Policy Alert #209 | May 28, 2020
RPI’s Special Series on Revisiting the World Order under a Pandemic continues in this Policy Alert, which focuses on how the COVID-19 pandemic is raising new debates on how to view the world order and power. In this issue, we focus on China’s prospects in a shifting world order with insights from Chinese scholars and international experts.
China’s role as the origin country of the novel coronavirus, coupled with its position as the world’s production hub and rising influence in international relations, has put the country front-and-center on the international stage as the pandemic continues. As it gained control of the virus, China pivoted from recipient of aid to a major provider of it. This shift has been met with suspicion and criticism as well as assertions that China’s initial response worsened the situation for the international community. China’s influence at the World Health Organization has also faced scrutiny for both the WHO’s sluggish response to the pandemic and the ongoing political issue of Taiwan’s potential participation in the midst of a global crisis, which will be addressed in our next Policy Alert. Amidst a barrage of criticism from the United States, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lijian Zhao promoted a conspiracy theory that the virus originated in the United States on Twitter. The move has been regarded as an exemplification of repeated fumbles by China to increase its standing in the world order.
A note to our readers: Some of the pieces below have been published by journals that maintain paywalls for full access to their content. We would like to remind our student readers that they may have full access to these journals through their universities’ digital collections or by logging on to their universities’ virtual private networks (VPNs).
Views from China
- In The Diplomat, Bao Huaying, Chief of Division for International Exchange at Beijing Foreign Studies University and Visiting Fellow at the George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs East Asia National Resource Center, outlined five key challenges–to the country’s credibility, diplomacy, public relations, finances, and economy–China faces as a result of the pandemic, and predicted that Beijing would weather the storm to bring change: “[…]China will not step down; instead, it will fight fire with fire, and confront these severe challenges with retaliation. In the post-pandemic time, the world is likely to come to a new normal marked more by all-around clashes than cooperation.”
- Wang Wen, professor and executive dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, writing for the Global Times, argued that the US was going the way of a “failed state”: “[T]he Trump administration has nearly destroyed the foundation of international order that’s been in place since the end of the Cold War. It has pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Paris Agreement, the United Nations Human Rights Council, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and many other international treaties and organizations. […It] has doubled the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet via measures including quantitative easing and strong stimulus policies, making [the] US dollar the most unstable factor in the global monetary order. It has also severely shaken the international financial system.”
- Shen Yi, director at the Research Center for Cyberspace Governance at Fudan University, similarly argued in The Times that the pandemic has only exacerbated the US’s decline in the international community: “From a theoretical perspective of international relations, the US, as a hegemonic power and global leader, should assume responsibility for providing the global public goods. [T]he US, at the center of global leadership, does not have enough capacity or willingness to provide the global public goods. The two pillars of US hegemony – military strength and financial system – can only play a very limited role in this fight against the virus.”
- Ding Gang, senior editor at the People’s Daily and a senior fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, joined the discussion about reassessing measures of state capacity in the wake of the pandemic. “The pandemic is another wake-up call to boost state capacity and it is necessary not only in economics. Western scholars are discussing the end of neoliberalism, because they have seen the importance of state capacity,” Ding wrote in an op-ed for the Global Times.
- In response to Francis Fukuyama’s interview with French magazine Le Point [French only], founding director of the Center for Strategic and Peace Studies at the China Foreign Affairs Academy Su Hao asserted that China’s domestic institutions were the source of its strength in stifling its COVID-19 outbreak: “The strength of a country can be measured by a government’s executive powers, mobilization ability and people’s willingness to cooperate. […] Our top-down, systematic and comprehensive governance system has provided us with great ability to handle crises such as COVID-19.” Su further explained that China is also leading in terms of its production capacity: “The production of medical products requires huge resources and great human resources, which Western countries lack.”
- Yu Yongding, director of the Institute of World Economics and Politics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, argued in the China Daily that the pandemic offers an opportunity for China and the US to avoid a Thucydides trap by stabilizing their relationship, if they seized it: “[T]he two sides have the same core interests in combating global challenges like the coronavirus pandemic, climate change, financial instability, and any number of other common enemies that may emerge in the future.”
- In an op-ed for the government-supported China Daily, former Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs and Chairperson of the Center for International Security and Strategy of Tsinghua University Fu Ying acknowledged that China’s public relations blitz in the wake of the pandemic had room for improvement: “Only by winning the recognition of foreign audiences and learn from their feedback can the influence of the narrative be improved and strengthened.”
- In the Global Times, Chu Yin, professor at the University of International Relations, opined that a major change to the world order was unlikely. On the one hand, “The idea of de-sinicization is an absolute delusion, as China has been playing an indispensable role in the global economy and global supply chain after China joined the World Trade Organization,” while on the other, “[The] US’ influence in global security affairs, at least, is still irreplaceable.”
Views from International Experts
- In a commentary for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Sam Bresnick, assistant editor and web coordinator at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, and Paul Haenle, Maruice R. Greenberg Director’s Chair at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center, warned that the US’s retreat is providing ample opportunity for China to expand into the vacuum it is leaving behind: “While the U.S. government is retreating from the international stage and leaving its allies high and dry, China sees an opportunity to fill the leadership void and enhance its global standing through emergency aid and assistance to countries around the world.”
- In Barron’s, Susan Thornton, a retired US diplomat and senior fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale University Law School, similarly argued that concern over a Chinese takeover is misplaced: “China’s governing system has not adapted well to social media, citizen journalism, and viral videos. In a fragile authoritarian state, public opinion can be harnessed, but it can also be destabilizing.” Thornton pointed out, however, that the pandemic may be a useful testing ground for Beijing and that China could hone its response for future crises.
- Diana Fu, associate professor of political sciences at the University of Toronto and an affiliate of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy Institute, warned in her analysis for Foreign Policy that China’s ability to weather the storm of the pandemic might erode the liberal world order by encouraging regime change in other countries: “The pandemic’s legacy for many may be that living in a Chinese-style dictatorship is far superior to living in the West’s free societies that cannot harness disorder quickly. For the governments and people of the so-called free world, restoring order also means, eventually, tearing down the restrictions on liberty the coronavirus forced.”
- In an article for The National Interest exploring the pandemic’s effects on the world order, Amitav Archarya, professor of international relations at American University, National Interest, argued that the pandemic hardly guarantees China’s rise: “Until China accepts its own share of responsibility for the outbreak, its international image is not going to be rehabilitated.”
- Michael Green, professor of Asian Studies at Georgetown University and Senior Vice President for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Evan S. Medeiros, professor of Asian Studies at Georgetown University dismissed claims of China benefiting from the pandemic given that its aid is being criticized as substandard, there is widespread frustration with its handling of the virus and transmission of information, and the recent conspiracy theory spun by a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson via Twitter: “[I]ts approach has a whiff of desperation, which hints at Beijing’s own insecurity about the mishandling of the outbreak.”
- Brahma Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research and a fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, claimed that China’s attempts to seize the political and strategic opportunities provided by the virus has backfired: “A boomerang effect from Xi’s overreach seems inevitable. A pandemic that originated in China will likely end up weakening the country’s global position and hamstringing its future growth.”
- Andrew Small, senior transatlantic fellow with the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and associate senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), argued in a commentary for the ECFR that while the US may be retreating from the international stage, China is alienating itself from the followers of the US-led order who are becoming more inclined to reorganize themselves, too: “[A]s US threats to defund the WHO have demonstrated, Europe will also have to deal with the argument that many global organisations are being so hollowed out by China that, in the long term, the only viable course is to build plurilateral alternatives among like-minded partners”.
- ECFR senior policy fellow Anthony Dworkin echoed this point in his commentary for the organization, but maintained that such a move would still require wrangling the two rivals: “The EU will find allies around the world who are eager to work in a more cooperative way – but any effort to repair the international system will also need a strategy to deal with the US-China standoff.”
RPI acknowledges support from the MacArthur Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York for its activities.
