China, India court Global South in competing bids to lead developing countries
- The Asian giants are courting developing countries for support in a changing international order, observers said
- While their approaches differ, Beijing and New Delhi are seeking to champion Africa, Asia and Latin America, with competition set to intensify
“We are more than 100 countries but our priorities are similar,” Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in his opening remarks to the latest meeting, intended as a briefing to attendees on the Group of 20 summit hosted by New Delhi in September.
“From a geographic perspective, the Global South has always existed but it has received a voice of its own for the first time,” he said.
As a G20 member, China was not invited to the virtual summits which were widely seen as a ramping up of India’s efforts to court the Global South – a term broadly used to refer to developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Use of the term – attributed to US political activist Carl Ogelsby in 1969 – has exploded in recent years as a “convenient shorthand” for countries that want the global economy’s structures overturned in favour of a more multipolar system, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
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While China and India have adopted different approaches – with the former focusing on investments and infrastructure – analysts said that both countries regard the Global South as increasingly important to their ambitions to expand influence and shape the changing international order.
Ali Wyne, senior analyst with Eurasia Group’s Global Macro-Geopolitics practice, said the key focus of India’s pitch to developing countries has been that it would strive to make prominent global institutions more inclusive and responsive to their voices.
In addition to the virtual summits, New Delhi has used its presidency of the G20 to work on ensuring that “the concerns of the Global South receive due cognisance”, according to the Indian external affairs ministry.
In an added boost to India’s efforts, the 55-member African Union (AU) was formally admitted to membership of the G20 at the New Delhi summit in September.
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While both India and China supported the AU’s bid, it was Modi who welcomed its chairman Azali Assoumani into the G20 fold with a wide grin and a warm embrace. Chinese President Xi Jinping did not attend the event.
The African Union’s admission would “strengthen the G20 and also strengthen the voice of the Global South”, Modi said.
According to Wyne, India was also able to make sure that the Russian war in Ukraine did not distract the G20 from focusing on developing countries’ priorities, including enhancing pandemic preparedness and reducing the global debt burden.
Byron Chong, a research associate at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, said India announced a number of initiatives at the G20 that had allowed it to “position itself as a serious contender to China for leadership of the Global South”.
Among the initiatives – which champion the interests of developing countries – is a plan to reform multilateral development banks and expand their lending capacities.
This would help improve access to funding but could also be seen as “an attempt to weaken China’s influence and status as the key source of developmental loans and aid for poorer nations”, Chong wrote, in a September article for the school’s Centre on Asia and Globalisation.
India also announced a massive rail and shipping project connecting India with Europe through the Middle East in partnership with the US, EU and some Gulf and European states – “the most overt indication of India’s intention to compete with China”, according to Chong.
Developing countries, particularly in regions such as Africa and Central Asia, have been the key beneficiaries of China’s landmark Belt and Road Initiative since its launch a decade ago.
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At the third belt and road forum in October, Xi renewed his commitment to the development of emerging economies and stressed that China’s modernisation was “for all developing countries”.
Amitendu Palit, senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Institute of South Asian Studies, said that China “has been able to mobilise some strategic influence through its infrastructure-building efforts”.
“India has instead focused on bringing the concerns of the Global South to the world’s largest and most influential policy forums. It has tried to ensure that specific challenges of the Global South, such as in addressing climate change, get to be heard and responded to.”
Palit said the importance of the Global South’s support has grown for both China and India, as countries look to form coalitions with like-minded nations. “China and India are keen on reshaping the international order. In this regard, the Global South is very important for them.”
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The Global South had also become more significant because of the shifts in the international order that followed the Covid-19 pandemic, which saw the delivery of “global public goods” becoming an “important source of obtaining strategic influence”, Palit said.
At the height of the pandemic in December 2021, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported that China had provided more than 1.8 billion vaccine doses to more than 120 countries and international organisations.
Indian media said India supplied some 235 million doses to countries including Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan.
China’s focus on developing countries was also on display in August, when Xi attended the Brics summit in Johannesburg, in just his second overseas trip this year.
The bloc of emerging economies – which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – was an important platform that would “elevate the solidarity and cooperation of developing countries to a higher level”, Xi said.
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The Brics leaders agreed at the summit to invite Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to join the bloc, a move that reflected China’s growing influence, according to observers.
Alessandro Arduino, affiliate lecturer at King’s College London’s Lau China Institute, said the expansion aligns with China’s extensive involvement with the Global South as the international governance landscape undergoes a “seismic shift”.
“Beijing’s quest to seize the helm of Global South leadership is a crucial component of its strategy to shape a world characterised by multiple power centres, aiming to exert a more potent influence in global affairs,” he said.
“In pursuit of global prominence, China positions itself as the champion of developing nations, attempting to redefine major power dynamics by prioritising development.”
Eurasia Group’s Wyne said China believes that building greater influence in the developing world will be essential to offset growing pressures by advanced industrial democracies – especially the United States – to contest its influence.
India, meanwhile, is of the view that its moves will help it to transform from an Indo-Pacific power into a global one, Wyne said.
Competition between China and India to court the Global South will heighten amid the growing distrust between the two powers, whose worsening relations in recent years have been punctuated by clashes along their shared border in the Himalayas, he said.
According to Wyne, India is likely to consider more ways to include representatives from developing countries at prominent gatherings, such as inviting officials from Southeast Asian nations to attend Quad meetings as guests.
“China will continue to leverage its geoeconomic statecraft to make inroads, but with an emphasis on greener, more sustainable investments,” he added.
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Palit said that he expects both countries to further engage with developing countries, with the rivalry spreading across infrastructure development, people-to-people connectivity, and environmental cooperation.
The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, announced at the G20, is likely to be joined by more infrastructure projects led by India, according to Palit.
China is already expanding its support for African countries, and in a concrete way, paying for parliamentary buildings, sports stadiums and conference centres across the continent.
Beijing has also delivered gifts of a US$200 million headquarters for the African Union and an US$80 million base for the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, both in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.
While analysts agreed that the competition between China and India is set to intensify, they suggested that it may not be possible for one leader to represent all the countries of the Global South, given their vast differences and varied needs.
According to Zack Cooper, senior fellow at Washington-based think tank American Enterprise Institute, while the Brics members share general concerns, there appears to be a lack of agreement on a broad set of rules governing trade, technology and other interactions.
“The core problem is that there are fundamental differences among the Brics-Plus members, which will limit its ability to actually deliver results,” he said.
“Countries don’t appear to have a consolidated view … They can’t articulate a shared vision for the future.”
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Palit said that China and India’s bids to position themselves as champions of the Global South have met with a mixed response, largely because developing countries are not homogenous and their interests are not always identical.
Other large middle and regional powers such as Russia, Brazil and South Africa might also aspire to lead countries belonging to the Global South, he suggested.
But because of the differences among developing countries and the evolving global situation, it was difficult to visualise one leader that could helm the Global South, Palit said.
According to Wyne, “it would be presumptuous for any one country to conclude that it is ‘the’ representative of the developing world”.
“And it is doubtful that developing countries would want to rely wholly on India, China, or any other given country as they look to stabilise their economies amid systemic instability in the international order.”
