickly and in line with their interests. Beijing attacks these ‘regional small circles’ as harmful and out of date ‘bloc politics’.
China’s UN-centred plans are supposed to finish the return to the truly ‘inclusive’ international order promised in 1945. Xi Jinping’s ‘community of a common destiny for mankind’ with its global initiatives supposedly is so popular because it ‘transcends the so-called “universal values” unilaterally defined by a handful of Western countries’. Of course, ironically it does so building some of its own ‘small circles’, as control over the UN is not won so easily after all.
Conclusion
China is steadily building an alternative world order. Without the West. Beijing does not need that ‘bourgeois’ grouping of yesterday for its ‘real’ international community. The US is engaged in self-destruction, while on a clear domestic authoritarian trajectory. The EU is struggling with a lack of capacity to act, while the structures on which Europe depends are showing cracks. Meanwhile, Xi and his guests are getting down to work.
Xi is drawing on deep reservoirs of anti-Western sentiment in the world and Chinese nationalism at home. The People’s Daily editorial of Wednesday centred the struggle that forged the Chinese nation in its civilisational self-defence against evil invaders. While Trump and Vance are burying the idea of the West, the EU sees an alternative in Tianjin made up of countries actively undermining European security and independence through aiding Russia’s war against Ukraine. Joining this camp is not even possible for European countries unless they atomise, giving up their embeddedness in structures of values and regional order.
The opening for a European defence of an open international order is clear: the battle for the international order must be fought on substance. Countries were in Tianjin because they get genuine practical benefits in return. The dominance of China’s coalition in the UN is in part because Beijing actually puts in the diplomatic effort. If the West is weakening as a construct and the UN cannot always serve EU interests, Europe should build its own coalitions with like-minded countries.
Chinese domestic economic challenges and international apprehension about its overweening power are real handicaps. The constellation assembled in Tianjin and Beijing has many fault lines. However, potential fault lines only become relevant when you leverage them. A multipolar world still seems the most likely outcome of the current grand game. However, if only one player is playing, it will win relative dominance by default.
Leave a Reply