The year past and the year ahead
Some thoughts by way of an interview with Global Times
On 29 November 2024, I contributed to an interview with Li Aixin from Global Times, which looked at the past 12 months on global diplomatic affairs and also sought to take a look through the crystal ball in 2025. The interview was undertaken by email, and the full interview is below. The original was published in Chinese.
GT: What major Chinese diplomatic events have you been most concerned about this year? Looking back on China's diplomacy in 2024, what impresses you most? Why?
The ongoing destabilisation of the South China Sea, with US military expansion in the Philippines, is one of the most pressing regional issues, from a diplomatic point of view. The placement of American HIMARS missiles on Japanese controlled islands in the East China Sea reflects growing regional instabilities.
More broadly, Chinese diplomacy continues to play a strong hand in other parts of the world. This is taking place via multilateral institutions such as BRICS and SCO, and is also evident in concrete outcomes in West Asia where China has played an important role in facilitating the resolution of disputes amongst 14 Palestinian political factions.
Most recently, China’s diplomatic focus and style was on display at the G20 and APEC meetings. These both exemplified China’s ongoing commitment to forge greater openness, alignment, coordination and collaboration through dialogue.
GT: The New York Times published an article recently titled “World leaders seek to stabilize ties with China.” This represents the view of a considerable part of the international public opinion that promoting cooperation with China is the path to stability and that China has injected valuable certainty and stability into the world. What do you think of this precious certainty and stability? How will it inject momentum to 2025?
The American unipolar moment is well behind us, and while the collective west continues to seek to reclaim primacy across the globe, and in the process intensifying instabilities and kinetic risks, China has offered a steady hand. Efforts to demonise China and to ‘talk down’ its economy from the collective west and associated mainstream media (backed by a $1.6 billion appropriation from Congress to do so) have come to naught. China’s domestic economic restructuring continues to take place in a steady fashion while maintaining targeted growth rates. At the same time, China’s external relations economically continue to expand rather than retreat. Trade and investment flows have consolidated during the past 12 months, particularly in relation to the countries of the Global Majority. Material reality contrasts with the western narrative-centric approach.
The Trump Administration is likely to bring greater uncertainty to global institutions, mainly because the US is expected to pursue policies that are less oriented towards international coordination and collaboration but more focused on ‘punishing adversaries and bullying allies’. Trump’s recent comments on the BRICS group and its relationship to the US dollar as a global reserve is indicative of this general antagonistic posture.
The situation in Europe also is a good case in point. The Ukraine conflict has exposed the collective west’s shortcomings in military terms. Without military preponderance, the collective west - and the US in particular - lose a large part of their so-called ‘persuasive’ powers. The production systems and supply chains in the US and the collective west generally cannot meet the needs of this single conflict, and incoming president Donald Trump has made it clear that he believes the Europeans have been free-riding off America. As European elites struggle in the face of the risk of American insouciance towards European security, citizens across European countries are increasingly of the view that Europe must go its own way. According to a recent survey by Bertelsmann Stiftung, the “majority of European citizens believe that Europe should go its own way in the current geopolitical landscape”. Western Europe is experiencing economic and security fluidity that it has not seen for decades, and the attitudes of policy elites in Brussels are increasingly out of step with the aspirations of ordinary citizens. In this fluid and, indeed, unstable environment, a ‘stable China’ can fulfill an important orientation role as Europe’s body politic seeks to refashion a new modus operandi.
Should Trump’s administration pursue policies that undermine global multilateral trade institutions, then again China’s consistent position in favour of open trade provides an anchor point for countries to align and coordinate policies around. An obvious vector here will be how Trump’s trade policies, which are not in Australia’s interests, clash with the security ambitions of the Australian policy establishment that sees alignment with the US as an unquestioned good. Australia has already made it clear that it supports open multilateral global trade. The new US administration most likely won’t.
GT: How do you view China’s diplomacy toward Australia this year? What do you think of China’s efforts to stabilize and promote sustainable China-Australia relations?
The general approach has been to focus on areas of common interest, namely smoothing out and expanding the trade relationship. The trade relationship is of mutual benefit, given the complementarities between the Chinese and Australian economies.
GT: How do you view China’s contribution to settle regional affairs in a peaceful way, such as China and Brazil proposing “Friends for Peace” group and China organizing dialogues for different factions of Palestine?
As noted, China’s efforts in relation to the Palestinian factions issue is commendable, and evinces a style of diplomacy that stands in stark contrast to the ‘take it or leave it’ approach that has characterised American-led ‘diplomacy’ in the past. China’s approach emphasises the need to fashion a consensus in which the disputants are party to the solution, not just the recipients of a preordained solution imposed from outside. Solutions in which disputants are invested in have a better chance of being sustainable.
The situation in Ukraine - in which the Friends for Peace group is most relevant - is challenging and complex. China’s position was made clear in early 2023, and has not wavered. Resolving the conflict requires a recognition of a broad array of conditions, including the historic context that gave rise to the conflict in the first place. As the collective west progressively escalates the conflict in the face of an unfolding defeat on the battlefield, the conditions for a negotiated settlement to the dispute continue to evolve. The prevailing conditions at the time of the Istanbul peace negotiations of March-April 2022 are no longer applicable today. The draft Istanbul agreement, initialed by representatives of both Russia and Ukraine, was sabotaged by the west. The agreement provided for Ukrainian neutrality and pre-2014 territorial integrity. At the time, the Russian forces engaged in Ukraine were relatively minor, and certainly were insufficient to mount a genuine conflict. That changed, and from Ukraine’s point of view, it changed for the worse.
Today’s conditions make it more likely that the draft treaty between Russia and the United States and agreement between Russia and NATO, presented by the Russians in December 2021 but which were dismissed by the western powers, will form the basis of a settlement rather than the Istanbul arrangements. It is possible, even likely, that Russia will press for a complete overhaul of the European security architecture, and perhaps even incorporate such an overhaul within a broader Eurasian framework - a Eurasian Security Club, as Vladimir Putin has described it.
China’s engagement in this process is a necessity, and will provide another opportunity for China to demonstrate the ‘power’ of its consensus-oriented diplomatic ethos and a perspective on world affairs that sees nations not as isolated islands but as intrinsically connected to one another. Indivisible security will be the guiding mantra in this dialogue.
GT: If you could use a metaphor to describe China’s role in the Global South, what would you use?
China’s role is to be an enabler rather than an expropriator. This is manifest through concrete work:
Opening its own markets to the global south. The tariff-free treatment for all goods from the least developed nations of the world is a clear sign of this.
Financing and building connective and mobility infrastructure. This includes transportation and logistics, energy generation and storage and digital infrastructure.
Growing local value adding. This is being achieved as China becomes a capital exporter. This involves creating assembly and manufacturing value-adding capabilities in the Global South across all areas - natural resources, agriculture and food systems all the way through to the assembling and manufacturing of advanced products such as EVs and batteries.
Enhancing skills. Foundational to development is literacy, numeracy and skills development. This too has been China’s own experience.