Xi’s Four “Global Initiatives”: China’s Blueprint for a Parallel World Order
Hello, I’m Ylli Bajraktari, CEO of the Special Competitive Studies Project. Today’s piece is authored by Katie Cheung, a Research Assistant on SCSP’s Foreign Policy team and a junior at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. In this piece, Katie highlights the latest effort by the People’s Republic of China to assert an alternative ideological framework to democratic world order.
Unpacking Xi’s latest Global Governance Initiative
SCSP recently released an analysis of the 25th Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit and continued evolution of an Axis of Disruptors to undermine American geopolitical and technology leadership. Beyond the summit and spectacle of Xi’s Victory Day parade, a notable news item was the unveiling of the Global Governance Initiative (GGI) during the “SCO Plus” summit on September 1, 2025.
The GGI marks the latest development in Xi’s efforts to promote an anti-U.S. global agenda. Since 2013, the PRC’s engagement on the international stage has deepened integration of economics and ideology. What began with the infrastructure-centric Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has evolved into normative frameworks known as the “Four Global Initiatives” (4GIs): the Global Development Initiative, Global Security Initiative, Global Civilization Initiative, and now the Global Governance Initiative. We should not see these as substantive shifts in the focus and strategy of PRC foreign policy—instead, these initiatives reflect additive layers in Beijing’s authoritarian grand strategy. Rather than abandoning its economic ambitions, Beijing has begun to push ideological narratives that serve to legitimize its global influence, alongside expanding economic dependencies on erstwhile client states, and challenging American technological leadership.
Building More Than Bridges: BRI’s Evolution into the Four Global Initiatives
Announced by Xi Jinping in 2013, the BRI served as the natural continuation of China’s “Going Global” or “Going Out” strategy which was initiated in 2000 by then-President Jiang Zemin. The early 2000s saw Beijing actively encouraging the internationalization of its state-owned enterprises and private companies. The BRI allowed China to effectively leverage its vast industrial and financial capacity through tangible development projects worldwide. Practically, this translated into large-scale infrastructure development, including railways, ports, roads, and power plants, often financed through shaky loans with less stringent conditionalities compared to traditional Western lenders. This approach facilitated the export of Chinese goods and services, creating new markets and solidifying China’s economic partnerships across Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
As the world grappled with the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the PRC’s international engagement began to shift. At the April 2021 Boao Forum, President Xi Jinping reiterated his focus on “the four deficits” in governance, trust, development, and peace that humanity is facing. Xi framed these deficits not as abstract problems, but direct consequences of a global order dominated by Western (particularly American) hegemony and a lingering “Cold War mentality.” The 4GIs are Beijing’s comprehensive ideological framework to address these deficits in the global order.
The Global Development Initiative (GDI), launched in September 2021, is the economic pillar of this new framework. It aims to address pressing global crises and accelerate progress towards the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. The GDI’s emergence was strategically timed, as post-pandemic economic stagnation and diminished global credit made a pivot towards smaller-scale grants, capacity building, and training programs particularly appealing to developing nations. Through international cooperation and financial commitments, the GDI seeks to solidify China’s influence and reinforce its role as a “permanent representative” of the developing world. The GDI’s messaging allows Beijing to maintain its leadership in the Global South using an approach that is skillfully packaged for two different audiences. For recipient nations, the GDI’s themes are more diplomatically palatable because they describe less capital-intensive, tech-focused solutions that appear cost-effective and rapidly deployable to solve development challenges. From a Western security perspective, China’s engagement is viewed as a deliberate strategy to embed long-term economic and now digital dependencies on China, undermining Western security partners. This duality is key: the CCP continues to deploy the GDI narrative to frame its involvement in the Global South as beneficial cooperation, thereby expanding its influence while sidestepping the reputational baggage of the BRI.
In April 2022, the Global Security Initiative (GSI) was announced to promote a vision of state-centric security fundamentally rooted in the principles of sovereignty and non-interference. The GSI’s launch served two purposes: a long-term effort to counter what the PRC perceives as the United States' strategic encirclement through smaller Asia-Pacific alliances (such as AUKUS, QUAD, and the U.S.-Japan-South Korea Trilateral), and a near-term rebuke to the West’s coordinated sanctions against Russia following its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The GSI operates through dialogues and the export of security-related technologies, aiming to legitimize authoritarian allies and secure China’s global interests under the banner of “peace through development.” This language has become a key tool in Beijing’s diplomatic arsenal, representing a low-cost, high-reward form of soft power projection that allows China to engage in critical security matters, challenge U.S. influence, and cultivate the image of a responsible great power without making costly military commitments. The GSI’s rhetoric of respecting other countries’ absolute sovereignty within a multipolar world thus provides a diplomatic shield for China to expand its influence and support regimes that might be shunned by traditional Western partners, thereby subtly shifting global norms towards a more permissive view of authoritarian governance.
The Global Civilization Initiative (GCI) was introduced in March 2023 and represents China’s explicit attempt to shape global norms and values. The GCI is implemented through four key ‘advocatings’ for civilizations: promoting diversity, upholding common values of humanity, fostering inheritance and innovation, and enhancing people-to-people exchanges. Framed as an alternative to a Western-centric and conflict-prone world order, the GCI promotes Chinese values of harmonious coexistence, mutual learning, and shared progress based on diversity and respect. By promoting “common values,” Beijing argues that core concepts like 'democracy' and 'freedom' are not universal but can be defined differently by each country according to its specific culture and national conditions. While the CCP’s interpretation of “common values” may seem ideal, the underlying message attempts to bolster China’s state-controlled authoritarian system as an equally valid form of governance while denying the West’s authority to maintain its standards.
Most recently launched was the Global Governance Initiative (GGI). Framed around core questions such as “who governs, for whom, and how,” the GGI offers five guiding principles: 1) sovereign equality, 2) adherence to international law without double standards, 3) multilateralism, 4) a people-centered development agenda, and 5) pragmatic cooperation. In the digital age, the GGI seeks to promote state control over data, digital infrastructure, and information flows, outside the bounds of market-driven rules and transparency, reframing governance as a domain where authoritarian control over the digital space is not only legitimate, but efficient and beneficial. In 2023, SCSP “decoded” some frequently-used CCP phrases similar to the following analysis:
“Sovereign equality” means that each country has the exclusive right to determine its own political system, social model, and development path without external pressure or criticism. Similar to “absolute sovereignty,” it is a core tenet used to deflect foreign pressure on issues like human rights, Xinjiang, Tibet, or the political system in Hong Kong, framing such critiques as violations of state sovereignty.
“Adherence to international law without double standards” signifies that international laws must be applied consistently to all countries, without selective enforcement. In reality, Beijing accepts legal decisions that serve its interests and rejects those that do not. For example, Beijing has continued to build and militarize artificial islands, ignoring the 2016 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration that rejected China’s expansive territorial claims in the South China Sea.
“Multilateralism” promotes a global approach where all nations, regardless of their size or economic strength, have an equal say in decision-making, opposing unilateral actions and power politics. Nevertheless, PRC engagement in multilateral forums like the United Nations Human Rights Council has been criticized for using intimidation, bribery, and doctored documents to remove unflattering information about Beijing’s human rights abuses and the origins of the COVID-19 virus from UN reports.
“A people-centered development agenda” prioritizes issues like poverty alleviation, food security, and public health, areas where China’s own development model is seen as having been successful. In conjunction with the GDI, China aims to shift the conversation away from abstract political ideals like democracy and human rights towards practical development goals that resonate with developing nations. Conversely, a deeper look at the PRC’s international policing partnerships, for example, shows how providing training and technology under the guise of safety and security simultaneously enables PRC intelligence collection and the surveillance of Chinese nationals abroad, thereby embedding long-term security vulnerabilities for recipient countries.
“Pragmatic cooperation” aims to show that China is a reliable partner that delivers on its promises, thereby strengthening its soft power and building trust, especially in regions that have grown disillusioned with Western aid and policy conditionalities. However, Beijing’s strict domestic firewall and invasive Internet monitoring system prevent foreign firms from fairly operating in Chinese markets, contradicting calls for cooperation.
The Four Global Initiatives are presented as the necessary antidotes to the Western failures that Beijing and Xi have conceived regarding the state of the world. Posing seemingly profound questions about humanity’s future and the kind of world to create for future generations, Xi has used these 4GIs to craft his vision for China’s comprehensive answer to the “questions of our times” in order to build his “community with a shared future for mankind.”
Why do the Four Global Initiatives matter?
Xi’s speech launching the GGI at SCO coincided with the 80th anniversaries of both the UN and the end of WWII, as he invoked the false moral authority of the post-war order (the nationalist Republic of China forces were America’s allies in defeating Imperial Japan, not the Chinese Communist Party) to justify a fundamental reimagining of a more stable future. The SCO is elevated as both a symbol and instrument of this alternative model, acting as a multilateral bloc premised on mutual non-interference, development-first diplomacy, and techno-industrial integration. Xi’s speech mentioned investments in energy, green tech, and digital economies across the Global South, highlighting how Beijing is effectively constructing an ecosystem where dependency on Western technological norms is neither necessary nor desirable. China’s commitments, ranging from AI cooperation and vocational training centers to the expansion of Beidou satellite and lunar research platforms, demonstrate that the GGI is more than aspirational, it is a blueprint for a parallel system of global digital governance.
With the GDI, GSI, GCI, and GGI, Xi has established the ideological arc for how he seeks to be the architect of a future global order. However, beneath his rhetoric of “fairness,” Xi aims to leverage China’s economic power to embed techno-authoritarian principles in a "community with a shared future for mankind" that actively undermines Western-led institutions and democratic ideals. The strategic implications are clear: the world is witnessing not just an expansion of Chinese influence, but a deliberate construction of a parallel global system designed to entrench Beijing's vision of an alternative, state-centric order.
Beijing’s 4GIs alongside other global strategies present a more cohesive vision for the world than the United States currently offers. While the White House’s July 2025 AI Action Plan is a crucial step towards asserting American technological leadership, this alone does not compete with China’s all-encompassing ideological framework demonstrating CCP ambitions to cement the supremacy of PRC values in the global economy, security apparatus, and digital governance irrespective of freedom and human rights. Thus, the United States must move urgently to articulate its own positive and comprehensive vision, leveraging its technological strength and building the American tech stack as the foundation for a new generation of tech-oriented alliances.
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