A: Extended Abstract

Title: China’s Approach to International Law in Light of Transformations of the Principle of Sovereignty

1. Introduction: With China’s return to what many describe as its historical and geopolitical centrality, scholarly attention has increasingly focused on the country’s evolving engagement with international law. Among the foundational concepts under scrutiny, the principle of sovereignty occupies a central position. This article examines China’s approach to international law through the lens of transformations in the principle of sovereignty and evaluates whether China’s growing role as a rule-shaper may contribute to a substantive reconfiguration of this principle. The study situates China’s practice within broader historical developments of sovereignty, from the Westphalian model to the post-Charter order, and investigates whether China’s engagement signals continuity, strategic adaptation, or a deeper ontological shift.

2. Research Gap and Objective: While existing scholarship has explored China’s compliance behavior and its participation in international institutions, fewer studies have systematically examined whether China’s evolving legal posture reflects a potential reconceptualization of sovereignty at a structural level. Much of the literature treats China either as a revisionist power seeking to undermine the liberal international order or as a pragmatic stakeholder operating within it. This dichotomy overlooks a third possibility: that China may be advancing a distinct normative vision rooted in its own historical and philosophical traditions.

The objective of this article is to assess whether China’s transformation from a rule-taker to a rule-maker entails merely a strategic reinterpretation of existing norms or whether it represents the early stages of a broader ontological and conceptual redefinition of sovereignty in international law.

3. Methodology: The research adopts a descriptive-analytical approach grounded in doctrinal legal analysis. It draws upon primary sources including the UN Charter, WTO jurisprudence, international legal instruments, official Chinese policy documents, and diplomatic statements. It also examines China’s conduct in specific legal domains—such as international waterways, the law of the sea, multilateral financial institutions, and human rights discourse—to identify patterns in its interpretive and institutional strategies.

In addition, the study engages in conceptual analysis by comparing the Westphalian conception of sovereignty with elements of classical Chinese political philosophy, particularly the Tianxia framework and Confucian notions of harmony, in order to explore potential normative divergences.

4. Key Findings: The findings indicate that China’s approach to sovereignty operates along a dual-track logic. On one level, China consistently affirms the Charter-based understanding of sovereignty, emphasizing sovereign equality, non-intervention, and territorial integrity. This position is particularly visible in its resistance to humanitarian intervention doctrines and its insistence on the primacy of state consent.

However, at the operational level, China demonstrates selective and strategic interpretive flexibility. In economic governance, China initially acted as a rule-taker—most notably upon its accession to the WTO—but gradually adopted more assertive interpretive strategies, including creative readings of accession protocols and procedural mechanisms. In maritime disputes, its positions vary depending on strategic context, oscillating between strict adherence to existing legal frameworks and expansive sovereignty claims.

Simultaneously, China has pursued a dual institutional strategy. While increasing its influence within established institutions such as the IMF and World Bank, it has also founded parallel institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the New Development Bank (NDB). These developments suggest that China is not merely adapting to existing rules but actively shaping institutional environments in ways that reflect its priorities.

At a deeper normative level, the study identifies the growing prominence of concepts such as “a community with a shared future for mankind” and civilizational diversity. These discursive shifts, combined with references to harmony and hierarchical responsibility, resonate with the Tianxia tradition, which conceptualizes order not as a system of formally equal sovereign units but as a relational and morally structured hierarchy.

While China continues to operate formally within the state-centric framework of international law, these elements point toward a possible reconfiguration of sovereignty—from an absolute, territorially bounded entitlement toward a functional and relational concept embedded within a broader civilizational order.



5. Contribution to the Field:This article contributes to international legal scholarship in three principal ways. First, it moves beyond the binary classification of China as either revisionist or status-quo-oriented by proposing a transitional analytical framework. Second, it integrates doctrinal analysis with philosophical inquiry, thereby illuminating the ontological underpinnings of sovereignty debates. Third, it highlights the possibility that transformations in sovereignty may arise not through explicit treaty reform but through gradual reinterpretation, institutional diversification, and discursive reframing.

6. Implications and Applications:The implications of this research extend to both theory and practice. Theoretically, it suggests that sovereignty is neither static nor exclusively Westphalian in origin, but potentially open to plural ontological foundations. Practically, China’s evolving approach may influence areas such as environmental governance, global economic regulation, and the balance between non-intervention and collective responsibility.

If China’s normative vocabulary gains wider acceptance among developing states, it may accelerate a shift toward a more pluralized understanding of global order, with significant consequences for the distribution of rule-making authority and the future trajectory of international legal development.

7. Conclusion:China’s evolving engagement with international law reflects neither simple compliance nor outright revisionism. Rather, it reveals a dynamic process in which strategic adaptation, institutional innovation, and philosophical distinctiveness converge. While China continues to invoke Charter-based sovereignty as a defensive principle, its growing capacity for rule-shaping and its civilizational discourse suggest the potential emergence of an alternative conceptualization of sovereignty. Monitoring this transition is essential for understanding the future architecture of international law and the possible reorientation of its foundational principles.

8. Keywords: China; Sovereignty; International Law; Global Order; Tianxia; Non-Intervention; Rule-Making