Addressing Global Chaos: Is China’s Alternative World Order Really Alternative?

The Xinhua Institute, a think tank affiliated with the state-media agency of the same name, recently published a report presenting China’s ambition to “reform and improve” global governance in response to what it calls the current “global chaos” (世界乱局). In this context, China’s self-prescribed role today rests on a deliberately layered identification as the world’s largest developing country, a natural member of the Global South, and a permanent member of the UN Security Council – a combination of a systemic insider and “anti-hegemonic” challenger.

While the document does not bring forth novel elements, it encapsulates Beijing’s proposed “solutions” to the current global governance crisis. It promotes the Global Governance Initiative (GGI) and follows its guidelines for the international arena. A close reading reveals that Beijing does not seem to pursue a profoundly revisionist agenda, rather – and not unlike other powers – it focuses on changing the power balance within the UN to its advantage.

Who Is to Blame for the “Global Chaos?”

Xinhua’s report argues that the “global chaos” is intensifying and the international system with the UN at its core is facing growing challenges. This view is illustrated by the US’ surprise decapitation of the Venezuelan regime in January, followed by Donald Trump’s threats to seize Greenland, the US’ announced withdrawal from 66 international organizations, the establishment of the controversial “Board of Peace,” and the ongoing war in the Middle-East.

It is unsurprising that the report identifies the US as the culprit and primary source of today’s global disorder. The report denounces Washington’s “hegemonic behavior,” which “disregards international law and the basic norms of international relations, challenging justice with its power and trampling on righteousness for its own interests.” While the report focuses on the US, it also mentions the British-French strikes in Syria (leaving out that they targeted a suspected underground facility of the Islamic State group).

It is worth noting that Beijing does not perceive this trend as a rupture. While in Europe, the Trump administration’s recent moves have sent shockwaves and raised existential questions about the transatlantic relationship, they are often attributed to “Trumpism” or even to the US president’s personal character. This perception is paired with a hope for a “post-Trump restoration.” Beijing, on the other hand, as outlined in a previous Xinhua report, views recent events as consistent with its long-held reading of US foreign policy and its historical trajectory.

China and the UN

The UN was established in the aftermath of the Second World War by its victors with the primary aim to maintain international order and security. The Western countries built their contributions to its conceptualization on political traditions inherited from the Enlightenment and more particularly from Kantian cosmopolitanism. In this framework, nation states are conceptually seen as fundamental political units and expected to act rationally. But this foundational premise of the international order is now showing cracks. The rise of gerontocracy and personalist politics are reminders that when it comes to autocratic regimes, the interests of a regime and its political elites are conflated with the ones of the nation they stand to represent. States can behave in ways that can contradict what in a liberal international order is understood as their national socio-economic, security, and political interests.

Beijing’s relation to the UN has shifted over the last decade. China once treated international institutions as pillars of a “US-led world order”. Now, it sees and presents the UN as the indispensable core of global governance, whose authority must be “defended and respected” (坚持和维护). The Xinhua report points to the UN’s “lack of capacity for action” (行动力缺乏) as an enabling factor of the “global chaos”. Order and peace, in this reading, are understood by Beijing primarily as products of a top-down authority.

When Xi Jinping addressed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization at the Tianjin Summit in September 2025, he introduced the GGI as a plan to “reform” global governance. This was largely perceived as China’s bid to overhaul the international order, yet there is little reason to believe that the GGI is effectively posing a greater challenge to the structure of the current world order than other revisionist powers.

Beijing’s Vision of Global Power Legitimacy

At the core of Beijing’s vision of the international order sits the principle of sovereign equality – enshrined in Article 2(1) of the UN Charter, which guarantees identical legal standing to all member states regardless of their size, wealth, or military power. Beijing has made this principle the cornerstone of its international strategy, pairing it with calls for the “democratization of international relations” – narrowly understood as majority rule among states.

This call is intertwined with Beijing’s intent to “help” countries which Beijing labels as belonging to the “Global South” to “enhance their institutional capacity and strengthen their voice.” By borrowing elements of the post-colonial rhetoric and by positioning itself as “correcting” the historical Western dominance, China is aiming to assemble a durable voting majority at the UN fora. For instance, by the end of 2024, 119 UN member states – 62 percent of the total – endorsed China’s preferred formulation on Taiwan. As the Xinhua report puts it: China aims to drive a shift “from minority-leadership to broad participation” in global governance and its rhetoric of empowering the “Global South” directly serves this purpose.

However, China’s revisionism is only partial and can be found in its efforts to “break the Western human rights hegemony.” The Xinhua report is revealing in this regard as the term of “human rights” (人权) does not appear once. In its place, “people-centered approach” (以人为本) appears – a concept systematically subordinating political and civil rights to the “right to development” and to what the report refers to as a “sense of gain.” Visibly, Deng Xiaoping’s model based on economic growth, prosperity, security, and stability – instead of political freedoms as pendants of the authority of the state – is presented as a universal model. “Only by enhancing the sense of gain among people in all countries,” the report argues, can the global governance system gain legitimacy.

The US’ financial withdrawal from 31 UN entities creates a vacuum and an opportunity for China to self-present as a “stabilizing anchor” for the organization. The report emphasizes an “action-oriented” attitude and highlights China’s contributions related to development funds, supply of public goods (emphasizing the role of Belt and Road Initiative projects), AI and digital governance, UN peacekeeping operations, as well as green and low-carbon transformation initiatives.

Beware of the Status Quo

China’s vision of “improved” global governance is less an alternative world order than a strategy to shift the power-balance within the existing one. Beijing does not seek to dismantle the UN system – it seeks to operate it to its advantage, defending the same Westphalian- style sovereigntist architecture that underpins the liberal international order.

This should caution us against a binary logic that confuses challenges of the current global order with threatening its very existence. The liberal order’s limits are real: unresolved long lasting conflicts, unfulfilled promises of shared prosperity and security (by the UN’s own admission), as well as persisting structural imbalances between richer and poorer countries. These shortcomings have created openings that Beijing identifies and can exploit – without any plan (or intention) of addressing their root causes. Countries concerned about the risks posed by revisionist powers to the UN should not strive to uncritically maintain the current status quo but attempt to honestly reckon with its shortcomings.