China Observers in Central and Eastern Europe (CHOICE), a multinational consortium of experts, published on 28 September 2023 a commentary titled "Ambiguity: The Key Obstacle for China's Ambition to Reshape the Global Order" by Moritz Rudolf, Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Center.
China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a white paper titled "A Global Community of Shared Future: China's Proposals and Actions" on 26 September 2023. It comes after Xi Jinping's concept of a Community of Shared Future for Mankind (CSFM), the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the Global Development Initiative (GDI), the Global Security Initiative (GSI), and the Global Civilization Initiative (GCI). The GDI, GSI, and GCI are efforts to provide meaning to the CSFM.
The author points out that China's global initiatives emphasize general principles, which opens the door to ambiguity and appears to leave Beijing as their sole legitimate interpreter. The documents suffer from insufficient translation, definition, and contextualization. China struggles to formalize and operationalize its global initiatives. The author concludes that as long as Beijing remains incapable of clearly stating its global positions it will not be able to play a constructive role in reforming the global order but will disrupt it, regardless of its intentions.
