Socialisation, policy opportunity, and bureaucratic bargaining: explaining China’s zig-zag engagement with multilateral debt restructuring

Scholars have long debated how emerging powers like China engage with global governance regimes. This paper contributes to the debate by suggesting a framework for discontinuous change of China’s engagement mode. We use China’s participation in the Group of Twenty (G20)-Paris Club Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI) and the Common Framework for Debt Treatments (Common Framework or CF), as a case study. Drawing on archives, new data and over 170 interviews, our findings suggest that China became more cooperative with the existing international regime as more Chinese bureaucrats were socialised into the regime. But this can be a slow process. Observed from outside, Chinese behavior can be confusing: The state makes a new commitment to international cooperation but then appears to renege on that commitment. We explain this ‘zig-zag’ behavior as the result of an interplay between uneven socialisation, policy opportunity, and bureaucratic bargaining. The compliance problem can therefore be seen as part of the progress rather than a setback of integrating China into the multilateral regime. Only when the majority of Chinese officials are socialised and when bureaucratic and banking interests are realigned through domestic reforms, can we expect full cooperation from China with the multilateral regime.