Chinese diplomacy goes hand in hand with the language of solidarity. Through the idioms of ‘true multilateralism’, the ‘democratisation of international relations’, and the promise of a ‘community with a shared future for mankind’, Beijing offers many governments a dignified way to resist world hierarchy. But this goes only so far. A meticulously reasoned 2016 South China Sea arbitral award was dismissed as ‘null and void’; the Sino–British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong, registered with the UN and promising a ‘high degree of autonomy’, is increasingly portrayed, in Beijing’s telling, as a mere ‘historical document’ already spent. And so, the paradox is clear: China’s solidarity lexicon travels well, while the rules themselves too often stand alone – affirmed in principle, yet set aside when they constrain.
The claim, however, is not that China rejects multilateralism from outside the system. Rather, it advances a semantic turn from within it: retaining familiar terms while gradually shifting what they authorise in practice. The move works less by denying norms than by redefining their function – from constraint to consent, from adjudication to ‘dialogue’, from accountability to ‘democratised’ interstate voice – so that enforcement can be redescribed as politicisation. The result is not the rejection of norms but their re-description. Rules are acknowledged in principle, yet their application becomes conditional. Unless other states are willing to organize and impose costs for avoidance, the language of solidarity can travel further than the obligation it invokes.
What Multilateralism Requires
If ‘multilateralism’ is to carry analytical weight rather than serve rhetorical ends, its meaning must remain precise. As John Ruggie famously put it, multilateralism is an institutional form that coordinates state behaviour through generalised principles of conduct – rules that apply irrespective of who gains or loses, and that sustain diffuse reciprocity over time. More simply: multilateralism is a discipline before it is a stage. It demands that states accept constraint when rules bite, not merely to add their flags to a communiqué when convenient.
This conceptual core bears directly on the politics of solidarity. There is solidarity among states – especially postcolonial states (as in the Group of 77) – which asserts dignity and equitable voice against hegemonism. There is also solidarity with persons: the dissident, the persecuted minority, the fisher whose livelihood depends on predictable rights – whose protection often relies on law constraining power. Both solidarities can be legitimate. The hard question is which one multilateral institutions uphold when these solidarities collide. A multilateralism that collapses into numerosity without discipline conserves the optics of inclusion while quietly stripping rules of their constraining edge.
Discourse Power, Platforms, and the Appeal of Beijing’s Lexicon
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has grasped that the struggle over order is also a struggle over meaning. Its pursuit of 话语权 (huayuquan, ‘discourse power’) seeks to define vocabulary through which legitimacy is debated: to make ‘sovereignty’, ‘development’, and ‘security’ the default moral grammar of international politics, and to recode legal constraint as politicised selectivity.
Three idioms illustrate the move. First, Beijing’s vision of a ‘community with a shared future for mankind’ (人类命运共同体, renlei mingyun gongtongyi) invites states to imagine order as shared destiny, while treating value pluralism as grounds to limit scrutiny. Second, the call for ‘true multilateralism’ (真正的多边主义, zhenzheng de duobian zhuyi) retains institutional forms but relocates authority to consent and ‘consultation’, so adjudication appears suspect and compliance conditional. Third, the language of ‘democracy in international relations’ (国际关系民主化, guoji guanxi minzhuhua) promises voice for the many, yet risks replacing rule-constrained equality with headcount-based legitimacy.
The lexicon is reinforced by platform-building. The Global Development Initiative aligns with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals but downplays conditionality; the Global Security Initiative foregrounds ‘indivisible security’ and non-interference; and the Global Civilization Initiative reframes normative contestation as civilisational diversity. None of this is illegitimate per se; the effect is functional. By defining multilateralism as sovereignty-plus-consent, Beijing mobilises state-solidarity within institutions – so that when rules bite, the rules themselves risk isolation.
The message travels because it answers real discontents. Many governments outside the transatlantic world carry memories of great-power selectivity, unequal finance, and conditionality experienced as hierarchy. When Chinese officials denounce ‘double standards’ or promise a voice for the global majority, they speak into those sediments. The result is not naïve alignment, but strategic hedging through shared vocabulary: echoing the CCP’s idiom can buy status, resources, and policy space with multiple partners at once.
When Rules Stand Alone
Consider maritime law. The 2016 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) tribunal award clarified that ‘historic rights’ claims cannot override the Convention’s maritime zones. Beijing rejected the award and continues to resist its legal consequences. A charitable reading of China’s position yields three arguments: that sovereignty disputes should not be judicialised; that the tribunal exceeded its jurisdiction; and that third-party adjudication can harden disputes better handled through bilateral negotiation. These arguments are laid out in China’s position paper on jurisdiction. Yet the rule at stake is precisely the one that safeguards weaker states: power cannot convert reefs into rights, and that agreed procedures prevail even when outcomes are adverse.
Treaty fidelity shows a similar pattern. The Sino–British Joint Declaration frames Hong Kong’s autonomy. Beijing treats the agreement as exhausted once sovereignty was resumed – a view expressed when a foreign ministry spokesperson argued its transitional arrangements are ‘now history’ and ‘not binding’. The UK government, echoed in a House of Commons briefing and its Six-Monthly Report on Hong Kong, has stated that China is in breach. The point is not to rehearse ‘one country, two systems’, but to mark the move: a treaty is honoured rhetorically yet re-described to remove its constraining force.
Trade discipline illustrates how enforcement depends on coalition. When Lithuania allowed a Taiwanese office under that name, trade frictions were framed as technicalities rather than sanctions. The European Commission brought the matter into the rules-based arena by filing a case at the World Trade Organization (DS610). For months, the rule at stake existed largely on paper; its enforcement depended on the will and market weight of a larger bloc. On 28 November 2025, the EU notified the WTO that it was terminating the dispute after ‘key objectives’ were met. The episode demonstrates both how readily discipline can be evaded, and how much enforcement depends on capacity. It also helps explain why Brussels has sought deterrent architecture beyond litigation, including the Anti-Coercion Instrument (Regulation (EU) 2023/2675).
Human-rights procedure offers the starkest illustration of ‘solidarity among states’ eclipsing solidarity with persons. In 2022 the UN High Commissioner’s assessment of Xinjiang reported credible evidence of grave abuses, warning that certain conduct may constitute international crimes. Shortly thereafter, a narrowly crafted draft decision merely to hold a debate was rejected at the Human Rights Council – 17 in favour, 19 against, and 11 abstentions. China’s delegation framed the move as politicisation and interference, urging states to reject the draft. Formally, universalist language remained intact. Practically, procedural control insulated a powerful state from scrutiny.
Importantly, China’s rule talk is not a mere façade. Beijing is deeply enmeshed in multilateral institutions and has expanded its contributions to UN peacekeeping, including as the second-largest assessed financial contributor and a significant provider of troops and police. The paradox, again, is functional: solidarity with institutions and solidarity with rules need not coincide. It is possible to sustain the stage while resisting the discipline.
Solidarity without Naïveté
How should defenders of a rule-bound order respond without lapsing into either moral grandstanding or quiet accommodation? Grandstanding may feel righteous; it can also confirm the narrative that makes Beijing’s lexicon travel – that ‘rules’ are a Western instrument applied selectively. Accommodation trims sails in the hope that semantic drift will not produce institutional drift. A more effective response begins with a sober premise: rules do not enforce themselves. They survive when coalitions are willing to bear costs, and when those coalitions can speak a language of legitimacy that travels beyond their own camps.
Framing, ownership, and reciprocity matter. When defending the South China Sea award, the lead voice should be the UNCLOS bargain struck by the affected coastal states, not a geopolitical camp. When economic pressure targets a small economy, the language should emphasise shared exposure and mutual insurance, not bloc discipline. When human-rights mechanisms are procedurally stymied, voices from every region should insist that universality means no exception. And if ‘democratisation’ is invoked as a standard, it must be made tangible – not only in seats, but in shared agenda-setting and in reforms that reduce the credibility gap created by uneven enforcement and double standards. Legitimacy is not decorative; it underpins compliance. That is why reform at the UN and in international financial institutions is arduous but essential if accusations of structural unfairness are to lose their sting.
Institutional design can translate that ethic into practice. Universal bodies remain indispensable, yet where contestation is sharpest, they are prone to gridlock. The answer is not to abandon them for exclusive clubs, but to practise ‘minilateralism’ in service of multilateralism: smaller coalitions that make rules enforceable, yet remain open, transparent, and treaty-anchored. In maritime law, this could mean capability-sharing on monitoring, evidence, and legal support for smaller claimants, explicitly tied to UNCLOS principles. In trade, it could mean reciprocal assistance and rapid-response tools against coercion, paired with clear off-ramps, so litigation is not the only option. In emerging domains such as surveillance technology and data governance, interoperable safeguards can be designed as open standards, available to any state that meets the bar and fed back into universal fora.
Finally, consistency is a strategy, not a sermon. Much of Beijing’s leverage rests on Western lapses. Admitting past breaches of the UN Charter, disciplining one’s coercive tools, and applying standards to friends as well as rivals undercuts whataboutism. A defence of norms voiced by a many-voiced chorus is stronger than a transatlantic solo. The more multilateralism delivers on everyday priorities beyond the OECD – flood averted, the debt eased, the clinic funded – the less credible the narrative of domination becomes.
After the Semantic Turn
China’s semantic turn matters because it exploits a genuine ambiguity: multilateralism can be a forum for voice, a system of discipline, or both. If the balance tilts too far toward voice without constraint, multilateralism revolves around headcounts and consent, while the rule that binds the strong is quietly hollowed out. If that happens, the states and individuals most in need of law will find themselves in solitude.
Avoiding that outcome requires a sincerity of turn to meet the semantic one. If ‘democracy in international relations’ is to mean more than a slogan, it must be visible in shared agenda-setting and in the willingness of the powerful to live under adverse outcomes. If ‘true multilateralism’ is to be more than a cudgel against alliances, respect for procedure must be audible precisely when it is least convenient. And if a ‘shared future’ is to be more than a banner beneath which power shelters from restraint, its legitimacy must be judged by those who lose most when rules wither: the small state, the dissident, the minority, the fisher whose catch depends on a line drawn in law rather than by coastguard hulls.
The solitude of rules is not inevitable. It depends on choice, narrative, and coalition. Beijing shows how potent narrative can be when harnessed to institutional entrepreneurship. Others can match narrative with practice: broaden the ownership of rules while keeping their teeth; accept scrutiny as the normal price of membership; build solidarities that are porous rather than punitive. Do this, and the next carefully drafted award, a treaty clause, or a procedural motion will not stand alone.
Stefan Messingschlager is a historian and political scientist at Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg, Germany, and an Associate Researcher at the Chair of Contemporary Chinese Studies at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg. His research focuses on contemporary Chinese history and politics, with particular emphasis on Sino‑Western relations and the evolution of Western China expertise since 1949.