China's Challenge to Liberal Norms

The Durability of International Order

Catherine Jones

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781349682331
  9781137427601
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137427618
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política asiática

Is China challenging liberal norms or being socialised to them? This book argues that China is incrementally pushing for re-interpretation of liberal norms, but, the result is that rather than being illiberal, this reinterpretation produces norms that are differently liberal and more akin to the liberal pluralism of the 1990s. In developing this argument, the author presents a novel way to understand and assess these incremental changes, and the causes of them. The book's empirical chapters explore China's views on norms of sovereignty and intervention, and aid and development, contrasting them against the current western liberal practices, but making the case that they are congruent with the attitudes understood as being broadly liberal-pluralist. This book will appeal to students seeking to understand how rising states may affect the current institutions of international order, and make assessments of how fast that order may change. It will also appeal to scholars working on Chinaand institutions by aiding the development of new lines of enquiry. 

© The Author(s) 2018

Catherine JonesChina's Challenge to Liberal Normshttps://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-42761-8_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Catherine Jones¹

(1)

University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

Catherine Jones

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

How and with what effect does China engage within international institutions? At risk of great oversimplification, when considering China ’s global activities the current literature has coalesced around two major schools of thought which focus on two competing and ostensibly mutually exclusive claims. Either China should be increasingly socialised into compliance with the norms , rules and institutions of international order ¹ or that China should challenge international norms in an effort to replace them with institutions better reflecting its own interests, values and its status as a great power . ²

This central debate leads to a number of more challenging questions about both how and with what effect China engages with the world: Can China change the world? Does China want to change the world? Do ‘we’ want China to change international order ? These questions pervade and imbue the current international relations discourse.

Year on year, a plethora of books, articles and reports express a cacophony of views concerning what this means for the rest of the world. Publications addressing these questions encompass a wide spectrum of potentially plausible scenarios: from the re-emergence of a modernised Chinese World Order to the gradual shaping of China into the norms and practices of the international order created by liberal states.

Nevertheless, the preponderance of these questions, debates and their myriad of answers tend to focus on China ’s capabilities, capacities and trajectory. Yet, there is—at least—one other side to these questions: What does China ’s rise reveal about the relationship between rising powers and international order ? What mechanisms has the current international order made available for its own mutation? What forms of agency (and therefore what forms of power ) are necessary to make use of these mechanisms? What can these questions tell us about the durability of the current international order ? As an extension to these works, this book primarily explores the relational aspect of a particular rising power and the current (and dynamic) international order . Hence, whilst many authors have chosen to focus on whether China is exceptional or whether China presents a challenge to international order wholesale, this research explores how China may present challenges to norms through its broadening and deepening engagement within institutions. Hence, this book starts from the claim made by Wang Yizhou, that China is engaged in ‘creative diplomacy’ whereby China is engaged and active within institutions. ³ In particular, this book explores Wang’s claim that China can carve out new space in diplomatic relations and forge new patterns of engagement. Wang’s work, however, leaves space for other scholars to explore the details of what this ‘involvement’ looks like; hence, although he indicates the potential and possibility of such an approach, and outlines and number of indicative cases (including Myanmar and Sudan), ⁴ he doesn’t expound how Chinese engagement differs from previous practices or how these processes can create durable changes to global order . ⁵

This book enters this debate by suggesting that rather than starting from consideration of whether China is changing international order , we should start by conceptualising how it might be able to do so. It therefore acknowledges that China is rising into a particular and––in many ways––peculiar international order . Unlike previous rising powers, China is confronted with an institutionalised international order ––wherein the challenges arise within the institutions, not to their existence.

In order to narrow the scope of this agenda, this book also starts from intuiting that the most likely area for China to seek to challenge international order is around the liberal interpretation of global norms : liberal intervention and international development .

The Research Puzzle and Scope

Based on China ’s domestic preferences, its own development experience and its stated foreign policy aims, it would not be expected to ‘buy-in to’ these norms. For example, China ’s stated defence of state sovereignty suggests that it should oppose international interventions into sovereign states. Furthermore, China ’s capitalist/communist fusion style economic system and no-strings approach to economic development it would be a reasonable expectation that China should also oppose development approaches that link good governance to economic development .

Yet, despite these expectations, China continues to increase the breadth and depth of its engagement with global institutions that espouse these liberal norms , such as the United Nations (UN), the World Bank (WB) and in its partnership with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). These institutions also contribute to a stable international environment that has enabled China ’s remarkable growth. Hence, despite a preponderance of literature on China ’s international engagements, we are left with a puzzle and a central research question: How can China challenge the liberal norms contained within international institutions?

The approach to responding to this question argues that it is necessary to open the ‘black box’ of international order and suggest that the current liberal order is liberal in two dimensions. It espouses liberal norms , but it is also liberal in its formal structures. The argument herein is therefore that China can internally challenge the norms within the structures but at the same time abide by the formal structures that both prescribe and proscribe appropriate behaviours that contribute to the continuation of China ’s rise.

Hence, these areas of the liberal agenda––developments and intervention ––form the basis for analysing whether China presents a challenge in these most likely areas. This selection is appropriate for a number of reasons but primarily because China is institutionally invested but also has a stated objection to a liberal interpretation of norms.

Although this may be interpreted by some as starting from a problematic point, that could be seen to assume that China ’s engagement is having an effect on international order , this is not the case. Rather, the claim is that, because the current international order is both unique and dynamic (see Chapter 3), before it is possible to discern whether there is a challenge , it is necessary to set out what that challenge could look like. Only then is it possible to make any assessment as to whether a challenge is being presented. This does mean that this project has to be constantly aware of the potential of creating a tautological argument.

The research risks of this approach are also ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• Part I. Conceptual Tools
• Part II. Re-Interpreting Sovereignty by Contesting Norms: China and the United Nations
• Part III. Evolution or Revolution in International Aid Practices? China and International Development
• Back Matter