China urged to win ‘hearts and minds’ to fill global leadership void as US retreats

As the United States undergoes a strategic shift in its global priorities, experts in China are pushing Beijing’s vision for a new world order – but they say the country must improve its messaging. Leading political scientist and government adviser Zheng Yongnian said China had two guiding principles: maintaining its agency while engaging with the world; and extending the ladder it climbed to help other nations ascend. Zheng made the remarks on Tuesday at the International Forum on Mutual Learning Among Civilisations, hosted by the Macau government. In an interview on the sidelines of the forum, Zheng said modernisation had often been misunderstood as Westernisation. He said nations or economies that simply copied or transplanted Western experiences were “highly likely to fail”. “I believe China’s modernisation – at least from our perspective – is not about replacing Western-style modernisation but rather about offering another important alternative to other countries,” he said. “Personally, I don’t think China will promote its own model to other countries in the way the West has done. But other countries can certainly draw references from our model.” Zheng added that the China model included narratives and lessons from other nations. Beijing has stepped up efforts to fill the void in global governance as Washington retreats from its traditional leadership role on the world stage under US President Donald Trump and his “America first” policy. In September, China unveiled a five-point plan for reform called the Global Governance Initiative calling for multilateralism, sovereign equality, and developmental autonomy free from ideological conditions. Beijing has previously proposed three other such initiatives – on development, security and civilisation. Cui Shoujun, an international relations professor at Renmin University of China, said the current design of global governance systems – set by a few countries after the end of the World War II – was inadequate. “The majority of nations have long been positioned as rule adapters or rule acceptors, which often leads to a strong sense of governance frustration among these countries,” Cui said during a panel discussion at the forum in Macau on Wednesday. He said that by trying to include “different civilisations” in the rule-making process, China was offering a new framework for global governance. “Civilisational diversity should be viewed as a resource for governance, not a cost,” Cui said. That view was echoed by Kin Phea, director of the International Relations Institute of Cambodia, who also attended the two-day forum. “When two big giants are competing, smaller countries like Cambodia sometimes become the victim and are forced to take sides, which is a bad choice,” he said in an interview. He added that the US-China rivalry remained the biggest challenge for Beijing in trying to promote its narrative. While tensions have eased between Washington and Beijing after a leaders’ summit in late October, the competition had escalated – with spiralling tariffs and supply chain interruptions – since Trump’s return to the White House. Another challenge for China in spreading its vision for the world order is how to grow its soft power and reach foreign audiences, according to David Ferguson, the honorary chief English editor of Foreign Languages Press in Beijing. Ferguson said China must improve by moving beyond its reliance on long-serving, loyal Communist Party members to craft its international messaging, adding that such figures were often poorly suited to engaging a modern global audience. “They have a very strong role to play in terms of the formal discourse, but the formal discourse is not going to win the argument for China in the international battle for hearts and minds,” he said. According to Ferguson, the country needs to target young people who “have not spent decades being brainwashed with anti-China propaganda”. “Whoever controls the megaphone controls the message, and at the moment, the West controls a megaphone,” he said, adding that America in particular had an abundance of soft power based on wealth, force and iconic messages. “But China does have one huge advantage in the weight of numbers,” he said. “If you can use enough people to battle at a wall, eventually the walls start to crumble and fall.”

China urged to win ‘hearts and minds’ to fill global leadership void as US retreats

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Experts pushing Beijing’s vision for a new world order say nation can offer an ‘important alternative’ but it needs to improve its messaging

Experts pushing Beijing’s vision for a new world order say nation can offer an ‘important alternative’ but it needs to improve its messaging