China’s Global Initiatives: Limited Reach, Strategic Openings in the Indian Ocean

Abstract

Fragmentation of the global, multilateral order is visible even in the range of purportedly cooperative initiatives on offer by great powers, which represent competing and alternative systems, (counter-)narratives, and poles of influence. This includes several “global” initiatives that China has put forward over the past several years—the Global Development Initiative (GDI) and the Global Security Initiative (GSI) among them. Intensified stakeholder competition limits the scope and impact of these initiatives, but also provides entry points for influence among smaller states. This is visible in the Indian Ocean Region, which has diverse local and extra-regional interests at play, and where China’s initiatives are one among a growing gamut of regional and extra-regional offerings for developmental and security partnerships. The main challenge will be to channel these competing economic, development, and security models towards a “race to the top” that enhances rather than erodes small-state development, security, and sovereignty.

The decline of multilateralism and the rise of great power unilateralism mark a global order in growing disarray. China is part and parcel of this wider geopolitical fragmentation, despite its rhetoric and perhaps genuine ambitions to the contrary: it is a party to maritime tensions in its near neighborhood, and a main actor in the increasingly sharp geostrategic competition.  It is in this context, of universal rules and norms arguably at a three-decade low, that China’s new “global”-level diplomatic offerings—the Global Security Initiative (GSI) [全球安全倡议], the Global Development Initiative (GDI) [全球发展倡议], the Global Civilization Initiative (GCI) [全球文明倡议], and the Global Governance Initiative (GGI) [全球治理倡议]—need to be understood and evaluated.

Despite being couched in language encouraging the adoption of new frameworks for principled state behavior, these Chinese initiatives are themselves part of the growth in competing and alternative systems, counter-narratives, and offerings of an era of intensified stakeholder competition. Limitations of China’s universalisms are particularly evident in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). This region has broad global significance for maritime connectivity, commerce, and security, but lacks effective overarching regional frameworks to cohesively manage associated developmental and security challenges. The region comprises diverse powers, both smaller and larger, each jockeying for its own interests. As this issue brief argues, it is highly unlikely these new Chinese initiatives will provide the foundation for such a framework—nor do they suggest that China will effectively become a dominant security or developmental provider, in this region or globally for that matter. Homing in on the GSI and GDI, however, these initiatives do offer additional opportunity for smaller and middle powers in the region to engage in strategic hedging, as they navigate much more complex, uncertain, and turbulent global politics.

The GSI and GDI, two of the more prominent of the Chinese initiatives, were announced separately by President Xi Jinping in 2021 and 2023. While they represent evidence of China’s global leadership ambitions and a much more assertive foreign policy, the two initiatives themselves do not represent substantively new approaches, or innovations, to existing Chinese foreign development and security principles, or behavior. The GSI reiterates many of the same conceptual framings that China had already articulated more than two decades ago in its “New Security Concept.” Introduced in the late 1990s, the New Security Concept contained much of the same terminology as the GSI, of “common” and “cooperative” forms of security, on both traditional and non-traditional topics. It also mentioned setting aside the “Cold War mentality” in favor of mutual benefits, towards security for humanity at large.[i] However, unlike with the GSI, those ideas at the time received very little attention from the international community.

The GDI also focuses on many broad principles, normative frameworks, and even targets that pre-exist in the form of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Putting separate Chinese branding on these ideas suggests, in part, that China holds the existing multilateral development system in high regard.[ii] Indeed, in concrete terms, China’s overseas footprint is by no means that of a hegemon that can wholly redefine or reorder existing global rules and norms. In terms of global development, China has since 2017 been the world’s largest creditor and is setting the pace and standard for financing in low-income states. In terms of stricter development assistance, however, Chinese aid remains very small in relative terms compared to traditional donors.[iii] Chinese development assistance amounted to only several billion USD in 2025, compared to the 174.3 billion by OECD countries in 2025, even after substantial cuts in aid budgets.[iv]

It is true that OECD countries’ approaches to development have begun to shift to a more Chinese-style emphasis on large-scale strategic and commercial investments.[v] However, China has meanwhile been shifting towards “small and beautiful” projects in low-income countries—replicating principles of inclusive localization that are by no means an innovation on existing OECD-DAC development assistance principles. This again indicates that China would be hard-pressed to independently define, let alone uphold, any truly new or alternative order in the development sphere.

Importantly, however, there is no international institutional architecture connected to these initiatives, which more than anything speaks to their limits. Global consternation and attention to these initiatives, therefore, are with regards not to genuine changes in China’s foreign security and development policies, but to China’s overall geopolitical clout, capacity, and footprint—which are admittedly as powerful as ever before.

[i] Chinese MFA, “China’s position paper on the new security concept,” July 31, 2002, https://www.mfa.gov.cn/web/ziliao_674904/zcwj_674915/200208/t20020806_9868841.shtml. Importantly, however, there is new language highlighted in the GSI around “indivisible security” [安全不可分割] between states, which echoes concepts that Russian leadership has used to narrate and justify the war in Ukraine. For more on this, see:  D. Zha, and D. Ting, “Catchy but Not New: “Indivisible Security” in the Chinese Foreign Policy Lexicon,” China: An International Journal 22, no. 1 (2024): 42–59.

[ii] Q. Chen and Z. Han, “Four global initiatives highly aligned with UN agenda, provide significant impetus for advancing relevant goals: former UN advisor,” Global Times, January 5, 2026.

[iii] A. R. Chen, “Foreign Aid With Chinese Characteristics,” Foreign Affairs, December 3, 2025; R. L. Root, “After USAID exit, China hasn’t moved to fill Asia’s funding gap,” DevEx, December 4, 2025, https://www.devex.com/news/after-usaid-exit-china-hasn-t-moved-to-fill-asia-s-funding-gap-111405.

[iv] OECD, “A historic decline in foreign aid: Preliminary 2025 ODA data,” April 9, 2026, https://www.oecd.org/en/data/insights/data-explainers/2026/04/a-historic-decline-in-foreign-aid-preliminary-2025-oda-data.html.

[v] S. Hameiri, and L. Jones, “International Development Financing in the Second Cold War: The Miserly Convergence of Western Donors and China,” Development and Change 56, no.1 (2025): 3–30.