Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

 Editor's Note:

In this pivotal year of 2025 - commemorating both the 80th anniversary of the victory in the World Anti-Fascist War and the founding of the UN - Chinese President Xi Jinping put forward the Global Governance Initiative (GGI), offering China's wisdom and solutions to further strengthen and improve global governance. The Global Times (GT) has launched a series of interviews, "China's vision on global governance," to share international scholars' insights into the spirit, contemporary relevance and global significance of the GGI. 

In the seventh installment of the series, Arnaud Bertrand (Bertrand), a French entrepreneur and commentator on economics and geopolitics, told Global Times reporter Li Aixin in an interview that the GGI is proof that China is being more faithful to the actual rules of the system than those who made those rules, which makes every Western violation of its own standards stand out in sharp relief.

GT: Could you briefly explain your understanding of the GGI?

Bertrand: It is trying to organize a predictable international order where countries can trade, develop and cooperate without facing warfare every time their policies diverge from Western expectations. The way I understand the GGI is essentially China's attempt to restore the international system to its intended design, not by creating new rules, but by actually making sure that the existing ones are followed.

GT: Just as you mentioned in an article, the current challenges in global governance aren't the UN Charter or international law, it's that they have been systematically violated by those who claim to uphold them. Could you elaborate on this view? 

Bertrand: Let's take an example, the UN Charter. It has an entire article about non-interference, which I believe is Article 2, that explicitly states nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the UN to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state. 

Yet, when you look at it, the US literally has entire government agencies dedicated to interference. 

The National Endowment for Democracy funds opposition groups worldwide. The CIA has a notorious history of regime change. This poses a clear challenge to global governance - those who claim to uphold the rules-based order actually don't follow the rules.

To return to the GGI, its proposition is simply about taking the rules of the UN Charter seriously. This, by the way, is precisely why it feels so threatening to those who have built their power on violating those rules.

GT: How would you describe a global governance that most countries hope for?

Bertrand: Most countries simply want rules - that's it. Actual, predictable, consistent rules that apply to everyone equally.

Again, the bitter irony is that the so-called "rules-based order," despite its name, doesn't actually have any rules - just arbitrary decisions that change based on Washington's mood and interests. When can you invade a country? When can you sanction civilians? When can you recognize separatist regions? Nobody knows - because there's no actual rulebook, just vague rationalizations for whatever the US decides.

What the Global South - and most of the world - desperately wants is predictability.

A small country wants to know that if it follows the rules on sovereignty, its sovereignty will be respected. A trading nation wants to know that if it complies with WTO regulations, it won't face unilateral sanctions. This transcends ideological divides, precisely because rules, by definition, are ideologically neutral. You want to know that signing a trade agreement means something. You want to know that your embassy won't be bombed. You want to know that your assets won't suddenly be frozen one day.

GT: How do the principles of the GGI address the issues in global governance that you mentioned?

Bertrand: In the five core concepts of the GGI, I think the international rule of law dimension is what resonates most powerfully, because it addresses the core absurdity everyone sees: We live in a "rules-based order" that has no rules.

So when the GGI commits to applying international law equally and uniformly, with no double standards, it offers what countries desperately crave: actual rules that won't mysteriously change tomorrow.

I think the core systemic problem in global governance is legitimacy. The current order has very little legitimacy, because its founding premise is fraudulent - some Western countries claim to uphold rules while systematically violating them.

China is being more faithful to the actual rules of the system than those who created them, which makes every Western violation of its own standards stand out in sharp relief.

When China refuses to intervene militarily, despite enormous pressure, and maintains the same trade terms regardless of political alignments, it demonstrates that a great power can actually be bound by law.

I believe systemic change comes not from confrontation, but from making the alternatives so obviously superior that the old model looks barbaric. In fact, a former Pentagon strategist I was listening to not long ago, Oriana Skylar Mastro, made an interesting comparison:  The war in Afghanistan cost the equivalent of 10 Belt and Road Initiatives.

GT: Although the GGI is a recently announced initiative, do you think its spirit and principles have already been reflected in some examples of China-foreign cooperation? 

Bertrand: There is a very long tradition in China's diplomatic history of following the same principles that are in the GGI, which are themselves based on the core principles of peaceful coexistence.

I was invited to the 70th Anniversary of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence in Beijing where the former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin was also present. He gave a speech in which he said something that I found quite profound: Whenever you work on concrete peace, you find these five principles to be the keys that can unlock almost any lock. I think the same applies to the GGI.

When you look at examples, you have, for instance, the Saudi-Iran reconciliation that China helped to achieve. 

It only worked because China embodied the principle of non-interference and was seen as a neutral actor with no military agenda to push. 

The BRI also makes these principles concrete. It provides infrastructure without interference and development without violations of sovereignty.

GT: From the Global Development Initiative (GDI), the Global Security Initiative (GSI) and the Global Civilization Initiative (GCI) to the GGI - which together form a more comprehensive set of "four initiatives" - how are they connected?

Bertrand: What's brilliant is how they all reinforce each other. The GDI creates material incentives for cooperation, the GSI removes security threats that derail development, the GCI provides ideological space for different systems to coexist, and the GGI institutionalizes these principles into actual governance.