Abstract:

The four global initiatives, namely the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, the Global Civilization Initiative and the Global Governance Initiative, represent a systematic practical framework through which China, as an emerging norm-advocating actor, supplies normative resources to the international community and embodies the core attributes of international norms. As a typical form of broad-domain norm supply, the four global initiatives take development, security, civilization and governance as their coordinates under a unified value framework. Oriented toward building a human community with a shared future and centered on the common values of all humanity, they form a norm-cluster structure featuring differentiation in domains and unity in values. The four global initiatives construct a progressive structure covering four dimensions: foundation, safeguard, values and procedure. Foundational norm supply establishes the material precondition of development priority; safeguard norm supply consolidates the security environment; value-oriented norm supply builds cross-civilizational consensus on legitimacy; and procedural norm supply provides an institutional vehicle for the other three dimensions. All these dimensions are underpinned by solid practices of global cooperation. Drawing on the common values of all humanity, the four global initiatives reconstruct the legitimacy foundation of international norms and help resolve the normative-legitimacy deficit brought about by Western-centric monopoly. With all-domain and systematically coordinated normative resources, they fill the norm-supply gap in global governance and facilitate the transition of norm supply from fragmentation toward integration. Through substitutive norm supply, they remove barriers to normative change and advance the democratization of the international norm system. The four global initiatives offer a systematic response to the triple predicament of structural imbalance, functional failure and blocked change within the existing norm system, and generate sustained impetus for the international normative order to evolve toward greater justice and equity.

Key words: Four Global Initiatives, norms, international norms, norm supply, global governance