Normative internationalization through globalization: China and India between modernisation, democratisation and resistances

Without challenging the very basis of globalization nor even the rules of international law, India and China have managed to benefit from it through a selective and strategic acculturation. This recourse to an international law, which they hardly had a hand in creating, has not reduced their normative autonomy but, on the contrary, participated to their empowerment and wise usage of a chosen internationalization. So much so that they are now, often softly, sometimes more aggressively, exporting the products of their own hybridization to the world. These patterns, while questioned by the global COVID19 pandemic, are also comforted by the decline—even if relative—of American and European leaderships and global influence. Hence the importance of a reverse internationalization for the initial creators of international law. This chapter addresses the benefits and challenges of a normative internationalization through globalization for developing Asia with a special focus on India and China, the two complex giants where modernization and resistances are simultaneously yet differently at play.