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half of this international order—namely the complex web of multilateral institutions which operate under international treaty law and which seek to govern the global commons on the basis of the principle of shared sovereignty. As for “global governance”, it tends to refer to the actual performance, for good or for ill, be it effective or ineffective, of the “international system” so defined.

It is deeply significant that at the 2018 Work Conference, Xi Jinping states boldly that a core component of his new ideology of a “diplomacy of socialism with Chinese characteristics” would be for China to: “lead the reform of the global governance system with the concepts of fairness and justice.” This is by far the most direct, unqualified and expansive statement on China’s intentions on this important question we have seen.

China, like the rest of the international community, is acutely conscious of the dysfunctionality of much of the current multilateral system. It also sees the US walking away from much of the system as well: from the JCPOA which was agreed to by the UN Security Council; from the UN’s Paris Agreement on Climate Change; its withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Commission; its open defiance of the Refugees Convention; and its challenging of the underlying fabric of the WTO.

Nature, as we know, abhors a vacuum. International relations even more so. And we all saw Xi Jinping’s riposte to President Trump on climate change and trade at Davos 18 months ago just after President Trump’s election. If China is indeed serious about leading the reform of global governance, its attitude to various of these multilateral institutions will be radically different to the historical posture of the US. Take for example the Human Rights Council in Geneva, which China would like to see emasculated. Mind you, so too now, apparently, does the current US administration!

The reference to “China leading the reform of global governance” in this conference is not an accident. It also reflects a growing Chinese diplomatic activism in a number of UN and Bretton Woods institutions around the world as China begins to seek to recast these institutions, their cultures, their work practices and their personnel in a direction more compatible with China’s core national interests. As I have written before, rather than China having to consistently resist the pressures of “Westernisation” inherent in the existing laws, institutions and culture of the current international system, particularly when these prove to be incompatible with the retention of a Marxist-Leninist Chinese state, the resolve of China’s leadership now seems to be to use its newfound global power to refashion those institutions within the international system that may be most problematic for China on the home front.

As for the principles of fairness and justice that Xi refers to as the core principles that will guide China’s reform of global governance, these terms historically imply China’s preference for a more “multipolar” international system in which the unilateral voice of the United States is reduced. China has already developed a strong constituency in Africa, parts of Asia and Latin America in support of this. ‘Multipolarity’ in Chinese strategic parlance is code for the dilution of American power in the post-war international system.

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