In the late 1940s, building institutional frameworks to prevent the horrors of World War II—which were unleashed by despotic, power-hungry regimes—became a primary goal of international diplomacy. More than ever, that architecture is being put to the test.
After leaving the institutions primarily created by Americans and Europeans, China’s one-party state is occasionally attempting to change the direction of the international organizations it is currently a member of. In other instances, it has disregarded the spirit in which they were founded, thus undermining them. In addition, China is erecting a whole new framework that will allow it to influence international affairs to Beijing’s liking.
The World Trade Organization is essentially inoperable as a result of the recent tensions. The United States withdrew from the World Trade Organization’s adjudication framework, leaving the organization at a standstill, after China took advantage of low-tariff access to developed markets while manipulating its manufacturing costs for competitive advantage.
Beijing is making a determined effort to change the fundamental principles of the UN, an institution founded on the ideas of individual dignity and universal human rights. The risk of the globe breaking up into blocs of like minds increases with the degree to which the Communist Party of China (CCP) is able to transform and replace institutions that have received support from the West.
Wang Yi, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and State Councilor for China, speaks at a meeting of the UN Security Council last year.Michael M. Santiago, photographer (Getty Images) North America
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Since the Allied battles against the Axis powers, the preservation of liberties has been the top concern in international relations; this is not the case in the CCP, which views the world very differently than the West. The UN and other organizations’ charters contain the postwar principles, such as the freedom of expression and belief, the absence of fear, the ability for self-determination, and the facilitation of freer trade and intellectual exchange.
Beijing, on the other hand, believes that state-directed economic development should be the guiding concept of international relations. Individual values are subordinated to material development aims. Rights are not seen in terms of the individual human, but rather in terms of the community.
Paul Tucker, the author of Global Discord: Values and Power in a Fractured World Order and a former senior UK central banker, stated that “the terrain is just so different for all of these organizations than it was before” as China’s global influence grows.
The key component that proved to be the cause of the WTO’s fundamental collapse was China’s state-led development model. Large-scale subsidies served as the foundation for the nation’s achievement in capturing the largest portion of the global manufacturing market. China manipulated the price of capital, commodities, and electricity in ways and on a scale not observed by competitors such as the US.
A system that denied manufacturing workers—mostly internal migrants—even the right to residency in the locations where they worked served to keep labor costs low. In addition, a deceptively low exchange rate was maintained to increase price competitiveness on international markets.
Such a rival was not intended for the WTO. Furthermore, it was understandable that a sense of injustice developed in Washington and elsewhere when trade rulings maintained China’s structure, which finally resulted in the appellate-body enforcement mechanism being rendered completely inoperable.
Tucker points out that the World Health Organization was undermined by China’s inclination toward concealment when Covid-19 broke out.
Speaking this week, he asked, “What do you do as an organization’s leader if the world’s second-most powerful nation simply doesn’t bother to report on what could be the most significant development in your field in a generation?”
According to Tucker, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England, China’s presence in financial forums such as the Financial Stability Board and the Bank for International Settlements’ meetings in Basel, Switzerland, may make it more difficult to address cyber-security threats and establish new norms. To put it bluntly, “it’s hard to imagine” the interactions.
Moritz Rudolf, a research scholar in law and fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center, said that China has launched a massive capacity-building initiative at the UN in recent years, training and deploying staff who have the technical expertise to help sway rule-making and norm-setting committees. He said that this apparatus, which began with the minting of Ph.D.s in international law, is influencing global governance in novel ways.
Beijing may want to see the UN shift its focus from human rights and freedoms to a shared notion of progress. This trend is comparable to China’s influence in international standards-setting bodies, as this newsletter has previously shown.
In an interview this week, Rudolf stated, “This will have a true impact, and it doesn’t matter which topic you pick.” He mentioned the digital economy, artificial intelligence, space exploration, and the exploitation of the polar regions. He remarked, “This is something that’s flying under the radar,” and that the West is “to some extent” losing this competition.
China is creating its own parallel architecture in addition to subverting or reprogramming the institutions that already exist. As Rudolf pointed out, this permits even more flexibility in establishing agendas.
Tucker noted that the influence that the World Bank and International Monetary Fund once held in developing countries across the globe has diminished due to the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and other lenders by China.
Additionally, China, the largest official bilateral creditor in the world, has essentially marginalized the Paris Club, which was formerly the preeminent platform for resolving sovereign debt difficulties with troubled borrowers.
Beijing is exploring a number of new agenda-setting organizations, including the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Global AI Governance Initiative, and many conferences connected to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Furthermore, Rudolf proposed that in 2024, if Donald Trump wins the US presidential election, China’s growing ability to integrate CCP doctrine into the global system will be even more significant. Beijing was unprepared for the first time the isolationist Republican party won the presidency.
“All of these international institutions are in jeopardy with the next US election,” Rudolf declared. Compared to 2016, “the Chinese side would be much better prepared to project its power” now.