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Fellows of Salzburg Global's latest Pathways to Peace Initiative present findings on the benefits of a multi-stakeholder model in negotiations with China
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Salzburg Global Seminar convened a program on "Crossing New Rivers by Feeling the Stones? Aspirations, Expectations, and China's Role in the 21st Century" from February 18 to 21, 2024, as part of its broader Pathways to Peace Initiative. During this program, Salzburg Global Fellows from 14 countries gathered to discuss the pressing issue of global interaction with China; they incorporated the perspectives of narrative frameworks, economic challenges, technology, and pathways for future engagement in light of rising geopolitical tensions.
Four working groups were tasked with addressing different aspects of this engagement. In the working group findings summarized below, Fellows were asked to consider how to preserve the benefits of multi-stakeholder international frameworks in view of China’s preference for sovereign-to-sovereign dialogue.
This document records the discussion and proposes findings for further dialogue rather than firm policy recommendations.
China has worked effectively within multi-stakeholder international frameworks in the past, with the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the Paris Accords serving as key examples. However, amid increasing tensions on multiple fronts with the US, and, to a lesser extent, with the EU and the community of economically advanced, democratic countries, Beijing has shown a preference for bilateral engagement. The country also wields greater technological, economic, and military power, and simultaneously promotes alternatives to the established global governance system more than previously; these are trends that give Beijing more leverage to conduct its foreign policy bilaterally or within groupings, such as BRICS, which do not include the West.
Fellows approached the question by recognizing China’s discomfort with certain kinds of multilateralism, given the affinity between Western multilateralism and liberal principles, or what Jon Ruggie called “embedded liberalism”. Western-style multilateral organizations are built around pooled sovereignty and organized around majoritarian principles where common interests are built into a commonly accepted rule. These fora are generally guided by familiar liberal principles of "one country, one vote" and the making of commonly binding rules. Multilateral governing bodies have come under growing pressure in the past decade, as China, Russia, and the US have all increasingly resisted being bound by international rules.
China is uncomfortable with this ideological territory on a number of grounds. For one, majoritarianism means that China could find itself isolated and excluded. This is not only an affront to China’s status and sense of itself as a great power, but it also institutionalizes and reifies a system of winners and losers, which is itself an affront to a sense of self built around the notion of “keeping face”. Moreover, it embeds and consolidates previously existing power balances, where China seeks influence with its new stature. China often seeks to demand face as a function of its great power status but does not grant it in kind, an impulse which is undermined by liberal majoritarian principles.
Fellows participating in this working group recognized that the political and economic principles often used within multilateral frameworks that have dominated international relations since the end of WWII, from Adam Smith to John Maynard Keynes, were developed in the Western world; these are often in conflict with commonplace assumptions in the more hierarchical and relativistic Chinese context.
China therefore prefers consensus-based multilateralism, such as the principles of "mushawar" and "mufakat" practiced by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), or the veto power it exercises in the United Nations Security Council (even that veto power was considered embarrassing for a long time and China invented the procedure of not partaking in votes with which it had problems).
China today sees itself as an exemplary multilateralist, but one which practices multilateralism in its own fashion. Namely, by using organizations as a trellis on which to build relationships and exercise the binding power of mutual obligation. In global institutions, China always wants a seat at the table. Regionally, it would prefer to govern by consensus.
China’s demand for status at times eclipses its substantive participation in global bodies. This creates increasing tension in multi-stakeholder international frameworks stemming from a Western assumption that we are building a world of somewhat like units with inter-permeability, and China wants to be a full participant without permeability or with very selective permeability.
Fellows also acknowledged the ability of the EU to understand China’s ideological positions, at least to a greater degree than Washington. American default positions in international frameworks derive from the idea of universal rights, which is often at odds with the orientations of China, and sometimes Europe as well. Both have histories that go back many centuries, whereas the establishment of the American republic, which was influenced by both Enlightenment thinking and, somewhat ironically, evangelical Christianity, was a fairly recent development. Chinese and Europeans have imperial and feudal histories that were buffeted by abrupt change in recent centuries. In the case of China, that abruptness occurred much more recently and did not incorporate the liberal ideas that took hold in Europe.
While this analysis may enable us to call for greater integration of Chinese default stances about the global political economy, it is clear that China has benefited significantly, particularly in economic terms, from the principles that have dominated multi-stakeholder international frameworks since World War II.
Fellows agreed that there is a distinction between multilateralism and the multi-stakeholder model. The former refers to inter-state relations, and the latter refers to negotiations that involve state, private or corporate, and NGO participants. This is especially relevant to technology and the regulation of the internet where corporate actors play a major role. China is often reluctant to recognize private actors as equal participants, but it has conceded their participation on technical issues. Sometimes China will agree to private actors and NGOs presenting views, but will decline to recognize their status in negotiations. For its own part, China wants its own stakeholders to appear in international negotiations speaking with a single voice. China has conceded multi-stakeholder participation on issues considered “technical’ but only deals with state actors on issues considered “political”. It is important in some areas to move issues from the “political” to the ‘technical” realm where negotiation is possible.
To participate in multi-stakeholder negotiations and speak with a single voice, China engages in its own internal consultation process with domestic stakeholders to prepare for upcoming international negotiations. Where there is time for those internal consultations to be held ahead of negotiations, China is better prepared to negotiate agreements. An example of a multi-stakeholder arena that China has acceded to is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
Based on their observations from the discussion, Fellows proposed the following findings:
While they may not offer certainty in terms of outcomes, negotiation frameworks monitored by transparency rather than adjudication, such as what led to the Paris Accords, have a better chance of engaging China in the process.
Avoid areas where conflict is inevitable, such as Taiwan, and start with issues around which non-engagement is no longer an option, such as climate and global health crises.
Utilize the EU to a greater extent as a host or organizer of multi-stakeholder international frameworks.
Dispense with labels. Labelling China forces it into a defensive crouch that makes it less amenable to negotiation; the usage of terms like “developing versus developed” should particularly be avoided. China’s per-capita GDP puts it into the former category, but the rapid growth in that metric in the past four decades is unprecedented. In addition, the size of China’s economy and its ability to produce some of the world’s most advanced technologies also makes the “developing” tag problematic.
As advanced technologies and the data they generate have become so central to the modern political economy, nations must quickly agree on what data can cross borders, and start on these negotiations early before the practices become embedded.
China’s position going into meetings within multi-stakeholder frameworks should include the views of the country’s private commercial sector and civil society. The Chinese government conducts this kind of consultation on many levels each time it prepares its five-year plans, so the practice is already in place. The practice needs to be put into action more often, perhaps on a regular basis, so that Beijing can be proactive instead of reactive.