Global,Development,Governance,and,China’s,Transforming,Role

Yu Hongyuan

The world is now in the midst of changes unseen in a century, with challenges such as the imbalance in development between the North and the South, the disorderly geopolitical competition among major powers and the inadequate supply of global public goods on the rise. How to tackle the development deficit, how to reform and enhance the UN development governance system, how to respond to climate change and the energy and food crisis have all become important concerns for strengthening global governance. In the face of a complex situation with combined impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and a global development deficit, President Xi Jinping proposed the Global Development Initiative (GDI) in September 2021, emphasizing the need to stay committed to development as a priority, stay committed to a people-centred approach, stay committed to benefits for all, stay committed to innovation-driven development, stay committed to harmony between man and nature and stay committed to resultsoriented actions. The introduction and implementation of the GDI has highlighted China’s position and role in global development governance. As the world largest developing country and a socialist country, China firmly pursues the diplomatic concepts of development for cooperation and development for peace, and relies on its own development resources to provide new ideas and inject new strength into global development governance through various modes of governance including bilateral partnership, regional cooperation and global development. China’s role in global development governance is gradually changing from that of a participant to that of a leader.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative cooperation welcomed by South Pacific Island countries.

Global development governance is the pursuit of equity, inclusiveness and cooperation in a transforming international order and the realization of a shared vision of prosperity for countries, communities and individuals. The global development governance during the Cold War was clearly characterized by a dominance of major powers. The global development governance pattern led by the U.S. and Europe and represented by the Bretton Woods system underscores the Western centrism and has obvious features of exclusiveness and hegemonic competition. The Western-led development governance has expanded globally since the end of the Cold War. The UN-centered global development governance system has become the mainstream, gradually incorporating both the North and South camps and multiple actors. Since the beginning of the 21st century, global development governance has undergone a major shift from the distortions of the Cold War to a truly holistic global governance, reflected in three main aspects. Firstly, the United Nations replaces the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other institutions to play a dominant role in the global development agenda. Secondly, the actors in governance are becoming increasingly diverse, with more and more participation of emerging developing countries, once marginalized in world economy, in development assistance and starting to create new development finance institutions, shaking the monopoly of developed countries. Thirdly, new ideas such as sustainable and inclusive development are gradually taking over. From the Millennium Development Goals to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the UN-centered global development governance process has undergone a continuous transformation, with greater emphasis on equal, win-win and benefit-for-all partnerships for development. The concepts of emerging developing countries continue to gain recognition, and the international community has developed a new set of norms of practices and interaction to address development problems and tackle challenges.

The UN-centered global development governance pattern remains a key link in the Western-dominated international order. In recent years, Western governance norms have frequently failed in addressing global challenges and have been linked to domestic governance disruptions in major developed countries, manifesting themselves in the collapse of the center of the global development governance pattern, the accentuation of the phenomenon of anti-globalization and the growing North-South development gap. To bridge the global development deficit and the North-South governance gap, China has launched a series of important initiatives to help build a global consensus on development and enhance global development momentum, and is committed to promoting the building of a community with a shared future for mankind and the continuous transformation and quality improvement of global development governance. The initiatives and actions of the emerging developing powers, represented by China, have become a new driving force for the continued development of global development governance.

In Pakistan, local children live in a temporary camp for the affected people built with Chinese aid tents.

Among the historic commitments made in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the primary goal is to eradicate poverty in every corner of the world. However, there are still many difficulties in achieving those goals. Against the complex backdrop of the pandemic, the climate crisis and the Russia-Ukraine conflict, inadequate global development governance has revealed many inherent flaws in existing international mechanisms. The global agenda for sustainable development is characterized by many uncertainties and challenges.

Firstly, the increased global development imbalances and the widening gap of regional development have resulted in difficulty to advance global development governance. While achieving unprecedented high growth rate, the global economy has also widened the regional development gap. The rapidly widening gap in economic and technological development between the North and the South is harmful to the advancement of sustainable development process in developing countries. Many of the institutional arrangements for global environmental governance have not taken into account enough the real development needs of developing countries or are not suitable to the stage of development of the developing countries. Western countries have often paid “lip service” to developing countries in financing such fields as infrastructure investment, climate adaptation, poverty reduction and food security, and have been progressing slowly in building technical assistance mechanisms.

Secondly, Western countries view the topic of global development governance with a competition mind-set. Against the backdrop of the great changes unseen in a century, the Western countries still hold the old thinking of a “zero-sum game”, accelerating the competition between major powers in areas such as economic dominance, energy security and technological restrictions. Some developed countries increasingly regard China and some other emerging powers as strategic competitors, and tend to maintain their structural advantages through beggarthy-neighbor competitive policies. As a result, they adopt a strategy of encirclement in the development field, constantly squeezing the space for global development governance cooperation. Pursuing technological hegemony, Western countries are adopting a strict policy of technological and industrial containment against China and other developing countries. They create divisions between the North and South camps to preserve the Western hegemony and condone or use counter-globalization and anti-globalization to weaken the process of global peace, development and cooperation.

Trains running on the Monterey Railway.

Thirdly, leadership imbalances and institutional pluralism in the global development governance architecture have led to the accentuation of public goods deficits. The global development deficit serves as an explicit manifestation of the failure of domestic governance in developed countries. With the downward spiral of development and frequent domestic problems, there is an increasing tendency for developed countries to shirk their international responsibilities and obligations, which has resulted in their insufficient capacity to supply international public goods. The rising protectionism in developed countries and increasing tendency of internal concerns have stretched the UN-centered governance pattern to handle complex issues. The phenomena include the increased difficulties in coordinating the positions of multiple players in development governance, more fierce competition between developed and developing countries for a voice in development governance, and countries are increased disputes around cost sharing and “free-riders” still persist, etc. As a result of the growing contradiction between the inadequate capacity of the global development governance system and the rising demand for global development public goods, how to tackle the public goods deficit has become a major challenge faced by today’s global development governance.

China as both a beneficiary of global development dividends and a supplier of global development is actively transforming itself from a participant to a leader in global development governance. As a participant, China has taken the initiative to integrate into the UN-centered global development governance system. While pursuing its own development in an open world, China has been, through its opening-up, creating more development opportunities for the world, providing assistance to other countries to the best of its power, and actively supplying various public goods for development in order to achieve a more balanced global development. As a leader, China upholds the concept of a community with a shared future for mankind and actively shares its experience and solutions with the rest of the world, especially developing countries. China stays committed to development as a priority, to a people-centered approach, to benefits for all, to innovation-driven development, to harmony between man and nature and to results-oriented actions. By proposing the GDI and facilitating its implementation, China works with other countries to usher the global development to a new stage featuring balance, coordination and inclusiveness. To put it specifically, China’s leading role in global development governance is displayed in the following aspects.

Firstly, China has accelerated the implementation of the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals in a multi-party framework by coordinating its domestic and foreign policies. On the one hand, China undertakes the responsibility and conveys the Chinese experience through organizing home diplomacy activities. China has taken the opportunities to promote the early implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals at the SCO Qingdao Summit, the G20 Hangzhou Summit and the BRICS Xiamen Summit, among others. China also put forward the initiative to build regional and global development partnerships and promoted the formation of consensus documents such as the G20 Action Plan on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, enabling the continuous and deepening advancement of the global development governance process. On the other hand, China’s development and progress has laid a foundation for the transformation in the role of the global development governance. Through the practice of ecological civilization, China is already the world’s largest producer of wind power, hydropower, photovoltaic, biomass and energy storage, and is set to achieve carbon peaking in 2030 and carbon neutrality before 2060.

Secondly, China has made distinctive contributions to building a global partnership for development by proposing the GDI and facilitating its implementation. President Xi Jinping has pledged a series of concrete initiatives within the GDI framework, including the consolidation and upgrading of the South-South Cooperation Assistance Fund into the Global Development and South-South Cooperation Fund, and an additional US$1 billion to the US$3 billion for the China-UN Peace and Development Fund. China will also release the Global Development Report, found a Centre for Global Development and build a global development knowledge network. The GDI has significantly promoted the international community to focus more on development, effectively strengthened its commitment to achieve the sustainable development goals on time, and has proposed feasible pathways, built cooperation platforms and pooled development resources to accelerate the achievement of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The GDI has provided new momentum and new solutions for the continued advancement of the global development governance process, highlighting China’s growing leading role in global development governance.

Thirdly, China has consistently promoted South-South cooperation and has become a staunch defender of the interests of developing countries. As a member of the developing world, China has successively established the China-UN Peace and Development Fund, the Global Development and South-South Cooperation Fund, the South-South Climate Change Cooperation Fund. It has founded the Center for International Knowledge on Development, the Institute of South-South Cooperation and Development and other institutions. It also helps UN agencies to further promote South-South cooperation by providing financial support to the UN Fund for South-South Cooperation, the UN Fund for Peace and Development, etc. China has worked together with relevant countries to develop and implement the Lancang-Mekong Environmental Cooperation Strategy (2018-2022) to promote the building of a green Lancang-Mekong economic development belt. On the China-Central Asia-West Asia Economic Corridor, China takes the SCO and other mechanisms as major platforms to deepen multilateral green cooperation and upgrade the collaboration for sustainable development in the region. China has eventually become an important leading force in promoting global sustainable development, and is highly appraised and actively embraced by vast majority of developing countries.

Looking ahead, China will adhere to the concept of equal participation by all countries in global development governance, actively engage in mutually beneficial cooperation in multiple fields with all countries around the world, discuss the rules of development governance, help tackle the difficulties in global development governance mechanisms, improve the ability to supply public goods for global development governance, work hard for the achievement of the goals set out in the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and make greater contributions to promoting the building of a community with a shared future for global development.