China’s Limited Aspirations as a Multilateral Architect

Beijing’s ambition to shape multilateral international organisations and frame treaty provisions in new issue areas seems unbounded. Yet as China attempts to assume greater leadership roles in existing institutions and contributes to building new ones, it must still work within institutional limits and accommodate other members’ interests.

Scholars largely agree that China initially joined multilateral international organisations to support its domestic development goals. But by the early 2000s, that ambition had expanded as China sought to protect its widening global interests, including its core territorial and maritime security interests.

Recent developments show how far this ambition now extends. In 2025, China was instrumental in setting up the International Organization for Mediation, headquartered in Hong Kong with 33 founding members. Its advertised remit is to mediate international political and economic disputes and enhance the Global South’s representation in international legal systems. China is also campaigning to host the secretariat for a global ocean protection treaty, as part of a broader effort to address its underrepresentation in the UN system.

At the March 2026 session of the UN Human Rights Council, China’s permanent representative Jia Guide continued his country’s efforts to challenge the universal nature of human rights as well as the workings of the Council and promote China’s collectivist, ‘development first’ approach to rights. Jia presented Beijing’s Global Governance Initiative as having ‘rich human rights’ implications, arising from its ‘people-centred’ approach, its emphasis on the right to development and its underlining of the principle of non-interference in states’ internal affairs.

What does all this activity in the multilateral space imply for a global order undergoing transition, marked by China’s stated intention to lead the reform of global governance and a disruptive US administration seemingly careless of extant ordering principles?

Source : China’s bounded ambition as a multilateral architect