Over the past three years, the world has undergone an unprecedented period of turbulence: the COVID-19 pandemic, problems in the post-pandemic era, tense relations between major powers like China and the United States, the Ukraine crisis, the conflicts in the Middle East... These factors prompt questions about the global order and the trajectory of global governance as 2024 is approaching.

From October 23 to 24, scholars from some 50 think tanks around the world gathered in Beijing for the Eighth China Global Think Tank Innovation Forum, co-organized by the Center for China and Globalization and the Chinese People's Association for Friendship With Foreign Countries.

"Think tanks are creators of ideas, producers of knowledge, and advocates of policies. They serve as guiding compasses, leading the way in shaping the trends and directions of our time," said Gao Anming, Vice President and Editor in Chief of China International Communications Group. "In the face of significant global challenges and urgent crises, think tanks should proactively shoulder the mission and responsibility of promoting cultural exchanges, resolving conflicts, and building a community with a shared future for humanity," Gao said in his keynote speech at the forum.

New order in the making

"Global order stands at a critical juncture. We meet today in difficult times unfolding in our region. Recent events underscore the urgency of reevaluating the international system," said Khalid Al Khater, Director of the Policy Planning Department, Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

"Today across the globe, there are more centers of influence each with their own political, economic, military and technological strengths. Additionally, international stakeholders are contending with the rise of more active roles for regional actors," Al Khater said, adding that those can more effectively contribute to the increase of regional stability.

Al Khater expressed his concern that local conflicts, such as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, could quickly escalate and have regional and global ramifications at any moment. "Thought leaders and think tanks serve a crucial and ever-growing role to inform and influence global policymakers in different areas," Al Khater said.

"I believe that the 21st century should be based on two words. One is respect. We need to respect each other across civilizations. The second is dialogue. Whenever there is a problem, we need to have a very detailed, strong dialogue," said Erik Solheim, Vice Chairman of the Europe-Asia Center and former Under Secretary General of the United Nations.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is drawing on the roots of India and Hinduism; in Türkiye, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is drawing on the roots of Türkiye and Islam; and Europe and America have become a little more inward-looking in recent decades.

"We need a balance between globalism and nationalism. Otherwise, we will fail," Solheim warned.

Hungary has its unique interpretation of this balance between globalism and nationalism. "Hungary is now and always has been in favor of a particular type of globalization that also allows it to maintain its identity. We believe that there are a lot of states, a lot of rising middle powers, and regional states that feel the same way," Gladen Pappin, President of the Institute of Hungarian International Affairs, said.

For that reason, the Hungarian strategy is to boost connectivity on the basis of preserving its national identity, culture and traditions, according to Pappin. On one hand, Hungary is in favor of preserving its traditional family structures and supports a strong family-based policy, which it views as essential to its ability to build links with different cultures and economic partners. On the other, it believes that the way to navigate the world is by using multi-vector foreign policy that allows it to be part of a variety of security arrangements, and also have multiple economic partnerships, he explained.

However, this thinking is not always well received. Pappin shared a story at the conference that an American think tank visiting him in Budapest hoped Hungary would focus much less on East-West connectivity between Hungary and Asia and more on North-South connectivity.

"I had to stop and ask: Who do you think is building the Budapest-Belgrade North-South Railway? And I didn't get an answer to that question," Pappin said.

The Budapest-Belgrade railway is one of the flagship projects of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in this part of Europe. It is the result of the deepening of cooperation between Central and Eastern Europe and China.

"I do think the BRI has many of the elements that are based on shared economic prosperity, that are based on increasing infrastructure development; and it also has a concept of people-to-people exchange which is based on mutual respect. Obviously, the BRI itself is not enough to solve every global conflict, because there are deep historical reasons, still culture divides, and geopolitical misunderstandings and resource conflicts," Pappin told Beijing Review. "Clearly, the future of humankind depends on finding a positive basis for international cooperation."

China-U.S. ties, still the key

Joseph Nye, a world-renowned professor of politics and former Dean of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, delivered a speech to the forum on October 23. Nye said he does not believe the world is entering a new Cold War between the U.S. and China, because there was almost no economic interdependence and very little social interaction between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. But that is not the case between the U.S. and China.

Using a three-dimensional chess board analogy, Nye said the U.S. sits on the top board of military power; on the middle board, the distribution of economic power is multipolar; power on the bottom board of interactions outside of the control of governments is diffuse. Therefore issues arising at this level cannot be solved with a "power over" concept but rather by a "power with" idea.

"There's enormous economic interdependence, half $1 trillion worth of trade. And there's also social interdependence—before COVID-19, there were something like 300,000 Chinese students studying in American universities," Nye said, adding that other areas such as ecological interdependence and climate change, nuclear non-proliferation and artificial intelligence applied to military affairs, all require increased cooperation between the U.S. and China.

According to Professor Zhu Feng, Executive Dean of the School of International Studies of Nanjing University, putting China-U.S. ties back on a normal track will be impossible if U.S. politicians continue to play the China card to achieve their domestic political goals.

"Since the time when U.S. President Abraham Lincoln declared an end to slavery, the U.S. has never been more divided and mired in domestic fragmentation and frictions," Zhu said. He continued that he didn't see much room for significant improvement in bilateral relations as long as American domestic politics remains highly fragmented.

Academic exchange has suffered as a result of the political mistrust. During the forum, Heiwai Tang, Associate Dean of the Business School at Hong Kong University, said he found it increasingly difficult to engage with American scholars.

"They [American scholars] told me they don't want to do it, because they had to go through multiple levels of approvals of their universities. Moreover, the IT departments of the universities require that they could only bring an empty laptop to China during academic exchanges," Tang said.

There is also a trend in the U.S., according to Tang, that universities are shutting down departments of Chinese studies. "This is not helpful in the process of American learning more about China," Tang said.

"We all know politicians come and go. We all know policies change over time, but the cultural aspect, educational aspect, of human society will always stay," said George S. Geh, Chief Executive Officer of the China Institute, a New York-based non-profit organization of Sino-U.S. cultural exchanges that was founded by Chinese and American scholars 97 years ago.

"We are here to participate in this discussion, and we want to make sure the exchanges between the peoples will continue to be strong, especially in today's geopolitical environment," Geh concluded. 

Copyedited by G.P. Wilson

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