On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the United Nations in 2025, the global governance system faces profound transformations, with the international community's demand for multilateralism, governance efficacy, and inclusive development growing increasingly urgent. As an institutionalized international platform, the UN plays an irreplaceable role in enhancing global governance capacity. China's interactive practices with the UN not only reflect the evolutionary patterns of multilateral cooperation but also provide practical explorations for global governance reform. By integrating core concepts such as its development philosophy, security outlook, and civilizational perspective into the UN agenda, China promotes the development of multilateral mechanisms and advocates for the interests of developing countries. The alignment of China's "Harmonious Unity and Good Governance" (HUGG) philosophy with the UN's vision of a "shared home" offers a feasible paradigm for addressing global governance deficits. Leveraging China's governance concepts and practical innovations, the UN has strengthened its legitimacy and operational capacity in global governance, expanded the inclusivity and adaptability of its institutional framework, and provided multilateralism with more substantial material and value-based support. In the future, deepening research on China-UN interactions will contribute to building a governance knowledge system for cross-civilizational dialogue, exploring synergies between institutional resilience and conceptual innovation, and offering more explanatory and constructive reference solutions for the transformation of the global governance system.

I. China-UN Interactive Practices in Global Governance

This section examines China-UN interactions in global governance in detail, revealing three stages since China's restoration of its lawful UN seat in 1971: institutional apprenticeship and internalization, systematic participation and responsibility restructuring, and institutional contribution and paradigm innovation. During the institutional apprenticeship phase, China transitioned from a peripheral observer to a deep participant, adopting strategies of cautious engagement, selective participation, and proactive internalization. In the systematic participation phase, China's policy positioning underwent a qualitative leap, shifting from issue-oriented approaches to systemic construction and assuming greater international responsibilities. In the institutional contribution phase, China proposed the Global Development Initiative (GDI), Global Security Initiative (GSI), and Global Civilization Initiative (GCI), injecting systemic reform momentum into global governance. China has consistently adhered to the UN Charter's principles, practiced multilateralism, and promoted the evolution of the governance system toward fairness and rationality. China's practices in global governance exhibit historical continuity and contemporary innovation, providing a new cognitive framework and practical model for global governance reform.

II. From "China's Actions" to "China's Governance": UN-Led Global Governance Reform and China's Contributions

As the core platform for global governance, the UN faces multiple challenges, including issue limitations, capacity constraints, institutional barriers, and conceptual gaps. China's three initiatives—the GDI, GSI, and GCI—offer systemic solutions for improving global governance. The GDI emphasizes reshaping global economic governance with new development concepts and advancing the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The GSI proposes a vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative, and sustainable security, opposing zero-sum games and bloc confrontation. The GCI advocates a civilizational outlook based on equality, mutual learning, dialogue, and inclusiveness, respecting cultural diversity and enhancing cross-cultural understanding. These three initiatives form an organic whole of conceptual renewal, institutional refinement, and pathway optimization, driving global governance from hegemonic stability to pluralistic co-governance. The deep interaction between China and the UN has catalyzed profound changes in institutional power structures, providing alternative solutions for global governance transformation.

III. Advancing "Harmonious Unity and Good Governance" and Building a "Shared Home": China's Vision for Global Governance

At this historical turning point for global governance, China has secured institutional voice for developing countries through systemic contributions and pioneered new pathways beyond ideological divides. Improving the global governance system requires leveraging the UN framework, integrating emerging governance concepts and practical wisdom, upholding multilateralism, rebalancing power structures, and fostering value consensus to transition from governance crises to governance revival and move toward a community with a shared future for humanity.

International responses to the three initiatives vary: developing countries prioritize development rights and depoliticized cooperation, while developed countries focus on rule alignment. In practice, the initiatives face challenges such as immature interest coordination among governance actors, mismatches between emerging governance issues and traditional institutional frameworks, and strategic misjudgments due to ideological biases, necessitating more inclusive and effective institutional innovations.

China's new global governance concept, "Harmonious Unity and Good Governance" (HUGG), creatively blends traditional Chinese "harmony" (和合) with modern "good governance" principles. Philosophically, "harmony" breaks free from the conflict-driven mindset of traditional international relations theory, emphasizing maximizing collective interests through non-zero-sum games while acknowledging civilizational diversity, institutional differences, and pluralistic interests. In value dimensions, "harmony" encompasses a tripartite logic: an ontological "unity of heaven and humanity," a methodological "balanced approach," and a practical "harmony among nations" relational philosophy. This tradition resonates historically with the UN Charter's principle of "good-faith coexistence," enriching multilateralism with unique Eastern values.

In governance system reconstruction, "harmony" fosters a flexible, inclusive global institutional network. By redefining the relationship between state sovereignty and global commons, it innovatively proposes a "multilateral consultative community" while upholding the UN Charter's principles. This new architecture maintains sovereign states as basic governance units while enhancing functional complementarity among regional organizations, specialized agencies, and non-state actors through multi-tiered dialogue mechanisms. In international security, "harmony" rejects absolute security, advocating a composite security ecosystem that integrates traditional military and non-traditional security issues into a unified framework, resolving structural contradictions through preventive diplomacy and cooperative security mechanisms.

In civilizational exchange, "harmony" transforms the cultural philosophy of "appreciating one's own beauty and sharing others' beauty" into practical governance wisdom. By establishing long-term civilizational dialogue mechanisms, it fosters new consensus points amid value-system collisions. In emerging areas like digital economy and climate change, it promotes a "technology-ethics-institution" trinity governance model, respecting national development rights while forming binding norms through mutual recognition of technical standards and shared environmental responsibilities. This approach balances innovation freedom and risk control, offering methodological guidance for addressing governance vacuums from technological revolutions.

The connotation of "good governance" is gaining contemporary reinterpretation in international consensus. China's governance outlook emphasizes both "procedural good governance" and "outcome good governance," focusing on procedural justice, rule co-creation, and equitable benefit-sharing. This ethic aligns with the UN 2030 Agenda's "leave no one behind" principle, providing a common denominator for global governance. China's "good governance" philosophy integrates domestic governance experience with global challenges, centering on a framework based on common human values. It transcends the sovereignty-first mindset, emphasizing justice in governance processes, diversity of actors, and inclusivity of outcomes.

China's proposed global governance framework revolves around "five-dimensional reconstruction": (1) Power dimension: reforming international institutions and enhancing emerging economies' voice for more representative decision-making. (2) Rule dimension: developing flexible, modular regulatory systems to accommodate diverse governance needs and differentiated responsibilities for nations at different development stages. (3) Resource dimension: optimizing governance resource allocation through multi-level linkage mechanisms, building a "UN-regional organizations-sovereign states-non-governmental actors" network, and establishing a dynamic global governance resource-matching system via digital technologies. (4) Momentum dimension: innovating public-private partnerships to engage businesses, social organizations, and research institutions. (5) Value dimension: constructing governance ethics based on "common human values," transcending ideological and civilizational differences to establish minimal moral consensus. This reconstruction is not an overthrow but an "adaptive evolution" for governance ecosystem upgrading.

In specific agenda-setting, three core areas should be covered: (1) Security governance: promoting the new security vision with full-cycle "prevention-management-resolution" mechanisms, focusing on conflict prevention and peacebuilding in regions like Ukraine, the Middle East, and Africa.

IV. Conclusion

The historical leap in China-UN interactions embodies Chinese civilizational governance wisdom and a socialist major country's interpretation of common human values. This interaction lays institutional foundations for a community with a shared future for humanity, leaving China's imprint on global governance history. China's approach inherits the "harmony as precious" civilizational gene, innovates "systematic governance" pathways, upholds multilateralism, respects civilizational diversity, and confronts challenges with solutions. Its governance philosophy offers new thinking for addressing "governance deficits," building communities at global, regional, and national levels. As the vision of a shared future for humanity materializes, global governance transitions from "good governance ideals" to "shared home" practices, reshaping international order and creatively exploring human civilization's future.