How Will China Shape Global Governance?

A ChinaFile Conversation

By Jeremy Youde, Melanie Hart & more on May 9, 2020

How is the Trump administration’s contempt for, and retreat from, multilateral bodies affecting China’s position and weight within them—or indeed its overall strategy for relations with these organizations? Do China’s leaders aspire to supplant the U.S. in steering these organizations? Or do they merely hope to make them more accommodating of the Chinese leadership’s interests and goals? If China does hold more sway in multilateral organizations, what does that portend for global governance more broadly?

Courtney Fung

on May 8, 2020

Courtney J. Fung is Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong, and concurrently Associate in Research at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University and Associate Fellow in the Asia-Pacific Programme at Chatham House. Fung’s work addresses how rising powers contribute to global security and the design of international order, with an empirical focus on China and India and an emphasis on the effects of status and norms for foreign policy behavior.

Fung’s book China and Intervention at the UN Security Council: Reconciling Status (Oxford University Press, 2019) explains the effects of status on China’s varied response to intervention and foreign-imposed regime change at the United Nations. Her work appears in Cooperation and Conflict, Global Governance, PS: Political Science & Politics, The China Quarterly, Third World Quarterly, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, International Peacekeeping, Monkey Cage, and the USIP PeaceBrief series. She has been cited in media outlets like The Wall Street Journal, Quartz, and PassBlue. Fung is currently working on two book projects mapping China’s influence at the United Nations and understanding how China is creating a global information order.

Fung was previously a Research Fellow with the East Asia Institute (Seoul) in their Program on Peace, Governance, and Development in East Asia, and a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow with the now Columbia-Harvard China and the World Program. Prior positions include research fellowships with the International Security Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University and with the Global Peace Operations Program at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University. Fung holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

Xie Tao

on May 5, 2020

Xie Tao is Professor and Dean of the School of International Relations and Diplomacy at Beijing Foreign Studies University. His research interests include Congress, public opinion, and China-U.S. relations. He has published extensively in both Chinese and English.

He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Northwestern University (2007). He is the author of U.S.-China Relations: China Policy on Capitol Hill (Routledge 2009) and Living with the Dragon: How the American Public Views the Rise of China (with Benjamin I. Page, Columbia University Press, 2010). He has also published several articles in the Journal of Contemporary China, including “What Affects China’s National Image? A Cross-National Study of Public Opinion” (September 2013). He is a frequent guest on CCTV News, the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, and China Radio International.

Michael Beckley

on May 4, 2020

Michael Beckley is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Tufts University and a Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

His research on U.S.-China relations has received awards from the American Political Science Association and the International Studies Association and has been featured by numerous media including the Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, NPR, and The Washington Post. Previously, Beckley worked for the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, the U.S. Department of Defense, the RAND Corporation, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He continues to advise offices within the U.S. Intelligence Community and U.S. Department of Defense.

Beckley holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University. He is the author of Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the World’s Sole Superpower (Cornell University Press,2018).

Jeremy Youde

on May 4, 2020

Jeremy Youde is the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota Duluth. A global health politics and policy researcher, he previously held appointments at the Australian National University, Grinnell College, and San Diego State University. He is the author of five books, the most recent being Globalization and Health (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019). He also serves as the Chair of the Global Health Studies Section of the International Studies Association.