The Chinese mediation project highlights the fracture between the West and the Global South

Beijing recently inaugurated a World Mediation Institute. Although Switzerland’s participation has brought weight to the event, questions still surround the Chinese initiative. Will it be perceived as an unprecedented effort to reduce conflicts, or as an attempt to weaken its Western rivals?

China feeds great ambitions with what it hopes to be the first world organization responsible for solving international disputes through mediation. The reactions aroused so far only underline the gap between the allies of the Western powers and the countries which consider the growing economic power of Asia as a counterweight.

A total of 85 nations of Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe attended the launching ceremony on May 30 of the International Organization for MediationExternal link (Iomed) in Hong Kong, according to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign AffairsExternal link. Among them, around thirty signed an agreement on the creation of the institution. Serbia and Belarus were the only European signatories, according to what has been reported.

Some see opportunities. Swiss Minister of Foreign Affairs Ignazio Cassis, invited by China, told the delegatesExternal link that his country supported initiatives offering “pragmatic solutions” in the context of a stable international order.

Others believe that the new institution, by emphasizing voluntary agreements, could resolve conflicts where the legal path has failed, or better representing the countries which are struggling to be heard on the international scene. However, it remains to be seen whether China, in a context of tensions with the West, will be able to convince enough additional nations to join its project, and to dissipate the suspicions that it would seek to supplant the arbitration courts already established by its geopolitical rivals.

Fear of being perceived as biased

“Many states might want to avoid being perceived as biased,” said Xinyu Yuan, a researcher on Chinese global governance at the Institute of High International Studies and the Development of Geneva (IHEID). “Signing an agreement overseen by China could be interpreted as an alignment.”

The permanent committee of the National People’s Assembly of China approved the Convention on June 27 and indicated that it did not plan to bring the disputes under the World Trade Organization (WTO) before the Iomed, the South China Morning Post reported, citing the official Xinhua agency.

The complete list of founding membersExternal link has not yet been officially published. But according to Dana Landau, co-director and principal researcher in mediation within Swisspeace, a foundation specializing in the reduction of conflicts located in Basel, 33 countries have signed the agreement in Hong Kong.

The remarkable presence of Switzerland, with a tradition of more than a century in the mediation of disputes as an observer, helped give prestige to launch. Nevertheless, the signatories came mainly from the Global SouthExternal link. This term designates a set of countries generally with average or low income, whose history has been marked by the colonization of European empires.

Switzerland, like other actors involved in conflict resolution, is faced with major upheavals, including increasing geopolitical rivalry and an erosion of international rules as well as institutions responsible for enforcing them, explains Dana Landau de Swisspeace. “All of this has made mediation efforts in Switzerland more difficult in many contexts,” she notes.

>> In recent years, the offers of good offices of Switzerland have been rejected on numerous occasions:

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Beijing presents Iomed as an alternative tool to resolve disputes between governments, as well as between a state and individuals from another state, such as foreign investors. The institution would also deal with international trade disputes subject by mutual consent.

The skeptics could consider that this project is part of Beijing’s efforts to expand its sphere of influence and promote alternatives to the international order long established by Western nations. These efforts range from investments and loans abroad as part of “new silk roads”, to its rapprochement with Russia during the war in Ukraine, including the promotion of the Chinese Yuan as an alternative to the dollar in international trade and finance.

“The Iomed marks a new phase in the diplomatic strategy of China as a great power,” wrote Hiroyuki Akita, editorialist of the Japanese newspaper Nikkei and author of works on relations between the United States, Japan and China, in a columnExternal link published on June 15. “If China’s efforts to build a parallel world order continue to accelerate, global polarization will worsen.”

The governmentExternal link From Hong Kong, which will host the Iomed in a former police station dating from the colonial era, said that the institution would be “at the same level” as the International Court of Justice and the Permanent Court of Arbitration (CPA) of The Hague.

In 2016, Beijing rejected a decision by the CPA, which gave a lot of right to the Philippines concerning disputed territorial claims at the Southern China Sea. China had not participated in the procedure, having first declared that the case was excluded from such a process under an articleExternal link key to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The court had disputedExternal link cet argument.

Human rights are a subject of concern

“The history of China with regard to human rights violations, the Southern China Sea and other questions such as border disputes and international decisions obviously arouse concerns,” said Yun Sun, researcher at Brookings Institution and expert in Chinese foreign policy in Swissinfo. “I think that the arbitration of 2016 is at the origin of the Iomed. Beyond litigation and arbitration, there can be another path: mediation. ”

“Nothing guarantees that other countries will consider Iomed as fair, fair and impartial,” she wroteExternal link June 6 on the Washington -based site of the reflection group.

Chinese officials have argued that the institution would be added to the global negotiation arsenal. The Iomed is a “useful complement to existing institutions and methods of dispute settlement”, notes in a study on the subject Sun Jin, which oversees the creation of Iomed in the Department of Treaties and Law of the Chinese Foreign Ministry of Affairs.

China deemed more favorable by some

For Xinyu Yuan, of IHEID, other nations of the global south could be ready to join the initiative, because they believe that China is more favorable to them and that their voices are not sufficiently represented in current institutions.

In 2022, almost two thirds of the referees, conciliators and “ad hoc committees” appointed by the International Center for the settlement of investments in investmentsExternal link from the World Bank came from Western Europe or North America. These two regions represented less than half of the world’s economic production that year, or approximately a third if we take into account the parity of purchasing power, according to data from the World BankExternal link and the International Monetary FundExternal link.

Be that as it may, without a broader support worldwide, the China’s mediation exercise will find it difficult to overcome the geopolitical cleavage that its creation has highlighted.

“If the Iomed effectively manages to settle international political and economic disputes thanks to its specific anchoring and legal basis, it will constitute a serious competitor to the mechanisms for the settlement of existing international disputes,” noted Yun Sun in his article for BrooKings. But it still remains to be proven. “

Rely and verified by Tony Barrett/AC, translated from English by Pauline Turban using an automatic translation tool

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