Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues

Eleanor M. Albert: Today we are joined by Courtney Fung. She is an associate professor in the Department of Security Studies and Criminology at Macquarie University. Fung is concurrently associate in research at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University, and associate fellow at the Lowy Institute. Her research studies how rising powers address the norms and provisions for global governance and international security, with a primary focus on China, and more recently, India. She was previously an associate professor with tenure at the University of Hong Kong.

Courtney, welcome to the show. We're thrilled to have you today, particularly as a host who shares a research agenda that is closely aligned to yours.

Courtney Fung: Thank you so much, Eleanor, for having me, and thank you for the invitation.

Eleanor M. Albert: I like to start all of these conversations with our guests to ask them about how they got into their research topic. For starters, how did you come to study China and then what led you to examining its presence at the UN?  

Courtney Fung: I grew up in Hong Kong and even as a kid, you heard the word sovereignty used quite frequently. So I think the notion of international relations, sovereignty, is not a faraway idea. Hong Kong is a very international city. People come and go. You are aware of a world much larger around you.

Then I was very lucky at the time that I was applying to go back to grad school to write my doctorate that I was reading the news and there was a lot of very interesting language coming out from Chinese foreign policy officials at the time because one of the big news items back in the early 2000s was whether or not there was first, a genocide going on in Darfur  and the debates about if you could use the word genocide and what would be the legal repercussions.

Second to all of that, there was also this very interesting language coming out from Chinese officials where they kept pointing out that Darfur is in Sudan, and Sudan as its own sovereign state. “Why do people keep saying that China is responsible for dealing with this Darfur crisis?” Then to see that as the initial position in 2004 and '05 and '06, and then to see the language that was coming out by Chinese officials [in] 2006, '07 and '08 saying that China will help solve and resolve this Darfur problem. I was quite interested in that movement and that's what really helped me focus on my own research topic when I began my Ph.D.

Eleanor M. Albert: Wonderful. Before we get into the more contemporary dimensions, I wondered if you could provide a brief history of the People's Republic of China's presence and involvement at the UN. What are some of the big highlights when it comes to China at the UN? Obviously, the PRC [People’s Republic of China] was not part of the UN at its founding in 1945 because it didn't exist as a country yet. Since the PRC's founding in 1949 to today, are there some flashpoints or highlights of China's presence at the UN?

Courtney Fung: You're exactly right to note that the People's Republic of China assumed the China seat in 1971 following decades of their attempt to assume that seat and have the Republic of China vacate it and have the People's Republic of China assume the China seat. It took them decades for this to occur. Resolution 2758 determined which China would assume the China seat, and so in comes the People's Republic of China and we can really see phases of PRC engagement.

PRC officials arrive in 1971 and you can read accounts where they call themselves students of the UN bureaucracy. But you can also read accounts of other diplomats that work with them that say that they arrived on day one as if they'd always been there. I think that really speaks to, again, threads that you will still see if you read debate within Chinese language media, a sense of humility in some ways about their ability to have these big successes that sometimes when you read the English language media, you do not get those glimpses on.

But, [in] that first decade, China's foreign policy still had very limited overseas interests, right? It was still very much focused on internal domestic control of the party. And so in that way, it enabled Chinese diplomats to have a very principled position. For the first decade at the Security Council, they actually did not vote. They created their own voting style in which they would be present for the vote, but they would not actually participate. They were very focused on railing against Western hegemony, the fact that you needed to respond and respect the Third World, but given limited strategic interests, you could actually afford to be 100% principled.

By the start of the 1980s, you see gradual engagement. China's willingness to cast abstention votes. By the end of the 1980s, movement towards casting yes votes for peacekeeping missions that were more traditional chapter six, consent-based operations, so the host state had said “the UN is invited to come in and observe a peace” and then China was willing to support that. You also see growing engagement by the end of the 1980s, start of the 1990s, because the prioritization on economic development at home meant that China wanted a stable international environment.

According to the research of Ian Johnston, you can see that China starts to sign up to a number of restraining treaty bodies at rates far higher than other states of similar socioeconomic profiles. China's willingness to sign on for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. It's signed on, though has not ratified, the International Covenant for the Civil and Political Rights, et cetera, treaties like this that will restrain China's international security flexibility, but China's willingness to be seen as being a good participant, a good member of the international community. Again, we have to remember the nadir of China's diplomacy in 1989, post-Tiananmen Square incident in which China really did feel it was left out in the cold, and so the need to engage the drivers to engage are now very different.

By the time we get to the early 2000s, the first decade the 2010s, China has secured its first headship of a UN specialized agency. Dr. Margaret Chan out of the Hong Kong special administrative region [was] heading the World Health Organization in 2006. China is well on its way as it's planning the budget cycles, in terms of growing its commitments from 3%, 5%. They reached the point by 2016 that China was now the second-largest budget contributor to the regular budget. Remember, these are required contributions that you must pay into the UN system.

China was becoming a very important player in terms of international peace and security issues. For example, the major peacekeeping missions that get underway in 2007, '08, '09, '10, China is the largest contributor into these very tough, austere missions into Sudan, South Sudan, the DRC [Democratic Republic of the Congo], et cetera. So I think again, shouldering burdens that are expected of it.

I think the last thing just to track is it is important to remember that if we look at China's other expression of power, if you look at one measure of power, the ability to just stop the UN in its tracks, we have to remember that China's been a very cautious veto player. For the first four decades, you can really see China's averaging about two vetoes a decade. Now, that changes with the Syria crisis where China has co-vetoed with Russia about 10 times now.

That is a sign from about the 2011, 2012, 2013, where you can start to see that China is becoming clearer about defending its principled commitment to the idea of sovereignty and territorial integrity, even if that means it has to stop the system entirely, because, of course, that comes at cost for China. If you stop the Security Council from acting with a veto, then you have to bear the cost of that.

Eleanor M. Albert: That's a fantastic overview. It takes us through the domestic changes in China, not only with its leadership turnovers, but also with its sheer economic transformation. Then of course, that has implications for how it is positioned as a contributor at the United Nations. There's no doubt about its interest now as a bigger player in terms of the budget and the fifth committee trying to be involved in how money is being allocated.

I wanted to place the role of the UN in China's broader foreign policy strategy. Fast-forward to 2024: how can we understand the UN within China's contemporary foreign policy thinking?

Courtney Fung: That's a great question. I think there are certain things that are still goals that China will look to pursue, even as the balance of power between China and other permanent members of the UN Security Council, aspiring members to the Security Council, even as the distribution of power in the system changes. For example, the belief and the commitment that the Security Council, the United Nations writ large, carries a very particular legitimizing function to remember that the UN is the only truly global body, right? One hundred ninety-three member states participate in the General Assembly. So it's a very important space in which to attempt to tame U.S. power.

The interest in understanding Sino-U.S. diplomacy in the UN is very real. I think the concern that states like the United States, the only actual global superpower, could turn away from the UN and pursue coalitions of the willing or pursue other NATO-led initiatives is something that Chinese diplomats have to think about, in a way, again, that China doesn't have these particular options left available to it. So I think this ability to help manage U.S., maybe some type of Western disengagement from the system is something that's very important for China to think about as it pursues its own activities in the UN system.

The UN itself is a very useful focal point. it's the only time you can get virtually everyone together to discuss and set the agenda for the next decades to come. On issues coming up on the horizon like AI [artificial intelligence], on issues of the day that continue to persist and be problems like economic growth, climate crisis, et cetera, it's a very useful learning environment for Chinese elites, and you can read about the change in diplomats’ profiles over time, so the ability to send off technical experts who are trained in international negotiations and deep subject matter knowledge on issues like biodiversity for example, this ability to train up and learn from the discussions going on and therefore self-improve the Chinese diplomats that get turned out to go do the work.

Then, I think there are some very practical benefits that all states try and pursue. For example, I would think about this space that the UN provides as a very interesting space for China to promote its own parochial foreign policy goals. Chinese revisionism, for example, about Resolution 2758, in which Chinese elites do not accept that this resolution simply states that the seat transfers from ROC to PRC; they see this resolution as determining Taiwan's international status.

Then, there are broader interests at play. China wants to help create a space for itself in which its own views on the way that global politics should work, the way that “so-called universal values” as Chinese diplomats would phrase that particular phrase to make sure that China has helped create space for itself by its engagement. It's helped to find its like-minded partners in various caucus procedures. It's found its like-minded partners in the G77 plus China, the Global South, that will allow China to say that it is not just China that worries about issues A, B and C; it is China and many other countries of this particular profile that disagree with ideas that come out of the Global North.

The last thing I think that China looks to pursue is this idea of there being the status recognition that China should have as a prime player in international politics today. The view that the multipolar order has arrived and that China does not get a fair play enough of the time. So the legitimacy, the prestige, and the status that can be conferred upon China as a veto-wielding permanent member at the UN Security Council, as the second-largest budget funder of the regular budget. The fact is they now argue that finance underscores the way that global governance works. So because China pays the second-largest amount, one needs to pay attention to what China worries about about the budget.

Again, that search for that status and recognition not just as a great state but also as the forebearer on behalf of the Global South in this G77 plus China, I think is something that is in this way quite unique.

Eleanor M. Albert: What's fascinating about that response is that it pushes me to think about the contrast through which we can use the UN as a lens for looking at China's foreign policy vis-a-vis other regional or multilateral or mini-lateral organizations that China had also spearheaded. There was a lot of experimentation in Xi Jinping's first term and thinking about what are the best ways in which we can engage more broadly with the world.

Part of that is the Belt and Road Initiative. Other parts of that are all of the different groupings, But when I started looking into some of these documents and the statements that were coming out of these, ultimately there's so much turning back towards the UN, which can only symbolize the importance of the UN as the nucleus for multilateral approaches coming out of Beijing. In some ways, because it is such a large representative body, it provides it with a venue where there are lots of different audiences that it can speak to at the same time.

Courtney Fung: You're absolutely right, Eleanor. The fascinating thing to remember is that, unlike other governments, that wax and wane in their UN interest, wax and wane in their rhetorical commitment to the United Nations system, China is actually remarkably consistent over the last decades in terms of this recognition that it wants to help reform international order and international order is expressed as the UN, its institutions, including the principles of international law.

Now again, this does not mean that China is always bound by international law or these institutions, but that China is very clear that questions of international order must involve a foundational institution, the United
Nations, and that it therefore looks to reform the UN from within, but it has a consistent interest in seeing the UN be referenced and the need to reference itself back to the UN.

So tying GSI [the Global Security Initiative] back to the UN charter, tying the Global Development Initiative (GDI), back to the Sustainable Development Goals for 2030, tying the Global Civilization Initiative (GCI), one place that this needs to be seeded is into various UN bodies. For example, look at their interest at the UN General Assembly recently passing that World Civilizational Dialogue Day, seen as the first kickoff of GCI. It can go into many other places, just as BRI has gone into many other places.

There's something very interesting in this rhetorical commitment that then is followed through on. I'm not making the claim that if we move beyond the regular budget payments that China is the largest player, certainly not. But the fact that they're able to talk about this so effectively and to point out so effectively that the world's largest debtor is America and that when America is late on payment, the UN itself cannot fully function.

Therefore again, this very consistent commitment to the UN enables China certain types of prestige, certain types of moments where it can really point out how it's doing very well in terms of supporting whatever this international community is. That's something that does provide China a very unique avenue in terms of really
engaging.

Eleanor M. Albert: You mentioned China's multilateral initiatives, the GDI, GSI, and GCI and how these show up at the UN to a certain extent. You also were talking about this consistency of China's approach or value of the UN. That said, there's also a good degree of consistency in their interpretation of what should and shouldn't go on at the UN. So, I wondered if these newer initiatives provide us some avenue into understanding Beijing's own vision of international order via the UN system? What can we learn from these initiatives?

Courtney Fung: Excellent, excellent questions. Why don't I preface this by saying where China's global governance vision is at the moment. I think the English translation has shifted away from this “community of common destiny of humankind, of mankind” into this shorthand abbreviation. Sometimes it's called “community of common destiny,” just “common destiny,” or just “shared future” in UN documentation.

It's a very broad, amorphous concept, but this “community of common destiny for humankind,” the “shared future,” is this idea that you can have practical participation on issues of international politics. You are not bound by having common principles or values, so if you can find the ability to cooperate on issues A and B, then go ahead. On questions of economics and trade, it's fine. Do you need to cooperate then between China and another player on questions and debates about human rights? No need, so you can proceed.

But amongst that, there still is this belief as China talks about a democracy of international relations and equality of views. There still is this belief in this “shared future” language that China is the first amongst equals. So, there is deference paid to China and its own political governance system and the respect given to it, but it is bringing this Chinese wisdom through this “shared future” into its global governance vision.

The other leg of this, which will sound contradictory to what I've just said, is that the “shared future” vision makes the case, as other researchers have pointed out, that all states are universally exceptional. So because every state has had its own unique experiences of development and history and society and culture and political background, therefore you cannot run a ruler and say that all states must meet a universal standard or that there are universal values or that there is a one way to achieve modernity and development and security.

As you think about these broad ideas, also connect that in the last decade, China has made more broadcasts about itself as a global public goods provider. They've celebrated a decade of BRI. Over the last couple of years, they've started to see these new initiatives, these new global initiatives: the Global Development Initiative, followed by the Global Security Initiative, followed by the Global Civilization Initiative. I should flag that these aren't the only global initiatives—the Global Initiative on Data Security, the Global Initiative on AI Governance also are out there. But these global initiatives are seen as China's attempts to help direct what the North Star is going to be. If “shared future” is very broad, how will we practically try and operationalize this?

So the Global Development Initiative helps try to refocus attention post-COVID on the 2030 SDGs. They're not looking for big infrastructure development in the way that they've done with BRI. The focus now is on people-to-people, tech transfer, training, education, and it's a very interesting set of SDGs that China supports. SDGs to do with justice reform are not really discussed in this Global Development Initiative.

Again, all of these initiatives are very much in their proto, initial phases, right? But one could argue that this Global Development Initiative probably has the best chance of becoming real in the sense that the respect given to China to teach others about its development experience, the fact that they have had a very large and influential role in the UN Development Program. The fact that China has had control and leadership of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs for the last three decades, creates these very practical focal points to help latch GDI into the system to help move the funding in to help profile China's ability as a South-South player, to help move South-South interests.

It's a little less clear on topics that are securitized, like security issues where Global Security Initiative ideas will go. Again, I think states are a lot more primed, especially as you're looking at dysfunction at the council on questions of the Ukraine War, the violence between Israel and in Gaza, the interest then that China will have in terms of "promoting peace" and its very particular approach that it takes to conflict mediation.

This Global Civilization Initiative, it's the newest one of the big three that Chinese foreign policy elites name. There are already some inroads that you could argue are happening, like World Civilizational Dialogue Day goes back again to focusing on a by state, for state approach. It's about states dialoguing about their civilizational experiences. It's about states accepting their unique civilizational backgrounds, therefore chipping away at this idea of there being a singular universal human rights standard, universal values.

Again, these are all very new, but they do tell us that China, A, is interested on engaging with the UN system. They also tell us that they are coming prepared to try and articulate, making these initiatives appear more fixed, tangible, and therefore China's commitment is very real.

Eleanor M. Albert: Today, there's so much talk about what China wants at the UN and that the impact is perhaps malign in some way, especially in Western media. From an analytical standpoint, how we can actually think about assessing China's UN behavior. In many ways, what you just laid out is much more of a narrative shaping exercise in some ways, right? It's re-engaging with existing elements at the UN, a system that exists, and maneuvering within it to some benefit, right? And that playbook isn't a uniquely Chinese endeavor.

China certainly has a lot more manpower. Its UN missions are much larger than they used to be. Its budgetary contributions, of course, are much larger. But I wondered how we can think about China's engagement in terms of examining its behavior. Where is China most engaged, and how can we assess its degree of engagement?

Courtney Fung: To pick up on this prompt about maligned influence, I think an attempt to get to some conceptual clarity, there's four different ways at least that I can think off the top of my head that this maligned tag has been applied to China by other diplomats, certainly not UN officials, but other diplomats. I think there are claims that China is seeking to transform fundamental values within the UN system. For example, you have former PRC officials that have been heads of UN agencies, and they will talk openly about the fact that they will forthrightly defend China's national interests in the UN system. You're meant to be abiding as an international civil servant. You're meant to be abiding by Article 100 that your only values and interests that you look to promote are those on behalf of the United Nations, so you have to set aside your own patriotic, national commitments.

You also have to bear in mind, though that UN politics has to be one of pragmatism, and there's a reason why the permanent members of the UN Security Council each have one of these big seats heading these UN agencies, right? For decades you've had the French heading peace operations. For decades, you've had the
Brits heading humanitarian affairs. You also have a U.S. official that heads the Department of Political Affairs. There's a reason why the big security billets have gone to the big Western players that traditionally have had that expeditionary military capacity because you want to have that type of political connectivity that they can call their capitals and try and make a case on behalf of whatever UN issues are on their docket today.

There's also this concern about a second category of so-called maligned attachment: that China is looking for different types of outcomes. If I can take a peacekeeping example, China's approach to peacekeeping, it's not looking to try and have transformational nation-building democracy promoting protection of civilians-type missions. It wants to talk about having, instead of the UN tripartite approach about peace and security plus economic development plus human rights equals individual security, the Chinese approach is much more about helping the state establish a strong state infrastructure, so your highways, your internet connectivity, your electrical networks all work. They're looking to promote economic development, so getting people back to work is a fundamental right, the right to work, the right to be away from subsistence, and then they're looking to try and promote gradual change. There is no shock therapy equivalent of elections occurring on this schedule. You're looking to promote gradual change, and this is meant to help promote the same type of outcomes of there being a more effective state and therefore some type of individual security being
offered.

Now, again, if you can criticize that those pathways are going to shape outcomes because what has been said now about human rights, what has been said about civil society participation in the Chinese ideal attempt to engage in the peace and security expression of peacekeeping, you also have to look at the language coming out from the UN secretary general himself where he is now talking about lighter, more technical peacekeeping mandates; smaller and smaller technical experts missions; talking about the fact that the UN will be a support player; the fact that you now have to think about trying to achieve protection of civilians by non-militarized means political solutions and good officers, right? This language already is sounding a lot like the language and the preferences being exhibited in the way that Chinese elites explain their approach to peacekeeping. So what is now maligned or different in this particular case?

The last two ways that I would think about maligned again, is somehow this charge that China is breaking the rules or that China is confronting the order. Coming in and disposing of parts of it. But I think again, if we look at China's experience, take for example in the human rights regime, it's not really a story now about rule breaking. If we look at the recent Universal Periodic Review, China has understood that it matters who is on the speakers list. It has understood that you can get government-organized NGOs as approved speakers on the speakers list, and it understands that government-organized NGOs will talk about a country's human rights record in a very particular way. None of this is expressly rule breaking per se. It is now utilizing the rules of the system effectively to help support and protect national interests.

If you look at language regarding the responsibility to protect, which was arguably, at first blush, going to be some type of confrontation with sovereignty as a right to now make sovereignty contingent on state performance. Has China really gone out and said that this set of norms is a problem? Their approach most recently has been to advocate that the way that you can advance R2P is by advancing the state. If you can build a highway that connects Khartoum to Darfur, then the government will have an ability to travel to Darfur and witness and understand what are the issues going on in the Darfur area.

You'll meet many a UN official that says, "You know, they've got a point to be made." Is that really rule breaking in the way that they're engaging with the normative debate? I'd argue not. They found ways to take that language and reframe it and recompose it, reconstitute it, to talk much more in line in content with what China's interested in.

Eleanor M. Albert: That's super valid. It's something that I've come across in my own research; that change in how vocal China is being, or its articulation of its priorities, is also not something new. It's just being paid attention to more because it has more capacity now. China is wanting to be more vocal about how it can engage with the UN.

It comes to its interpretation of what the UN charter is. I think the UN has its three pillars, and China doesn't necessarily view them all as purely equal, but perhaps stepped, where it has a priority for the development space because it thinks if you can get development, you will then secondarily make inroads on the security (front), and then as a result, on the rights front. It's just a different vision of how you go about achieving those pillars. That's not necessarily antithetical to the work of the UN, it's just a different approach from what has been previously the norm. And so it's in some ways a bit of an ideological contest, but again, not necessarily new. Contestation has always been present at the UN.

Courtney Fung: Right. I agree with you on those points. I do think though that there is clarity on the way that China is now prioritizing the human rights space. And I think it is kind of counterintuitive. It's a great priority for Chinese diplomats, right? Managing China's human rights footing is very important.

But at the same time, overall, this commitment to the idea that there are universal rights, the idea that economic and social rights are of equal value to civil and political rights, I think we're already moving past that point. There is much more push, as you say, about these stepped arrangements. It's not that these three pillars are equal. There is much more effort now and articulation that development is the fundamental right. They are becoming clearer about what they see as “so-called universal values” just being this expression of Western experience and the reasons why development must be the fundamental right.

You can pull language out of UN documentation that talks about the inability to meet the SDGs, plus low levels of development in terms of sparking conflict. They're not contesting by themselves. They're not contesting from below. They're working within a lot of different rhetoric that helps bolster their particular position.

Eleanor M. Albert: I'm curious how you see China's vision of itself within the Security Council in particular, given that it is the most politicized body. We talked a little bit about vetoing, but what are its priorities within the security space and how does it want to position itself?

Courtney Fung: China is somewhat unique in the sense that if we think about all of the vetoes that have been cast, they've only ever actually vetoed alone one time, in 1999. China has been very cautious about being seen as the block on the international security order functioning. Unlike other players, for example, like the United States, there is no NATO, there is no coalition of the willing, there is no going it alone. There are no alternate platforms for China to say, "Well, if this doesn't work, we can go somewhere else."

The ability then to maintain focus on the bare functioning of the UN Security Council I think has a greater import in a way that states with alternate platforms—they can have their own version of forum shopping in a way that China can't. So there has to be this focus on making sure that the council can do hopefully the bare minimum, if not a little bit more, in order to make the case that the council should maintain its prime position as being the space, the arbiter for international peace and security issues.

It's also very interesting to note that as much as there's been talk about this no-limits partnership (with Russia), actually, there's a lot more caution when it comes to votes that are one way in which you can track what the no-limits partnership is looking like in the UN Security Council space.

In other UN bodies, at the UNGA, at the IAEA, China's been very cautious about committing its abstention votes, and only on very rare occasions will it co-vote with Russia on questions of violence against Ukraine. Again, that highlights this common thread about pragmatism that Chinese diplomats must handle as they go about reckoning on where they should fall.

That leads to a level of coordination that sometimes isn't tracked as much in the popular media, a level of coordination between China and other Western players, whether they're part of the elected rotating 10 or whether they are the P3, France, Great Britain, and the United States, to help with quiet diplomacy, help massage resolution content so they can at least get to a presidential statement on Myanmar. They can at least get to a version of a resolution that China can abstain on.

On areas of emerging security interests that we should be thinking about, it also really is China's engagement on these areas to do with questions of cyber, AI, and standard setting. These are areas [where] we know that China wants to be a first mover. As I mentioned, there are these Global Initiatives for Data Security and the Global Initiative for AI Governance. China's also had a resolution through the UN General Assembly. This is quite unique because China often, A, it's not a pen holder in the UN Security Council, it doesn't lead the first draft, it does not shepherd a resolution through, and B, it does not typically do this at the UN General Assembly, and really the gentleman's agreement is that the P5 should stay out of that UNGA leadership space.

But it's very interesting to have seen that China drove home a by-consensus resolution on AI capacity building within the UN General Assembly. It's the belief that if it can articulate its position first about what AI good governance principles should be, what the value of AI is, this is also in line with interests of the secretary general. China will be able to fix its ideas into the UN, so therefore take national views and try and make them global governance institutional views.

The same thing with cyber. We can see China's very active participation at the council, at the open-ended working group, at the group of governmental experts on cyber issues. It would like a stable internet that respects state sovereignty and cyberspace.

Again, it's engagement in these cyber norm spaces has been very robust and continuous, and something that they write about frequently, the fact that they weren't engaged at the start and that this was a problem. The last thing on this, in this standard setting space, is something to really pay attention to as we narrow that connection between technology and security. Those would be the spaces to see Chinese security engagement.

The views and opinions expressed are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the position of Georgetown University.

Outro

The U.S.-China Nexus is created, produced, and edited by me, Eleanor M. Albert. Our music is from Universal Production Music. Special thanks to Shimeng Tong, Tuoya Wulan, and Amy Vander Vliet. For more initiative programming, videos, and links to events, visit our website at uschinadialogue.georgetown.edu. And don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.