Indian Council of World Affairs

Distinguished experts, scholars and friends, 

We are having this Panel Discussion today on China’s New Global Initiatives: Agenda and Outcomes. These global initiatives are Global Security Initiative (GSI), Global Development Initiative (GDI) and Global Civilization Initiative (GCI) which China has launched over the last three years or so.

2.  Diplomacy is a playground for launching initiatives to bring countries and peoples of the world closer and make them friendlier towards each other. Diplomacy is also a tool to bring to bear one country’s strengths to the benefit of another country or for global good. However, diplomacy can also prove to be a playground for forces that seek to establish hegemony, for countries that seek to outdo others at all costs, and for forces that do not believe in healthy competition.

3.  The GSI, GDI, and GCI are cast in the framework of US-China strategic rivalry.They are set in an anti-West mould. In these initiatives, East-West and North-South divide deepens. Despite claims of endorsements by countries in three digits, they lend themselves to polarization and bloc politics, of which the world needs less not more at a time of tremendous geopolitical shifts and tumult. Also, it remains open whether endorsements by other countries are genuine endorsements or mere hedging.Moreover, these initiatives discredit another’s leadership to make space for one’s own.

4.  As one examines the principles and conceptual framework of these initiatives, one senses a replication of the agenda, principles and objectives of the UN. The security objectives, the development objectives, the civilizational objectives – all of them. Though Chinese official documents cite importance of the UN, the initiatives seem to be an attempt to create an alternative UN - a Sino-centric global security and development governance architecture. Needless to add, the world needs only one unifying UN which has taken a hundred or so years to build and one which everyone wishes to reform and update and strengthen for the benefit of all.There are voices to amend the UN Charter too.

5.  The concept and content of China’s grandiose new global initiatives are vague and broad and seem hurriedly done to meet the exigencies of geopolitics of the day, and not the genuine requirements of human welfare. There is a debate,for instance, on whether GSI is a response to the Indo-Pacific strategies of various countries. Cooperative approaches are the need of the day, not exclusionary ones. Also, these initiatives are far from being fully operationalized.

6.  A vision of the world that is not multipolar cannot be acceptable when the actual geopolitical trends of the day are showing otherwise. We have to craft a world order where the options and choices available to the weakest are maximized and not constrained to only one or either/or. Instead of seeking to create a counter-narrative and an alternative to the ‘rules-based international order’, global efforts to synergize and build consensus on what should constitute a people-centric ‘rules based international order’ would be helpful.

7.  I am sure the Panel will come up with many such interesting observations, analyses and suggestions. I look forward to a lively discussion. I wish the panelists all the best.

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