中文
By Josef Gregory Mahoney
With the first anniversary of China's Global Development Initiative (GDI) approaching, several deliverables have been appearing, as well as the support of more than 100 countries and international organizations. So far, over 60 countries have joined the Group of Friends of the GDI, a platform launched by China at the UN for sharing experiences, enhancing cooperation and promoting multilateral interactions for development.
Introduced last September by Chinese President Xi Jinping during the 76th Session of the UN General Assembly, the GDI aims to "support the development of developing countries, promote a global economic recovery, and strengthen international development cooperation." The initiative is timely given the growing intersection of global crises — i.e., the pandemic, climate change and rising international tensions — that increasingly threaten to derail goals sought by the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Principled policy making
Chinese scholars debate how we should understand the GDI's core principles, highlighting its people-oriented approaches and its values of mutual respect, mutual learning and solidarity, and how it supports Xi's call for building a community with a shared future for mankind and dovetails with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
That said, the recently released Global Development Report by a leading Chinese government think tank and one of the first key deliverables promised by the GDI have clarified the principles. Explicitly, they include: 1) prioritizing development and innovation-driven approaches; 2) insisting no country or person should be left behind; 3) promoting harmony between man and nature; 4) advancing through true multilateralism and emphasizing openness and inclusiveness as cornerstones.
Western critics have responded by describing the initiative as "long on principles but short on concrete commitments." This is amusing because Washington's reactions to China's efforts to support global development have been met with half-formulated plans like President Biden's Build Back Better World and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity. Moreover, both efforts are designed to support America's strategic containment efforts targeting China. They are coordinated with developing military blocs like AUKUS and the Quad, upgrading controversial missiles in the Republic of Korea and placing them under U.S. control, and supporting Japan's transition from a defense-only to an attack-capable military.
In contrast, U.S. efforts are even shorter on principles. The U.S. is pursuing its hegemonic interests through more exclusive, bloc-oriented policies and not in any way that is multilateral. It also allocates less money to development, making its efforts less likely to achieve sustainable results. Instead, they are more likely to undermine regional and global security, spark new tensions and cause conflict.
Despite the blatant double standards at work, Western critics have repeatedly pointed out that the GDI promotes China's economic and security interests at the expense of America's interests. China is presented as the threat to displace the U.S. as the global hegemon.
Security and development
When China talks about security in the context of the GDI, it speaks directly to economic, supply chain, energy, water and food security, with a heavy emphasis on the latter two especially given new challenges related to weather-affected production, disrupted supplies, increasing cost-plus inflation and growing poverty. In other words, when the GDI speaks about security, it does so in terms related to ensuring the basic necessities required for human survival.
Nevertheless, some Western critics have linked the GDI with China's Global Security Initiative (GSI), introduced by Xi at the Boao Forum for Asia in April 2022. Like the GDI, the GSI also begins by articulating clear principles, including 1) maintaining common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security; 2) respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries; 3) respecting the purposes and principles of the UN charter; 4) peacefully resolving differences and disputes between countries; 5) maintaining security in traditional and non-traditional domains; 6) upholding indivisible security.
In response, Western critics have raised three concerns in particular. First, the GSI presents a security worldview based on the traditional Chinese philosophical value of "universal harmony" despite differences and opposition. The philosophy is entirely at odds with Western traditions that preach universalism but normalize crises and conflict in theory and practice, and do so by rejecting contradictions and differences as illogical.
Second, critics argue the GSI features a China-centered approach, showing China's concerns about its sovereignty against ongoing international efforts to undermine that sovereignty in Taiwan, Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong. These critics are often connected in various ways with efforts to slander and weaken the Chinese government while encouraging separatists. They are concerned that the GSI will intersect with the GDI to create security-related conditions for development projects that incentivize new economic-based alliances, which ultimately reinforce support for Beijing's security objectives.
Third, one of the GSI's key arguments is that security is not just the handmaiden of development; it's also a precondition. This seems intuitive, but in fact, it runs contrary to actual Western practices, in which national development strategies were based historically on genocide, dispossession, slavery, enclosures, colonialism, imperialism and hegemony, in tandem with production and consumption practices that have driven the world to the brink with climate change. Therefore, they have excluded developing nations from seeking similar advantages and improving living standards.
That said, it's true the GDI and the GSI are based on interlocking principles, and this shouldn't be surprising. Without question, there is a more profound logic guiding these two initiatives. Indeed, the Chinese government prides itself on articulating reasonable and consistent principles.
Furthermore, both the GDI and the GSI belong to a broader trend established by Xi when he first introduced the BRI in 2013. These efforts represent a new era of China going global, one that aims for a new era of genuine multilateralism promoting peace and development as win-win solutions instead of zero-sum games.
Development and subsistence as basic human rights
What's most compelling here, however, is how Western critics have reacted negatively to Beijing's assertion that human rights begin with a right to subsistence and, thus, development. On the one hand, China's insistence that the base determines the superstructure — that one cannot simply speak into existence lofty ideals if one's economic base is both a product and producer of the opposite — is a core Marxist belief. It's nothing new that Western critics reject Marxism, of course, but let's be clear that this kind of criticism, at best, has more to do with kneejerk ideological opposition than it does with building the material foundations of human survival and progress.
On the other hand, this belief has guided Chinese efforts to raise hundreds of millions out of poverty and eliminate extreme poverty, an unprecedented historical achievement. It's likewise guided other people-centered policies, like those associated with the pandemic, through which China has protected the lives of its people better than any other country and worked harder than others to produce vital public goods, including vaccines, for the global market, neglected developing countries and UN peacekeepers, among others. These are the values China aims to bring to global development and security, and precisely why so many have embraced them so far and why others should consider doing so.
Josef Gregory Mahoney is a professor of politics and international relations at East China Normal University and a senior research fellow with the Institute for the Development of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics at Southeast University.
