China’s State Council Information Office released a white paper on global governance on 17 June 2026, setting out Beijing’s positions on the United Nations, development, security, technology, trade, and the Global South. The document does not mark a sudden turn. Its importance lies in consolidation. China has put its diplomatic vocabulary into one framework at a time when the UN is weakened, the US is less willing to carry the burdens of multilateral leadership, and conflicts in West Asia and Ukraine have exposed the limits of existing institutions.
The paper presents China as a defender of order rather than a challenger to it. That is the point. Beijing is not proposing to replace the UN. It wants to reshape the UN-centred system from within, using the language of sovereignty, development, equality, and multipolarity. The target is not only institutional power. It is also the moral and regulatory vocabulary through which countries, companies, and citizens will deal with one another.
For India, this is a direct challenge. New Delhi has tried to define a third way in world politics, avoiding dependence on the West without accepting Chinese primacy. China’s new document makes that space harder to hold. If India does not press its own agenda more firmly, Beijing will define the terms on which the Global South, the UN, and emerging technology rules are debated.
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China global governance paper
China has long spoken of a “global governance deficit”, its phrase for the weakening of multilateral institutions and the dominance of Western preferences in global rules. Since the global financial crisis, this argument has grown more assertive inside China’s political system. It has been tied to Beijing’s claim that its rise will be peaceful and that it can act as a responsible power in a fragmented order.
The white paper gives this claim a more organised form. It casts China as an active builder of a new type of international order. In practice, that means an order in which China has greater say over norms, institutions, and standards. The phrase is less neutral than it appears. Beijing is using the failures of Western-led collective action to present its own preferences as the reasonable alternative.
The timing helps China. The US has repeatedly treated multilateral restraint as optional. The UN has struggled to act on Gaza, Ukraine, and the Iran crisis. In that gap, China can speak the language of collective action without bearing the full cost of collective leadership. The white paper turns that opening into a diplomatic programme.
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China and the UN: Working inside the system
China’s approach to the UN has changed. For decades, Beijing often used the institution to protect sovereignty and resist external pressure. The new paper does more. It aligns China’s domestic and diplomatic claims on development, trade, women’s rights, sustainability, and institutional reform with UN language.
That alignment is not accidental. China wants to be seen as the power defending the UN when others bypass it. This helps Beijing avoid the image of a revisionist state. It also allows China to recast the ideological foundations of global governance. Liberal vocabulary built around rights, democracy, and conditionality gives way to sovereignty, development, non-interference, and representation for developing countries.
This is a more effective strategy than attacking the UN. It lets China argue that the institution is legitimate, but its rules and priorities need correction. The correction, in Beijing’s telling, should give greater weight to China and to countries that share its discomfort with Western dominance.
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AI standards and China’s rule-making push
The white paper also gives prominence to artificial intelligence, cyberspace, and outer space. These are not side issues. Rules in these areas will shape trade, security, data flows, platform governance, satellite use, export controls, and industrial advantage.
China has already invested in standard-setting across emerging technologies. Its firms, regulators, research institutions, and diplomats work across technical bodies and multilateral platforms. The white paper places those efforts inside a broader political claim: future rules should not be written by Western states and corporations alone.
For India, domestic capacity will not be enough. Building AI models, launching satellites, or expanding digital public infrastructure matters, but the rules governing these systems will be written in international forums. If India is absent or underprepared in those forums, it will live with standards shaped by others. China understands this. India should too.
Global South leadership the main contest
The boldest claim in the white paper is China’s attempt to speak for the Global South. Beijing does not merely ask for a larger role for developing countries. It places itself at the centre of that demand.
This has direct consequences for India. New Delhi has invested heavily in its own Global South diplomacy, including through the G20 presidency, development partnerships, vaccine diplomacy, digital public goods, and voice-of-the-South platforms. China’s pitch competes with that effort. It seeks to rally developing countries inside the UN, BRICS, and other forums while narrowing India’s room to lead.
China’s positions on Iran, Gaza, and Ukraine are part of this strategy. Beijing points to its role in the Saudi-Iran agreement, its calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, and its diplomacy on Ukraine as evidence of a distinct approach to international order. Some of these claims are overstated. But they work politically because many Global South countries see Western positions on West Asia as selective and self-serving.
India cannot ignore that perception. Its diplomacy on Gaza and Iran has been careful, but caution can look like hesitation when China turns every crisis into a platform for leadership. New Delhi need not copy Beijing’s rhetoric. It must ensure that its positions are not read as silence when Global South sentiment is moving sharply.
India China relations need agenda-setting
India’s answer cannot be alignment with the West. That would concede China’s argument that only Beijing speaks for countries outside the Western bloc. Nor can India rely on distance and ambiguity. China is moving in old institutions such as the UN and in new rule-making arenas such as AI, cyberspace, and space. Drift will be costly.
India needs a sharper multilateral strategy. In BRICS, it must prevent China from turning group statements into vehicles for Beijing’s geopolitical line. In the UN, it must push reform language that expands representation without handing China the role of principal interpreter of the Global South. In technology forums, it must invest diplomatic capital in standards, safety rules, data governance, and access to infrastructure.
The contest is not only over power. It is over vocabulary. If China defines fairness, sovereignty, development, and multilateral reform on its own terms, India’s third way will become harder to explain and harder to defend. Beijing has put its claim on paper. India now needs to put weight behind its own.
Devendra Kumar is an associate fellow at the Center of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence, Delhi NCR. He tweets @DoctorDev. Views expressed are personal.