What is ‘minilateralism’, and why is Beijing fascinated with it?
AUKUS and the Quad are examples of 'minilateralism' – what are Beijing's equivalents?
The Investigator | No. 08/2025
‘Minilateralism’ has joined Beijing’s ever-shifting geopolitics lexicon at a telling moment. Facing dizzying global uncertainty and power dynamics, the use of this term ‘xiaoduobianzhuyi’ [小多边主义] in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) captures an emerging fact: the need perceived in Beijing and elsewhere for small, flexible groupings of states, pursuing shared interests rather than broad ideological alignments.
Morphing from scholarly speculation to the geopolitical chessboard, the term echoes other buzzwords that take on lives of their own. Like ‘soft power’ in the 1990s or ‘strategic ambiguity’ in the 2000s, minilateralism has, at least in Beijing’s eyes, evolved from a descriptive term to an active policy principle. It reflects widespread adaptation to a fragmenting multilateral order and a conscious strategy by pragmatic powers – implicitly led by the United States (US) – to maintain influence while minimising headwinds.
Beijing’s official media dismisses the concept of minilateralism held by the free and open nations as ‘pseudo-multilateralism’ while simultaneously developing its own variants. This mirrors earlier polemics: terms like ‘peaceful rise’ or ‘responsible stakeholder’ became contested ground between competing visions of international order.
A key case in point was ‘climate change’. Repudiated through the 2000s as a ruse by the free and open nations to contain the PRC, after the first United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference (COP1), Beijing embraced it as an arena in which a stunning ‘China Solution’ might be displayed.
Start of breakout
Extensively discussed in the 2010s by Rory Medcalf at the Australian National University, minilateralism was a background principle in security initiatives like the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) and AUKUS. As the Financial Times noted in April 2024, under Joe Biden, then President of the US, the State Department found ever more applications for the term.
Gulf News, the newspaper in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), published ‘Minilateralism: a concept that is changing the world order’ on 13th April 2024. A Chinese translation appeared in the state-run newspaper Reference News Network on 20th April, and was republished the same day by Sohu, a widely-read online platform known to test official limits. The intriguing term later spread, praised with faint damns, in PRC commentary.
Nikolai Mladenov, the author of the piece in Gulf News, is a Bulgarian diplomat with Middle East expertise. Both Chinese versions were allowed to close with Mladenov’s view that ‘minilateralism’s benefits outweigh its defects’.
Mladenov noted that minilateralism refers to small groups of states working together to solve a problem or pursue a common goal and is increasingly popular as a way to address challenges that cannot be solved by individual countries. Minilateralism has several advantages, not least flexibility, speed and focus on shared interests, but also comes with risks, not least the potential to worsen power imbalances and fragment the global order. Minilateralism offers a promising approach to international cooperation, with potential to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time.
Recent cases in point illustrate Beijing’s selective perception of minilateralism:
The China-Central Asia ‘5+1’ (C+C5) mechanism, formalised in 2020 and elevated to summit level in 2022, was a pragmatic adoption of the rubric. Linking Beijing with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, it allows direct PRC engagement with Central Asia without Russian mediation. Through focused initiatives in trade, infrastructure, security and cultural exchange, C+C5 illustrates how Beijing can employ minilateral understandings, meanwhile officially promoting ‘genuine multilateralism’ – suggesting the PRC’s criticism of the concept of minilateralism upheld by the free and open nations may be more about content than form.
During the visit of Wang Yi, Foreign Minister of the PRC, to the US in October 2022, Camille P. Dawson, a US State Department official, described ‘minilateralism’ as a way for countries to work together on specific issues via groups such as AUKUS and the Quad. Beijing officially rejects these as containment (‘exclusive small circles’).
Conversely, when Ferdinand Marcos, President of the Philippines, visited Vietnam to foster coast guard cooperation. Denouncing this as destructive ‘clique formation,’ Beijing contrasted it unfavourably with ‘genuine multilateralism’ via the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – demonstrating that the term’s acceptability depends on whether arrangements serve or challenge PRC interests.
End of Breakout
Minilateralism has not remained derogatory in PRC ‘diplospeak’. Uneasy fascination with it, praising it with faint damns, extends beyond strategic responses in security per se. PRC policy work reveals deep engagement with the idea. A growing body of scholarship examines it not just as a containment strategy by the free and open nations, but as an inflection in how states pursue interests in an ever-fragmenting international order.
This engagement comes to the fore in recent analysis of semiconductor supply chain rivalry. PRC theorists develop detailed frameworks probing how minilateral arrangements may reshape global technology ecosystems. They parse distinctions between different types of minilateral mechanisms, grouping them by fine degrees of exclusivity, topic linkage, and organisational flexibility.
This granular attention to ‘mechanisms’ suggests Beijing sees the concept as valuable for understanding – and potentially replicating – new geopolitical ‘games of interest’. Semiconductors illustrate this dual approach. Officially blasting US-led initiatives like the so-called ‘CHIP4 Alliance’ – an initiative between US, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan aimed at securing semiconductor supply chains – as ‘exclusive small circles,’ PRC experts probe them as potential models for future initiatives of their own. Minilateralism thus operates below the threshold of formal alliances while yielding concrete strategic objectives.
US-led minilaterals are lambasted as tools of hegemony, but ironically Beijing’s own ‘middle ground’ [中间地带] strategy turns to eerily similar flexible, interest-based groupings. Originally articulated by Mao Zedong to describe grey zones between US and Soviet influence, it has been repurposed to frame current PRC efforts to build coalitions with nations seeking refuge from major power competition. In initiatives like the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation initiative and certain trilateral dialogues, minilaterals are ‘decontaminated’, to remove any perceived diplomatic props of the free and open nations and become ever more universal geopolitical features.
Minilateralism reveals its utility for British foreign policy day by day, as the second presidency of Donald Trump, President of the US, steps up the erosion of traditional multilateral frameworks. Alarming as this is, it could serve other interests.
The success of AUKUS demonstrates the potential of well-crafted minilateral initiatives. Despite controversy, it has shown how focused cooperation among like-minded states can make ground while avoiding the complexity of broader multilateral negotiations. Of course, AUKUS also highlights potential pitfalls: the arrangement initially strained relations with France and raised concerns among ASEAN nations about regional stability. Careful diplomatic management and clear communication are clearly at a premium.
Beyond AUKUS, several models of minilateral cooperation warrant Westminster’s attention. The Quad’s evolution from a security dialogue to a platform addressing technology, infrastructure, and supply chain resilience is notable, while Japan’s deployment of issue-specific partnerships provides a template for middle powers to retain strategic autonomy while managing relations with both the US and the PRC.
For London, the optimal approach likely involves developing a portfolio of minilateral initiatives serving different objectives. These might include:
technology partnerships focused on emerging domains like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and quantum computing, where the research capability and regulatory expertise of the United Kingdom (UK) make it an attractive partner
supply chain security arrangements with trusted partners, leveraging the UK’s position as a major financial centre and trading hub
climate action coalitions that can move faster than global frameworks, building on the UK’s leadership in environmental policy
maritime security cooperation in specific regions, drawing on the Royal Navy’s global presence and expertise
A final caveat: buzzwords like ‘minilateralism’ are subject to Humpty Dumpty’s dictum that ‘words mean what I want them to mean’. They are easily loaded with dubious freight and put to dubious use. One assumption that may trigger resistance is the focus on ‘common interests’ rather than ‘common values’, which is supposed to solve all problems. Trade, technology and industry policy need not always work on the basis of shared interests; the interests at play may, to the contrary, be incommensurable, yet, other things being equal, work out smoothly. Voices may at the end of the day still be heard saying ‘it’s the values, stupid’.
David Kelly is a founding partner at China Policy, a policy analysis and strategic advisory firm headquartered in Beijing.
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