The rise of confrontational and exclusive forces in today’s world drives the growth of group politics and bloc politics. However, this is not the right way for international relations to evolve. I believe that the mechanisms and cultures of symbiosis between countries are crucial for international relations to break away from the framework of traditional confrontational politics.

We need to take two important political principles into consideration when constructing a relationship of symbiosis between nations. First, all sovereign states should follow the principles of equality, mutual respect, and non-interference. Second, no international order should interfere in domestic affairs.

The first principle, which is also the foundation of state symbiosis, is now well accepted across the world. The major threats to international order come from different understandings of the second principle. In past decades, the liberal world created various political doctrines to find theoretical excuses for interfering in other countries’ domestic affairs, and those political doctrines bring the world into turmoil. If an international order began to meddle in domestic affairs, it is destined to be dangerous, and therefore in opposition to state symbiosis.

State symbiosis also considers how nations can better cooperate in an increasingly interdependent world and therefore promote global governance. There are many obstacles to international cooperation, among which confrontational institutional system within countries have long been neglected, while it has a negative impact on multilateralism, global governance, and how international cooperation agreements are implemented. The confrontational system is largely due to the propaganda and diplomatic promotion of Western politics. It has been regarded as a democratic system for quite a long time in the past, but we need to reflect on this system in the 21st century. We now see more and more cooperative organizations and global governance arrangements are impaired by partisan politics within certain important countries. The US is a typical case in point, with growing doubts about whether its domestic confrontational system can provide definitive support for global governance commitments.

State symbiosis needs to solve this problem. If global governance is established based on domestic politics with internal divisions and rivalries, its coherence and effectiveness will surely suffer. The current global governance deficit, and the declining willingness, sluggishness and wobble of more and more countries regarding global governance, are related to such a domestically confrontational institutional environment. Such system has been replicated in many places over the past few decades. Out of respect for the political choices of other countries, we cannot directly say that such political choices are bad. But the political environment formed by these choices is actually disturbing state symbiosis and global governance.

State symbiosis also requires a reexamination of the concepts and logic that have dominated international political behaviors for a long time. Apart from the two principles mentioned above, some crucial political concepts and hypotheses should be redefined. From the perspective of Marxism, and Chinese political economy theory, when we understand the world based on the logical clue of production-exchange-distribution-state-world market-liberation, we might be able to provide a new view of international politics, and we could try to understand international politics from the perspectives of all human beings to provide plans for actions toward a better international order.

Su Changhe is director and professor from the School of International Relations & Public Affairs at Fudan University. This article was edited from his paper submitted to The International Academic Forum in China 2022.