The discursive power of the people's Republic of China: hidden strategies of global initiativesand challenges to Ukraine's foreign policy subjectivity

Abstract

Background. The transformation of the contemporary international relations architecture is accompanied by China's transition from a passive "rule-taker" to an ambitious global "rule-maker." In the context of Russia's aggression against Ukraine and the growing coordination between beijing and moscow, the critical analysis of the PRC's official discourse acquires direct practical significance for preserving Ukraine's foreign policy subjectivity and its Euro-Atlantic trajectory.The study aims to critically analyse the PRC's official discourse within its key global initiatives – the Belt and Road Initiative (一带一路), the Digital Silk Road (数字丝绸之路), and the Community of Shared Future for Mankind (人类命运共同体) – in order to identify the gap between their humanistic rhetoric and concealed strategic objectives, as well as to assess the challenges these initiatives pose to Ukraine's foreign policy autonomy.
Methods. The methodological foundation combines a critical synthesis of secondary scholarly literature with interpretative analysis of official primary sources – State Council white papers, Xi Jinping's programmatic speeches, and conceptual documents of the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Results. It is established that the concept of "discourse power" (话语权) functions not as an instrument of inter-civilisational dialogue, but as a mechanism of normative dominance aimed at replacing universal liberal values with norms that prioritise state sovereignty over individual rights. The Belt and Road Initiative is found to generate asymmetric economic and technological dependencies through a "lock-in effect," while the Digital Silk Road constructs a parallel digital order incompatible with liberal norms of privacy and freedom of expression. The concept of the Community of Shared Future for Mankind is analysed as a contemporary form of the neo-imperial Tianxia system (天下) – a hierarchical model of world order in which the status of states is determined by the degree of their loyalty to the Chinese centre.
Conclusions. It is concluded that for Ukraine, the cumulative effect of these mechanisms is critical: the coordination between beijing and moscow within international institutions systematically undermines the normative framework that protects Ukraine's right to choose independently its security guarantees, while engagement with Chinese infrastructure and digital projects without a clear risk management strategy threatens the formation of "relational lock-in" that would constrain the realisation of Ukraine's sovereign Euro-Atlantic choice.