Defender not destroyer

During a meeting with US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman in Tianjin on July 26, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said: "China is one of the founders of the international order since World War II, and one of its beneficiaries. We have no intention to create another mechanism. China will firmly uphold the international system with the United Nations at its core, the international order based on international law, and the basic norms of international relations based on the purposes and principles of the UN Charter."

The Munich Security Conference, which was first held in 1963, is one of the most important forums for discussing security issues in the world. Its 2019 Munich Security Report pointed out that current international affairs show that the liberal international order is disintegrating.

The consensus of the international academic community is that this order, which was established after World War II, advocates freedom, democracy and open markets, and the importance of rules. The order champions the governance of the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization in international affairs.

In theory, such an international order should be welcome. However, in reality, this seemingly just international order has become a "mask" for the United States to do whatever it wants on the international stage. In order to safeguard its own interests, the US holds high the banner of unilateralism and pursues supremacy. It often employs a double standard in areas such as human rights, sovereignty and rules, abandons the UN Charter at will, and tramples on multilateralism.

This international order under the control of the US, the so-called Pax Americana, is unfair and should be abandoned. As a member of the global family, China has always sought to change the unreasonable international order based on Pax Americana. For example, as early as 1974, Deng Xiaoping expounded on Mao Zedong's Three Worlds Theory and China's foreign policy at the UN, and put forward the Chinese government's proposal for the establishment of a new international economic order. He believed that the political and economic relations between countries should be based on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, and that international economic affairs should be managed by all countries in the world, and should not be monopolized by a few countries. In 1990 Deng said China's foreign policy focused on two aspects, the first is to oppose hegemony and power politics and to maintain world peace, the second is to establish a new international political and economic order.

In recent years, with its increase in overall national strength, China has more and more contacts and exchanges with the world, and China's call for the establishment of a new type of international relations has become stronger and stronger. However, this well-intended objective is often misunderstood, misinterpreted and misjudged, and sometimes even seen as revisionist.

In fact, the purpose of China's foreign policy has always been to maintain world peace and promote common development. China has always been an advocate of world peace, a contributor to global development and a champion of a fairer international order.

At the 53rd Munich Security Conference in 2017, Foreign Minister Wang said: "The world is not out of order. The international order and system established after World War II still play an irreplaceable and crucial role in safeguarding world peace and development. It should continue to be upheld and maintained." At the 55th Munich Security Conference in 2019, Yang Jiechi, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, said: "As a founding member of the UN and a permanent member of the UN Security Council, China has always supported and practiced multilateralism, always held high the banner of peace, development, and win-win cooperation, and always served as an advocate of world peace, a contributor to global development and a defender of the international order."

The US advocates the so-called rules-based international order. However, it has recklessly withdrawn from different organizations, broken agreements, imposed illegal unilateral sanctions and carried out military interventions in other countries. The US has caused serious harm to international and regional peace and stability and severely violated international law and the basic norms of international relations. It is the US that is the biggest disrupter of the international order.

In recent years, under the unreasonable suppression of the US, Sino-US relations have nosedived precipitously. As former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger said at a Chatham House event via virtual link in March: "The US will have to reach an understanding with China on a new global order to ensure stability or the world will face a dangerous period like the one which preceded World War I."

To sum up, China does not agree with the so-called Pax Americana. The country hopes to work toward a more just and reasonable international order with the building of a community with a shared future for mankind as the indicator, multilateralism as the basis, and the UN Charter as the criterion and win-win cooperation as the principle. In other words, there should be only one order in the world, which is the international order based on the multilateralism advocated by the UN. There should be only one system in the world, which is the international system with the UN at the core. There should be only one set of rules in the world－the basic norms of international relations based on the UN Charter.

The author is a distinguished professor at Shanghai University. The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.