Combating Sino-Centric Multilateralism: The “Hard-Boiled Realism” Required for Japan’s Multilateral Diplomacy

Takaichi Sanaei primo Ministro del Giappone

Dr. Masahiro Matsumura, Professor of International Politics and National Security at the Faculty of Law, St. Andrew's University (Momoyama Gakuin Daigaku), and a member of the IFIMES Council, has prepared an article entitled “Combating Sino-Centric Multilateralism: The ‘Hard-Boiled Realism’ Required for Japan’s Multilateral Diplomacy.” In this article, Dr. Matsumura examines the profound transformation of the contemporary international order, arguing that the liberal international system is being challenged simultaneously by the United States' retreat from multilateral institutions and China's efforts to reshape them from within in pursuit of its strategic interests. He concludes that Japan should adopt a pragmatic and realist foreign policy by strengthening its alliance with the United States while maintaining an active role in international organizations to help balance China's expanding institutional influence.


Introduction: The End of the Liberal International Order and the “Inversion” of Multilateralism


In the post-World War II international community, the "Liberal International Order" constructed under United States leadership—along with its core institutions, most notably the United Nations—has long been accepted as a self-evident prerequisite for global peace and prosperity, possessing an unexamined, taken-for-granted legitimacy. Within this traditional framework, the United States operated as a "prudent hegemon." By subjecting itself to the constraints of the multilateral rules it had established, Washington rendered its own international behavior more predictable and less threatening to other countries, including its allies, thereby advancing its national interests over the medium to long term.

Over the past decade, however, the global landscape has been utterly transformed. As the negative side effects of globalization—such as deep wealth disparities, the collapse of the middle class, and deindustrialization in developed economies—became increasingly pronounced, the domestic foundations supporting the existing order collapsed. The structural culmination of this seismic shift is the return of the Donald Trump administration in the United States. In early January 2026, President Trump signaled his intent to support withdrawal from a total of 66 international organizations and treaties, a mandate his administration has been steadily executing.[2] The United States, once the "guardian" of the old order, has now transformed into the vanguard of anti-multilateralism, seeking its active deconstruction.


In stark contrast stands the behavior of the People’s Republic of China. President Xi Jinping has relentlessly championed the authority of the United Nations and the importance of multilateralism, packaging these concepts under the slogan of a "Community with a Shared Future for Mankind."[3] Beijing’s assertion that China represents the true "status quo power" in the international arena, while the United States acts as the revisionist destroyer, has created a bizarre "inversion" in global politics. While Sino-American relations superficially appear to be a contest over liberal values and competing ideologies, their essence is a cold, calculated "international power game" for global leadership. This essay dissects the reality of the "Sino-centric multilateralism" pursued by Beijing and delineates the diplomatic strategy that Japan must adopt as it confronts the profound uncertainties of this transitional era.
 

1. Institutional Revisionism from Within and the Reality of "Entryism"


The essence of China’s contemporary multilateral diplomacy lies not in destroying the existing international order from the outside through military force, but rather in deeply penetrating its inner workings to redefine it in a manner advantageous to Beijing. China has systematically deployed vast personnel and overwhelming financial resources across the main body of the United Nations, its specialized agencies, international financial institutions, and regional organizations.[4]

Some analysts characterize this phenomenon as "entryism." While the term originally carries a strong political coloring—denoting a tactic where a political faction infiltrates an existing organization to capture its leadership—it remains highly instructive as a metaphor for China's current behavior. China maintains the structural scaffolding of existing international institutions and exploits their global legitimacy, while simultaneously pushing "norms" (the interpretation of rules), "agendas," and "narratives" tailored from within to its own convenience. This is precisely what should be termed "institutional revisionism from within," and its ultimate objective is the realization of a "Sino-centric multilateralism."[5]


The impact of this strategy on the liberal international order is profound. First, it severely erodes the consistency and universality of "liberal norms" such as human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. Brought to the fore in their stead is a gradual shift toward a "post-liberal" order that prioritizes state sovereignty, economic development, and regime stability above all else. Shielded by the principle of non-interference in internal affairs, criticism of human rights abuses is deflected, while a new global standard that legitimizes state capitalism and developmental autocracy is subtly woven into the resolutions and guidelines of international bodies.

Crucially, China has not yet moved to transition fully toward creating a complete "alternative order." This is because Beijing still requires the global legitimacy and practical utility embedded within the existing institutional architecture of the UN system. They operate not as outright wreckers, but as transforming agents that parasitize and alter the multilateral system from within.
 

2. Transitional Uncertainties and the Trump Administration’s Institutional Restructuring Vision


In response to China's creeping internal erosion of these bodies, the tactic adopted by the Trump administration has been a radical strategy of disengagement, resembling a retreat from the established battlefield. The U.S. suspension of mandatory financial assessments and its withdrawal from various treaties and agencies destabilize the operational foundations of these organizations, forcing budget cuts and structural downsizing. This approach possesses a certain destructive efficacy, as it deflates the value of the very stages upon which China seeks to expand its influence, effectively neutralizing Beijing's institutional investments.

However, this strategy harbors a fatal flaw. Once the United States vacates the stage, its veto power, voting rights, and structural voice within those institutions vanish, leaving it unable to exert leverage over the remaining member states. In effect, Washington voluntarily abandons its most direct defensive mechanism: balancing from within.

Simultaneously, the Trump administration has proposed a new framework to replace or bypass the deadlocked UN Security Council—a genuinely empowered "Board of Peace"[6]—alongside an initiative called "CORE5" (comprising the U.S., Russia, China, India, and Japan)[7], which seeks to absorb and expand the economic and political coordination functions of the traditional G7 (U.S., Canada, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the EU). The CORE5 concept discards ideological alignment in favor of a return to great-power politics (Realpolitik) anchored by five pivotal states possessing actual material power and global influence. It is being presented as an alternative capable of breaking through the current paralysis of multilateralism.

This dynamic encapsulates the structural uncertainty unique to this transitional phase of contemporary international relations. The legacy system (the UN and its affiliates) is decaying and weakening, yet it still retains a degree of international utility and legitimacy that prevents it from being discarded overnight. Concurrently, nations are forced to navigate through a dense fog of uncertainty, engaging in trial and error as they attempt to adapt to emergent mechanisms like CORE5.


3. Japan’s Course: The Japan-U.S. Alliance and the Dilemma of Multilateral Diplomacy


Faced with a fierce Sino-U.S. rivalry for the steering wheel of multilateral diplomacy, how should Japan position itself?

As a foundational reality, the United States remains Japan’s sole treaty ally, upon whom Tokyo depends entirely for its national security and with whom it shares dense economic interdependence. Given that a rising, communist China is executing an assertive brand of multilateralism, aligning fundamentally with the U.S. competitive stance against China is a rational and necessary choice for Japan's survival and core national interests. Furthermore, the CORE5 framework proposed by the Trump administration offers Tokyo an exceptional opportunity to elevate its global influence, securing an indisputable seat as a principal power representing Asia. Japan should engage with this initiative proactively.

At the same time, however, the existing structures of the UN Security Council and the G7 still retain institutional utility; discarding or marginalizing them abruptly would damage Japan’s national interests and its diplomatic capital. Therefore, blind adherence to the Trump administration’s drastic policy pivots is both impossible and ill-advised for Tokyo. What Japan requires is an approach that aligns its "policy vector" (strategic direction) with the United States to the maximum extent possible, while cold-bloodedly calibrating the "scale," "degree," and "tempo" of its execution against its own national interests.

Specifically, Japan must strictly refrain for the foreseeable future from adopting radical measures like Washington's abrupt withdrawals or the halting of mandatory financial contributions. If Japan were to abandon the battlefield alongside the United States, international organizations would be transformed entirely into uncontested domains for Chinese influence. Japan must choose instead to remain inside these organizations, working in close alignment with European allies and other like-minded partners to serve as an internal bulwark, monitoring and checking Beijing’s attempts to distort global norms.


Conclusion: Shifting to a "Hard-Boiled Realism" Void of Idealism


In the practical execution of its multilateral diplomacy moving forward, Japan must institutionalize two distinct tactical approaches.

First, regarding "voluntary supplementary contributions" earmarked for specific operational programs, Tokyo should strategically restrict and manage these funds in lockstep with the U.S. counter-China strategy. Japan must utilize its financial leverage to disrupt and check China’s capacity to capture institutional leadership and dictate agenda-setting.

Second, Japan must re-evaluate its approach to critical sectors where a cessation of activity is deeply undesirable, such as human rights, humanitarian assistance, and public health. If a specific multilateral framework in these sectors is deemed to have fallen under Chinese leadership or veto control, Japan must not naively cling to that structure. Instead, Tokyo should dynamically pivot its operational delivery toward bilateral coordination with the United States and other allies, or toward "minilateral" frameworks comprising a small, committed nucleus of like-minded nations. There is no strategic rationale for Japan to remain tethered to a multilateralism that China has paralyzed or hollowed out for its own parochial interests.

The arena of multilateral diplomacy is not a utopian landscape for preaching global harmony; it is an unforgiving theater of power politics where state will and national survival are contested. Japanese diplomacy must completely discard its historical, naive attachment to "UN-centrism." Managing the volatile dynamics of a changing United States while resolutely checking China's Sino-centric institutional encroachment requires Tokyo to chart its course with an enduring, sophisticated, and thoroughly hard-boiled realism.

Prof. Dr. Masahiro Matsumura

About the author: 
Prof. Dr. Masahiro Matsumura is Professor of International Politics and National Security at St. Andrew’s University in Osaka, and was a 2024 ROC-MOFA Taiwan Fellow-in-Residence at NCCU-IIR Taiwan Centre for Security Studies in Taipei. He is Member of IFIMES Council.










Footnotes:
[1] IFIMES – International Institute for Middle East and Balkan Studies, based in Ljubljana, Slovenia, has Special Consultative status at ECOSOC/UN, New York, since 2018 and it’s publisher of the international scientific journal “European Perspectives”, link: https://www.europeanperspectives.org/en

[2] “Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Withdraws the United States from International Organizations that Are Contrary to the Interests of the United States,” White House, January 7, 2026, link: https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2026/01/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-withdraws-the-united-states-from-international-organizations-that-are-contrary-to-the-interests-of-the-united-states/?utm_source

[3] “Remarks by Xi Jinping at the High-level Meeting to Commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the United Nations” (an official translation of Xinhua News agency), Center for Strategic  and International Studies, September 21, 2020, link: https://interpret.csis.org/translations/remarks-by-xi-jinping-at-the-high-level-meeting-to-commemorate-the-75th-anniversary-of-the-united-nations/?utm_source

[4] “People’s Republic of China (PRC) Representation in International Organizations,” U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, April 2026, link: https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/2026-04/PRC_Representation_in_International_Organizations_April2026.pdf

[5] Joel Ng, “Sino-centric Multilateralism: China’s Order-Building in the Post-Liberal Order, “ Columbia SIPA, February 24, 2026, https://multilateralism.sipa.columbia.edu/news/sino-centric-multilateralism-chinas-order-building-post-liberal-order?utm_source; Kristine Lee and Alexander Sullivan, “People’s Republic of the United Nations: China’s Emerging Revisionism in International Organizations, “Center for A New American Century, May 2019, link: https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/files.cnas.org/documents/CNAS-Report-China-IO-final-web-b_2026-06-03-170623_fere.pdf; and, Gregory T. Chin and Kevin P. Gallagher, China and the Global Economic Order, Cambridge University Press, October 10, 2025.

[6] “President Trump Ratifies Board of Peace in Historic Ceremony, Opening Path to Hope and Dignity for Gazans,” White House, January 22, 2026, link: https://www.whitehouse.gov/releases/2026/01/president-trump-ratifies-board-of-peace-in-historic-ceremony-opening-path-to-hope-and-dignity-for-gazans/?utm_source.

[7] “Trump’s alleged ‘Core Five’ plan sparks debate over future of global power,” Gulf News, December 12, 2025, link: https://gulfnews.com/world/americas/trumps-alleged-core-five-plan-sparks-debate-over-future-of-global-power-1.500377800?utm_source.%20%E2%80%9CTrump%20Administration%E2%80%99s%20Core5%20Proposal%20as%20Alternative%20to%20G7,%E2%80%9D%20link:%20https://mezha.net/eng/bukvy/trump-administration-s-core5-proposal-as-alternative-to-g7/
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     
 
Ubicazione: Osaka, Prefettura di Osaka, Giappone

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