What China really wants from global governance

Beijing recently released a white paper titled “More Just and Equitable Global Governance: China’s Principles, Proposals and Actions”, with Foreign Minister Wang Yi personally explaining its significance. On 1 September last year, Xi Jinping formally proposed the Global Governance Initiative (GGI) at the “Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Plus” meeting in Tianjin. That same evening, China’s foreign ministry issued a concept paper outlining the initiative’s background, principles and priority actions. Less than a year later, Beijing elevated the initiative into a full white paper. Given today’s volatile international environment, the important question is not what the document says on the surface, but what Beijing seeks to achieve through it.

China’s official vision rests on five principles: sovereign equality, international rule of law, multilateralism, a people-centred approach and real actions. Beijing argues that all states should participate equally in global governance; international rules should not be interpreted by a few powers or subordinated to any country’s domestic law; the United Nations (UN) should remain the central platform; and development, security, climate, artificial intelligence, cyberspace and international finance should no longer be dominated by the West.

China’s changed purpose

Strictly speaking, little of this is new. Since the reform era, China’s positions on the UN, multilateralism, sovereign equality and developing countries have been broadly consistent. Beijing did not discover multilateralism because the Trump administration returned to power politics, nor did it begin caring about the UN only because the world is in disarray.

As early as the Deng Xiaoping era, China emphasised opposition to hegemony, support for the third world and resistance to an unequal international economic order. Later formulations such as “multipolarity”, the “democratisation of international relations” and a “new international political and economic order” share the same logic as today’s language of the Global South and global governance reform.

What has changed is not the vocabulary, but its purpose. In the past, China’s invocation of the UN, multilateralism and sovereignty was largely defensive. As a weaker country, China needed to integrate into the international system, secure a peaceful environment for development and use sovereignty and non-interference to shield itself from Western pressure on human rights, democracy and ideology.

Today, China still uses the same language, but it is no longer the China of the past. It is the world’s second-largest economy, the largest manufacturing power, a major trading state and a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Although Beijing still calls itself a developing country, it is no ordinary developing country.

Global institutions must change with China’s rise

China’s current enthusiasm for global governance must therefore be understood against the backdrop of what Beijing calls “great changes unseen in a century” and an age of fierce contestation. These “great changes” refer partly to shifts in the external world: the relative decline of American power, divisions within the West, the retreat of globalisation, fragmentation of the international order, wars and conflicts, the AI revolution and supply-chain restructuring. But they also refer to China’s own transformation.

China’s rise is itself a central part of this century-level change. Without China’s ascent, the phrase would not carry the same structural meaning. China has changed, and Beijing believes the world cannot remain unchanged.

That is the deeper context of the white paper. Beijing is not merely reacting to external turbulence. It is seeking to translate the power shift brought about by China’s rise into changes in institutions, rules and representation. In the past, China sought space within the existing system. Today, it wants that system to recognise China’s new position.

Beijing will not say openly that because China has grown stronger, international rules must be redistributed. That would be too blunt. Instead, it frames the issue differently: global governance suffers from deficits; the Global South is underrepresented; the international financial system is unfair; unilateralism and hegemonism are rampant; UN authority is being eroded; and rules in emerging fields lag behind reality. The world therefore needs a more just and equitable global governance system.

On the surface, China is discussing governance deficits. In substance, it is expressing a demand for a redistribution of international power in more acceptable language. The key concept here is the Global South.

Speaking for and using the Global South

This narrative embeds China’s ambitions within the aspirations of the Global South. When China calls for raising the status of the Global South, it is also raising its own. When it says the Global South lacks representation, it is also saying that China lacks sufficient institutional power within the existing order. China already enjoys considerable status as a permanent member of the Security Council, but in finance, technological standards, public discourse, value judgments and the interpretation of rules, Beijing still sees itself as constrained by the US and the West. The Global South has therefore become China’s key lever for international legitimacy.

The Global South, of course, is not a unified bloc. India, Brazil, Turkey, South Africa and others have their own interests and ambitions, and may not accept China as their representative. But international politics is not only about formal authorisation. It is also about self-empowerment through narrative-building, agenda setting and resource mobilisation. Through BRICS expansion, the SCO, the Belt and Road Initiative, regional forums and development finance, China seeks to show that the Global South is not a scattered collection of states and that Beijing can organise it.

Redistributing power within the existing system

This also explains why China says it does not seek to overthrow the existing international system while calling for global governance reform. The two positions are not contradictory. China does not want to dismantle the UN system. The UN framework, its permanent Security Council seat, sovereignty and non-interference all serve China’s interests. These are the foundations Beijing wants to preserve. What it wants to change is the advantage held by the US and the West in interpreting rules, shaping finance, setting technological standards, defining values and influencing global opinion. China is not trying to build a separate system; it is trying to alter the distribution of power within the existing one.

By describing China as a builder of peace, contributor to development, defender of order and provider of public goods, the white paper reveals Beijing’s desired role: not merely a participant in the existing system, but a provider of solutions, a setter of agendas and a shaper of order.

Wang Yi made the ambition clearer at the press conference. He said the GGI opens a “new frontier” in international political civilisation, transcends the outdated “centre-periphery” structure of traditional international relations and rejects the law of the jungle in which “might makes right”. The language is anti-hegemonic, but it also exposes Beijing’s larger ambition: China does not merely want to participate in global governance. It wants to rewrite its discourse and rules.

The Trump administration’s return to naked power politics gives China a useful contrast. In the past, Washington at least upheld the language of a “rules-based international order”, forcing Beijing to argue that this rhetoric was hypocritical and selective. Today, with the US emphasising America First, tariffs, transactional diplomacy, deterrence and raw power, Beijing can more easily present itself as the defender of the UN, multilateralism and the Global South. China did not embrace global governance because of Trump. But Trump has made China’s longstanding narrative appear more relevant.

What China ultimately values in global governance is not governance itself, but the power behind it. Whoever defines what is wrong with the world, proposes the solutions, and claims to represent the majority of states will occupy a more favourable position in this age of contestation. Global governance is not a cooperative arena outside great power rivalry. It is part of that rivalry. The competition is no longer only about military power, tariffs, technology and alliances. It is also about institutional narratives, international agendas and moral representation.

That is the real purpose behind China’s GGI. On the surface, Beijing is responding to governance deficits, defending multilateralism and elevating the Global South. In reality, it is seeking new international legitimacy for China’s rise, constraining American unilateral power and elevating China itself. Beijing’s goal is to weave together three developments — China’s rise, the ascent of the Global South and the relative decline of the West — into a new narrative of international order.

Ultimately, global governance is not merely a technical question. It is a question of power. What China is really contesting through this white paper is the authority to explain, arrange and represent the future world.

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