The heft of China’s multilateral diplomacy

CHINA’s multilateral diplomacy leverages its membership of international organisations to meet its declared objective of a “modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced and harmonious” by 2049. At a time of increasing uncertainty in international relations, China sees the United Nations (UN), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as supportive institutions to achieve its national objective.

Using the IMF as its partner in ‘rules-based’ international cooperation, China has acknowledged mutually beneficial outcomes.

China supports the UN as the main platform for global security governance. It is the second largest contributor (after the US) to the UN budget ($367 million/13 per cent). It is the only one of the permanent five (P5) members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) to contribute significant troops (2,500 out of 95,000) for UN peacekeeping operations, paying 15 per cent or $900 million of the UN peacekeeping budget. China’s position as a veto-wielding P5 country representing Asia, acquired as a precondition for creating the UN in 1945, gives it untrammelled power on legally binding UNSC decisions on threats to international peace and security, including terrorism. China’s P5 status allows it to interlink its bilateral and regional relations with major and emerging powers.

Since August 1972, China has cast 20 vetoes in the UNSC, including 10 on the Syria issue. On the broader Asian canvas, however, apart from dominating UNSC positions on the situation in North Korea, Taiwan and Myanmar, China has been generally circumspect. This has allowed the NATO members (France, the UK and the US) among the P5 to dominate the UNSC’s decisions on Asian issues such as the Israel-Palestine conflict, Yemen, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.

China’s profile in the UNSC could change following the launch of its Global Security Initiative (GSI) by President Xi Jinping in April 2022, and its call for ‘indivisible security’. In 2017, the UN opened a liaison office in the Beijing-headquartered Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). The GSI’s six priorities draw on the principles and objectives of the UN Charter, buttressing China’s posture as an upholder of ‘UN values’ through ‘dialogue and consultation’.

The most significant outcome of the GSI so far has been China’s facilitation of the Saudi-Iran rapprochement in March 2023. In UNSC meetings, China has called for regional security frameworks for the Gulf and Afghanistan. It hosted the first China-Pakistan-Iran trilateral security meeting in Beijing in June 2023. Since October 2023, China has acquired the sole Deputy Secretary-General’s position in the Kazakhstan-based CICA (Conference on Interaction & Confidence-Building Measures in Asia).

A potential impact of the GSI would be the emergence of an overland Asian strategic energy/trade corridor with pipeline, railroad and digital connectivity between the Gulf and China. This would enable Beijing to bypass the existing maritime transportation hotspots of the Straits of Hormuz and Malacca, and the South China Sea.

China has consciously interlinked its Global Development Initiative (GDI), launched by President Xi at the UNGA in September 2021, with the UN’s Agenda 2030 and 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The GDI has eight priority areas, incorporating the SDGs on poverty eradication, food security (included in China’s Global Food Security Initiative tabled at the G20 in Bali in 2022), industrialisation and innovation, and climate finance. To these, the GDI has added the emerging digital economy and connectivity, integrating China’s infrastructure-driven Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Digital Silk Road and Global Data Security Initiative.

China has leveraged its financial and human resources in the UN to benefit from the implementation of Agenda 2030’s goals. China’s $4-billion Global Development and South-South Cooperation Fund announced in 2023, and its $200-million UN Peace and Development Trust Fund set up in 2016, are both steered by the UN Secretary-General’s Office, supported by a 70-country ‘Group of Friends of GDI’, most of them partners of the BRI. The UN’s Department for Economic and Social Affairs, headed by a Chinese Under Secretary-General since 2007, is responsible for regular monitoring of Agenda 2030 implementation, getting data directly from UN offices on the ground.

Since April 1980, when it joined the IMF, China’s transformation from a centrally planned to a ‘socialist market-oriented economy’ has been a priority. Using the IMF as its partner in ‘rules-based’ international cooperation, China has acknowledged ‘mutually beneficial’ outcomes, including ‘trust’, from this relationship. In November 2015, China’s Renminbi currency was included in the IMF’s basket of currencies making up the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights, allowing its international use for finance and trade. China is the third largest shareholder in the IMF after the US and Japan, giving it a decision-making role. This enables China to integrate its BRI and debt relief initiatives into IMF support measures for crisis-hit countries.

Beijing has three priorities in the WTO, which it joined in December 2001. It uses WTO agreements as the applicable ‘rules-based order’ to ensure MFN (most-favoured nation) treatment for its market access as well as to offset criticism of its dominant state-owned enterprises. It participates in ongoing WTO negotiations to formulate “new rules”, particularly in the digital economy. It upholds “the rule of law” based on the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding as the key to countering the ‘extra-territorial’ application of laws by its trading partners (notably the US). Significantly, China’s participation in a Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement set up in 2020 (which includes the EU, Japan, Australia and Singapore) counters the current US policy to atrophy the WTO’s dispute settlement system by blocking fresh appointments to the WTO appellate body.

China’s multilateral diplomacy is cognisant of the challenges to multilateralism. Following the China-US summit in November 2023, China declared that its preferred option was to “join hands to meet global challenges and promote global security and prosperity”. The alternative was a ‘zero-sum mentality’ that would “drive the world toward turmoil and division”, to the detriment of China’s core interests.