Adjustment of global governance faces hurdles

Global changes have been unstoppable amid the evolving world order. The Global South's voices of demand for its aspirations to be heard are growing.

The defining moment in the first decade of the Belt and Road Initiative's implementation witnessed an extensive reshaping of infrastructure connectivity worldwide, alongside the emergence of alternative institutions of multilateral development finance in pursuit of a more autonomous development lifeline for the global majority. Undeniably, China is the central driver of that change.

That being said, it's still premature for us to cheer on the advent of a new dawn. Despite the fact that the Global South is gaining tangible leverage in certain areas like finance, infrastructure, trade diplomacy and multilateral forum-setting, behind the picture lies the structural limits characterized by diverse interests and priorities, alongside capacity gaps and different stages of development.

These limits make a full reset of global governance unlikely in the short term.

While China is a principal architect of alternatives in specific domains, its position is not at all enviable. It has to bear with the sharp accusations from the West of upending the present global order, even though in reality it's the latter that has outlived its shelf life, as the world is evolving to being polycentric.

Yet the United States-led West, which has been holding sway in global matters for too long a time, remains recalcitrant and defiant toward any moves intended to reset a world order that favors its interests.

On the other hand, some of the developing and underdeveloped countries yearning for change may appear somewhat hesitant in supporting such a full reset, as misgivings about the mode of post-reset global governance still loom large for them.

Having long been influenced by the Western semantics of Sinophobia under the guise of "value-based diplomacy", they fall easy prey to simplistically equating Chinese constructive efforts to assume greater global responsibility with the creation of a so-called Chinese-dominated Pax Sinica (Chinese peace) era. The specter of ideological face-off is again resurrected from the tomb of Cold War as the bogey.

Meanwhile, some of the emerging economies and regional middle powers, having been caught up in the Sino-US geopolitical rivalry on the one hand, and yearning for dividends of multilateral cooperation on the other, choose to opt for "a la carte multilateralism" — embracing cooperation where it aligns with their own national interests and resisting risks or constraints when necessary. Nonetheless, this opportunistic choice is not their monopoly.

The catchphrase "a la carte multilateralism" is a creation of Richard N. Haass, a US State Department official during the administration of US President George W. Bush who sought to justify the White House's opportunistic selectivity in rejecting high-profile international treaties, like the one that founded the International Criminal Court, as just "choosy", making the foreign policy phrase a new euphemism for purported "unilateralist" deeds.

While sneering at emerging groupings like BRICS Plus as a mere motley of developing countries and emerging economies of diverse interests, the US-led West is now tempted to attribute the prevailing global fragmentation to the ongoing global reset.

From their perspective, the world is envisaged to be heading for a fragmented, domain-specific reconfiguration, where the Global South's influence in development and connectivity is acknowledged, while Western primacy continues to reign in security and many normative domains.

Rules-making in digitalization and cutting-edge technology remains the main turfs for intense competition between the two major powers.

In such narratives, perhaps the most conspicuous missing element that seems to escape the Western radar is exactly the "a la carte multilateralism" that the West resorts to.

While wooing Beijing for multilateral cooperation in addressing exigencies like climate change, global debt restructuring, global health, cross-border terrorism and environmental degradation, Washington is known for its never-ending effort in hobbling Beijing in the name of "strategic competition".

Such underhanded attempts to hinder competitors, which are unethical and against the principles of fair play, contribute nothing to fostering a better tomorrow for humanity, but simply signify Washington's growing sense of insecurity in taking on challenges confidently in the face of Beijing's rising clout and influence on the world stage.

In this context, Washington's indiscriminate weaponization of economic sanctions and punitive tariffs against its rivals well illustrates Robert Daly's remarks in referencing China. The former US diplomat and current director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson Center has been quoted as saying, "The US must make sure it doesn't have a peer competitor for security. It must limit China's growth, even if pushing them back to poverty."

So long as this prescription continues to dictate US diplomacy vis-a-vis its rivals, friends and foes alike, the "hobbling" locked into a zero-sum competition mindset looks set to pose the greatest hurdle to any order-resetting endeavor. It happened to Japan, the closest ally of the US in the Asia-Pacific, in the 1980s, and now to the US' newfound systemic rival, China, both of which have been pressured to comply with the playbook of US exceptionalism.

The author is president of the Belt and Road Initiative Caucus for Asia Pacific.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.