Africa is now recognized for its vast potential as well as its political influence in international fora, and there has been a growing number of Africa-focused summits, with China, India, the European Union, South Korea and Turkey all hosting such events in recent years. The US has in the past given precedence to bilateral engagements in support of its ‘four pillars’ approach to implementing its Africa strategy. The first US-Africa Leaders’ Summit, held in August, marked a shift towards a complementary continent-wide engagement. 

At this roundtable, Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield will discuss US policy and priorities in Africa and the significance of the summit for enhanced US-Africa relations.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

It has become routine for China’s leaders to use high profile international events as a means of projecting a preferred image of what China stands for and how it will act as  a great power, one that is perhaps now second only to the US in the league table of global powers. So it is no surprise that Xi Jinping has used his interventions at the UN development summit and his address to the General Assembly to showcase China’s growing role as a global aid actor, and to call for greater ‘democratization’ of global governance institutions (or, in other words, a greater role and say for China and other developing countries). China’s alleged and self-proclaimed (and challenged) predilection for peace, a desire to build a ‘new type’ of (vaguely defined) international relations, and support for the UN as the sole arbiter of when sovereignty might possibly be put aside (instead of the US or a coalition of the willing) are also now relatively well-established and rehearsed Chinese positions.

In addition to wielding China’s financial power in support of this national image projection, Xi’s activities also represent a move towards mobilizing discursive power (话语权) as well. To date, and for a number of years, this discursive power has been primarily deployed in a defensive manner, with the aim of denying the supposed universal nature of many of the norms and principles of the international order. These norms, as articulated by both Chinese government officials and some supportive academic scholars, are not universal at all, but merely the product of a small number of Western countries’ histories, philosophies and developmental trajectories. So, in this formulation, while it is important to have a common set of principles and responsibilities as the basis for international interactions, each country should be free to develop its own nation-specific definitions based on its own unique histories and contexts. And it is only these Chinese-inspired definitions and aspirations – of human rights, for example, or development – that China should be judged against.

But this position has changed under Xi, with China’s leaders increasingly keen on promoting Chinese understandings and definitions as the basis for international debates and international action. Hot on the heels of Chinese attempts to take a leading role in defining the basis for global cyber diplomacy,  China is now seeking to shape the way that development is defined and understood – which of course has massive implications for how development, thus defined, might be attained.

Leading on development, missing on security

Xi’s willingness – or should that be desire – to establish Chinese potential global leadership was less apparent when it came to solving the major security challenges of the day. To be sure, there was talk about the need for new ways of dealing with insecurity that recognize the consequences of globalization and that no country can solve problems on its own – including, presumably, the United States. The pledge of more peacekeepers will cement China’s position as one of the world’s major contributors to UN overseas activities, and the promise of a military assistance fund to the African Union shows that Beijing really is an important security actor beyond its own borders. But when it comes to conflict in places like Syria, China seems content to maintain its back seat and allow Russia to take the lead in a crisis that is admittedly some distance from China’s own backyard. Expect a Chinese-led agenda for the G20 summit in 2016 in China that reinforces this differential willingness to assume leadership roles depending on the specific issue at hand.  

So for the time being, the aim seems to be primarily to confirm the idea that China is a new and very different type of great power; one that is a friend and supporter of those smaller developing states and emerging powers that had previously suffered from the asymmetric economic and military power of great powers in the West (or in some cases, still do). As part of this ‘difference’ a second related objective seems to be to establish China as a global leader on development issues.

But simply asserting something does not mean that it is true, and its something of an understatement to suggest that China’s pacific and non-interventionist self-identity has not been accepted by everybody, particularly in East and Southeast Asia. China’s developmental achievements have also been questioned. The response in Beijing to Hilary Clinton’s tweet that it was ‘shameless’ that Xi was co-host of a meeting on women’s rights shows that the defensive nature of Chinese policy remains in place: ‘those in the best position to judge the state of women's issues in China are Chinese people, particularly Chinese women’, according to the foreign ministry. And Clinton’s comments also show that the field of ideas is not being left open for China to do whatever it wants just yet; gaining widespread acceptance for Chinese preferences is not going to be an easy task and will likely face considerable resistance. But the suggestion here is that the world is likely to see a growing Chinese presence over the coming years not just as a global development and aid provider, but also as a putative developer of new global norms.

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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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