Global Multilateralism Is Dead

Institutions such as the World Trade Organization, the UN Human Rights Council, and the World Health Organization no longer work

Conventional wisdom and Western policies long believed that an economically prosperous China would ultimately become more democratic. For better or worse, the opposite has happened. China is today far more autocratic than at any point in modern history, something the West, in its misguided approach to embracing China, has de facto enabled. Matt Pottinger, former Deputy National Security Advisor to President Trump, eloquently captures what happened: “We saw a baby shark and thought that we could transform it into a dolphin….We kept feeding the shark and the shark got bigger and bigger. And now we're dealing with a formidable, great white.”

The great white has now hijacked many of the multilateral institutions that define the rules-based international order, effectively killing hope of coordination on global challenges. Consider the functioning of the World Trade Organization, the UN Human Rights Council, and the World Health Organization and how they’ve dealt with unfair trade practices, an ongoing genocide, and the COVID pandemic.

World Trade Organization

In 2001, the Western world was convinced it was nourishing a future dolphin and worked diligently to bring China into the global rules-based trading system; to do so, China made a set of commitments in order to enter into the World Trade Organization, summarized at the time by Nicholas Lardy (emphasis added):

Summary of Commitments
China’s commitments to further open its economy in order to gain membership in the World Trade Organization are sweeping. They include significant reductions in tariffs…the gradual elimination of all quotas and licenses that have restricted the flow of some imports; a substantial reduction in the use of state trading… and the opening of critical service sectors such as telecommunications, distribution, banking, insurance, asset management, and securities to foreign direct investment. In addition, the protocol governing its accession sets forth China’s commitment to abide by international standards in the protection of intellectual property….

How has China done in fulfilling these commitments over the past 20+ years? In short, very poorly. Many of the violations are obvious, and are well-known to the global business community. The state remains an enormous player in many sectors, intellectual property protections are weak at best, and many critical service sectors in China remain closed to foreign ownership. Rather than become more market-oriented as they indicated, and the world expected, they would, China has become more socialist and centrally-controlled. Of course, they created new phrases to suggest compliance (“Capitalism with Chinese characteristics” was among my favorites) as they simply ignored or broke the rules. And the political reform that was expected simply didn’t materialize.

The US-China Relations Act of 2000 requires the US Trade Representative to provide an annual summary of China’s compliance with the terms of their ascension into the WTO. The most recent report, published in February 2023, captures the status of Chinese compliance (emphasis added):

China also has a long record of violating, disregarding and evading WTO rules to achieve its industrial policy objectives. China continues to use numerous and constantly evolving unfair, non-market and distortive trade policies and practices in pursuit of harmful and anticompetitive industrial policy objectives. At the same time, China has sought to frustrate WTO oversight mechanisms, such as through its poor record of adhering to its WTO transparency obligations.

Consider that last line, which gets to the heart of the matter, and reminds me of a Politico headline on the twentieth-anniversary of China’s entry into the WTO: “China joined rules-based trading system — then broke the rules.” WTO disputes are so numerous and the rules so inconsistently enforced that it’s really hard to think the institution is functioning as advertised. It’s also impossible to believe we’re still dealing with a dolphin.

UN Human Rights Council

And it’s not just in economic and trade matters that China has undermined multilateral institutions. The United National Human Rights Council offers another case. The fact that global institutions such as the United Nations Human Rights Council are unable (unwilling?) to recognize the ongoing genocide in Chinese-occupied East Turkestan (Xinjiang) is a disgrace. (To learn more, you might enjoy watching my conversation with Uyghur dissidents Rushan Abbas and her husband Hakeem Idris).

After multiple delays and postponements, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet issued a report about the atrocities in Xinjiang in 2022. A Foreign Policy article titled “The United Nations is Scared of Calling Out China’s Genocide” summarized its findings: “confirmation that those imprisoned were tortured by being beaten, that women suffered violations of reproductive rights through the coercive enforcement of family planning policies (including sterilizations), and that camp inmates were used for forced labor—effectively enslaved—by state-run work programs.”

Ultimately, the report concluded that China “may” be committing crimes against humanity and that a legal process (such as one conducted by the International Criminal Court) would need to take place before any final determination could be made. Also noteworthy is that Commissioner Bachelet issued the report minutes before her term ended. Unsurprisingly, the Chinese denounced the report as politically motivated and intended to smear and slander the regime by interfering in the country’s internal affairs.

Meanwhile, groups including Amnesty International, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, and the New Lines Institute have been crystal clear in describing the Chinese regime as conducting a systematic genocide and cultural erasure of muslims in Xinjiang, violating the 1948 Genocide Convention. The governments of the United States, Britain, Canada, and France, among others, have also called what’s happening a genocide.

Sadly, the world is doing nothing, thanks in large part to China’s sustained campaign to undermine global institutions. As noted by Azeem Ibrahim, “China’s diplomats operate in force and with confidence in the halls of the United Nations—stymieing the work of the Security Council and the individual U.N. agencies…” Again, impossible to assume we’re dealing with a dolphin.

World Health Organization

And of course, the COVID pandemic exposed the World Health Organization as a body no longer working towards its founding purpose: to coordinate country efforts to control and eradicate communicable diseases by supporting and developing healthcare capacities around the world to improve global health.

In a piece titled “The WHO and China: Dereliction of Duty,” Michael Collins of the Council on Foreign Relations highlights how the World Health Organization (and specifically its Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus) emerged as a defender and promoter of the Chinese government’s COVID response - despite mounting evidence that the CCP was more concerned about covering up the outbreak than warning the world of potential risks. Collins notes how Tedros went further than just praising China; he criticized governments around the world for limiting travel to and from the People’s Republic. In addition, the WHO (and specifically Tedros) delayed declaring COVID a “public health emergency of international concern” while the virus spread rapidly, slowing a coordinated response to contain the disease at a critical time.

Of course, the fog of uncertainty might help explain some of these actions. But surely a multilateral global health body would intensely focus on determining the origin of the virus so as to mitigate the risk of another pandemic, right? Unfortunately, that doesn’t appear to be a WHO goal. After dragging its feet on multiple occasions, WHO has stopped investigating the origins of the virus, “citing ongoing challenges over attempts to conduct crucial studies in China.”

Would it surprise you to learn that China was instrumental in getting Dr. Tedros elected Director-General of WHO? Or that upon becoming Director-General, one of his first official statements was a reiteration of his belief in “One China” based in Beijing? To learn more about China’s attempt to hijack the World Health Organization, I’d encourage you to read a 2017 piece by Yanzhong Huang which he aptly titled “Tedros, Taiwan, and Trump: What They Tell Us About China’s Growing Clout in Global Health.”

At the end of the day, as noted by Michael Collins, “the WHO’s weak response to China’s mishandling of the COVID-19 outbreak has laundered China’s image at the expense of the WHO’s credibility.”

Global Multilateralism is Dead

It’s time for the world to recognize that the great white shark has consumed many of our global institutions. China has undermined the credibility of most multilateral organizations (via explicit efforts such as the Belt & Road Initiative), and as this becomes increasingly obvious to nations around the world, more and more nations will disengage from the so-called “rules-based international order” as they pick sides in the US China war. Cooperation on important global issues (such as climate change) will be increasingly difficult to achieve. As a result, the world will continue to split into two global ecosystems - one led by China, and the other led by Western nations. Leaders need to plan and act accordingly.

About Vikram Mansharamani

Dr. Mansharamani is a global generalist who tries to look beyond the short term view that tends to dominate today’s agenda. He spends his time speaking with leaders in business, government, academia, and journalism…and prides himself on voraciously consuming a wide variety of books, magazines, articles, TV shows, and podcasts. LinkedIn twice listed him as their #1 Top Voice for Global Economics and Worthprofiled him on their list of the 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. He has taught at Yale and Harvard and has a PhD and two masters degrees from MIT. He is also the author of THINK FOR YOURSELF: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence as well as BOOMBUSTOLOGY: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst. Follow him on Twitter or LinkedIn.