Global,Governance,Crisis,and,Organizational,Change

Su Changhe

Global Governance refers to institutional system and operational mechanisms that come into being through extensive consultation by various governments and various parties to tackle common issues facing one another and the international community at large. Such common issues are indivisible and interconnected, whose resolution if long overdue will affect the development of concerned countries and the process of development of international relations. In the world today, it is difficult for old global governance system to deal with all kinds of international challenges under profound changes, and thus it becomes necessary for the international community to join hands in taking resolute actions to cope with changes and challenges, exerting efforts to reach consensus on security and development issues that concern all parties, and preventing against major deviation in international relations. Standing as always on the right side of world history, China has made a series of major initiatives, propositions and plans, injecting important positive energy to promoting change in global governance system.

Global governance on all issues requires favorable international cooperation environment. At present, domestic political polarization and veto politics in some of the major world powers lead to frequent overthrow of global governance agreements. Should the world be again pushed into division and antagonism or let it be under an international system of confrontation and mutual vetoes, it would be extremely difficult to reach an agreement on cooperating to tackle global issues. Therefore, the requirement is all the more urgent to avert world division and antagonism, and uphold solidarity of the international community.

A child stands in front of a model of the Earth in Corona Park, New York, U.S.

The history of Western international relations since the 18th century illustrates that more often than not the international relations within the Western world cannot escape either of the destinies: one, a multipolar pattern of three or more forces that will fatalistically lead to contest between bipolar alliances, namely “a multi-polar world necessarily leading to antagonism”; two, in a hegemonyled international system, the incumbent power and the rising power will ultimately fall into a war of rivalry for hegemony. Such a historical fatalism leaves the whole history of Western international relations unable to escape this absurd historical circle, almost always being one of antagonistic alliances and hegemonic wars. The circles rolling on a circle phenomenon has not only left Western countries and their people with miserable memories but also, due to great power contest expanding from the Western world to the non-Western world, brought untold collateral devastation to the non-Western world and its people.

Should such a theory on international relations be used to deduce and even guide the international relations in a world undergoing drastic changes, it would very likely be of misguidance. In recent years, under the guidance of a “new Cold War” mindset, an ever multi-polarized world faces the danger of division with a lot of signs of ambiguities and uncertainties, and reorganization of forces seems to evolve in the direction of the hegemonic power doing its best to consolidate its alliances against the development of the emerging power, very likely to result in returning to a bipolar state of alliance confrontation as happened in history. This is projection of Western theory on international relations in practice, which is also where lie the limits and even the danger of foreign policy of Western countries.

However, it is imperative for international relations to be free from the set pattern of Western theory on international relations, and not only is it possible for a multi-polar world to construct a cooperative symbiosis system, it will be capable for a multipolar world to do so. China’s foreign policy and diplomatic practice have been engaged in promoting greater democracy in international relations, and making common efforts with all parties of the international community to prevent the world from moving toward division and antagonism. In order to uphold solidarity of the international community and create a cooperative environment for global governance, it is necessary for the international community to reach consensus on major issues and take actions.

Solidarity is the essence of all communities. To uphold solidarity of the international community makes it necessary to have value consensus. Holding humanity’s common values of peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy, and freedom is essential to upholding solidarity of the international community and achieving consensus on global governance, which in turn is conducive to upholding an international order featuring shared destiny, pluralistic symbiosis, and mutually non-molestation. It is not for humanity’s common value to take measures of distinguishing ourselves from the enemy and choosing either this or that, but to take humanity as a whole with interdependence among all countries, harmonious co-existence between various civilizations, and survival, security and development of any country and nation being conditioned by survival, security and development of other countries and nations. To go by, promote and expand this state of shared destiny requires to discard previous narrative model of antagonistic value alliances and to convert to a new narrative model of more inclusive mutualistic values.

Building value consensus cannot be separated from global political consultation. The world today is no longer staying behind in the era when a country or a small number of countries could monopolize international affairs or global governance. However, this does not mean that a large number of the world are therefore able to carry out effective cooperation. As such, it is imperative to construct effective multi-formed and multilayered global political consultative mechanisms, to build consensus and take actions so as to avert the world falling into division and antagonism and promote global governance. Over the years, on the plane of global governance, the international community has set up political consultative mechanisms covering nuclear issue, climate change, finance, and trade domains. Meanwhile, besides the participation of sovereign states, importance is attached to absorb multiple social and economic forces to participate in political consultative mechanisms on various issues. On the whole, countries in the world are active in regional governance, however inter-regional consultative and dialogue mechanisms are clearly insufficient. The above global political consultative mechanisms of all kinds are not and should not be mutually replaceable but rather mutually complementary.

It requires more profound dialogue between civilizations to build value consensus. The world is made of entities different from one another, and there are two ways to deal with differences, one being to eliminate them, and the other, to seek common ground while shelving them for harmonious co-existence. One school of thoughts holds that the world will have good order after transforming and eliminating differences by an existing standard and forcing all things in the world into the one model. Should it hold sway, there would necessarily be clashes between civilizations, and no peaceful co-existence among nations. It requires high political wisdom to blend different things and even contradictory ones in harmonious co-existence, the soil for such wisdom to grow being more often than not in the oriental, Chinese philosophy.

Factors affecting world security and stability can be roughly put into three categories, the first being systemic unstable factors such as disruption of mutually recognized diplomatic institutions and instabilities of financial and trade system, the second being structural unstable factors, namely antagonistic alliance politics and bloc politics on international plane brought about by force or role shift as well as antagonistic domestic political polarization in more and more countries that generate risks for global security, and the third being behavioral uncertainties, referring to conceptual, prejudice, intent, trust and policy factors that induce to estrangement between states like double security standard, conducts at the cost of other countries’ security, abuse of sanctions leading to insecurity, anxiety about decline of hegemonic power, extremism arising from hatred instigated by irresponsible media.

Pursuing security principles of invisibility, commonality and nonmalificence, it is necessary for global security governance to distinguish systemic, structural and behavioral factors that threaten global security and take collective actions. It was against this background that China put forward the Global Security Initiative (GSI). In March 2013, during his first visit overseas as Chinese president, Xi Jinping expounded in a speech on his views of world security, “As challenges often take on global dimensions, it is all the more necessary for countries to take on them cooperatively, turning pressure into motivation and crises into opportunities. Confronted with complex threats to international security, fighting alone or fighting with a blind faith in the use of force will not get one anywhere. The only right solution lies in cooperative security, collective security and common security.” On April 21, President Xi put forward for the first time the GSI in his keynote speech at the Opening Ceremony of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2022, promoting the vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security as the guiding principle of global security governance.

Development and security mutually support one another. Development is a most basic economic right of all countries and all peoples, especially developing countries that are victims of the old international economic system. Since the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, the implementation of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has encountered serious setbacks. At the same time, a few Western countries have insisted on putting their own countries first, severing world economic and trade links, and abusing economic sanctions, all this has seriously damaged the normal operation order of world economic. Taking development for another core agenda of global governance, China has committed, together with other countries, to tackling the development deficit of the international community. On September 21, 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping made an important statement at the General Debate of the 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, in which he put forward the Global Development Initiative (GDI), promoting the return of development issue to the core agenda of global governance. On June 24, 2022, President Xi hosted the High-level Dialogue on Global Development in a virtual format and delivered a keynote speech, made a four-point proposal of jointly building international consensus on promoting development, jointly creating an enabling international environment for development, jointly fostering new drivers for global development, and jointly forging a global development partnership, and announced a series of important measures taken by China to implement the GDI.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres holds a joint press conference for the safe shipment of grain products in Istanbul, Türkiye.

Chinese Navy’s hospital ship successfully completes its mission and returns home.

Security and development are pillars for effectively advancing global governance, and also a most urgent task facing global governance. For today’s global governance, the core of global security governance is to discard old security concept, construct global security mechanisms with a new security vision, and take forceful actions to prevent against division and antagonism of the international community, whereas the core of global development is to release drivers for development and change the state of imbalanced development between countries through common development.

The major causes for predicament facing global governance are as follows: first, there are contradictions between the exclusive characteristic of sovereignty and the necessity of international cooperation on global issues; secondly, many countries copying Western antagonistic political institutions results in the fact that their domestic political parties and interest groups lack consistent commitment and actions to implement agreements on global governance; and third, implementation and effect of agreements global governance cooperation vary greatly within concerned countries.

Affected by the interaction between the three factors above, almost all existing international organizations that provide organizational framework of global governance fall into predicament of insufficient will and ability.

Global governance calls for a new type of international organizations to improve its vitality and capacity. To meet the needs of global governance, the 21st century world is undergoing new changes in international organizations. The first trend of changes is that in international relations, international organizations initiated by developing countries are on the rise, becoming an ever increasing important force in the domain of global governance. China is an important party to this round of progressive changes in international organizations, and the Chinese side has coinitiated with concerned countries the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the BRICS New Development Bank, carrying the principles of common value, non-antagonism, mutual benefit, and common development through the design of such international organizations. The second trend of organizational changes in global governance arises from bilateral and multilateral transnational administration. As governance of global issues in the main relies on administrative and executive capacity of various governments, it becomes an important phenomenon to jointly resolve global and regional issues through bilateral and multilateral transnational administrative cooperation. It ultimately requires administrative cooperation of governments of sovereign states to realize governance of global issues, which also determines the practical effect of implementing agreements on global governance. Therefore, for governments to tackle issues of common concern through effective administrative cooperation becomes a new form of international cooperation, which gives more content of “inter-governmental cooperative relations” to international relations.

The world today is at an important period of change. People can see the old forces attempting to take the world into alliance, antagonism and division and even more so the new forces supporting and expanding solidarity of the world, preventing against division and antagonism. The world at change conceives opportunities and forces of constructing a new type of international relations. To take common values for a principle, to focus on promoting global security and development as core governance agenda, and to improve global governance capacity by innovating on forms of international cooperation, only by doing so can the world come through a stage of insecurity, instability and uncertainty and reach a new and higher state of international relations.

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