China Is Gaslighting the Developing World

When Hanoi declared its support for China’s proposed “community of shared destiny” during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Vietnam last December, it was hailed by Beijing. China wants a post-American world order of its own design, and though Xi’s vision is as ambitious as it is fuzzy, Beijing is building its project largely on the cachet of public goods, including $1 trillion in now-precarious loans.

Since taking power, Xi has built off existing, if still sometimes nascent, Sino-centric organizations: the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO); the BRICS grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and now four other states; and the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA), a Eurasian talk shop. Over the past three years, still more initiatives have been added to this alphabet soup of projects: the Global Security Initiative (GSI), the Global Civilization Initiative (GCI), and the Global Development Initiative (GDI).

But while many of these programs may be appealing to the global south, it’s unclear whether these countries really want a post-American future—let alone a Beijing-dominated one. China’s vision of multilateralism is camouflage for its own hegemonic ambitions, not a sincere goal.

The current U.S.-led system is fracturing. G-7 GDP, based on purchasing power parity, has declined to about 30 percent of global GDP, slightly smaller than that of BRICS, and many pledges, from climate to poverty reduction, have failed. That has left countries receptive to China’s overtures, which claim to foster a sensibility of “democratic multilateralism,” or cooperation based on the antithesis of the U.S.-led order. Military alliances are rejected as Cold War relics; human rights are economic-centered, and political rights, minority rights, an independent judiciary, and free speech are restricted as a result. Beijing claims to offer a non-Western path to development, suggesting China’s state-driven model as an alternative. The incipient Chinese displacement of U.S. stewardship is, not coincidentally, absent from the imagined faux utopia that Beijing’s initiatives paint.

Yet so far, all of this is aspirational. While the SCO, BRICS, and CICA serve as talking shops, they have no major achievements. When there was a crisis in Kazakhstan, it was Russia that intervened, not the SCO. When Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, Beijing ignored the violation of its purported core principles of sovereignty and noninterference.

Despite Xi’s overreach, there is a deficit of both supply and demand for leadership by Beijing and a lot of multialignment and hedging in the global south. Xi might make “Asia for Asians” speeches, as he did at a 2014 CICA meeting, but it has been China’s aggression in the South China Sea and its bullying of neighbors over projects such as THAAD in South Korea that have determined the responses. U.S. alliances have strengthened, as has a deepening intra-Asian cooperation in response.

Even as its economy stumbles and developing-nation debt to Chinese creditors grows (and Belt and Road loans and investments diminish), Beijing continues to have an outsized global economic footprint. But will Xi’s appeal to a multialigned global south fade? Just ask Zimbabwean or Sri Lankan debtors about the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Philippine maritime officials about respect for sovereignty, or climate activists about the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. A 2023 poll by the Pew Research Center indicated that of 24 nations surveyed, a median of two-thirds had a negative view of China, including Brazil, India, and South Korea. A 2017 Pew poll showed pluralities in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam saw China’s rise as a threat.

Yet Beijing says its GSI has “support and appreciation” from more than 100 countries. It calls for a commitment to “respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries,” “common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security,” “the purposes and principles of the U.N. Charter,” and “resolving differences and disputes between countries through dialogue and consultation.”

The GSI is a recycled version of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, a pillar of China’s official foreign policy since Zhou Enlai introduced them in 1954 following the signing of the Sino-Indian Agreement.

On its face, what’s not to like? For many in the global south, backing Xi’s initiatives entails no specific costs or commitments, while rejecting them risks offending China. In the real world, however, some are more equal than others. But with the possible exception of Pakistan, Beijing is not a security provider. Nor is there a hint of the subtext: that most of China’s initiatives are aimed at delegitimizing and displacing U.S. power. Countries that exist under the shelter of Washington’s wing might love to complain about it—but they don’t necessarily want it to disappear.

In theory, nonaggression, noninterference, respect for sovereignty, and peaceful resolution of disputes offer small states the hope of not being bullied or coerced by larger powers. In practice, things work out differently. As China’s economic and military capacity has grown, however, it has morphed into noninterference—with Chinese characteristics. Look no further than China’s silence on Russia’s war, a massive violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty; its now toned-down “wolf warrior” diplomacy; and its economic coercion, as Australia, Lithuania, the Philippines, Taiwan, and others suddenly found many of their exports unwelcome for any slightest criticism of China.

Beijing is playing some low-risk mediation roles. But on major world problems, China’s often activist diplomacy is smoke and mirrors, not problem-solving. In February 2023, China issued its 12-point peace plan for Ukraine into a vacuum, with no serious diplomatic follow-up. Middle East envoy Zhai Jun went on a tour of the region in late October, followed by China hosting a meeting of Arab and Islamic leaders in Beijing the next month calling for an end to the Israel-Hamas war. Again, to no effect.

Xi’s diplomacy seems more performative for the global south than practical problem-solving. The oft-cited Chinese facilitation of the fragile Saudi-Iranian détente in 2023 is an exception: The ceremony in Beijing reflected its growing influence with a thickening nexus of economic ties in the Gulf (and the Saudis trying to boost leverage over U.S. President Joe Biden).

Another Xi-ist project, the GCI, which calls for dialogue reflecting respect for “diversity of civilizations,” appears aimed at delegitimizing the U.S. notion of universal values such as freedom of speech, expression, and democracy: All civilizations are equal, so let’s have dialogue to enhance understanding. It is, again, risk-free for countries in the global south to give it a nod but of little consequence.

The third scheme, the GDI, is the most serious and likely most legitimizing of Beijing’s efforts. Conceptually, it is essentially a repackaging of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development—poverty alleviation, food security, green development, climate action, etc. The BRI institutionalized a trend of China exporting its industrial overcapacity. Given China’s massive BRI infrastructure projects, with 150 nations joining (at least 90 projects in the global south), and to some extent its own development experience, it has some street cred. Since 2022, Beijing has held a series of meetings on South-South cooperation pursuing GDI goals.

However, as China’s financial crisis and developing-nation debt mounted (China holds some 37 percent of total developing-nation debt), BRI lending shrunk by more than 90 percent, and a downsized BRI is focused on IT connectivity and green tech. Yet 58 percent of current BRI lending is in the form of rescue loans to China’s debtors. Despite being the world’s largest bilateral creditor, Beijing has not joined the G-7-centered Paris Club on restructuring developing-nation debt, and despite committing to the G-20 Common Framework, China has only occasionally cooperated with it. Instead, Beijing has often stymied other creditors’ efforts at debt relief, acting bilaterally toward its debtors. Nonetheless, the problem for the United States and G-7, which have not reformed and expanded IMF and World Bank resources to alleviate the debt crisis or provided comparable infrastructure in the global south, is that you can’t beat something with nothing.

The BRI and resentment of U.S./G-7 dominance, symbolized by the U.S. dollar, are drivers of BRICS. China, whose economy is larger than all other members combined, envisions BRICS, as it expands, as a Sino-centric network, a competitor if not to the Bretton Woods institutions. Many members see it more as a platform to demonstrate a new multipolarity countering the G-7 but have strikingly different agendas. For example, India and Brazil have their own ambitions to be the voices of the global south, evident at last year’s G-20 meeting in New Delhi—the first that Xi skipped. New Delhi has little interest in helping out Beijing.

When it comes to hopes of a new financial order and de-dollarization, the BRICS New Development Bank is small beer. Despite a goal of de-dollarization, some two-thirds of its $33 billion project lending is in U.S. dollars. Some of the group’s new members—Egypt, Ethiopia—are leading candidates for debt defaults. Currency swaps with the yuan and other local currencies could offer some insulation in another global financial crisis, but replacing the dollar will remain a distant dream so long as China maintains currency controls.

In sum, the BRICS popularity—growing in direct proportion to U.S./G-7 inwardness and economic nationalism—appears more as a collective thumb in the eye by the global south to the West than an alternative. Many developing countries see BRICS as potentially providing modest benefits at low cost and, no less important, as a lever to signal the United States to pay more attention.

The U.S.-designed post-World War II Bretton Woods economic and political system, facilitated by a U.S. security umbrella and access to its relatively open markets, was the secret sauce that fostered unprecedented growth and stability, though initially mostly limited to Europe and Japan. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the benefits spread globally, lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in places such as Brazil, China, and India, fostering a global middle class.

The U.S. liberal order enhanced U.S. global primacy but benefited all participants (none more than China), was consensual, and helped legitimize U.S. power. However, the 2008 financial crisis and now growing U.S. economic nationalism and events from the Iraq War to the crisis in Gaza widened the credibility gap between the West and the global south, and that sense of legitimacy has eroded.

China offers few security guarantees or a nuclear umbrella and is not much of a diplomatic problem-solver. Beijing’s provision of public goods borrows a leaf from the U.S. playbook. But developing-nation indebtedness to China, a deficit of trade rules, economic coercion, and not very open markets do not a viable economic alternative make. Beijing’s budding initiatives thus far do not add up to a system promising peace and prosperity in a Sino-centric order.

Moreover, China is beginning to rival the United States in hypocrisy. This is evident in the gap between its professed principles, posturing, and actual behavior—from gaming the World Trade Organization system to economic coercion and protectionism to its military assertiveness from the Himalayas to the East and South China Seas based on dubious and discredited sovereignty claims.

When it comes to building a new order, China doesn’t have the sort of soft power or attractiveness of culture, openness, and opportunity that helped power U.S. dominance since World War II. Despite tensions, some 300,000 Chinese students flock to the United States every year—while just 350 U.S. students are left in China. Unlike other Asian states, there is not yet a Chinese equivalent to Bollywood, K-pop, Korean movies, or Japanese pop culture from Pokémon to Marie Kondo. A culture of growing censorship means there may well never be.

China appears, at best, an immature great power, its aspirations far exceeding its grasp and appeal. Beijing’s wannabe post-U.S. order faces a legitimacy deficit. As the world endures what the IMF calls “geoeconomic fragmentation,” it’s not obvious how either country “wins” a U.S.-China competition.