Creating a better world
Global South’s rise offers opportunity for a more fair and equitable international order
Chinese President Xi Jinping often says that the world is witnessing great changes unseen in a century. Now, how is the 21st century fundamentally changing from the 20th century? Well, in two ways.
One, the economic and strategic hegemony of the West is rapidly coming to an end. Two, the world is seeing a simultaneous and dramatic rise of the Global South. These twin changes are now opening up real possibilities for a more democratic, just and peaceful world order.
The Global South — a broad nongeographical community of developing and underdeveloped countries — is now on an unstoppable march. History’s dominant trend in the 21st century is toward equitable global development, assured global security and democratic global governance.
The era of colonial slavery was ended by the heroic struggles of freedom-loving peoples in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Now, the subsequent era of Western economic and political supremacy is also coming to an end.
The Global South’s rise is propelled by three drivers. The first is the power of demography. Out of the global population of 8 billion, only 15 percent live in the West. It is rightly said that demography is destiny. The peoples of the Global South are taking their destiny into their own hands with new modes of mutual cooperation.
Second, this process of de-Westernization is accompanied by multipolarity and the emergence of several non-Western multilateral organizations committed to sustainable development and the peaceful resolution of conflicts. The BRICS has already overtaken the G7 in terms of both demographic power and economic power.
Meanwhile, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is promoting trust-building relations among countries in the vast landmass of Eurasia and South Asia. China, in particular, is playing a leading role in many multilateral development initiatives such as the Belt and Road Initiative, the New Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
China is now also emerging as a responsible mediator to end disputes. The recent rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia was an important triumph for Beijing’s peace-promoting diplomacy.
Third, many developing countries in the Global South have convincingly demonstrated their ability to overcome difficult development challenges without depending on the West. China’s success in lifting 800 million people out of poverty in just four decades is an inspiring example.
While China has forged far ahead on multiple fronts, other countries such as India, Indonesia, and Brazil are also making impressive strides in technology, infrastructure and improving the living standards of their citizens.
These are heartening features of the rise of the Global South. Nevertheless, it still has a long way to go. It must take the following measures to remove the hurdles in the way of a new global order that ensures development and security for all.
First, it must frustrate the designs of Western powers, who, afraid of losing their global hegemony, are trying to create divisions among developing countries. To achieve its aims, the West has raised the bogey of the “China threat” and resorted to unfair sanctions to “decouple” and “de-risk” from the Chinese economy. New security groupings such as the Quad and AUKUS imperil peace in the AsiaPacific region.
Second, the Global South should accelerate the process of de-dollarization of the global economy. The US dollar’s share in global reserves has already fallen from 73 percent in 2001 to 47 percent in 2022. Ending the dollar’s hegemony will greatly weaken the United States’ ability to weaponize its currency to make unfair gains in global trade to the detriment of developing countries.
Third, there is also an urgent need to resolve many entrenched differences among important countries in the Global South. For example, the border row between India and China, along with its negative effect on overall bilateral relations, has given Western powers an opportunity to fish in troubled waters. Given this, New Delhi and Beijing should take certain trust-enhancing measures, foremost of which is a mutual assurance that the two neighbors are not a threat, but a significant developmental opportunity, to each other.
Finally, leaders of the Global South should make it clear that theirs is not an anti-West block. The new world we seek to build in the 21st century should be one in which all countries are friends, and none is an enemy. It should be one in which all are regarded as equal, regardless of their size, religion, culture, political system, economic ranking and military power.
And it should be one in which there is the highest degree of mutual respect and solidarity aimed at creating a future free of injustice, wars and violence.
In other words, it must be based on acceptance of the ancient wisdom of all human civilizations — namely, that all people belong to one indivisible family, whether they reside in the East, West, South or North.
The author, an aide to former Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, is an advocate of IndiaChina-Pakistan cooperation. The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.