At one time, not that long ago, writing about or advocating global governance in China was a sensitive matter.  Much has changed.

Just as China’s international policy has moved from an almost exclusive emphasis on bilateralism to growing regional and global governance, global governance and China’s role in multilateral contexts has become an acceptable subject for China’s inernational relations experts.

It’s why the focus of Wang Zaibang’s 2007 article is so interesting.  Entitled, ‘China and Global Governance,’ this Continue reading →

In a rather ‘crowded’ little piece (meaning that there are a number of currents flowing through the article), Niall Ferguson of Harvard, Oxford and Hoover Institution fame, has declared ‘Chimerica’ at an end.  As Niall points out in his article in the new journal Standpoint  out of the UK, the growing financial crisis puts this most important driver of global growth at risk.  Chimerica which has represented one-third of GDP and over the past 6 years 50% of global growth, is threatened by the credit and liquidity crisis of Wall Street.

Niall begins his declaration of Chimerca’s demise, a term he suggests was birthed by himself and German political scientist, Moritz Schularick with a trip through Chongqing Sichuan, China – arguably the largest city in the world – with a tale of enormous infrastructure building.  This tale of Chongqing presumably is to highlight the Chinese government’s continuing flow, if not flood, of public expenditure especially in China’s west.

The Chongqing description is a reminder that public financing in China is a key component of economic growth, and presumably now a substitute and alternative to American export trade.  It is also a warning that China and its economic planners pay scant attention to China’s environment.  Niall compares the public infrastructure and the motivation behind this palnning is the worst excesses of Stalinism and Soviet industrialization with all its consequences.

Niall’s article chronicles the geopolitical consequences of the demise of Chimerica and more directly the financial meltdown in the United States.  First he points out that high indebtedness and slow growth is the enemy of a reserve currency.  He suggests the financial turmoil may well require years of workout and consigning therefore the US to sustained slow growth.  With the alternative available – the euro – the United States may pay a much greater penalty than just slow growth.

With slower US growth and presumably sustained greater Chinese growth, the second geopolitical consequence, according to Ferguson will be a more rapid convergence between the US and China with China closing the GDP  gap not in 2040, as predicted by Goldman Sachs in its report in 2003, but 2027.

And a further geopolitical consequence is the likely growing presence in the globe – Africa, Latin America and Asia – of China, and possibly some others, in search of secure commodity sources. With the growing demand on commodities – for sure oil – but also minerals and foodstuff – China will be out there as a new Great power presumably.

Niall leaves the reader to wonder whether the future of US-China relations will be troubled by Great power rivalry. Maybe, but maybe Chimerica is not a ‘chimera’ as Niall so cutely ends.  Indeed China and America may not be as decoupled from the United States as Niall would like us to believe.  The symbiotic closely coupled relationship of the two may be much tighter than suggested in this article.  Niall may be ‘jumping the gun’ on China’s Great power status.

The Hokkaido Summit, as I imagine and sense other G7/8 annual summits – now 34 and counting – have been, was an intensive, word-strewn affair. Take a look at the University of Toronto’s G8 Research Group website. The site is filled with Hokkaido’s outpouring of Reports and Statements by G7/8 officials. Even the evaluation of the Summit, entitled, “A Summit of Substantial Success: The Performance of the 2008 G8“, by G8 Research Group leader, Professor John Kirton of the University of Toronto comes to some 45 pages and that doesn’t include appendices that adds another 45 pages. John is taken with Japanese summitry and what he sees as consistent success in leading the summit, which it has done 5 Continue reading →

The Russian and Chinese vetoes of the US-sponsored sanctions resolution on Friday July 11th (along with South Africa’s negative vote) has done much to keep the question of a ‘league of democracy’ alive in global governance circles. Thomas Carothers of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) has written recently a useful examination of the League of Democracies concept in the most recent issue of Foreign Policy. His article entitled, “A League of Their Own,” reviews the origins, history and even the influence of the concept of the League of Democracies.

Born in the academic byways, the concept discussed by John Ikenberry and Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter in their Continue reading →

In a recent blog post, “To Enlarge; or not to Enlarge – That is a Question“, I looked at current G7/8 members, their views of G7/8 enlargement and the Heiligendamm process.

The G7/8 discussion begins with two questions: Does the G8 constitute a Great power club with adequate authority and influence to act as a significant institution of global management? If not what membership and enlargement does the G8 need to address the legitimacy/effectiveness dimensions of this international organization?

The second question is does the Heiligendamm Process – this structured dialogue – provide an enlargement path for Continue reading →

So is the challenge to legitimacy and the inability of the G7/8 today to solve key global problems – global finance, and climate change but two key problems – leading the Great powers to welcome enlargement? No. That’s not it exactly. The current enlargement plans – if that is what the HP process is (more on that in a moment) – appears to have been built on earlier enlargement efforts of the G7/8. In fact the G7/8 as great power organization, is itself a product of enlargement, since its initiation in 1975 was 5 and today is somewhat imperfectly the G8.

But enlargement models have periodically arisen. Thus, much praise has accompanied the emergence – at the Finance ministerial level – of the G20 created after the Asian financial crisis. In this forum China, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa Continue reading →

For information on the G7/8 there is one must stop. It is the G8 Research Group. This Group is led by University of Toronto’s political science professor, director and co-founder of the G8 Research Group. It is a major if not the major global source on G7/8. Indeed, at the website you can find documents and analysis on every annual meeting, plus obligations undertaken by the member countries – The United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, (the EU is also present), Japan Russia. It is a treasure trove. And John Kirton, well he’s a walking encyclopedia. All you need do is ask him anything about any of the Leaders’ Summits, and in a flash John will tell you exactly what was decided in any of Continue reading →