18 October 2020

Global China: Global governance and norms

Tarun Chhabra, Rush Doshi, Ryan Hass, and Emilie Kimball

China’s efforts to secure a larger role for itself in multiple international institutions have generated questions about the scale of its ambitions and the tools it will use to advance them. From human rights to energy to trade, China’s growing weight in the international system is bending institutions, rules, and norms in its preferred directions. At the same time, in other areas, such as internationalization of the renminbi and international law, China’s aspirations continue to exceed its impacts.

The papers in this final installment of the Brookings Foreign Policy project “Global China: Assessing China’s Growing Role in the World” examine China’s approach to global governance, and specifically to China’s efforts to influence institutions, norms, and rules at the heart of the modern international system. Taken as a whole, the pieces highlight that as the United States has stepped back in recent years from its traditional role in various international institutions, China has stepped forward, often to seek to encourage institutions, their member states, and other consequential global actors to better accommodate its preferences.

Taking these developments as a baseline, the papers offer a range of policy prescriptions for how the United States and other countries should respond in order to protect their interests and promote their values. In some areas, such as climate change, the authors call for the United States to explore deeper collaboration with China even as it competes vigorously with China in other areas of the relationship. In other areas, such as democracy promotion, the authors urge the United States to pursue a more competitive approach to blunting China’s efforts to advance its ambitions.

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