China, the United States, and the future of a rules-based international order

Few concepts in U.S. foreign policy are invoked more frequently than “the rules-based international order,” and few U.S. phrases are more contested by China. We accuse China of seeking to destroy or gravely undermine “the rules-based international order.” China accuses us and other Western countries of invoking the concept to demonize China and impose our hegemony.

In spite of the general deterioration of U.S.-China relations, we cannot postpone analyzing this conflict about “the rules-based international order” and getting a fuller understanding of the specifics of China’s challenge. We must consider what may sound like a far-fetched question: Is some bridging of the gap in this realm possible? This is essential to have any chance of salvaging an international order that is now gravely weakened and endangered.

The international system set up after World War II was a major effort to create “the foundation for global peace and prosperity.” But the ideal of organizing world affairs through international institutions and “rules” creating greater “international order” is now under great stress, being blatantly violated by wars and terrorism (most obviously, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine); international institutions such as the World Trade Organization undermined by greater economic nationalism; and insufficient new rules to address a variety of major new global challenges, such as climate change and artificial intelligence. We are at risk of the existing international order collapsing, becoming an empty shell, or being replaced by bipolar orders with a divided set of rules, or even more fragmentation.

Today’s global turmoil, of course, also reflects matters not directly involving the “rules-based international order”—most obviously, changes in the power dynamics and perceived interests of countries. But the international relations literature too frequently blurs the idea of “global order” as this general dynamic of international relations with the more specific concept of a “rules-based international order.” The latter domain involving “rules” is my subject here.

Salvaging this weakened international order will of course require extensive negotiation among a range of diverse countries. But the United States’ and China’s distinctive power elevates the importance of bilateral discussions. Since official U.S.-China diplomacy is almost certainly unable to tackle this vast project now, what I have written here is designed to be a starting point for experts outside of the two governments to begin clarifying specific disagreements between the United States and China about an “international order” based on “rules” and the possibilities of bridging them, as a preface for more official and multilateral negotiations. Since China is widely perceived as the greatest challenge to the rules-based international order, a central part of both that project and this paper is to better understand the elements of China’s challenge.

Understanding international law

At the outset, a few basic matters need to be clarified. First, as Iain Johnston has persuasively demonstrated, “there is no single international order”; there are multiple international orders. There are international institutions and rules in a variety of different fields—the United Nations and the U.N. Charter provide a general foundation, but many other international institutions and rules address fields like arms control, international trade and finance, human rights, development, and the environment. It is possible that the international order in some of these fields might collapse but endures in other fields. In addition, there are a variety of multilateral but not global institutions that coordinate or regulate members’ conduct, providing limited and often regional “rule-based order,” such as the European Union, BRICS, the G7, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and OPEC. These can contribute to “global order,” and often do. But they certainly can also create conflicts among nations. I focus here on international institutions and international law that have global applications or close to global applications.

Second, we should not romanticize the post-World War II international order. It has failed to prevent many kinetic wars, the Cold War, economic crises, and human rights disasters. Even after the Cold War ended and the United States became the “hegemonic” global leader, the international system hardly stopped crises from emerging throughout the world. The symbol of the United Nations is extraordinary and its structures force constant peaceful interactions between governments of countries around the world—but its powers are limited. “International law” is a complex concept and reality. The U.N. Charter is viewed as “international law” binding on all U.N. members. However, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not itself legally binding. Most “international law” derives from separately negotiated treaties and includes “customary” norms. But to be bound by a treaty, even one usually labeled as an “international treaty,” a country must ratify it. Both the United States and China have refused to ratify some major treaties that are often referred to, wrongly, as international law that binds all countries. If a country hasn’t ratified a treaty, the country is not legally bound by it.

In addition, the “international law” contained in treaties—or, for that matter, the U.N. Charter itself (not to mention the content of “customary” norms)—must be interpreted. Treaties often contain general and vague language open to various different interpretations. Indeed, as any lawyer knows, even quite specific language in a legal document is often open to reasonable, differing interpretations. International treaties do not always provide for judicial-style tribunals like domestic courts that resolve disputes about the law’s meaning, or they may do so only with the parties’ consent, and they typically have no power to enforce their decisions—and tribunals have often been rejected and criticized. Countries may and do get away with ignoring and blatantly violating international law. In short, there are significant limits on the real-world force of current international rules and the “order” they create.

But none of this undermines the significance of getting as much agreement as possible on the importance of international rules and “international law,” on specific rules, on the meaning of the rules and laws, and on compliance with them. To do so, an essential step is to better understand and analyze China’s views and positions.

China wants substantial change to the international order, not elimination

In recent years, the United States has repeatedly called China’s actions a “challenge” and a “threat” to the current rules-based international order, and that China is a “major disruptor” with “both the power and the intent to change the system that we’re living in.”

China has responded by saying “the ‘rules-based international order’ … is just another version of power politics[,] … an attempt to impose … the house rules of few countries.” It has decried the “so-called ‘rules-based’ international order” as not truly representative of “universal values”; in China’s view, “the overwhelming majority of countries in the world would not recognize … that the rules made by a small number of people would serve as the basis for the international order.”

This certainly sounds like a radical assault on an international system of rules and laws that seeks to restrain fundamental wrongs in the world. But in fact, China has not advocated the overthrow or elimination of “a rules-based international order.” Chinese criticism of “the rules-based international order” is probably based on China’s opposition to various parts of the existing rules-based international order, and China’s desire to substantially revise various rules and interpretations of the rules and change some existing features of current international institutions. That may not be reassuring to many people, but it is about keeping a system that is “international,” not embracing a world without “rules,” and not about creating two different sets of rules guiding each side in a bipolar order.

China’s 2023 Foreign Relations Law summarizes some of Beijing’s general ideas about global governance that receive more elaborate and propaganda-like presentations in other Chinese documents. Article 19 of the law specifically states that:

“The People’s Republic of China upholds the international system with the United Nations at its core, the international order underpinned by international law, and the fundamental norms governing international relations based on the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

“The People’s Republic of China stays true to the vision of global governance featuring extensive consultation and joint contribution for shared benefits. It participates in the development of international rules, promotes democracy in international relations, and works for economic globalization that is more open, inclusive, balanced and beneficial to all.”

“International law” mostly involves binding rules—not just “extensive consultation.” So, embracing “international law” is to embrace a central dimension of a “rules-based international order.” In short, the discourse in China endorses sustaining an “international” order that involves rules and laws.

At the same time, as Article 18 indicates, “The People’s Republic of China … participates in the reform and development of the global governance system.” This reveals that China not only wants changes to the substance of international law but also to fully participate in the procedures by which international law is made and implemented.

China’s growing power will certainly give it greater influence in the evolution of the international order—and with some plausibility, China’s argument that its greater power (along with the voices of many countries in BRICS and the Global South) entitles it to seek changes to the rules is analogous to the way domestic laws are debated in a Western “democracy” when new domestic political groups become more powerful. Of course, this hardly means countries that become more powerful get to remake the rules. We should certainly insist that China is obligated to follow current rules unless or until they are changed, even if we silently understand that all great powers (including the United States) depart from the rules when powerful national interests are at stake. But China’s greater power to try to influence the shape of an enduring international order launches a new political dynamic that can go in various directions.

When the People’s Republic of China first joined the international system, few people recognized that China’s characteristics would make its wholesale assimilation to the established rules a dubious expectation: China’s population was the largest in the world; it is ruled by a strong Communist Party radically different from Western democracies; it has a long history and entrenched cultural differences from “the West”; it harbored lingering resentment of what it calls “the century of humiliation” in which Japan and Western countries repeatedly waged war against it; the Chinese Community Party was feeling growing pride as China’s extraordinary “rejuvenation” continued. Nevertheless, China has remarkably benefitted from the existing international order, continues to benefit from it, and wants substantial parts of it to persist. But it clearly wants significant changes. Like it or not, we must more clearly accept that China as well as countries in the developing world will have a greater role in trying to influence the future of the international order if we want to preserve an international order.

In fact, the United States does not oppose the idea of revising the current rules-based order, and has explicitly endorsed the general idea of “updating” and “revitaliz[ing]” the international order. As Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said, “We want not just to sustain the international order that made so much of that progress possible, but to modernize it, to make sure that it represents the interests, the values, the hopes of all nations, big and small, from every region.” However, he has explicitly called China “the most serious long-term challenge to the international order,” including a challenge to “the foundations of the [existing] international order,” and warned that “Beijing’s vision would move us away from the universal values that have sustained so much of the world’s progress over the past 75 years.”

To be sure, although China endorses sustaining an “international order” that involves rules and law, China is developing relationships with other countries and creating institutions that could compose a new “bloc” in an emerging bipolar order. And something similar might be said of the United States and its “allies and partners,” as it has prioritized the goal of acting collectively with them. A bipolar world and the creation of a strong bipolar set of rules and institutions are clearly possible. The United States and China can both be said to be “hedging”—i.e., preparing to deal with increasingly more international matters through a bipolar struggle between blocs, with a separate set of rules, or even a more fragmented and disordered world. But while we are not there yet, we haven’t made appropriately sustained efforts to avoid that.

The changes China wants to the international order

Considering China’s challenge to the existing rules-based international order is distinctively powerful and important, we need a much more specific understanding of China’s views—most importantly, what specific changes Beijing wants to make to the existing international rules and institutions. We need specifics so we can have concrete discussions with the Chinese about the possibility of constructively moving forward.

China has given us some specifics, but mostly generalities and attitudes. The most comprehensive and concrete document China has issued about global governance is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ (MFA) Proposal on the Reform and Development of Global Governance issued on September 13, 2023 (what I will hereafter call the Global Governance Proposal). This proposal explicitly “calls on the international community to … further develop and improve the governance system,” with China playing “an active part in the reform and development” of that system. Most importantly, this MFA document is based on three major “global initiatives” announced by President Xi Jinping himself—the Global Security Initiative, the Global Development Initiative, and the Global Civilization Initiative.¹ These three “global initiatives” combine ideas about China’s general foreign policy and ideas about global governance specifically, and the two must be distinguished—but they also contain China’s most authoritative statements about the future of global governance.²

The Global Security Initiative includes a statement China now regularly makes, that we need to “firmly safeguard the international system with the U.N. at its core and the international order underpinned by international law.” Here Xi emphasizes the centrality of “sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries” as the core element of “common … security.” But he blurs this point by urging a shared commitment “to taking the legitimate security concerns of all countries seriously,” and by calling on states to “build a balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture” (vaguely suggesting a need to review the current global “architecture”). The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ subsequent Global Governance Proposal in fact uses Xi’s language when discussing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: “The root cause of the crisis lies in the problem of security governance in Europe,” the parties must “accommodate each other’s legitimate security concerns,” and interested parties must “work to build a balanced, effective and sustainable European security architecture.” Does this reflect a fundamental change in China’s long-standing embrace of “sovereignty and territorial integrity” as the most fundamental principle of the U.N. Charter and international law? Or are these statements an unprincipled exception explained by a unique geopolitical moment, or carefully drafted phrasing about past causation rather than justifying a new international principle? We don’t have an answer to that.

Xi’s Global Security Initiative speech also says in general terms, “We need to embrace a global governance philosophy that emphasizes extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits.” He opposes and predicts the failure of “unilateralism,” “practices of decoupling, supply disruption and maximum pressure,” “the wanton use of unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction,” and attempts to “stoke conflict and confrontation along ideological lines.” These are clearly criticisms of U.S. actions, but in none of these specific areas does he propose specific changes in existing rules or institutions. Will China push for changed international rules and institutions to constrain such behavior?

Xi’s speech on the Global Development Initiative stresses the need “to put development high on the global macro policy agenda” given that the world’s “call for equity and justice is growing stronger.” It contains many admirable and generally phrased economic development goals—but not specific changes in the rules making up the international order. A Global Development Initiative “Concept Paper” circulated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs the same day does call for “enhanc[ing] the representation and voice of emerging markets and developing countries in global governance,” but provides no specifics about what that “enhancement” means concretely. The paper also emphasizes the need to “build an open world economy, and … an open and interconnected global development environment” allowing for “unimpeded trade”—in spite of China’s having one of the least “open” economies in the world.

The Global Development Initiative’s “Concept Paper” explicitly supports “enhanced” global governance in the “priority areas” of “climate change and green development.” The “Concept Paper” also underscores “the special development difficulties of developing countries” and the “importance” of “both development and environmental protection.” Regarding countries’ addressing climate change, the MFA Global Governance Proposal is the most explicit in calling “for the full and effective implementation of the Paris Agreement” and “especially” insists on “the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.” A central issue going forward in the future of the international order is what will be the specific rules implementing this “principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.” The United States has recently affirmed its agreement with this principle, but negotiations on more specific approaches are ongoing.

Xi’s most recent global initiative, the 2023 Global Civilization Initiative, points to what may be China’s most fundamental challenge to the current rules-based international order. Although Xi purports to “advocate the common values of humanity” and the “common aspirations of all peoples,” he suggests how much of the existing rules-based international order governing human rights China seeks to change. The initiative calls first and foremost for “respect for the diversity of civilizations,” insisting that states “refrain from imposing their own values or models on others.” These principles indicate resistance to a universal human rights regime that binds states regardless of their “diversified cultures.”

The MFA Global Governance Proposal is significantly more specific in its section that builds on the Global Civilization Initiative. It emphasizes that China’s framing values are “the diversity of civilizations,” “sovereignty,” and not “to interfere in other countries’ internal affairs,” which seems to preclude binding “rules-based” international human rights, at least where countries have not agreed. It explicitly states there is “no one-size-fits-all model” of human rights. It uses the phrase “universality of human rights,” but only to emphasize the “need to combine the principle of universality of human rights and [different countries’] national conditions.” In one of its most radical phrases, the document states that “All countries’ independent choice of their own path of human rights development should be respected.” It continues: “Human rights issues should not be politicized or used as a tool, double standard should be rejected, and still less should human rights be used as an excuse to interfere in other countries’ internal affairs or encircle and contain other countries as they pursue development.” The proposal does not explicitly address the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (which the United States has ratified but China has not) or the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (which China has ratified and the United States has not), but its statement that “subsistence and development are the basic human rights of paramount importance” supports the latter covenant and ignores the former. (Indeed, in discussions of human rights in almost any setting, China emphasizes the “elimination of poverty” in China as one of the Chinese Communist Party’s greatest achievements.)

These documents suggest that much of China’s rhetoric about “the rules-based international order” should be understood as challenging the West’s interpretation of and efforts to enforce human rights standards. These are stated not only in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which China has not ratified, but also such countries’ interpretations of the U.N. Charter and other legally binding documents that China has indeed agreed to and that Western countries interpret to create enforceable political and civil rights.

The MFA Global Governance Proposal’s discussion of the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC) is particularly revealing. The Human Rights Council is the arena of the existing international order where China has repeatedly taken concrete actions that transparently reveal the changes China wants in the existing order as well as the effect it is already having. In the Human Rights Council, China has insisted on “mutually beneficial cooperation” and “constructive dialogue” and rejected country-specific name-and-shame resolutions; has “block[ed] any official resolution condemning” China’s own alleged violations of human rights; and has tried to marginalize civil society actors and make the council’s human rights discourse and debates the exclusive prerogative of states. In October 2022, for example, China secured a narrow victory in a HRC vote defeating a draft resolution to debate the findings of a report on Xinjiang by the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights which documented evidence that China may have committed crimes against humanity.³ This all seems to suggest that international human rights are not binding “rules,” in spite of China’s explicit embrace of “international law.”

The MFA Global Governance Proposal concludes with a section entitled “Strengthening the core role of the U.N. and advancing the reform of the global governance system.” The theme that runs through this section is increasing not only China’s role but also the “representation and voice of developing countries,” including the “equitable reform of the Security Council” and “making special arrangements to meet Africa’s aspiration as a priority.” China also aims to “improve global economic governance” by “increasing the representation and voice of developing countries” at institutions such as the G20, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Bank, and boosting these entities’ “capacity and efficiency.” But no specific changes are proposed.

Significantly, less than a month before the MFA issued its Global Governance Proposal, the leaders of the BRICS bloc—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—held a summit in South Africa and issued a summit declaration that contained very similar ideas. Perhaps even more significantly, five new countries joined BRICS: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. China’s efforts to expand and strengthen BRICS must be seen as building a substantial group of countries at odds with features of the current global order. They are countries that can be a powerful political force in trying to “reform” the international order, and also countries that are potentially a foundation for an institutional bipolar global order.

The BRICS summit declaration emphasizes “a more representative, fairer international order”—including many policies China has stated separately:

• “The central role of the United Nations.”
• “Upholding international law, including the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”
• “Greater representation of emerging markets and developing countries, in international organizations.”
• “Comprehensive reform of the UN, including its Security Council … to increase the representation of developing countries.”
• Criticism of “the use of unilateral coercive measures, which are incompatible with the principles of the Charter of the UN and produce negative effects notably in the developing world.”
• “Reform of the Bretton Woods institutions, including a greater role for emerging markets and developing countries” such as “increases in [IMF] quota shares.”
• “Cooperat[ion] in promoting and protecting human rights,” with “the right to development” given “the same emphasis” as other human rights, and promoting human rights in a “non-selective” way “without double standards.”
• “Support for the … rules-based multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organization (WTO) at its core, with special and differential treatment for developing countries,” in addition to “necessary WTO reform” and the “restoration of . . . [the] two-tier binding WTO dispute settlement system.”
• Addressing “trade restrictive measures which are inconsistent with WTO rules, including unilateral illegal measures such as sanctions.”

In short, the BRICS summit declaration asserts a mixture of support for the existing international order, calls for changes of some important elements stated at a quite high level of generality, and criticism of unnamed countries such as the United States for violating current rules and using double standards.

BRICS demonstrates China’s effort to garner support for revising the existing international order. By building a broader bloc of countries that agree on the need for substantial changes, China intends for BRICS, acting alongside many friendly Global South countries, to create a new political dynamic that will either seek change within the existing rules-based international order or potentially create a new bipolar order if some or all of the existing international order collapses.

A path to strengthening the international order

From Chinese documents and actions like those just summarized, outside researchers might be able to put together a plausible list of changes in the existing rules-based international order that China wants. Human rights is the most obvious area, where China’s actions in Xinjiang and Hong Kong and repression of political dissidents have produced both widespread condemnation and stern Chinese objections. There is harsh disagreement about the U.N. Law of the Sea, particularly as it is applied in the South China Sea. Regarding international trade rules enforced by the WTO, China accuses the United States of pervasive violations, while claiming that China is steadily compliant. (In fact, the WTO has found both the United States and China guilty of numerous violations over the years. But President Donald Trump took more radical steps to block the WTO’s dispute resolution process, which are still in effect.) And in the security field, China accuses the United States of persistently using force in violation of international law while asserting its own greater and enduring adherence to the U.N. Charter’s norms of “sovereignty” and “territorial integrity”—although China’s statements about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine seem contrary to that claim.

But as a country leading the charge to revise the international order, China is obligated to be more explicit: What specific existing rules of international law does China oppose and want to change, and what specific changes does it want? What interpretations of international rules does China believe are wrong, such that either the interpretation must change or the law being “wrongly interpreted” must be amended to specifically state the meaning China advocates? What changes in the operations of international institutions does China want? Having a clearer and more detailed understanding of China’s proposals or demands is essential.

We are at an historic moment. After the Cold War, the Western model of free trade and open economies, greater democracy, and human rights became the foundation of the rules-based international order—an imperfect one and with frequent double standards, but a dominant liberal order clearly led by a confident United States in a “unipolar” world. But the world has changed since the end of the Cold War; the unipolar moment is gone.

The United States remains by far the most powerful country in the world, but it is plagued by political division and uncertainty, its global influence is in flux, and its enduring commitment to the international order doubted by many. At the same time, China’s rise, Russia’s violence, and what Fareed Zakaria calls the “rise of the rest” are not only transforming geopolitics and economics but are explicitly challenging the character of international order in significant ways. After a unique and short period of modern history, we are no longer living in a unipolar world. The present rules-based international order is greatly weakening. Changes to it appear essential since a more divided, paralyzed, or even collapsed international system will be a world far weaker in its ability to address the massive and genuinely existential challenges the planet faces.

The United States should clarify what changes it wants to make to the existing rules-based international order to improve and strengthen it. But Washington also needs to know what changes other countries want and consider what changes it might accept. This paper emphasizes the importance of knowing the specific changes China wants because it is the most powerful and explicit challenger to the existing order. Many of the proposed changes will surely involve compromises the United States does not want to make. Nevertheless, some compromises seem acceptable if on balance a revised but rules-based international order would be preferable to a disintegrated or collapsed one.

But where will the United States and others refuse to compromise because they view the matter as an uncompromisable fundamental, even if that decision results in the collapse of a workable international order? As indicated above, Blinken has said that “Beijing’s vision would move us away from the universal values that have sustained so much of the world’s progress over the past 75 years.” Does this imply that the human rights arena may be part of the non-negotiable “foundation of the international order”?

It is impossible to know where the international system is headed, but only a process of negotiations can allow it to regain some strength. That process will eventually need to be multilateral, but it could begin with bilateral discussions between China—the de facto leader of the challengers—and the United States—the post-Cold War leader of the international order. The goal for the United States should be to learn what specific changes in the international order China wants and put on the table the specific changes we want, discussing and debating those ideas as a step in the far larger process that must eventually take place.

Given the current hostility in U.S.-China relations and the two countries’ minimal diplomatic exchanges, it seems difficult to imagine making progress on these extremely broad issues any time soon. Yet sustained “Track 2” dialogues among scholars and former government officials from both countries could be a good place to start discussions about the future of the international order. These conversations could take many forms and be more specific than the general exchanges about the “global order” that occur at various conferences and dialogues, but discussing and clarifying what China wants to see in a revised rules-based international order seems like the most valuable way to begin, probably proceeding sector by sector (trade, human rights, the U.N.’s institutional structure, etc.).

In negotiating to salvage a weakening and endangered international order, our persuasiveness will depend upon our power, our tenacity, our diplomatic skills, and our own fidelity to the rules-based international order we seek to preserve. Most importantly, it will require a driving belief in the importance of the goal—and not only by the United States, but by most other countries on our planet, who separately and together recognize the dangers we are facing, our differences yet our interdependence, our smallness in the universe but the infiniteness of human existence, and the capacity of human agency to make a difference.