Global Governance amid the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Fragmentation and the Role of Middle Powers

The world is now experiencing the most serious global crisis since the second World War. Not only are governments of countries doing everything they can to improve domestic public health management, but there is also an urgent need for the international community to improve global governance. In the face of this global crisis, however, the world does not have the unity it deserves. On the contrary, the United States promotes the strategy of confrontational competition to maintain world hegemony. Its politicians try to politicize the work of epidemic prevention and control, destroy the global coordination mechanism, which further exposes the shortcomings of global governance, and the trend of great power competition and power transfer is more obvious. In the foreseeable future, the transition of global governance is more likely to take the regional form. In the face of competition from great powers, the space for middle powers to play a role has expanded significantly. Most of middle powers choose to balance foreign policies, advocate multilateralism, act as “catalyst” and “bridge” to win global influence. Nevertheless, the role of “follower” also exposes the weakness of capacity and the lack of diplomatic independence of some middle powers. Global governance system should be reshaped to adapt to the new stage of globalization, which firmly revitalizes multilateralism, promote consensus among major powers, enhance the authority and political legitimacy of global governance.