Rethinking socialisation: the mediated model and China’s regional multilateral platforms

Why have China’s efforts to socialise other states produced such divergent outcomes? This paper addresses this question by examining the factors shaping the results of China’s socialisation attempts within the former 16 + 1 (now 14 + 1) platform in Central and Eastern Europe and the C + C5 mechanism in Central Asia. It argues that the effectiveness of China’s efforts to socialise secondary states into an alternative order depends on the behavioural responses of those states—ranging from support to resistance and including attempts to innovate or even socialise China in return. To account for these socialisation dynamics, the paper advances a model of mediated socialisation that conceptualises secondary states as active intermediaries: their varying degrees of embeddedness in the liberal international order shape both their responses to and the trajectory of a rising power’s efforts at socialisation into an alternative order. A comparative analysis of China’s institutional design choices across the two platforms, and how these reflect and respond to secondary states’ behavioural responses, offers empirical support for this model. The findings refine prevailing understandings of state socialisation by showing how rising powers’ normative and institutional projects are mediated by secondary states.