China is reshaping new world order, says foreign policy expert

Stefan Halper, Senior Research Fellow at Magdalene College and a leading foreign policy expert, will discuss this at the World Affairs Council in San Francisco on 27 April.

His new book, The Beijing Consensus: How China's Authoritarian Model Will Dominate the Twenty-First Century, is published in the UK today [20 April].

It tells the story of how China's non-confrontational strategy is reshaping the rules of the new world order.

Dr Halper argues that, in attempting to influence developing nations to adopt
a liberal and democratic order, the United States, together with the World Bank and the IMF, has imposed conditions requiring loan recipients to implement “good government” reforms and transparency. "China extends low interest loans with no conditions while offering the world’s largest billboard advertisement of how to utilise the market for growth while remaining authoritarian”, he says.

Halper argues: "In order to maintain political control in a nation rife with corruption, environmental problems and social dislocation, the Chinese Communist Party must sustain double-digit economic growth, which means that it must acquire strategic resources wherever possible. The failure to provide jobs and housing for the millions pouring into the cities each month would invite chaos and the Party’s demise.”

He adds that China also strictly observes local sovereignty, does not urge reforms - rule of law, general accounting rules, safe working conditions etc-- but rather “provides a path around the West that renders Western values and institutions less relevant to global development.”

He says its example is widely admired in the "Third World" as a nation that has risen to the heights of global power and it has found growing supporters in the UN, WTO and other international organisations. He says: “In the decade ahead, we confront a battle of ideas about governance - perhaps the greatest challenge since the Cold War.”

Dr Halper is a Senior Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge, where he directs the Donner Atlantic Studies Programme. He is also Senior Research Fellow at Magdalene College and a Distinguished Fellow at the Nixon Center in Washington, D.C.

Halper served in the White House and Department of State during the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations, advising on a range of US foreign policy and national security issues. He is a frequent commentator on national security and foreign policy issues for the print and broadcast media.