(Beijing blames NATO expansion for the conflict.) Yet the American response-ferrying arms and intelligence to Kyiv while imposing an array of sanctions on Russia-also deepened Chinese fears that Washington could turn the global order against them. From one angle, the war bolsters the Chinese narrative that the current system is in chaos, and Washington is responsible. Xi was probably prompted to unveil the GSI by the war in Ukraine, which encapsulates Beijing’s concerns about the U.S.-led order. “China, being one of the largest stakeholders of this global system, felt there’s a need, there is an urgency, to propose some kind of security recommendations and initiatives” in order to “start a constructive dialogue on this issue” and “minimize the risk of the falling into another catastrophe.” “The world is starting to fall apart,” Wang Huiyao, the president of the Center for China and Globalization (CCG), a Beijing-based think tank, told me. Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in an April essay, wrote that the GSI “contributes China’s wisdom to the efforts of mankind” and “China’s solution to addressing international security challenges.” China, and specifically Xi, whom Beijing markets as a master theorist, can provide new solutions. Washington and Western democracies more broadly have become incapable of leading the world, China says-typified, in Beijing’s eyes, by their failed response to the coronavirus pandemic. “They need to lay the infrastructure for a more China-centric, or at least a less U.S.-, Western-centric, world.”īeijing’s agenda is also shaped by its narrative of inevitable U.S. hegemony, that … the world’s greatest power is doing all it can in order to contain and suppress and encircle China,” Tuvia Gering, a research fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, told me. “Chinese policy makers believe that the current global order is geared toward U.S. and its partners, leaving China vulnerable to sanction and pressure. Worse still, from Beijing’s perspective, it hands undue diplomatic, economic, and ideological leverage to the U.S. By upholding democracy as the sole legitimate form of government, the system undermines the stature of China’s authoritarian state on the world stage. To Beijing, the existing order has become inherently hostile to it and a constraint on its global ambitions. “Beijing’s vision would move us away from the universal values that have sustained so much of the world’s progress over the past 75 years.”Ĭhinese leaders don’t see things that way. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in May. “China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it,” U.S. T he Biden administration has placed defending and strengthening what Washington calls the “rules-based” global order at the center of its Asia policy, to counter Beijing’s threat. and China are locked in a struggle to define how countries interact, the legitimacy of different forms of governments, the rules of commerce, and the meaning of human rights. What began as a trade war over Beijing’s discriminatory business practices and a tech war to dominate the industries of the future is now an ideas war-a battle to establish the norms that govern global affairs. and China is escalating into a full-fledged contest for global primacy. The GSI is the latest, and possibly most troubling, evidence that the confrontation between the U.S. Its principles and practices would usher in a global system friendlier to repressive regimes than the current order, grounded as it is in democratic ideals. The initiative might as well be called the Autocrat’s Manifesto. “Countries around the world are like passengers aboard the same ship who share the same destiny.”īehind the pleasant sentiments is a deeper threat. “We need to work together to maintain peace and stability in the world,” he said. Included are some proposals that sound appealing-countries should resolve their disputes through dialogue, respect one another’s differences, and be considerate of varying national interests to achieve “security for all,” as Xi put it in an April speech. ![]() Xi has collected his ideas for a new world order into the Global Security Initiative (GSI), a platform of principles on international affairs and diplomacy that, he argues, can make the world a safer place. B eijing has for years been chipping away at the pillars of the U.S.-led global order-subverting its foundational institutions, international norms, and liberal ideals-but Chinese President Xi Jinping had not offered a comprehensive vision of how a China-led replacement might work.
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