How to better understand China’s development policies for the ‘Global South’

The West views with suspicion China’s engagement in development finance, and its global initiatives for development and security
But viewed through a Chinese prism, the nature of North-South relations does not have the postcolonial underpinnings in the Western sense of the term

Zha Daojiong

Published: 3:30am, 29 Oct 2022

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Is the Global South a new arena for competition between China and the West? Developments such as the first US-Pacific Island Country summit in Washington last month are widely viewed as a sign that the contest has begun.

The summit was a pointed reaction to China’s security agreement with the Solomon Islands in April, followed by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit to eight Pacific countries.

But it is useful to note that “Global South” is not standard Chinese vocabulary in framing the world. The corresponding quanqiu nanfang can be sporadically found in Chinese publications but almost exclusively as a quotation of non-Chinese authors and speakers.

When used to discuss Chinese foreign policies, the geographical scope of the Global South is similar to yafeila (Asia, Africa and Latin America). Yafeila was used to express third-world solidarity, most prominently when China was campaigning for UN diplomatic recognition. But, since the early 1980s, the reference has virtually disappeared from Chinese commentary on world affairs.

What’s the significance of this gap in framing Chinese foreign relations? For international, particularly Western, analysts, the term “Global South” can help in seeing Chinese activities in one country as indicative of what is to come for other nation-states outside the conceptual Western world. But that approach can lead to undue alarm and even unwarranted geostrategic anxieties.

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As I see it, the conceptual gap goes to the heart of competing understandings of international development and cooperation. Modern Chinese thinking is heavily affected – though not always acknowledged – by Sun Yat-sen’s prolific writings in the early 1920s.

Sun was committed to ridding China of its abject and pervasive poverty. His 1922 book The International Development of China, published in English, was a comprehensive exposé of his Chinese writings.

Among other things, Sun championed four fundamentals: promotion of China’s infrastructural development; development through agricultural and industrial growth (as opposed to financial dynamism); using foreign inputs in a controlled manner; and the creation of international agencies to promote world development.

Mao Zedong would call him a forerunner in China’s pursuit of modernisation. In terms of China’s foreign relations, Sun’s idea that “all [nations] are equal” (tianxia datong) resonates with framings such as the “five principles of peaceful coexistence” and “a world community with a shared future”.

Men pose with a statue of Sun Yat-sen in Zhongshan, China. Photo: Ed Peters

It can be said that tenets underpinning Sun’s conceptualisation of the development of China and the rest of the world is intuitive in Chinese scholarly and policy thinking.

Viewed through a Chinese prism, the nature of North-South relations, even as framed during the Cold War, does not have the postcolonial underpinnings in the Western sense of the term.

China treated its participation in the Bandung Conference of Asia and Africa in 1955 as definitional of its foreign policy, but did not join either the South-South Cooperation movement or the non-aligned movement in full force. Even today, China does not formally align with the Group of 77, which grew out of those political movements led by newly independent countries.

Under Deng Xiaoping, China moved away from the “three worlds” formulation to identify the nature of North-South relations as one of international security – with nuclear disarmament by the superpowers as the main indicator – and the South-South relationship as one of development, that is, with economic growth as the primary task, rather than a revolutionary change to the post-war international system.

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So, what is the relevance of this history review in discussing China’s policy approaches to Asia, Africa and Latin America today?

First, China’s engagement in development finance arrangements for other middle- and low-income countries is a natural step. China first joined major multilateral development banks (MDBs) in 1980 (the International Monetary Fund and World Bank), going on to join the African Development Bank (1985), the Asian Development Bank (1986), Inter-American Development Bank (2009), and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (2016).

Whether as a contributor or borrower, China’s membership in these MDBs helped its pursuit of economic growth and social development. In 2014, it established the New Development Bank (NDB), and then the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in 2015.

It is true that the clientele of the AIIB and NDB is in the Global South. But, as is broadly recognised, contributions by these banks, especially in infrastructural development, fill a much-needed void in world development.

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Second, China put forward the Global Development Initiative (GDI) last year. Seen as a continuation of the Belt and Road Initiative, the GDI prioritises the alignment of areas for cooperation with the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. China emphasises cooperation through UN development agencies in implementing the GDI, as opposed to the Belt and Road Initiative, which is primarily a bilateral endeavour.

Third, the Global Security Initiative (GSI), which China recently tabled, has probably attracted more attention from the West. But much of the GSI’s text amounts to merely reframing its five principles of peaceful coexistence.

What is new, especially to American and other Western observers, is the inclusion of a reference to “indivisible security”, a term associated with Russian rhetoric. But the Chinese-language equivalent can also mean “inalienable” or “inseparable”.

In the final analysis, prospects for the GDI and GSI will depend on buy-in from countries in the Global South. More significantly, a government in the Global South simultaneously relates to competing development and security initiatives from major countries. For discussions about the dynamics of China’s interactions with the West, it is useful and even necessary to have a common understanding of the notion of the Global South.

Zha Daojiong is a professor of international political economy in the School of International Studies and Institute of South-South Cooperation and Development, Peking University. This is an edited version of his prepared remarks at the “Great Power Competition in the Global South” panel of the 2022 edition of the Stockholm China Forum, held on October 25

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