(This is a slightly edited version of a speech given at the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs and the EU Democracy Shield Special Committee session “China’s Influence in the EU and Globally” on 5 November 2025).
Let me sum up my argument first: China’s challenge to the global governance is primarily driven by its impressive rise of power and structural position in international system. China’s concrete policy behaviour is important, of course, but follows second. So, for the EU to compete effectively with China, it also has to focus first on own power and structural position.
With a bit of simplification, we can understand global governance to be driven by rules and power. As for the power, China’s rise in recent decades, but also the rise of other countries in the Global South, mean than the relative position of the EU and its Western partners have been declining. As for the rules of behaviour, these are changing as well, and not just because of China, but also Russia, and, importantly, also the US – previously the key supporter of the international order.
As a result, the global governance seems to be shifting away from what used to be called the “liberal rules-based order” to a more realist power driven system, in which “might makes right”. Although the EU has long preferred the global ‘rule of law’ system, it now needs to cope with the system in which direct power will probably be much more important. And that is happening at the moment when the international power and position of the EU is relatively weaker than before.
In this emerging system, China will be a crucial actor for the EU to deal with it. So, what does China want and how it wants to achieve it?
My understanding is that China wants a world which is safe for its authoritarian political system, a world which doesn’t endanger the domestic political monopoly of the Chinese Communist Party. Such a world does not necessarily need China to be a global hegemonic power. But China certainly prefers a world which is not dominated by the West – militarily, economically, politically, or ideationally. Hence, China has been long calling for a multipolar world.
It has been China’s view for decades that the world is heading towards such multipolarity, meaning that China is gaining and the Western countries are losing, relatively speaking. And China has been actively trying to shape this trajectory by various means.
In the domain of global governance and international law, China’s approach cannot be simply characterized as either a status quo or revisionist power. China has benefitted greatly from the existing international institutions, and it is not in China’s interest to undermine this system entirely. Many of the features of the current global governance are in China’s favour, including the dominant position of the five permanent members in the UN Security Council or the open trading and financial system.
Yet China is not in favour of some of the other aspects of the global governance, such as the liberal democratic norms and human rights or the more ambitious trading rules – in short, rules which could limit China’s sovereignty. China calls for the changes in the institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank which are dominated by the Western countries. At the general level, China often tends to be against the idea of binding treaties.
China also recognizes that the current international order has not worked very well in many domains, and its effectiveness has likely been getting worse in recent years.
Thus, China has applied a two-pronged strategy. First, China has worked within the existing international organizations. It actively participates in the processes of the UN, tries to gain leadership positions, and shape how the UN institutions work. China has been quite successful in pushing its state-centric views, for instance when it comes to the norms of the human rights, sovereignty, but also issues such as internet governance. My previous research has shown that most countries in the world, especially in the Global South, tend to vote and speak more similarly to China than to the EU (and the US) in the UN General Assembly.
The second strategy is that China has established many new international institutions. These include groups such as Shanghai Cooperation Organization, BRICS, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, or East Asia Summit, where China is among the most influential countries. Notably, in 2000, China started the first regional exchange mechanism – the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, and then established similar mechanisms to cover Latin America and Caribbean, Arab countries, and Central and Eastern Europe, among others.
In 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative was announced, and it has served as a sort of umbrella above these regional institutions, including most countries of the Global South.
These institutions are not formal organizations and can rather be understood as flexible mechanisms allowing for regular exchanges, building relationships, shaping perceptions, and flexible dealmaking. China has conveniently positioned itself in the centre of this new ‘hub and spoke’ system.
More recently China started announcing a new series of global initiatives, covering now domains of the Development, Security, Civilization, and very recently also the Governance.
These international institutions and initiatives are also driven by the normative framework of Community of Common Future for the Mankind, which has become a conceptual centrepiece of China’s foreign affairs under current Chinese president Xi Jinping.
Although there is a lot of criticism that these initiatives are vague and lack concrete steps, China has repeatedly proven it can mobilize a lot of diplomatic and economic activity, and it can shape international discourse and perceptions. China uses these institutions in flexible ways to build support for any current issue at given time. If the existing international organizations slide towards more irrelevance, China may increasingly lean on its own mechanisms to shape international processes.
To conclude, China has invested a great effort in shaping global governance to its liking and is very active on the multiple fronts. The acknowledgement that China’s role is multifaceted and nuanced is a necessary first step for an effective foreign policy response of the EU. Moreover, much of China’s success in influencing international institutions can be attributed to its rise of power, which gives China capacity to act.
The EU should recognize China as a long-term institutional and normative competitor within the global governance. The EU should be active, persistent, and realistic in pursuing its interests. Most importantly, the EU-China competition will be driven by who has the leverage so it is crucial that the EU backs up its positions with power – economic, financial, diplomatic, and even military.
The production of the article was funded by the EU NextGenerationEU through the Recovery and Resilience Plan for Slovakia under the project No. 09I03-03-V04-00595”.
