Global norms with Chinese characteristics

Elizabeth Economy's book offers insights into how China is reshaping global norms and raises the question of whether it can truly coerce nations with its economic power to serve its own interests

The World According to China

Author: Elizabeth C Economy

Publisher: Polity Press

Pages: 304

Price: Rs 2,008
 

China under Xi Jinping’s leadership is attempting to develop and mould global narratives and norms. This is not easy, given the United States’ dominance of international institutions, finance, technology, and its democratic system. To challenge this position, Beijing has not shied away from using its military, economic and technological clout to push countries to accept the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) line.

The major challenge in Mr Xi’s path is that existing global norms and institutions are accepted by most countries. Though China has accepted that it has gained a lot from these norms, Beijing has always felt that in their current form they put it at a disadvantage and there is nothing wrong in attempting to change them.

The World According to China  by Elizabeth Economy is one of the few books to offer an insight into how China is challenging international norms, painting a vivid picture of China’s grand ambitions under Mr Xi. China expects the world to acknowledge and respect the red lines it draws over the idea of Chinese sovereignty. These red lines mutate with respective issues and countries involved; Hong Kong, Taiwan, Xinjiang, and the South China Sea are some of them.

The adoption of the National Security Law in 2020 has changed the ground realities in Hong Kong and ended the democratic space and hopes associated with the Basic Law. In Taiwan, since President Tsai Ing-wen’s election, China has ramped up its efforts to alienate the island diplomatically, increasing the number of military exercises across the Taiwan Straits.

Every time countries have tried to challenge and question the legitimacy of Chinese actions, Beijing has flexed its military and economic muscles. One major example is the Philippines. After a ruling on territorial limits by the Permanent Court of Arbitration went in favour of Manila, Beijing suspended banana imports. When the Philippines temporarily dropped efforts to enforce the decision, Beijing ended its ban and indicated a willingness to increase its imports of a wide range of additional goods. As the author argues, “One of the most challenging elements of Xi Jinping’s playbook is his ability to leverage the Chinese market to shape others’ political and strategic choices.”

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) announced in 2013 is another tool. The BRI “positions China at the centre of the international system, with physical, financial, cultural, technological, and political influence flowing out to the rest of the world,” Dr Economy writes. The Covid-19 pandemic impacted the BRI negatively, and there have been multiple reports about corruption, environmental challenges, opaqueness in Chinese dealings and debt-traps. These have made partner countries reconsider contracts, putting the brakes on the pace of the BRI.

Under Mr Xi, technological growth is front and centre of China’s global ambitions. China has been investing billions of dollars hoping to match the US in technology development. Beijing understands that countries that develop technologies own the rights to their use and distribution. However, the path has not been easy. The agenda-setting by the CCP, and the path assigned by the Chinese government have not helped foster innovation despite some successes such as Huawei, TikTok and so on.

Beijing has also leveraged its people in top positions of international institutions to push its global agenda. It has used these to scuttle issues related to human right violations and atrocities in Xinjiang, especially in the United Nations. China knows that being part of important institutions will help set the future agenda and provide acceptance for its ideas. The freedom of the media and reporting has been one major challenge for the CCP. Under Mr Xi there is a new agenda to “tell the Chinese story right”. With this China has been gaining control not only over domestic media but foreign media as well.

The major success to date has been in African countries like Kenya, principally because they still lack economic capabilities to access Western media outlets. With this, China is hoping to build its own narrative of human rights, and it “continues to chip away at the core elements of the human rights regime”. It has taken the fight to the virtual world as well, “launching a two-pronged attack to shape both the norms that define the degree of state control over the internet and the standards that will enable that control”, Dr Economy writes.

In the longer run, Dr Economy predicts, “The emergence of two separate value-based technology — and perhaps even economic and military — ecosystems thus appears increasingly likely.” The primary challenge to such an ecosystem today emerges from within China, such as the closeness of the CCP and the Chinese government, which has proved a major hurdle for the Chinese soft power. The opaqueness of the Chinese government with respect to loans and investments and the geopolitical ambitions attached to them have been another bump in the Chinese dreams.

 Dr Economy summarises, “The objective of China’s soft, sharp and even hard power efforts is to shape the political and economic choices of foreign actors in support of Beijing’s values and interests”. But even if China can arm-twist nations with its economic and military strength to its purposes, can it make them follow what it believes in? Is a world according to China possible without Beijing changing its perspective of the world as it is?

 The reviewer is assistant professor, O P Jindal Global University