South Africa's governance challenges: assessing the South Africa–China mineral case

The past 50 years of Africa's history have been blighted by a lack of good governance, which has hindered economic growth and political stability. The continent continues to maintain weak states which are clearly evident in the persistent corruption, unconstitutional behaviour, inefficiency, waste and unnecessary bureaucracy that remain widely practised. However, owing to emerging markets such as China and India that have promoted foreign direct investment in developing countries, a lot of speculation has arisen regarding the impact of the Forum for Cooperation between Africa and China on continental governance. The speculation tends to focus on whether the multilateral trade agreement between Africa and China will be mutually beneficial, or promote bad governance practices such as corruption. This paper argues that in order for any multilateral agreement to become economically beneficial in Africa, the continental elites must first implement good governance best practices. Furthermore, the onus is on the African states, not their regional or trading partners, to implement economic institutional change.     

改革开放与中国在世界贸易体制内的多边外交

改革开放以来,对外贸易在我国经济和社会发展中的地位日益上升,全方位参与多边经贸外交成为我国面临的一项重大课题。本文通过分析中国在关贸总协定和世界贸易组织所代表的世界贸易体制内的参与及发挥的影响力,对如何进一步发挥中国在该领域的建设性作用进行了展望。     

Waiting for Godot: Sustainable development,international trade and governance in environmental policies

The current environmental crisis calls for a sustainable style of development and draws attention to a new ecological dimension in social life that poses hitherto unforeseen challenges to the social sciences and to the everyday concerns of citizens, governments and private interests. Consequently, it is appropriate to attempt a critical overview of governance issues around the formation and implementation of environmental policies designed under the framework of sustainable development. After a brief introduction on how global perceptions about sustainable development have evolved, this article subsequently focuses attention on the main thrust of the emerging international environmental regime, and the multilateral environmental treaties embodied in it. Specific governance issues pertaining to environmental policies are also critically reviewed, particularly interrelations with the trade regime. The article concludes by spelling out some comments on research issues for the future, with a view to charting the environmental governance agenda lying ahead of us.     

RCEP:特点、问题与前景

作为世界最大的自由贸易安排,RCEP所取得的突破不仅有利于改善区域贸易与投资环境、增强区域供应链、推动经济复苏,还为区域经济一体化、全球贸易自由化、基于规则的多边贸易体制注入了前行的动力。同时,它对中国贸易和投资的可持续发展、高水平制度型开放、实施自由贸易区提升战略、构建国内国际双循环相互促进的新发展格局也可以发挥积极作用。RCEP以市场准入、规则、合作为支柱,具有开放包容、全面、高质量、互惠等诸多特点,并突出东盟方式与东盟中心地位。RCEP的后续生效实施与适时升级,将面临成员差异性与利益诉求复杂性、外部因素牵制、既有FTA规则的多样性与整合的难度、区域身份认同与大国协调等现实问题的挑战,仍需要以渐进灵活的方式,不断推动其深化和拓展。中国应一如既往支持东盟的主导地位,推动RCEP尽快生效。既要助力东盟提升凝聚力、加强大国协调,也要加速推进中日韩FTA谈判、加快与东盟成员的FTA构建。应不断提高规则利用率,充分发挥FTA本应具有的效应,以制度型开放营造良好营商环境,持续推动区域制度性经济一体化。     

Trading in Paranoia: Exploring Singapore's Security-Trade Linkages in the Twenty-first Century

Singapore's rude awakening to independence has led to the creation of one of the most important and strategic entrepôts in the Asia-Pacific. The country's limited territorial lands and natural resources, combined with huge per capita income, high population density and sensitive racial mix, make Singapore the quintessential pragmatic trading state of the twenty-first century. This paper examines how Singapore has embedded itself at the centre of regional and global trade systems by exploiting various forms of free trade activities including multilateral, regional and bilateral FTAs that underpin its security and survival. It argues that in order to maintain the city-state's geo-economic and geo-political viability, the Singaporean government has progressively linked its security interests with its multilevel free trade activities. Given the ‘vulnerability fetish’ and siege mentality that confront Singaporean leaders and policymakers, the pursuit of economic development via free trade has become the heart of its national security policy and strategy. The paper concludes by arguing that the enhancement and preservation of Singapore's survival as a sovereign nation-state demands a strategic utilization of FTAs with different trade partners, especially with regional and trans-regional powers such as the United States and China.     

The world's trading system in the post cold war era: implications for public administration

The authors of this article argue that the world is evolving into a regional bloc trading system with important public policy implications. Recent developments in North America and Europe suggest that regional integration is becoming an alternative approach to the multilateral trade deliberations under the auspices of the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The reasons for the evolution are suggested in this article, and arguments are presented on how the negative implications of this trend in world trade can be countered effectively by constructive domestic and international government action.     

Paving the way for farm animal welfare in international relations: an EU–Brazil case study

As a sensitive area in international trade, animal welfare measures have encountered resistance in negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO). Consequently, alternative avenues have been pursued to reach international trade policy convergence. To further understand the contemporary trade politics of animal welfare, an empirical investigation was conducted on the interplay between European and Brazilian actors in the context of livestock production. By drawing upon diplomatic studies and the global governance literature, this study identifies and analyses initiatives that parallel the WTO approach and through which the development and implementation of mutually acceptable farm animal welfare measures have been pursued. Research findings indicate that a constellation of international non-diplomatic actors are currently engaged in influencing the future development of farm animal welfare measures. Among the initiatives that enable the alignment of European and Brazilian animal welfare policies and practices, there are soft instruments such as knowledge sharing and private standards. The rise of new actors and the use of soft instruments have been, to a certain extent, able to mitigate the tardiness of a WTO consensus regarding the use of animal welfare measures. However, there are concerns that the use of private standards has become a shortcut to circumvent the rigours of the multilateral trading system. This concern deserves a closer look because instead of paving the way, private standards may hamper trade relations which in turn hamper progress in animal welfare matters.     

国际碳交易机制复杂化及中国应对

目前,国际碳交易机制网络群体呈现复杂化态势,碳交易机制复合体、碳交易机制集群与碳交易机制联结相互渗透,同时其内部也进行着良性协同、建设性合作与功能性竞争的有序互动。在无政府状态、利益认知差异以及全球气候治理体系转型等普遍性因素影响下,国际碳交易机制复杂化的成因有着自身的特殊性,是其发展进程中的必然产物。另外,国际碳交易机制间的互动具有双重效应,其协同合作将会带来经济发展与气候保护的双赢结果,而如果互相掣肘则会增加碳交易成本甚至造成负减排。因此,中国在复杂化的国际碳交易机制中推进新型碳外交并实现碳中和目标,既需要充分发挥自身团结国际力量的优势以及国内和国际双循环新发展格局的核心作用,促进碳交易机制间的协同与衔接,又要积极践行《巴黎协定》关于碳交易机制整合的倡议,与各国及相关国际组织共同将碳交易机制整合的规范推广到整个国际社会以及其他议题的全球治理之中。     

试论全球政治的新发展和中国多边外交的再思考

全球政治的新发展对国际关系产生了三大全局性影响,涉及人类生存的全球性重大问题上升到各国政治议程的前列,全球力量中心正从欧美开始向其他地区转移,全球性的"政治兴奋和活跃"继续扩散,从而对全球治理能力提出更高要求。但是现今的国际多边机制无论在充分性、有效性还是合法性上都存在日益严重的"能力赤字"。改革国际多边机制的呼声持续高涨。同时,中国在参与国际体系变革的多边外交进程中,面临日益上升的发挥"领导"和承担"国际责任"的压力,需要我们在多边外交中不断适应变化了的国家身份定位,在战略规划和布局上加强统筹地域和领域的多边机制,有机结合近期和长远目标,并在多边外交实践中丰富发展和谐世界理念。     

Recalcitrant spoiler? Contesting dominant accounts of India’s role in global trade governance

India is frequently cast as a troublemaker and blamed for the breakdown of the Doha Round. This article provides a critical re-reading of India’s trade policy and its position in multilateral trade negotiations. It challenges the widespread characterisation of India as a recalcitrant spoiler, intent on derailing trade liberalisation at the WTO. It shows that with the emergence of its highly-competitive, export-oriented services sector, India became one of the leading advocates of global services trade liberalisation in the Doha Round. Yet, not unlike the traditional powers, India’s offensive trade interests are also combined with significant defensive concerns in agriculture.     

Watching from the sidelines? The decline of the IMF's crisis management role

This article compares the International Monetary Fund (IMF)'s crisis management role during the Asian financial crisis in 1997–98 with the role it has played during the ‘credit crunch’ which emerged in the wake of the subprime crisis in the United States. With prominent calls for the construction of new forms of global financial governance to prevent a recurrence of the subprime crisis in the future, we explore how the designated guardian of the international financial system has responded to the credit crunch in order to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the existing system. Our comparison of the US subprime crisis and the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s indicates that the IMF has lost credibility with its members, and particularly with its principal sponsor, the United States, which has curbed its capacity to develop multilateral solutions to major financial crises.     

New Development in Global Politics and Rethinking on China’s Multilateral Diplomacy

The new developments in global politics exert three systemic impacts on international relations. Global issues, vital to the survival of mankind, rise to the top agenda of national governments. The epicenter of global power is shifting from U.S. and Europe to the rest of the regions. The global "political excitement and zeal" is rolling on. All exact more on the competence of global governance. The current international multilateral mechanisms are in "competence deficit", worsening either in terms of adequacy, validity or legitimacy. The call for the reform of it is ever soaring. China by the way is at once engaging in the multilateral diplomacy transforming the international system and facing the growing pressure of assuming "leadership" and "international responsibility". China needs to continuously adapt to the changed national identity in the multilateral diplomacy, to reconcile the multilateral mechanisms that deal with regions and domains in China’s strategic planning and laying-out, to organically associate the short-term and long-term goals and to upgrade the concept of harmonious world in the practice of multilateral diplomacy.     

Turkey’s global governance strategies at the UN compared to the BRICS (2008–2014): clarifying the motivation–contribution nexus

This study attempts to analyse Turkey’s contribution to the United Nations (UN) system in comparison with those of the Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) countries between 2008 and 2014 on three levels: personnel, financial, ideational. Employing an integrated methodology of a global governance contribution index (GGCI) and statistical analysis of complementary raw data, this study empirically reveals the degree to which Turkey was able to transfer its capabilities into an effective contribution to the UN system on the three levels. Drawing on the findings of its quantitative analysis, this paper further qualitatively assesses the reasons behind the gap between Turkey’s global governance motivations and its contribution to the UN system. In doing so, this study, first, deals with the main motivational drivers of its activism in global governance in the 2000s. After unpacking its integrated methodology, the second part of this study quantitatively compares Turkey’s contribution to the UN system to that of the BRICS. The third part of this study delves into the main trends and deficiencies in Turkey’s contribution to the UN system. Finally, this study concludes that Turkey, despite its high motivations for activism in global governance, has not performed well in transferring its capacities into contributions to the UN system, particularly on financial and personnel levels.     

Tensions in the discourse and practice of the European Union's Aid for Trade

The contemporary global Aid for Trade (AfT) agenda emerged out of world trade negotiations and it could have profound implications for the future of development aid, depending on how it is interpreted. The European Union (EU) has recontextualised this global agenda to suit its own approach to trade and development; specifically a focus on regional integration, and free market but ‘pro-poor’ development models. AfT is ascribed a variety of purposes in EU texts and its use continues to adapt as the EU's trade and development policy evolves. Institutionally the AfT framework has not strongly affected EU processes, organisational structures or methodology. A study of the use of EU aid for regional integration reveals dissonance between its development relationship and its trade policies while a focus on pro-poor AfT reveals a lack of capacity. Overall, there are tensions not just between discourse and practice but between different discourses of the EU.     

拜登政府的全球气候变化领导政策与中国应对

美国的气候治理政策长期呈现周期性变化特点。围绕气候问题,拜登政府强调引领清洁能源革命和重回气候治理,重视国内清洁能源发展、气候议题科学化塑造、气候治理多边主义,希望在继承奥巴马政府时期气候政策的基础上,全面提升美国的气候治理领导力。在国内,拜登政府欲依托科技创新、刺激需求、投资基础设施等措施使清洁能源融入美国经济进程;在气候外交方面,美国将推动相关问题在国家安全和外交事务中的主流化。拜登政府设计了“团结应对策略”,将盟友、峰会外交、经贸合作、对外援助和投资、技术标准、区域合作等内容融入其中,并突出气候变化与安全、人权的相关性。在对华气候政策方面,拜登政府将对中国实施限制性气候合作策略。虽然中美合作有助于实现《巴黎协定》的“2摄氏度”目标,也有助于全球低碳经济良性发展,但在气候治理领导权、全球低碳标准领域,中、美两国仍存在竞争。     

The capitalist conjuncture: over-accumulation,financial crises,and the retreat from globalisation

This article argues that the key crisis that has overtaken today's global economy is the classical capitalist crisis of over-accumulation. Reaganism and structural adjustment were efforts to overcome this crisis in the 1980s, with little success, followed by globalisation in the 1990s. The Clinton administration embraced globalisation as the ‘Grand Strategy’ of the USA, its two key prongs being the accelerated integration of markets and production by transnational corporations and the creation of a multilateral system of global governance, the pillars of which were the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The goal of creating a functionally integrated global economy, however, stalled, and the multilateral system began to unravel, thanks among other things to the multiple crises created by the globalisation of finance, which was the main trend of the period. In response partly to these crises, partly to increasing competition with traditionally subservient centre economies, and partly to political resistance in the South, Washington under the Bush administration has retreated from the globalist project, adopting a nationalist strategy consisting of disciplining the South through unilateralist military adventures, reverting to methods of primitive accumulation in exploiting the developing world, and making other centre economies bear the brunt of global adjustments necessitated by the crisis of over-accumulation.     

Russia and the Secession of Kosovo: Power,Norms and the Failure of Multilateralism

Theoretical debates about multilateralism positively juxtapose it to unilateralism or bilateralism, because it is seen as a natural ideational fit with the growth of global governance. The major schism on the concept is between normativists who emphasise shared values and the realists' concerns with strategic interactions and power asymmetries. The Kosovo crisis beginning in 1999 could be seen as the first major crisis of multilateralism in the international system after the end of the Cold War. It was a crisis about the role and interests of a hegemonic USA and a weakened Russia. As a case, Kosovo demonstrates the paradoxes and limitations of multilateralism in the field of international security, when there are different types and levels of multilateralism interacting. The US and EU leaderships saw Kosovo as essentially a regional problem which could be manipulated to rejuvenate and enhance Western multilateral cooperation in NATO. This view found support among an upper echelon of officials in the UN, surrounding Secretary-General Kofi Annan, which favoured a multilateral intervention in Kosovo as proof of commitment to the developing norm of ‘right to protect’. Russia, however, saw its multilateral engagement over Kosovo as a strategic interaction to counterbalance and compensate for its weakness vis-à-vis NATO. The multilateral interactions by these three parties appear to have deepened mistrust as the process failed to resolve the final status of Kosovo, leading to its unilateral declaration of independence in 2008. The case demonstrates the importance of shared interests for successful multilateral interactions.     

Assessing Aid and Global Governance

This analysis argues for a system of global economic, social and political governance in which development aid is part of wider global redistributive mechanisms to foster social progress and development in the twenty-first century. The study provides two arguments in favour of setting up a new system of global governance, and the role of aid in such a new system. First, since in the current international economic system aid cannot cope with adverse external shocks, a new system of global governance is necessary in order to protect LDCs from the volatility of the international economic system. Second, it is argued that a new system of global governance is needed to improve redistribution at the global level to foster social progress and development.     

Generating global health governance through BRICS summitry

While global plurilateral summit institutions (PSIs) of the world's most powerful countries have long generated effective global health governance, the most recent summits of the Group of Eight (G8) and the Group of 20 (G20) have largely abandoned their earlier concern with health, especially outside its specialized food and nutrition link. However, since its start in 2009 in Yekaterinburg, Russia, the annual summit of Brazil, Russia, India, China and now South Africa (BRICS), a new PSI arising has substantially addressed health and started to lead in some ways. The BRICS summit-level health governance has been reinforced by the advent of a BRICS health ministers' forum, other health-related ministerial institutions (notably for agriculture and trade) and official and multi-stakeholder bodies. This article provides the first direct, disciplined empirical analysis of how and why the BRICS summit system has governed global health, based on the models developed for and applied to G8, G20 and United Nations summit governance.     

“泛安全化陷阱”及其跨越

安全概念及其适用范围是国际关系学界长期以来争论的焦点之一。冷战结束后,传统安全的边界被打破,非传统安全领域议题越来越多地占据国家安全和国际关系议题的中心地位。国家行为体追求绝对安全状态和无节制扩充安全议题,可能造成资源的错配和浪费,导致国内政治的保守化和国际交往的封闭趋向,最终反而不利于实现安全目标,从而掉入“泛安全化陷阱”。当前,国际上少数国家表面上以“国家安全”为由干扰国际合作,实则推行单边主义和保护主义政策,对全球多边主义秩序规则、国际合作、大国关系造成严重冲击,其消极影响不可低估。党的十八大以来,中国的安全体系和能力建设取得了重要成就,形成了总体国家安全观的理论体系。作为新兴大国,中国同时面临复杂的安全形势和较大的发展压力。中国应以总体国家安全观为指导,理性平衡好安全与开放、发展之间的关系,审慎塑造安全议程,防止落入“泛安全化陷阱”。同时,中国在国际上应坚决反对滥用安全概念的行为,在新兴全球性议题上高举合作旗帜,推动经济全球化和国际关系民主化的持续发展,积极推动国际安全治理机制改革和创新,为构建人类命运共同体凝聚广泛共识和作出积极贡献。