China and Russia: alternative global governance initiative

China dominated global politics in the first week of September 2025. First, we had the SCO meeting in Tianjin, and then the Victory Day parade was held in Beijing to celebrate the 80th anniversary of China's victory against imperial Japan in World War-II.

What stood out as the most significant takeaway from this Chinese dominance of world politics this week was the GGI (Global Governance Initiative) proposed by President Xi Jinping at the SCO meeting. This Chinese proposal seems to be based on the premise that the US is no longer a stabilising power in the world. Therefore, China proposed a vision of a new global, security and economic order that promotes the active participation of Global South. GGI stands up against hegemonism and power politics and promotes peace-time multilateralism.

Understanding President Xi's concept of the proposed GGI becomes easy if one has already read RD Kaplan's new book, Wasteland: A World in Permanent Crisis, in which the author argues that the current world is in a state of permanent crisis, similar to Weimar, Germany. Wasteland is a metaphor that the author uses to describe today's world as it existed during the inter-war period. Although during this period, Germany became a constitutional republic for the first time in history yet the German Reich, as it was officially named, was dominated by Hitler's politics and the Great War that followed it.

In the wasteland that we live today and which the GGI proposes to change, global power politics is being dominated and driven by three international institutions — IMF that represents the economic power; UNSC that stands for the political power; and NATO represents the security component of this global power dominance.

Only if we remind ourselves of the post-war role that these institutions have played, we will be able to correctly analyse why the leaders of the other great powers are interested in promoting a different governance model for the world and why Kaplan calls today's world a wasteland. The voting power decision-making at the IMF reflects member countries' relative economic position. Europe's share of the IMF voting structure is 26% and China's share is 6%, whereas globally both powers account for over 20% of global GDP. IMF does not represent the economic balance of power that accommodates Global South. In UNSC, France and Britain still occupy two seats for permanent members.

Surely, both countries were great powers in 1945 when the UNSC was officially established and structured, but are they in the same league today? Only 12% of people live in the West, whereas the remaining 88% people reside in the rest of the world. An open-ended working group on UN reform was established in 1993, and even 32 years later the UN has not been able to undertake any reform in this most important global political institution. No wonder, Kishore Mahbubani, a Singaporean diplomat and geopolitical consultant who also served as Singapore's permanent representative to UN, calls it a "never-ending working group on UN reform" rather than an "open-ended working group on the UN reform".

The article 5-dominated global role of NATO is a true specimen of what the GGI stands for — anti-hegemonism. NATO's encroachment eastwards has raised the security concerns of the other two great powers and the GGI proposes to change the current global governance model under the looming NATO threat.

The world order that followed World War-II enabled us to create a better world for ourselves. But the core of that better world was built around a world order, driven by its economic, political and global security institutions. This order is now experiencing a change - one that is resisted by the United States and its European allies. The resistance to this change is what is generating security competitions and overall global insecurity, prompting authors like Kaplan to describe the world as a wasteland. What is this change that the West is not willing to accept? The change is in the shift of power from the West to the East.

In the 80s Europe's economy was 10% larger than China's; by 2050 it is projected to be half the size of China. Some 100,000 Englishmen ruled over 300 million people in India for over 180 years during the colonial era, but today Britain represents past and India the future. In 80s, Britain's GDP was four times larger than India's but by 2050, India's GDP is projected to be four times bigger than that of Britain. Even the EU economy, which has been bigger than that of ASEAN, will be half the size of ASEAN by 2050.

The United States maintains its global posture as a dominant power yet the popular American story today is the story of its decline. Thomas Friedman describes decline as relative, overrated, and something that can take decades, so no one can put a mark on the end of the American era and its absolute decline. SP Huntington wrote that America is great not because of the character of its people but its institutions. Today many American institutions, including the Supreme Court and Federal Reserve, are under political pressure like they were never before — something which Kaplan reads as Weimar-like, inter-war period in which the institutional erosion touched the peak.

Geopolitically, we are in a period of world history in which each part of the world and whatever happens within it affect the other parts like never before. If the world is a global village, then we need to make sure that under the democratic spirit, this village is represented by its true council duly elected by the villagers themselves. Other global institutions, like SCO and BRICS, are rising, and when President Xi talks about the new GGI, it represents the idea of bringing in a change in global governance because the United States and its European allies would not stop resisting the change.

For the United States and the European countries, the choice is very clear. They can resist the change and keep the composition of the global institutions with which they govern, and keep losing their global credibility; or change the composition of these institutions and keep their global credibility. Credibility is why the world listens to you. If the West remains no more credible, the world will turn to the other great powers and see what they have to say. In fact, the rest of the world has already started doing that.