How to encourage China to become a law-abiding member of the rules-based international order

By Hari Har Jnawali, Wilfrid Laurier University

Like many nations, China’s relationship to the rules-based international order has often featured a selective adherence to those rules and a focus on its own interests, sometimes resulting in violating international laws when they’re at odds with Chinese goals.

But China has the ability and opportunity to transform into a law-abiding member of the rules-based international system, which is founded on relationships among states and through international institutions and frameworks, with shared rules and agreements on behaviour.

The international community can support this transformation by engaging China on global human rights and avoiding what the Chinese government considers interference in internal and territorial affairs.

It’s important that China, now a formidable power, embraces the rules-based order to achieve international harmony, strengthen international relations and tackle universal crises like climate change. China has criticized the current international order for failing to address the development gap and promoting alliance-based confrontation, preventing peaceful international relations.

It has proposed replacing the current international order with what it calls “a global community of shared future,” suggesting the current international order isn’t fit to deal with global crises.

Revising the existing order

But the Chinese proposal doesn’t genuinely present an alternative vision that can potentially reform the existing order. Chinese authorities have complex views on international order; they don’t want to dramatically change the existing order because it’s supported China’s transition to a position of global power.

Instead, China wants to revise the existing order by increasing the role of individual nation-states and ensuring human rights standards align with unique national sovereignty priorities.

The Chinese stance provides a window of opportunity for the international community to include China in the international order, transforming it into a law-abiding member by deploying a human rights approach that temporarily prioritizes some rights over others.

If the international community continues to focus on ethnic and Indigenous rights, it’s likely to further alienate China and cause it to disengage from the international order.

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