Global Governance, Conflict and China by Matthias Vanhullebusch

Abstract

China’s rise has been a visible, yet somewhat puzzling, phenomenon to the world. During the the ongoing global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, China, with its more stringent national policies, has been relatively successful at virus containment compared to many Western counterparts. Moreover, the differences between the East and the West has been a persistent theme attracting great academic interest in many fields, but rarely has anyone been able to propose a balanced approach that can bridge the differences between the two to solve real-life issues. This book intends to address this gap, with a critical account of the current international law-making process. It ambitiously proposes a theory named the “Relational Normativity of International Law”, calling for a paradigm shift of international law from a mere rule-based system to a rule-based system complemented by relational thought.

Keywords: international law; global governance