In 2013, in a speech in Moscow, Xi Jinping floated the idea of mankind being a community of shared future or common destiny. In the decade that has followed, this phrase began to shift from being a description of the world’s interconnected nature to underpinning the idea of a more proactive foreign policy that aims to shape a favourable external environment for China. 

Since 2021, however, with the launch of the Global Development Initiative (GDI), the Global Security Initiative (GSI) and the Global Civilisation Initiative (GCI), the concept of mankind being a community of common destiny has been fleshed out as Beijing’s key proposition to reform global governance. To achieve this objective, the Chinese leadership is seeking to bring about fundamental institutional and normative changes to global governance, in a way that would reassert the interests of the state over individual human rights.

Xi launched the GDI in September 2021, with the stated goal of placing “development high on the global macro policy agenda” and fostering “global development partnerships that are more equal and balanced.” The Chinese leadership has linked GDI to the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. Compared to Xi’s signature Belt and Road Initiative, which largely covers transport and energy infrastructure projects, GDI projects are smaller in scale and focus on domains like poverty reduction, food security, pandemic and vaccines, climate change, industrialisation, digital economy, digital connectivity and development finance. 

The GDI project pool comprises around 200 projects, in addition to the 32 broad deliverables that were agreed upon during a High-level Dialogue on Global Development held in June 2022 in Beijing. A formal grouping called the ‘Group of Friends’ of GDI at the UN, comprising 70 countries, has been established to iron out specific projects. Beijing says that nearly 100 countries and international organisations have expressed support for the Initiative. 

The GDI’s implementation is primarily led by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but entails Chinese agencies partnering with established multinational institutions. This is different from how BRI has been implemented, a distinction that is important to note. Domestically, a cooling economy and weak returns on external investment have diminished the appetite for big-ticket projects and lending. Meanwhile, internationally, BRI projects have been criticised for being economically unviable, extractive, environmentally damaging and engendering financial and political risks. 

Through the GDI, and specifically by focussing on capacity building and experience sharing, Beijing is looking to rebrand and re-boot its economic diplomacy…

Through the GDI, and specifically by focussing on capacity building and experience sharing, Beijing is looking to rebrand and re-boot its economic diplomacy, positioning itself as a preferred development partner for the Global South that can do more than simply build infrastructure, and a responsible major power whose developmental successes serve as lessons for others.

In comparison to GDI, the GSI and GCI are far more nebulous in terms of their implementation. The GSI was announced in April 2022 in the form of six core principles or commitments; however, it took nearly a year for the Chinese government to issue a concept paper fleshing out its tangible implications. This is perhaps an indication of significant internal discussion and debate within the Chinese policy-making ecosystem around the implications and positioning of GSI. 

In the end, the concept paper outlined 20 cooperation priorities and five platforms and mechanisms. They imply that GSI brings together existing Chinese security policy perspectives and measures across different domains – including areas like law-enforcement, defence, cybersecurity, biosecurity, space, etc – under one rhetorical umbrella, while indicating a willingness to more proactively engage in issues of global security. 

The primary animating force for the GSI appears to be the need to counter what Beijing believes is a Cold-War-like containment effort by the United States. To do this, the GSI decries the concept of “collective security” or bloc alignment as relics of the past, specifically targeting NATO and America’s Indo-Pacific Strategy. At the same time, it stresses the importance of sovereign independence, inviolability of territorial integrity and equality of states. 

In this context, GSI proposes a rather vague norm of “common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security.” Within this framework it argues for “indivisible security” i.e., the indivisibility between individual security and common security, which requires respecting the “legitimate security concerns” of others. What this means in practice, however, is vague and perhaps somewhat akin to the idea of a major power detente and a world of spheres of influence, along the lines of the 1800s Concert of Europe.

The GCI is the final pillar of the concept of community of common destiny. It was formally announced in March 2023. There is no formal structure or group for GCI’s implementation and most GCI projects, such as those around education, media, literature, art, tourism, and youth exchanges, are bilateral in nature or leverage established diplomatic platforms. 

But the projects are not what matter when it comes to the GCI; what is relevant is the normative shift that it seeks to engender in global governance. The GCI argues that modernisation does not imply westernisation and that civilisational diversity is a basic feature of the world, which must be respected. In this context, it calls for dialogue between civilisations rather than estrangement. 

While this sounds rather benign, the implications of these arguments are pernicious. First, the GCI applies a civilisational frame to governance values and the norm of state sovereignty. It also emphasises the particularity of human rights. Such a shift globally could lend legitimacy to regressive and discriminatory practices under the garb of cultural particularities. By doubling down on the principle of state sovereignty, it also limits the tools at the international community’s disposal to counter gross violations of individual rights. 

The Communist Party appears optimistic that the cumulative effect of the normative intervention that it is undertaking through these initiatives will bolster regime legitimacy and security.

Second, the GCI applies a state-centric lens to the global discourse on governance values and rights. In doing so, it places the state and, to a certain degree, community interests over individual interests. This portends a fundamental shift potentially eroding decades of progress in advancing individual rights. Third, the GCI conflates liberal values with Westernisation, thereby adding a geopolitical tinge to liberal perspectives on political, civil, social and economic rights, and undermining them under the guise of respecting diversity. 

The Communist Party appears optimistic that the cumulative effect of the normative intervention that it is undertaking through these initiatives will bolster regime legitimacy and security. If it is successful, the outcome, however, will likely be a world where statist perspectives triumph over individual rights, diversity would justify regressive practices and great powers keep the peace by accepting each other’s spheres of influence.

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Click here to read a Q&A with Manoj Kewalramani on ‘Reading the People’s Daily, Daily’.

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