"Examining US–China strategic competition: The case of China’s global initiatives at the United Nations Secretariat" - by CWP alum Courtney J. Fung
The well-reported multilateral rise of the People’s Republic of China (PRC or China) is presumed to challenge US leadership in a Western-dominated United Nations (UN) system. Among China’s many multilateral contributions are its advance of “Global Initiatives,” which China frames as “global public goods.” This paper applies sociological interpretations of power, specifically the Barnett & Duvall 2005 typology, to investigate the different strategies used by China to seed three of these Global Initiatives within and upon the UN Secretariat: the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, and the Global Civilization Initiative. While these Global Initiatives are still in their infancy, the research finds variation in how China is approaching each Initiative within the UN system and that these “global public goods” are sites of US–China strategic competition. The research draws from primary and secondary sources produced by PRC and UN elites and foreign policy researchers, and is supplemented by interviews of officials of the PRC, the United States, and the United Nations.
Keywords China, global public goods, United Nations, GDI, GSI, GCI, United States, multilateral politics
Courtney J. Fung is Associate Professor in the Department of Security Studies & Criminology at Macquarie University. She is concurrently Non-Resident Fellow at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University; Asia Society Australia; LSE IDEAS, and the Lowy Institute. Courtney is on the editorial board of Contemporary Security Policy, the Australian Journal of International Affairs and H-DIPLO ISSF. Her research examines how rising powers address the norms and provisions for global governance and international security, with an empirical focus on China.
Courtney was previously an associate professor with tenure in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong; a research fellow with the East Asia Institute (Seoul) in their Program on Peace, Governance, and Development in East Asia, and a post-doctoral research fellow with the now Columbia-Harvard China and the World Program.
Courtney is author of China and Intervention at the UN Security Council: Reconciling Status (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), which explains the effects of status on China's varied response to intervention and foreign-imposed regime change at the United Nations. Her book was shortlisted for the BISA LHM Ling Outstanding First Book Prize and received the 2019 - 2020 HKU Research Output Prize for the Faculty of Social Sciences. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Contemporary Security Policy, Cooperation and Conflict, Global Governance, International Affairs, Journal of Cyber Policy, Journal of Global Security Studies, Journal of Contemporary China, PS: Political Science & Politics, The China Quarterly, Third World Quarterly, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, and International Peacekeeping.
Courtney holds a PhD in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. She serves on The Fletcher School Board of Advisors and the National Foundation for Australia-China Relations. She will be a a Fulbright Scholar at Georgetown University in 2024/Q2 through the DFAT-funded Professional Scholarship in Australian-American Alliance Studies.
Photo Credit: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/13691481261472305
