June 2024

EDITORIAL – JUNE 2024 – GLOBAL SHIP NEEDS STEADY STEERING

Global ship needs steady steering

President Xi Jinping’s flurry of diplomacy last month revealed much about China’s thinking on the rules-based international order.

It also exposed further flaws in the American position.

Here is the issue: How can a global order command legitimacy when there is no viable mechanism for its updating and modernisation?

Part bully, part child, Russia’s answer is to win reform by smashing things up, although it has offered no constructive alternatives to the existing order. 

More nuanced China does offer alternatives,which we are seeing played out carefully and slowly to great effect. It is currently in a lobbying process to win its argument.

Before his trip, Xi hosted German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Beijing with the aim of bolstering economic ties. Arriving in Europe, he chose Paris as his first stop, where he was hosted by France’s President Macron.

Within a matter of weeks, therefore, he strengthened his standing with Europe’s two biggest powers.

From France, Xi avoided the more democracy-minded European governments and went onto meet two leaders on the authoritarian, pro-Russian flank.

First came President Vučić of Serbia, with a visit that poignantly coincided with the 25th anniversary of NATO’s bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. 

Xi then finished his visit with Hungary’s disruptive Prime Minister Orban, seen by many as China’s authoritarian Trojan horse within the European Union.

The Chinese leader returned to Beijing to meet President Putin, with whom he has declared a friendship without limits, the leading partnership of what the West perceives as a growing autocratic front.

Behind China and Russia come Iran and North Korea, regional quasi-vassal states like Cambodia and Laos, together with a swathe of the Global South, where some sit on fences and some are strengthening ties.

The West’s reaction has been to create a spectre of threat accompanied by a moral compass of ‘good against evil’ that paints a canvas reminiscent of the Cold War.

In the eyes of many analysts, China is strengthening autocratic alliances amid unconcealed attempts to divide Europe and weaken its partnership with the United States.

But this emerging situation is not only a China ploy.

The most powerful governments opposing the 2003 Iraq invasion were China, Russia, France and Germany, a signal from a generation ago that when it comes to defining values,Europe and America do not always see eye to eye.

We are still a long way from things getting out of hand and, with the Iraq invasion leading to catastrophe, perhaps we should now pay more careful attention.

We must begin by understanding China’s role and responsibility in keeping the global ship steady for coming storms.

While Russia has clearly gone too far, Xi’s leadership encompasses a sophisticated view of future geopolitics, technology, trade and economics. So far, Xi has complied with America’s red lines against helping Russia in Ukraine. He has leant on Putin over the Russian nuclear weapons threat and is working hard to stop the Ukraine conflict from escalating further. 

China’s policies might well be at odds with the Western one, but the differences may emerge as being little compared to the global nihilism emanating from backward-looking Russia.

We should also anticipate a sudden rupturing between Moscow and Beijing because of their lack of shared culture and their many unresolved points of tension.

Central Asia, once Soviet territory, is an obvious theatre, together with swathes of Africa, where influence through Russian guns risks confrontation with China’s influence through trade.

There are also outstanding territorial issues, not least the 100-year-old Karakhan Manifesto where the then Soviet regime promised to return much of Russia’s Far East to Beijing, including cities like Vladivostok.

China regards Europe as a major pole in the multipolar world and would like to see one that is less strategically reliant on the US and more autonomous in its thinking.

Rather than combining Russian and Chinese future visions, Western leaders would be wise to keep them separate.

The West owns the current world order. If its leaders can set up a formal negotiating mechanism by whichsystems and representation can be updated, clouds of war are likely to disperse.

Certainly, there is no harm in trying.