2022. vol. 17. No. 1

During its 72-year history, PRC has gone through a difficult path of changing the diplomatic strategies of relations with the outside world. The first period, thirty years from 1949 to 1978, was ideological, directed by Mao Zedong and completely ignored international organizations (IOs). The second, the next 30 years (1978–2008) – economic, which was determined by Deng Xiaopingʼs policy of reforms and opening up, and the gradual embedding of the PRC in the IOs. Now China is implementing the third, political stage under the leadership of Xi Jinping, who set the country with the tasks of great power diplomacy and the formation of new / alternative international structures in which it plays a leading role and has a real impact on the future model of the system of international relations.The formation of the PRC in 1949 and the Korean War (1950–1953) that followed soon after, where Chinese “volunteer” soldiers fought with the united UN forces, blocked the possibility of contacts between the PRC and this universal international organization for two decades. The countryʼs internal problems in the form of a “cultural revolution” also did not contribute to the solution of this problem. Even the restoration of the PRCʼs rights in the UN in 1971, the establishment of diplomatic relations with the United States in 1979, and Deng Xiaopingʼs reforms could not significantly accelerate the PRCʼs accession to other international organizations. This process took about twenty more years and, on the whole, ended only in 2001 with the entry into the WTO. In the 21st century, especially after the 2008 global financial crisis, China began to actively use existing and create new international organizations with partner countries.The purpose of the article is to analyze the Chinese academic discourse on the problem of relations between the PRC and international organizations and international system, where Western countries, headed by the United States, dominate to this day, and China does not see a prospect for itself to take a place worthy of its complex power. The article examines the history of the formation of relations between the PRC and international system, identifies the reasons for the dissatisfaction of the PRC with its status in its structures and traces the process of creating international organizations in which China occupies a dominant position and in global competition with the United States can influence the future model of the world.The peculiarity of the article is that it mainly uses the works of Chinese authors who study the position of their country in relation to international system. It is concluded that China is actively formatting its geo-economic space, offering the countries of the Global South, which are part of it, not only material dividends, but also their values, development model and their view future model of the world.

This article was prepared as part of research project #20-514-93003 “Russia and China in the Global Political Space: Harmonization of National Interests in Global Governance” supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Following the United States’ unilateral withdrawal from the agreement between the five permanent UN Security Council members, the European Union, Germany, and Iran, that intends to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the United States has re-imposed and tightened its sanctions against Iran. The United States’ renunciation of the agreement, despite the agreement’s UN Security Council approval and verified Iranian compliance, arguably violated international law. Nevertheless, the United States is attempting to compel the other state parties (and others) to follow its policy on Iran by threatening those states’ companies and business executives with economic or even criminal sanctions to force them to cut commercial ties with Iran.Based on an in-depth discussion of the lawfulness of such secondary sanctions under public international law, this article concludes that secondary sanctions, as imposed by the United States more recently, are unlawful. The United States’ assertion of extraterritorial jurisdiction is not justified under any principle of jurisdiction recognized in customary international law. In fact, the international community explicitly rejects the United States’ claims to extraterritorial jurisdiction. Furthermore, the United States seeks to undermine third states’ foreign and trade policies by targeting their citizens and businesses. United States’ sanctions policy is thus an attempt to assert control over other states’ foreign policies. This coercion amounts to an unlawful intervention into those states’ internal affairs. Lastly, the use of the United States’ superior economic power to strong-arm other states into abandoning their own foreign policy is a violation of the sovereign equality principle.

The article “Enforcing U.S. Foreign Policy by Imposing Unilateral Secondary Sanctions: Is Might Right in Public International Law?” by Patrick C. Terry is translated and published with permission of the author and Washington International Law Journal, vol. 30, no 1, 2020, where it was originally published in English. Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/wilj/vol30/iss1/4.

Today, cross-border data flows are an important component of international trade and an element of digital service models. However, they are impeded by restrictions on cross-border personal data transfers and data localization legislation. This Article focuses primarily on these complexities and on the impact of the new European Union (“EU”) legislation on personal data protection – the GDPR. First, this Article introduces its discussion of these flows by placing them in their economic and geopolitical setting, including a discussion of the results of a lack of international harmonization of law in the area. In this framework, rule overlap and rival standards are relevant. Once this situation is established, this Article turns to an analysis of the legal measures that have filled the gap left by the lack of international regulation and the failure to harmonize law: extraterritorial laws in the European Union (regional legislation) and the United States (state legislation); and data localization laws in China and Russia. Specific provisions restricting cross-border personal data transfers are detailed under EU legislation, as are the international agreements that have been invaluable in allowing flows between the United States and the European Union to continue – first the Safe Harbor, and now the Privacyт Shield. Finally, in this context, the role of data governance is investigated, both in the context of data controllers’ accountability for the actions of other actors in global supply chains under EU law and under the Privacy Shield. Thus, this Article goes beyond the law itself, to place requirements in the context of the globalized business world of data flows, and to suggest ways that companies may improve their compliance position worldwide.

The article by W. Gregory Voss “Cross-Border Data Flows, the GDPR, and Data Governance” is translated and published with permission of the author and Washington International Law Journal where it was originally published in English in volume 29, number 3, 2020. Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/wilj/vol29/iss3/7.

Given the increasing importance of the digital economy, competition for digital technologies and solutions, as well as the contest to influence norms, standards, and regulatory mechanisms, is escalating. This influence is distributed unevenly – digitalization leaders, primarily the key Group of 20 (G20) members, gain significant advantages, increasing their potential for shaping digital regulation through the consistent inclusion of domestic standards and norms in the documents of multilateral institutions, including the G20, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the United Nations (UN) At the same time, Russiaʼs impact on the most important aspects of digital economy regulation at the global and regional level is currently limited.The article presents an assessment of the influence wielded by the leading G20 members (the U.S., Canada, the UK, the European Union (EU), Japan, Korea, China and India) on the digital economyʼs development and regulation. This assessment serves as the basis for recommendations on Russiaʼs approaches to the specific aspects of regulation (digital infrastructure development, cybersecurity, regulating digital platforms, regulating global stablecoins and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), data governance, and artificial intelligence (AI) policies) at the national level, as well as its engagement in the G20 and other multilateral institutions.The analysis indicates that the leading countries affect the digital economy mainly by determining conditions for activities in their domestic digital markets and participating in shaping new global standards and rules. In the areas of digital infrastructure development, cybersecurity, and data governance, there are growing contradictions between the approaches of the U.S., the UK, Japan and partly the EU and Korea on the one hand, and Russia, China and India on the other. Recommendations in these areas are related to strengthening coordination within the BRICS group of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa to develop common positions and collectively promote them in the G20 and other multilateral institutions. The main recommendations on other regulatory aspects include using the experience of digitalization leaders to minimize the risks posed by competitors and to strengthen Russian positions in the global digital economy.

Climate politics forms a subsystem of world politics. In this subsystem, states are differentiated by their ambitions to decarbonize their economies. These ambitions proceed from national policies and the nationally determined contributions (NDC) submitted by states in accordance with the Paris Agreement. Based on states’ climate ambitions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) produce multiple reports ranking states and evaluating their contributions.The main parameter of state differentiation by climate ambition is the expected year of achieving carbon neutrality. In 2019–20, the UK and the European Union (EU) promoted this parameter with the Green Deal, and eventually other metrics were overshadowed. The previously used climate parameters and rankings based on them were contradictory and depended heavily on the chosen methodology. Apart from being untrustworthy, they put some western countries in unfavourable positions.N. Luhmann’s new systems theory identifying “carbon neutrality” is taken as the main code of the climate communication subsystem that differentiates the climate subsystem of world politics from other functional subsystems. In this review article, how the emerging code of carbon neutrality is used by states and international organizations to form a new hierarchy in international relations is examined. Various constructivist and normative theories, from Foucault’s poststructuralism to the historicism and normativity of the English School, are applied in order to capture the possible implications of the political use of carbon neutrality for international relations. The article concludes with a discussion of the potential prospects of climate politics hierarchization for power redistribution in international relations.

The article provides a critical review of the book “Digital diplomacy and international organizations. Autonomy, Legitimacy and Contestation” [Zaiotti, Bjola (ed.) 2020]. The key feature of the book is the approach to the study of digital diplomacy, according to which international governmental and non-governmental organizations, and not only the foreign political departments of states, are considered as the main actors of communication. The authors highlight the features of the Internet communications of international organizations, look for new approaches to the study of online activity, consider the challenges and threats to the legitimacy and autonomy of international organizations in the context of information confrontation.
The article also examines a number of controversial topics raised by the authors of the work under review, including the issue of the correctness and validity of the use of the terms disinformation and fake news on an unsubstantiated basis.

The article was written on the basis of the project "Post-crisis world order: challenges and technologies, competition and cooperation" under grant No. 2020-1902-01-372