Engaging China in a Post-Liberal Order
With the US ending its support of the liberal international order, Western states face an unfamiliar situation of recalibrating their foreign policies without any of the usual anchors or bearings the US once provided. Yet finding a new footing is imperative because these disruptions are intertwined with the great power competition between the US and China and have widespread ramifications even for states that want to avoid this rivalry.
During the Cold War, great powers rarely fought each other directly. Instead, they relied on proxy actors in battleground states. Today, one may think analogously: US-China confrontation is indirect but applied through national security rules or industrial policies in battleground domains to shape the behaviour of companies. Companies unrelated to either side still suffer collateral damage.
Therefore, it's critical to reinforce general, uniform rules that prevent selective or targeted application, which is why multilateral cooperation is so important. While the US presently seems uninterested in this, China has been building deep relations around the world, with one of its methods being Sino-centric multilateralism.
Sino-centric multilateralism in a minimal sense involves multilateral summits organised by China such as the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation or the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), where the structure gives it networked centrality. But there is also Sino-centric foreign policy applied to multilateral organisations to increase Chinese influence within them, and China is increasing its presence in the United Nations, commensurate with its increased funding. Altogether, China's influence in the Global South is more extensive than the West's.
To understand China, understand Asia
Many are keen to understand what the implications of China's growing influence are. While it may be natural to be suspicious of changes that seem opaque, this isn't a new phenomenon in some parts of the world. Asian countries have had decades of experience dealing with China.
Most Southeast Asian states have cordial relations with China, although they hedge between them and the US. This stems from a distrust of both powers, and so a transactional relationship results. "Transactionalism" may have a negative connotation in the West, but it has a more positive meaning in much of Asia.
Moreover, if one believes that China is transactionalist, then there would be benefits from offering opportunities to China. Thus, Southeast Asian states have reaped the rewards: it is the fastest growing region of the world, linked to the fastest growing single economy of the last two decades. Moreover, despite disparities in size, the democratic states among them have not sacrificed strategic autonomy nor been pressured to change norms in their political systems to appease China.
China's commitment to "True Multilateralism"
China's new global governance white paper asserts that "true multilateralism is the only path forward", and by this they mean the UN system rather than smaller multilateral groupings (which may exclude China).
While Western states worry about China's growing influence in multilateral organisations (especially where Western states are not present), it's important to remember that multilateral institutions have safety valves. One reason why some great powers don't like multilateralism is that organisational rules are crafted to prevent dominance.
Decolonising states seized sovereign equality as a vital norm in the postwar period and one of the most important gifts the UN gave the world was to entrench and universalise this principle. It is a relatively young concept (indeed, rejected by realists) but one that has been integral to the economic growth the world has enjoyed since the end of World War 2. China also defends sovereign equality as a core principle, and this is a value worth holding them to.
Consensus and Normative Change
This commitment has downsides. Multilateral institutions in the Global South are embedded with consensus as the core decision-making preference. New institutions develop slowly because consensus is difficult when interests diverge and without an accepted hegemon to drive initiatives.
There is evidence of institutions such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation struggling with ambitious proposals, and one may do a stocktake of these experiences to assess how likely they are to increase their influence. ASEAN, the most successful Global South regional organisation, went forty years without a legal charter.
Consensus is both a necessary condition to protect sovereign equality but also a brake on rapid normative change. The upside is that it gives agency to states, but only after they have been sufficiently socialised with others to drive change. This assures robust cooperation once the conditions are met.
It is these characteristics of multilateral cooperation that lead me, and I believe many others in Southeast Asia, to believe that engagement with China is beneficial and worth attempting, and that the risks can be mitigated. China's stance is laid out in its white paper, challenging the rest of the world to test its commitment to these principles.
Dr Joel Ng is a senior fellow and head of the Centre for Multilateralism Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
