Despite the hype surrounding it, the gathering of the country’s ruling elite in Beijing is likely to prize measured change over dramatic reform.

If there was a clearer idea of what makes China’s new elite leadership tick, then the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party that is about to be held in Beijing would not be such a big deal. But in a polity which privileges concealment over overt statement, it is viewed widely as the one chance for outsiders to see more clearly what the leadership aims to achieve. Expectations were raised by the October statement by one of the most staid members of the current Standing Committee of the Politburo, Yu Zhengsheng, that the plenum would presage a new era of reform.

In Chinese politics reform is a word that has a wholesome, positive air about it. But the question is where and when reform will happen and who will gain from it. The plenum is not like a party convention in the Western sense. It is not an eye-grabbing, media-dominating event that produces surprises. Comparing this year’s installment with the great Third Plenum of 1978 that heralded the repudiation of late Maoism and the embracing of the market, the non-state sector and foreign capital – all anathema before then – is misleading. The significance of the 1978 meeting was only obvious in hindsight. It took years for the scale of the radical transformation of the whole strategic direction of the Communist Party to be appreciated. That 2013 will prove a similar historic moment is unlikely, perhaps even impossible.

What is much more likely is that the highly tactical leadership now in charge will reaffirm its commitment to incremental reform. It will make some statements about the radical urbanization that China is about to undergo and say something about social welfare reform. China’s leaders will do what they have always done in plenums over the last three decades, namely set the broad parameters of politically permissible activity that provinces, ministries and other stakeholders will then need to implement.

This plenum will also have to produce something about the need to achieve greater egality and balance in the economy. It needs to answer some of the questions about how Premier Li Keqiang, in particular, intends to meet the goal of 'fast, sustainable growth' when a falling overall GDP figure looks likely. It needs to communicate to as broad a constituency as possible the arch-narrative of a world where the raw statement of growth on its own is no longer the be all and end all of government policy. It needs to say something about how the party is going to fulfill the increasingly complex aspirations of the Chinese people, aspirations that exceed purely having a materially good level of life and concern broader questions of well-being that vex the politics of all developed economies.

Observers will want to see some signs too of addressing the most sensitive issues. Yu Zhengsheng talked of economic reform. Reforming the economy is now a wholly uncontroversial mantra in China. However, it impacts on one enormously important issue that reaches beyond economics: whether wealth, prosperity and development benefit the few or are accessible to the many – in other words, good, old-fashioned questions of economic and social justice. At the heart of this lies the question of how state-owned enterprises have become vehicles of profit not just for the party state, but also for tightly knit networks of vested interests. Reforms that lap at the doors of these entities also creep into the space of powerful political players, who will resist any attempt to cut down their wealth, and who have the power to resist.

China’s new leadership is proving more confident than was expected and displays a high sense of historic mission. President Xi Jinping speaks increasingly like a politician who believes it is almost his historic destiny to sit at the centre of the leadership of a renascent 'rich, strong country'. The ultimate question for the plenum is not what outside observers make of it but what the vastly complex mixture of groups in China does. For them, a sign that the leadership is willing to take on some of the entrenched vested interests that penetrate the operations of some state-owned sectors to the core is critical.

This is likely to be couched in the language of more support for the market, which is the key channel in any attack on vested interests – through widening access to wealth and economic benefits, and support for the non-state sector and entrepreneurs. It is hard to see how deeper reform can occur without these two crucial elements. And it is through these that the attitude of China’s leadership to political and legal reforms – far more complex issues that, almost certainly, will not be addressed at the plenum but will lurk in the background − will become clearer. The leadership thinks it is too early to tackle these issues directly, but this plenum will still be part of the process for it to come up with ideas for how to transform not just China’s economy, but its polity too.

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Professor John Ikenberry will examine the challenges to global order that are posed by the rise of China and current shifts in global power. He will argue that a liberal-oriented international order, as championed by the United States and Europe over the last century, remains the best hope for stability and growth in the 21st century.

Professor Ikenberry will contend that, while non-Western rising states seek greater voice and authority in the global system, they – perhaps surprisingly – still embrace the basic principles and institutions of liberal world order. Thus, the United States and Europe have powerful incentives to work together to reform the world’s governance institutions to accommodate new stakeholders and tackle problems of rising economic and security interdependence.

ASK A QUESTION: Send questions for the speaker by email to questions@chathamhouse.org or using #askCH on Twitter. A selection will be put to him during the event.

This event will be followed by a reception.

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On 26 January, President Barack Obama joined Prime Minister Narendra Modi as his guest at India’s Republic Day, in a reflection of the huge potential in the US-India relationship. The trip makes Obama the first US president to visit India twice while in office, and comes on the heels of Modi’s visit to Washington last autumn. Nevertheless, the heavily touted ‘transformation’ in bilateral affairs that these summits are supposed to herald is unlikely to materialize soon. Continued, active and deliberate effort by the two leaders could allow the relationship to jump forward, but given competing priorities, this moment seems destined to pass without the major advances many believe are possible.

Since the 2005 breakthrough nuclear deal which brought India into the non-proliferation tent, the opportunities in the bilateral relationship have been loudly extolled. Notably, the countries lack historical closeness − during the Cold War, India led the Non-Aligned Movement but leaned towards the Soviet Union. This means that there is ample opportunity to progress in a number of key areas – but also is indicative of the challenges.

Democracy

It is often said that India is the largest democracy and the United States the oldest. President George W. Bush saw India as a valuable partner in promoting democracy around the region and the world. India’s loud, raucous political system should be a good example of a vibrant democracy. However, India, like China, holds strongly to the primacy of sovereignty and as such has no wish to lead others to build new political systems or to impose them.

Economics and trade

India has a middle class that is, by some counts, larger than the entire US population. However, India’s regulatory system is complex, and its legal architecture slow and unpredictable. After recent Indian decisions such as the 2012 case where retroactive taxes were imposed on Vodafone, American businesses have been extremely wary. Tensions at a governmental level were also raised in America after India collapsed the WTO negotiations last July.

Security

Major strides have been taken in military cooperation, and there is space for more.  During Obama’s visit, the two leaders revitalized their Defence Framework, building on a 2005 agreement and subsequent progress led by then-US deputy secretary of defense Ash Carter. Carter’s likely confirmation as secretary of defense in the coming weeks is probably the brightest spot for the future bilateral agenda. But Indian acquisition processes do not align well with their American equivalents.  And the US is resistant to providing blueprints to technology, which the Indians want, preferring to build at home and sell the equipment on. These misalignments make progress in this area difficult.

Geopolitics

India wants to be considered a regional and global power, and America would dearly like to have India onside, particularly in light of China’s occasional muscle flexing. However, as illustrated by its uncritical stance towards Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its abstention from the 2011 UN Security Council resolution authorizing military action in Libya, India’s view on sovereignty and its historical non-aligned positioning mean that it too often fails to back up the US on divisive issues.

Environment

The environmental debates between India (as a representative of the developing world) and the US (representing the developed) have often been acrimonious, as the two sides take opposing views on where the principal responsibility lies in ensuring growth while limiting the environmental fallout. There are however opportunities in this arena to advance together through technology cooperation. India is the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases (behind China and the US) and has significant and growing energy demands as it works to bring its people out of poverty. If the US and India could find a compromise similar to the recent agreement between the US and China, the impact could be significant both in environmental terms and in the demonstration effect to others.

Unrealized potential

Most of these issues are central to President Obama’s legacy and integral to Modi’s goals of restoring growth to India and putting it at the centre of global geopolitics. They should dovetail well with both leaders’ agendas. But in each case, the challenges, including the institutional bureaucracies, are preventing real breakthroughs.

If this bilateral relationship is to be transformed, Obama and Modi need to not just push their systems, but exert sustained pressure on them to overcome the long-standing obstacles. Unfortunately, given other agendas and historical legacies of distrust, such ongoing attention is unlikely. More likely, the relationship will continue to move ahead, but the huge potential will for now remain unrealized.

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The speaker will argue that Chinese foreign policy should be viewed as an extension of domestic policy to a degree not seen in other countries. China's foreign policy aims to support domestic growth and employment, must be aligned with nationalist and narratives of ‘rejuvenation’ and the ‘China Dream’, and must help dilute hostile foreign values. The ‘One Belt, One Road’ project, also known as the ‘New Silk Road’, exemplifies this. The speaker will illustrate its origins and development, discuss how it promotes the Communist Party’s domestic agenda, as well as look at (secondary) geostrategic aims and difficulties. Finally, he will look at the lessons for Europe, and why and how this Chinese initiative should be welcomed.

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Parag Khanna will draw on the themes of his new book, Connectography, to explain how the future of geopolitics lies less in determining national borders and territory but more in controlling infrastructure, supply chains and market access.

Khanna argues that new energy discoveries and innovations have eliminated the need for resource wars, global financial assets are being deployed to build productive infrastructure that can reduce inequality, and regions such as Africa and the Middle East are unscrambling their fraught colonial borders through ambitious new transportation corridors and power grids. He will contend that beneath the chaos of a world that often appears to be falling apart is a new foundation of connectivity pulling it together.

This event will be followed by a reception open to all attendees.
 

It is tempting to read China's refusal in this case to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the arbitral tribunal in The Hague as the defiance of an arrogant superpower that views itself as above international law. No doubt many in Manila, Washington and elsewhere are purveying this view. But there is more here than meets the eye.

For decades, Beijing has complained that the global order was forged in an era when China was weak and the rules of the game are rigged against it.

But this lament is more difficult to sustain in relation to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which China helped negotiate in the 1970s and early 1980s. Beijing signed the treaty as soon as it was opened for signature in 1982 and ratified it in 1996.

The Philippines initiated this arbitration against China in 2013 as part of a long-running dispute over rights in the South China Sea, including over the Spratly Islands (known as the 'Nansha Islands' in China) and surrounding maritime areas. 

Under the treaty, China is not obliged to defend the case but this is no bar to proceedings and it remains legally bound by the award. From a legal perspective, its refusal to participate is thus a risky move, all the more so since the ruling is likely to have legal ramifications for China's highly charged maritime disputes with other neighbours such as Vietnam and Malaysia.

It is well known that the legal proceedings launched by the Philippines sparked a contest of ideas in Beijing. Behind closed doors, some Chinese international lawyers argued that China should prove its commitment to the international rule of law by vigorously fighting its corner in the arbitration. The defeat of these liberal voices is usually interpreted as an inevitable effect of the nationalists' grip on power under President Xi Jinping.

In a significant concession to those on the losing side of the argument, however, China published a position paper setting out its objections to the jurisdiction of the tribunal and formally conveyed this to the tribunal which treated it as ‘effectively constituting a plea on jurisdiction’.

This novel form of ‘non-participating participation’ must be seen against the backcloth of a strategic ambition by China to develop a greater mastery of international law. At an important meeting just two months earlier, the Communist Party called for China to strengthen its ‘discourse power and influence in international legal affairs’ and use legal methods to safeguard its ‘sovereignty, security and development interests’.

Our research team at Chatham House has been tracking impressive steps by China to realize this goal, including new government decision-making machinery designed to promote compliance with international law, a hiring spree of international lawyers and new advisory committee for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, promotion of scholarship and efforts to show norm leadership especially in ‘new domains’ of international law such as cyber law, and a training programme to share growing Chinese international law expertise with the global South.

We know from Chinese colleagues that maritime disputes are a major impetus for this drive. For years, the Chinese government has fretted about its low capabilities in the international legal field, compared with other permanent members of the UN Security Council and regional rivals such as Japan. Now, impelled by the need to protect its strategic interests in the South China Sea and elsewhere, it is doing something about it.

It may seem paradoxical in light of its bullish attacks on the Philippines and even the tribunal itself, but China's boycott of the arbitration should also be seen as a manifestation of its low confidence in its own capacities in the realm of international law. Speculation is rife that the leadership lacks faith in its ability to convince the tribunal of the legal validity of its controversial ‘nine dash line’ demarcation of China's rights in the South China Sea.  

In the arbitration and otherwise, China has avoided clarifying the precise legal basis and implications of its ‘nine dash line’ claims while sponsoring a vast industry of academic studies to support its position.

In the meantime, China is playing to its strengths, including its deep pockets, in pursuing an extrajudicial approach. An audacious programme of land reclamation and militarization of atolls and escalating patrols and exercises in disputed territories is a clear effort to alter ‘the facts on the water’. And in recent months it has choreographed statements of political support for its South China Sea claims from a motley crew of states with economic ties to China.

While China's rejection of the South China Sea arbitration is true to form for a powerful state that, like its great rival the United States, is generally ill-disposed towards binding international dispute resolution processes, it is not inconceivable that this approach will give way when China becomes more confident in its ability to play and win at ‘law fare’, as we are already seeing in the context of World Trade Organization disputes. Until then, in time-honoured fashion, Beijing is biding its time, plugging its skills gap and hoping it can shake off mounting reputational damage from its petulant spurning of these proceedings.

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The ruling by an arbitral tribunal of five members based in The Hague was simple and devastating. It declares that ‘China’s claims to historic rights… with respect to the maritime areas of the South China Sea encompassed by the relevant part of the “nine-dash line” are contrary to the [The UN] Convention [on the Law of the Sea, UNCLOS]’. This is a result that Southeast Asia’s maritime countries have long sought. The way is now clear to resolve all the disputes in the region, if the participants choose to do so.

For decades, countries around the South China Sea lived under the shadow of a quasi-territorial claim that no one really understood. What did the U-shaped, nine-dashed line marked on Chinese maps actually mean? In 2009, the Chinese government attached a copy of the map to an official submission to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf and the region became alarmed. For the first time, it seemed that China was serious about asserting a claim to all the land and water inside the line.

On Tuesday that claim was dismissed as entirely incompatible with international law. Moreover, the Arbitral Tribunal ruled that not one of the Spratly Islands qualifies as an ‘island’. This ruling is at least as significant: it means none of the features in the archipelago are entitled to an exclusive economic zone. Theoretically it should now be simple to resolve all the maritime disputes in the southern part of the South China Sea. The Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and the Philippines can, in principle, draw lines up to 200 nautical miles out from their coasts and agree compromises where they overlap. China is now irrelevant to this process because its nearest coastline is simply too far away.

All the 50 or so features in the Spratly Islands that are naturally above water at high tide would be granted a 12-nautical-mile territorial sea. The resulting settlement would resemble a Swiss cheese: large areas of exclusive economic zone measured from national coastlines punctuated by a few dozen ‘bubbles’ of disputed territory. This would not resolve the disputes about which country is the rightful owner of those ‘bubbles’ but it would settle the maritime disputes in the sea around them.

Of course, there are still wrinkles. Not least is the Philippines claim to the Malaysian province of Sabah in northern Borneo. This means that, for the time being, those two countries can’t settle the maritime boundary between them. They could, nonetheless, agree how far it projects offshore.

The bigger problem will be China’s attitude. Its response to the tribunal’s ruling has been angry but curiously misdirected. State media have focused their ire on questions of territorial sovereignty – even though the tribunal was barred from even considering this subject. China’s territorial claims to the rocks of the Spratly Islands are entirely unaffected by Tuesday’s ruling. There must be separate processes to resolve those questions.

China has many interests in the South China Sea – including defence, trade routes, fisheries and hydrocarbons – so it’s not surprising that it pursues whatever approach it thinks practical in order to protect them. However, the whole purpose of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea was to create an international order that defended the rights of countries to exploit the resources off their own coasts without threat from other states further away. China was a full participant in the negotiations between 1973 and 1982 that created UNCLOS and, at that time, was a strong defender of the rights of coastal countries.

While it may feel that it has lost out from this week’s ruling, China has much to gain from a strong community of regional order in the South China Sea. Most Southeast Asian countries remain alarmed by China’s intentions − which is why, in the past few years, they have been strengthening their ties with the United States and increasing military spending. China’s wider interests would benefit from a de-escalation of this tension. Reassuring its neighbours would give them less reason to rely on the US.

Putting a new maritime order in place, based upon UNCLOS and commitments between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, would be a major step towards this. It would also bring many associated benefits – not least cooperation to protect the region’s fish stocks, which are facing disastrous collapse. The first step is accepting the implications of Tuesday’s ruling.

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President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has responded with an iron fist to last Friday’s failed military coup attempt in Turkey by detaining, dismissing or suspending, so far, 60,000 military officers, police and intelligence officials, judges, teachers, academics and civil servants, and imposing a widespread travel ban and a three-month state of emergency. He is vowing to reintroduce the death penalty, abolished in 2004 as part of reforms required for opening EU accession negotiations.

This uncompromising approach in the post-coup period will have profound negative implications on Turkey’s domestic politics, security and foreign policy in the foreseeable future to the detriment of its stability and prosperity.

Fractured politics

Erdogan’s indifference to the unprecedented political unity against the coup is, regretfully, a missed opportunity to dilute the deepening polarization and divisiveness bedeviling Turkish politics. His determination to use the putsch to consolidate political power in the presidency and to erode or eliminate the secular character of the Turkish state by means of a new constitution will widen the ideological and ethnic divide between, respectively, secular and conservative Turks and Turks and Kurds. Just a few months ago, Ismail Kahramam, speaker of the Turkish parliament and Erdogan ally, exhorted that ‘secularism cannot feature in the new [religious] constitution’.

His policies and rhetoric, in other words, will undermine even more the almost imperceptible presence of ‘interpersonal trust’ in Turkish society - the willingness of one party to rely on the actions of another party – seen as incongruent with a robust polity and cohesive society. According to a 2010 OECD survey Turkey’s levels of interpersonal trust are considerably lower than OECD averages and it stands out among the 20 surveyed countries as the only one where higher educational attainment correlates with lower feelings of trust. That posture can only breed even more discord and mistrust between the different segments of the Turkish electorate and entrench personality-based and top-down politics, the root cause of political turmoil in Turkey.

Diminished state capacity

Turkey’s NATO partners fear that the purges of experienced military and security personnel have the potential to diminish its capability to thwart the threat posed by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and other militant groups and to better manage its long and porous borders with Syria and Iraq. Thus far, Turkish authorities have incarcerated nearly one-third of Turkey’s senior military commanders and more than 7,000 police and intelligence officials. This constitutes a major loss of expertise and institutional memory at a time of heightening security challenges. After all, Turkey witnessed 14 bomb attacks over the last year, many of them carried out by ISIS or the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Similarly, the removal of tens of thousands of school teachers, both in private and state schools, university academics and education ministry officials will severely disrupt the provision of adequate educational services to enable future generations to succeed in an increasingly complex global economic environment. This ‘cleansing’ operation did not spare even the elite and renowned state and private universities considered bastions of liberalism and cosmopolitan values in Turkey.

In all probability, the government’s replacements of key staff with less qualified loyalists will rupture the institutional integrity and professionalism of the military establishment and the state institutions. Such a hollowing out process was already underway prior to the coup but post-coup decision-making has greatly accelerated the speed. Sadly, under the best case scenario, it will take Turkey years, if not decades, to restore a modicum of rule of law and public services’ delivery at pre-coup standards to which the Turkish citizenry have been accustomed.

Foreign policy challenges

Erdogan’s endorsement of the death penalty might signal the end of Turkey’s (already nearly non-existent) EU accession prospects and a more troubled relationship with Europe and the US. He was, before the coup, a prickly and challenging partner for the US and NATO to handle, a recalcitrant member of the US-led anti-ISIS coalition and vociferously against the US cooperation with PKK-affiliated Syrian Kurdish fighters targeting ISIS in northern Syria. After the coup, he will probably become more disagreeable to US and European foreign policy and security objectives.

His disagreeability will probably extend to Turkey’s deal with the EU to stem the flow of Syrian migrants across the Aegean Sea and Greece into mainland Europe, which looks increasingly unsustainable. A pugnacious Erdogan may utilize the forthcoming EU refusal to abolish visas for Turkish travellers to the Schengen borderless zone by end-October to wring out more concessions from an Erdogan-sceptical Europe. Despite their exasperation, they should decipher from his rapprochement with Israel and Russia that he tends to compromise with muscular diplomacy as opposed to diplomatic niceties.    

Turkey will be so convulsed and self-absorbed by internal political machinations and its security and military capabilities so compromised that it cannot afford to deploy sizeable assets to promote regime change in Damascus. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers are, naturally, the prime beneficiaries while the armed largely Sunni opposition are the biggest losers. Arguably, Assad must now feel very secure in power and confident that he will enlarge his territorial acquisitions at the expense of the Sunni groups. Equally, the Syrian Kurds will seek to strengthen and, perhaps, extend the quasi-autonomous zone along the Turkey−Syria border commensurate with Turkey’s declining influence in the Syrian quagmire.

Europe’s lesson

Turkey is a bitter testimony to the ill-effects of sacrificing progressive values to political expediency, fear and interests. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French president Nicolas Sarkozy demonstrated a lack of strategic foresight by stymying Turkey’s desire to join the EU in 2005. Had the EU engaged Turkey in a credible accession process, however arduous it may have been, the coup would probably have never occurred. Turkish political leaders would have been forced to implement deeper and wider reforms to strengthen democracy, secularism, human rights and a functioning market economy. Instead, Europe is reaping what it sowed: a coup-rattled and more unstable Turkey on its doorstep.

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