U.S. Secretary of State John Blinken on Friday (May 7) attended a UN Security Council foreign minister-level video conference hosted by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, where Blinken criticized China by name for its blatant disregard for international rules on issues such as human rights, trade and territorial borders.
At the meeting, titled “Preserving Multilateralism and the UN-Centered International System,” Blinken emphasized that multilateralism is the best tool to address global issues and that the United States will strongly defend it. But he noted that international multilateral cooperation is based on nations working together to adhere to a rules-based international order.
“When we see countries undermining the international order, pretending that the rules we’ve all agreed on don’t exist, or simply violating them at will, we will push back hard,” Blinken said.
China is the rotating president of the U.N. Security Council for the month of May. Before Blinken’s speech, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who initiated and chaired the meeting, said at the meeting that international rules must be written by all parties and not be “the preserve and privilege of a few countries.
“We want fairness and justice, not bullying and hegemony,” Wang said.
Wang’s statement echoes recent Chinese official criticism of the U.S. call to preserve the international order, saying the order the U.S. wants to preserve is one that serves U.S. and Western interests. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Thursday that the international rules the U.S. wants to uphold are “hegemonic rules” and “small-circle rules.
In a not-so-subtle retort, Blinken alluded to China as the main beneficiary of the post-World War II international order in his remarks Friday.
“Let me be clear, the United States did not seek to suppress other nations by maintaining a rules-based order,” Blinken said, “the international order that we helped establish and defend enabled the rise of some of our most imposing competitors.”
In an interview with the CBS television network just last weekend, Blinken noted that the purpose of U.S. policy toward China is not to deter or suppress Chinese development, but to preserve a rules-based international order. He noted that China, which has increased its oppressive rule internally and become increasingly domineering externally, is challenging that order.
“China is the only country in the world right now that has sufficient military, economic and diplomatic capabilities to weaken or challenge the current world order,” Blinken said in that interview.
Same words, different meanings
The video conference was less about the fiery tit-for-tat of the Alaska talks and more about criticizing each other without naming names, but the level of disagreement between the U.S. and China was undiminished.
At the meeting, Wang called for “upholding the basic norms of international relations based on the purposes and principles of the UN Charter” and for “all parties to adhere to the universally recognized rules of international law and to mutually agreed international agreements. He stressed that there can be no exceptionalism or double standards in this regard, which is exactly what the Chinese official media has been accusing the United States of saying.
The first of the three ways in which Blinken proposes that countries defend the multilateral system is that “all member states should fulfill their commitments – especially those with international legal effect, including the UN Charter, treaties and conventions, Security Council resolutions, international humanitarian law, and the UN Charter. rules and standards agreed upon by the World Trade Organization and numerous other international standard-setting organizations.”
On human rights, Blinken pushed back against the notion that China views human rights issues as internal affairs.
“Some people believe that what governments do within their own borders is their own business, and that human rights are subjectively determined values that are viewed differently by different societies. But the Universal Declaration of Human Rights begins with the word ‘universal’ because member states agree that there are rights to which anyone anywhere should be entitled,” Blinken said, adding that “domestic jurisdiction is not a blank check for any country to use as a justification for its own rights. for them to use as a justification to enslave, torture, disappear, ethnically cleanse, or in any other way violate the human rights of their people.”
In his statement, Blinken also emphasized the principle of the sovereign equality of member states.
“When a state claims to redraw another state’s borders or seeks to resolve territorial disputes through the use or threat of force, or when a state claims that it has the right to dictate or coerce another state’s choices and decisions, it does not respect that principle (of fairness),” Blinken said.
Jimmy Quinn, a journalist for National Review, writes that China has focused its offensive in recent years on trying to change the way the international order is discussed, with the aim of reshaping the very institutions and ideas that underpin it. The reason behind this, he argues, is China’s belief that the various crises the United States has endured over the years have permanently weakened its ability to resist China’s attempts to reshape international affairs.
Whereas Chinese officials were once cautious about expressing this “East is rising, West is falling” view of the world, now high-level Chinese diplomats are declaring it directly to the world on camera. As Yang Jiechi, director of the Foreign Affairs Working Committee Office of the CPC Central Committee, said at the U.S.-China Summit in Alaska this year, “The United States is not qualified to speak to China from above.”
As the Communist Party celebrates its 100th anniversary, the Chinese government is more aggressively demonstrating its hand and ability to reshape international affairs and discourse.
“Hard core of power coated with soft paste of goodwill” China intends to change the world order
Nadège Rolland, a senior fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR), a U.S. think tank, has written that behind China’s redefinition of the discourse is its focus on “discourse power.
According to Rolland, “Chinese leaders’ efforts to increase China’s discourse should not be viewed as mere propaganda or empty slogans. Rather, they should be seen as evidence of the leadership’s determination to change the norms that underpin the existing system and to lay the foundations for the new international system that the Chinese Communist Party dreams of,” Roland recommends in his study.
Rowland likens this approach to changing the world order by changing the discourse to “the persistent application of a soft paste of peace and goodwill on the surface of a not-so-hidden hard core, which itself is the unchecked power and aura of the Chinese Communist Party.”
In its 2019 White Paper on Human Rights, China said, “The 70 years of the new China are the 70 years of China’s continuous contribution to the development of the cause of human rights in the world.” The People’s Daily Overseas Edition even published a direct article titled “China redefines ‘human rights’ with 70 years of development.”
Quinn argues that the Chinese government is creating a very dangerous framework by redefining human rights as a universal value and institutionalizing its heartfelt discourse through the influence it has been accumulating in recent years in international institutions.
“In this framework, mass atrocities can be ignored and give way to a focus on economic development,” Quinn said.
A similar situation is already evident. At a UN Human Rights Council meeting in March, Cuba presented a joint letter signed by 64 countries, including China, calling on other countries to “stop manipulating the Xinjiang issue to interfere in China’s internal affairs and refrain from making politically motivated and unfounded accusations against China.” At a meeting of the Human Rights Council last July, 53 countries supported China’s new National Security Law in Hong Kong.
An inevitable change in the international order? A competition of norms, narratives, and legitimacy
Stephen M. Walt, a professor of international relations at Harvard University, recently wrote in Foreign Policy that it is inevitable that the dynamics of the international order will reflect a potential balance of power. “China’s rise means that its ability to shape some of the rules (or to refuse to abide by rules it rejects) will be considerable,” he said.
The problem, according to Walter, is not the U.S. preference for a rules-based order or China’s lack of interest in it, but rather the question of who decides which rules are used where.
At its core, the U.S. and China are competing to shape the foundational global system – the basic ideas, habits and expectations that dominate international politics,” said Michael Mazarr, a researcher at the RAND Corporation, a U.S. think tank. Ultimately, it is a competition for norms, narratives, and legitimacy.”
The post-World War II international order was never complete, Michael Auslin, a scholar on Asia at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, said at a seminar Thursday organized by the Asia Scotland Institute.
“It comes down to interests and power. What matters is what your interests are and whether you have the ability to exert influence over them,” he said.
Walter believes that the United States would prefer a multilateral system that focuses at least somewhat on individual rights and certain core liberal values, while China would prefer a Westphalian system kind of order, where independent sovereignty and noninterference in the internal affairs of other countries are supreme principles, but where liberal notions focused on individual rights are diluted, if not completely rejected.
According to Walter’s judgment, if China’s economic development does surpass that of the United States to become the world’s number one, China will still not be able to take over the world, but China, occupying the economic high ground, will gain enormous influence to set the rules of the international system, and countries that do not want to openly challenge China will be forced to conform to China’s preferences, and countries that form a military counterweight to China will be accommodated to some extent.
If the United States can maintain its core strengths in key scientific and technological areas that affect future productivity, and hold the economic high ground, then the 21st century order will be more in line with Washington’s preferences.
In her report, Roland also claims that in the new world order envisioned by Beijing, China is enjoying partial hegemony, not world domination. But she also points out that if a bicentric world system does take shape, the world’s emerging and developing countries could once again become a battleground for global influence among the major powers.
Roland also cautions in the report that “the Chinese leadership’s criticism of the existing international order demonstrates its unwavering opposition to the values that established it. At stake is not only U.S. dominance in the current system, but more importantly, it could erode basic human rights, freedom of thought and expression, and autonomy around the world.”
Recent Comments