This study examines China’s multi-tiered and diverse approaches to global governance reform through four interrelated analytical moves. First, it reconceptualizes the architecture of global governance and distinguishes among power, ideology, and governance solutions. Second, it theorizes a ‘reform methodology’ grounded in China’s domestic experience with reform and opening-up. Third, it explores the socio-political mechanisms that underpin the construction of China’s global governance solutions, with particular attention to deliberation within policy circles. Finally, it provides an empirical analysis of China’s engagement in three critical issue areas ‒ international development cooperation, climate governance, and global financial safety governance ‒offering a nuanced understanding of China’s evolving role in shaping global governance reform.

Bowen Yu is an Associate Professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs at Fudan University. He is also an associate editor of Chinese Political Science Review and an affiliated researcher with the Environmental Governance Lab of the University of Toronto. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of Toronto. His research focuses on international organizations, global development, global environmental governance, and international relations theory, with a particular interest in the logic of change in global governance. He is the author of Power, Discourse, Practice: Understanding the Deep Transformation of Global Governance (in Chinese), published by Shanghai Renmin Press in 2023. His research has been published in the World Economy and Politics (in Chinese), China International Studies (in Chinese), the Chinese Journal of International Politics, Journal of Contemporary China, Global Environmental Politics, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, and Chinese Journal of Population, Resources and Environment, among other journals. Bowen Yu is working on a project on the development of new international organizations funded by the National Social Science Fund of China. He is also a partner in a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship project led by Yixian Sun at the University of Bath.